hgsummerofcode

[hgsummerofcode]

I'm getting the urge to work on coding projects again and I knooooooooow I should work on the video game I've been teasing since 2018 but I want to make an app for the game Antidote (and more generally work on mobile apps and network servers).

Regardless I think I might stream some coding at some point. Maybe Thursday?

[hgsummerofcode]

I missed my opportunity to enroll in summer classes so now I'm having another hot girl summer of code. I'm hoping to have my godot 4 version of gds at feature parity with the godot 3 version by the end of the summer. I'm trying to rely less on art being done to motivate me to work on stuff bc that's just an excuse to. wait instead of work. lowkey yanderedev vibes.

[hgsummerofcode]

I'm very happy with the progress I'm making on Ghost Dating Sim :3c I've made a bunch of progress on the dialogue system. Now I only need it to control room effects so I can make the characters walk around during dialogues. After that I want to put the foyer room together and it's basically caught up to the Godot3 version!

Next steps will be an inventory system, a player spawn system for each room (the foyer will be the trickiest), lighting, and sound! Then I can start paying for art and writing the actual story! Maybe! Hopefully!

As an aside, I've been referring to this game as "ghost dating sim" for almost 6 years, so all these posts will be funny to look back on once it has a real name.

[hgsummerofcode]

This blog isn't dead! I just haven't coded anything in a long time lol.

I'm remaking ghost dating sim in godot 4 and everything I've done so far is rewrite code I had already written. Which is not only tedious and so discourages me from working, but also gives me nothing "new" to show off while I put in that work.

I'm hoping to get the current version to feature parity with the godot 3 version by the end of July. I mean, it shouldn't take that long but the only thing I know about game dev is things take longer than you expect so I'm giving myself a generous buffer. Plus July is when my artist becomes available to work on the part of the game I hate doing. So after July I'm going to start paying for art and music and hopefully get an MVP/demo done by the end of the year!

[hgsummerofcode]

Oh also when it eats it will finish the whole fruit every time. I need to add decision-making in the fruit state after each bite.

So here's what I have so far for the virtual pet prototype:

The pet has a state machine that can choose between Walking, Waiting, and Eating (sleeping still coming soon lol).

As you can see at the end of the video, eating can make hunger go below 0, which messes up the decision-making a little bit (although I haven't run into errors yet, I know it's possible and that makes me antsy).

I need to tweak the part of the code the weighs what the pet wants to do next. Then I need to make it so needs can't go below 0 or above 100. Then I need to let the pet sleep. Then I need to... probably add animations and sounds at that point.

Anyway, progress! Also I'm a little proud of my code and project organization this time. :3c You can peep my source code here: https://github.com/HappyFork/VirtualPet

[hgsummerofcode]

So here's what I have so far for the virtual pet prototype:

The pet has a state machine that can choose between Walking, Waiting, and Eating (sleeping still coming soon lol).

As you can see at the end of the video, eating can make hunger go below 0, which messes up the decision-making a little bit (although I haven't run into errors yet, I know it's possible and that makes me antsy).

I need to tweak the part of the code the weighs what the pet wants to do next. Then I need to make it so needs can't go below 0 or above 100. Then I need to let the pet sleep. Then I need to... probably add animations and sounds at that point.

Anyway, progress! Also I'm a little proud of my code and project organization this time. :3c You can peep my source code here: https://github.com/HappyFork/VirtualPet

[hgsummerofcode]

I've been working on a thing!

It's a prototype of a virtual pet game. I'm trying to teach myself a couple things with this. First: I'm trying to get better at AI/non-player-controlled things. I had a first pass at that idea with the cat umbrella game jam game I made, and I want to expand on that. Second: I'm learning Godot's navigation system. It was apparently changed dramatically in the jump from 3.x to 4.x.

The idea for the prototype is something resembling tamogatchi. A creature that moves around and eats and sleeps and maybe poops. But I'm hoping the lessons I learn from it can help me make two other long-term dream projects.

But here's what I have so far:

What the hell, gifs of this game are beefy. I think it's because my stock image background is moving around too much. I hope this tells you anything.

So I have a character that chooses a random thing to do out of 3 options. It either waits around, picks a random spot on the map and moves to it, or moves towards the nut. That's all I got so far. The player moves to a random spot by picking from random numbers within hard-coded parameters (I gotta fix that at some point) and then moves to the closest spot on a navigation mesh. Right now the mesh is just a simple rectangle, but I want to mess around with more interesting shapes (maybe keeping it on the path, at least for the stock-photo-background phase). It also waits for a randomly chosen amount of time.

Lastly it decides to eat by moving to the food. But as soon as it gets there it makes another decision and usually moves away. I want to figure out what exactly happens when it eats (give it a hunger stat, make the nut disappear, etc). So that's next on my list.

Also that Panel in the corner stressed me out so badly. Godot 4 changed their panels? So I spent a significant portion of my time at work today learning about custom themes and theme overrides JUST to make the panels opaque. This is the second change from godot 3.x to 4.x that I'm iffy about (only because I'm lazy and it makes me have to work around things). The first being the removal of the light "mask" blend mode, which was how I accomplished a really cool effect in Ghost Dating Sim. Anyway, that's a rant for another time.

Anyway yeah. I hope to keep yall updated!

[hgsummerofcode]

I made a game jam game!

I teamed up with another regular in this game jam: the talented subvertissement!

Their other work can be found here: https://subvertissement.itch.io/

[hgsummerofcode]

Omg I need to stop abandoning this blog for months at a time.

Anyway look at this!!!

Player art by the talented @kookyoddball !!!

It keeps track of which frame of the animation it's on so each step alternates, even when there's no input for a bit!

:))))

[hgsummerofcode]

I already started it but I don't have access to my file at work :(( I guess I'll have to start a new one and combine them.

Ok I think I want to work on another creative project. The game jam was nice practice. I'm thinking either writing the script for the ghost dating sim mvp or working on my forum website. I do also have that Antidote app project.

Nvm I was gonna make a poll but I know what yall will vote and I agree so I'll get working on that script now lol.

[hgsummerofcode]

Ok I think I want to work on another creative project. The game jam was nice practice. I'm thinking either writing the script for the ghost dating sim mvp or working on my forum website. I do also have that Antidote app project.

Nvm I was gonna make a poll but I know what yall will vote and I agree so I'll get working on that script now lol.

[hgsummerofcode]

Hey I did a game jam to get back in the groove of making games.

[hgsummerofcode]

I spent this morning wondering why a form wasn't rendering on my site and then this afternoon it just suddenly worked!

Not sure what I did but I'll take it!

[hgsummerofcode]

Alright I'm finally getting down to working on Ghost Dating Sim again. Kind of. I'm going back and forth between that and my old forum website project bc there is a small chance that my forum project can get me a new job. But this post is about Ghost Dating Sim.

What's a better way to show that I'm working on new content than by redoing the tileset for a scene that was already (mostly) done? lol

I'm redoing the outdoor scene tileset because the original tiles were 128 x 128 pixels, but the foyer tile set is 640x640. Plus I'm going to redo the camera. Right now, I have the tilesets scaled to .5 and .1 (outside and foyer respectively), but i realized it makes more sense to have all the assets be at the same scale and just zoom the camera out.

On the topic of re-doing assets, the wonderful @kookyoddball has generously animated the player character walkaround sprite and it looks gorgeous. I am so excited to show it off! All the art in this game not done by me is going to look great, you can count on that. I'll probably get that working and post a clip in the next couple of weeks!!

[hgsummerofcode]

Hey I promise this is impressive. I made a connection that says open and lets me send messages to my server!

Next step will probably be getting messages back from the server and then uh. Making the messages mean something! But I'm honestly burnt out on Android right now and I'm gonna go back to godot I think.

[hgsummerofcode]

This blog is not dead!

I have been keeping true to my word and working on my Antidote android app. It's slow going because android is a nightmare to develop for (but it's the phone I and the majority of my friends use). Also, I haven't posted many updates because there's no visual component to it yet.

So far, I've been able to make an android activity that connects via socket to a python server that I made with this tutorial: https://realpython.com/python-sockets/ . I was going back and forth about using HTTP or just doing my own data encoding but HTTP gives me a headache when I use it for anything other than web pages. I'm sure there's a better way to do what I'm doing with HTTP but uh. I'll figure that out later. Right now I'm focused on making it work and then I'll make it better.

I'm still struggling with step 1 though lol. I did make a connection that sends a "Hello world" message and then closes, but I'm setting the Android project up to be able to maintain a single connection and send multiple messages back and forth through it. I have the main activity (right now it's just a button that says connect), a service that can run in the background and handles all the game logic, and a HandlerThread that runs the socket connection. I spent all of my winter break getting here lol and it feels like I haven't actually accomplished anything. I have successfully bound the activity to the service and created the network thread, so my next tasks are being able to send messages to the server, interpret messages from the server, and close the connection.

I have one more weekend until my Spring classes start. I'm hoping I can get something done before then!