#Godot Coders needed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

allieebobo · 6 months ago

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Monsoon Games: Roadmap

I'll continue to tweak this rough roadmap according to the responses I get from the google form, but here's the plan (ideal-case) for the next 1-2 years!

If you haven't filled out the form yet, please do, as answers would be super valuable in helping me better gauge, prioritize, and budget my next steps as well as tweak the pricing for the tiers!

Phase 1: Now till end-2025

Full-time urban planner

Part-time game dev.

Likely to be mostly solo-work and choice-script based

Phase 2: Beginning 2026 till end 2026

Part/Full-time game dev

Likely to involve / bring in an artist/coder, depending on eventual decision on game format (ren'py, Godot or choicescript)

Phase 3: Beginning 2027

Launch phase 2 game

Re-evaluate what to do next, likely back to my full-time job, but to KIV this based on what happens in Phase 2

Details below the cut!

Again, if you have comments, suggestions, preferences, do leave a message or email ([email protected]). If you're interested to collaborate, or to find out about what games I'm thinking of, click here.

Phase 1a

Timeframe: now till end 2025

Scope: Keep rolling out choicescript updates for CT:OS and Merry Crisis. This will form the base of content for ko-fi/patreon (with subscribers continuing to get early-releases until these games are complete).

Phase 1b

Timeframe: start sometime 2nd half of 2025, run concurrently till end 2025)

Scope: Write a choicescript 'concept demo' for 2 new games I've been haunted by over the past couple of years. (I'll release more info on this if I think they're viable). Whether or not they become more complex games, I'll at least have the choicescript demo.

Phase 1c

Timeframe: optional, but to start as soon as funding is obtained

Scope: Depending on interest, I want to consider doing a port to ren'py for Merry Crisis (or CT:OS, but likely MC) for a more visual-style game. This would involve either hiring a coder to help with the port, or doing it myself. More importantly, will need to commission art for this.

_____

Monthly-subscriptions for both Phase 1a and 1b would include the following tiers:

$3/month (existing): Just to support me :)

$6/month (existing): Early-access links to CT:OS and Merry Crisis

$9/month (new tier): Same as above + Early-content (e.g. lore, character snippets & art, non-interactive stories, dev logs) for new game(s)

$12/month (might not go for this tier, but including just as a concept): Same as above + Expanded early-content (e.g. interactive choice-script based demo access)

Phase 2a

Timeframe: Beginning 2026, probably 6-9 months or more depending on scope

Scope: With CT:OS and Merry Crisis completed, I hope to then turn my sights to converting the choicescript demo created in phase 1b into actual complete games. This could either take the form of:

A full choicescript game

A full ren'py (visual) game

A full Godot (2D) game

About 2-3 months into Phase 2a, I will also have enough content to launch a kickstarter, which would hopefully bring new backers on board and funds to speed-up production of the game(s). For folks who prefer supporting once-off instead, they'll also come in at this stage :)

Phase 2b:

Timeframe: Probably 6-9 months into 2026

Scope: Once there's a playable beta version of the game, I'll then do testing with subscribers and other beta-testers, and do de-bugging.

_____

Monthly-subscriptions for both Phase 2a and 2b would include the following tiers:

$4/month: Just to support me :)

$8/month: Subscriber-only content for all new games in development (e.g. character snippets & art, dev logs)

$12/month: Same as above + Little interactive patches/expansion packs for CT:OS and Merry Crisis

$16/month: Same as above + Expanded early-content for all new games (e.g. non-interactive stories, scene peaks/teasers, interactive twine or choicescript based playable content, access to beta version of the game when ready in phase 2b)

Kickstarter tiers:

$12 once-off for a specific project (a selection of content from the pool of characer snippets & art, dev-logs that $8/month subscribers get)

$25 once-off for a specific project (same as above + a selection of content from the pool of expanded early-content)

$35 once-off for a specific project (same as above + special perks e.g. ability to design a character or item or request chapter)

Phase 3

Timeframe: Start of 2027 onwards

Scope: When at least 1 game is launched, hopefully by start of 2027, I'll re-evaluate and see what to set my sights on next! This probably also means going back to full-time urban planning :)

#if #interactive fiction #game development #game plans #roadmap #future plans #monsoon games #ideas

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sonicbattlelm · 1 year ago

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- C# or Godot only - Additional Programmers Needed! to help join the Battle for Sonic Battle Lost Memories ambitious upcoming title! - Please message us here or any other platforms. Your time is much needed. come join the fight in this incredible battle!

Greetings! I'm a Lead director of Sonic Battle Lost Memories, with experience in the industry and with developing an indie game or two myself; what I'm seeking are fellow coder with experience in C# or Godot who are looking to sharpen their skills.

This is intended to be a sequel to Sonic Battle; a sonic fighting game. Smash Bros & Power Stone is quite the best reference. The idea is pretty much recreating sonic battle but adding a few tweaks. The programmer currently on board is skilled in this element and has a prior codebase to pull from, allowing us to focus on the artistic elements early. here's a sneak peak :

wherein we will be using this prior work as a base in the latest Godot.

Character concept art and limited environmental concepts are available.

After the Demo is done, we can discuss whether we worked well together, if the demo came out well, and if we want to continue on this path. There is a possibility of adding payments but that will be discuss in the future.

If you are interested or otherwise have any questions, please, reach me either via PM here, or DM on https://twitter.com/TeamSbte. From there you will be sent to join the official server!

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f0rt1e · 1 year ago

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Devlog #0 | An unexpected journey into a game development

What does it take to go from gamer to game creator, especially when you're the team's artist, coder, and tester, all rolled into one? I would like to have an answer!

In this blog, I invite you to join me at the very start of an (hopefully) exciting journey: developing my own indie game, solo. As I dive into the territories of game design and coding, I'll be sharing regular updates about my progress, the hurdles I encounter, the solutions I discover, and the lessons I learn along the way.

Whether you're someone who's interested in the behind-the-scenes of game creation, a fellow developer, or perhaps someone thinking about starting their own project, this blog will give you a window into the real-time ups and downs of bringing a game to life from scratch.

So why do I want to dive into a gamedev? You know, I've always been hooked on video games, always curious about the magic that goes on behind the scenes. Back in school and through university, I dabbled in a few courses on Unity, GameMaker, and Unreal Engine. But, to be honest, I never really threw myself into it—either the motivation wasn't there, or the ideas just didn't spark. Fast forward a few years, I've kicked off a career in tech, working now as a technical architect, yet my love for games hasn't faded a bit.

Recently, I found myself thinking, "Why not take a crack at the gaming industry?" But with little direct experience or relevant skills, just a ton of passion and a nagging curiosity, I realized I needed something solid to show for myself. So, I signed up for some new courses and decided to start my own little project. It’s sort of a mini-portfolio, something to back up my leap into game development. Let's see where this goes!

Sparkling idea

Lately, I've really gotten into city builders. I've played everything from SimCity to Cities Skylines, and from Banished to Settlers — not to mention the recent Manor Lords. It's been a blast, but sometimes these games can get a bit too intricate and overwhelming. That got me thinking — what if I could create a game that's more laid-back, user-friendly, and just easy to dive into? That's when the idea hit me: why not develop a medieval city builder? I imagined a game with a straightforward economy, some interesting research and discovery elements, but nothing too complicated. With just that simple concept in mind, I started developing my game.

As I mentioned, I was somewhat familiar with Unity, so naturally, I started my project there. I even made some headway — created an island with procedural generation complete with biomes and objects like rocks, trees, and flowers, got some pathfinding in place, and even prototype of a building process. But it didn't take long to realize that Unity might be a bit overkill for what I had in mind. My project wasn't that massive, and Unity felt too complex for my needs.

So, I began looking for something a bit simpler and more user-friendly. That's when I stumbled upon Godot. At first, Godot seemed a bit mysterious, but I decided to dive in and give it a shot. I'm really glad I did! Despite a slight shortage of learning materials, Godot has been a dream to work with. It's flexible, feels more approachable, and has everything I need for my 2D city builder, which, by the way, is going to be in pixel art style.

Right from the start, it's clear that being an artist is pretty much a prerequisite for game development. Sure, you could take the easy route and just buy or download assets, but where's the fun in that? Here's the thing—I'm no artist. Drawing a square is about as artistic as I get, and even then, it's a pretty questionable square. So, learning to create my own graphics was a big hurdle I had to overcome. Pixel art caught my eye because it seemed like it had the most forgiving learning curve for a beginner like me. So, I decided to give it a shot.

Current state and future plans

So here I am, just starting out with my project. I recently moved everything over to Godot, and it feels like a fresh start. Right now, I've decided to put the procedural generation on the back burner. Instead, I'm prioritizing what really matters to me at this stage—creating my first pieces of art, laying down the basics of the road system, buildings, navigation, and sketching out the interface placeholders. I’ll dive deeper into the progress I’ve made in my next post.

It's been almost two months since I started developing this game, and boy, it’s been a journey. There aren’t always clear-cut answers in game development—it’s more like an art form, with your imagination and ideas being the only real limits. I’m constantly faced with new questions and challenges, but that’s what makes this process so exhilarating.

I’m really hoping this is the start of something great, not just another fleeting idea. I want to see it grow into something both playable and visually appealing that I’ve created myself. I’ve got plenty of ideas buzzing around, and I’ll be sure to share them as the game develops and hopefully bring them to life.

Just a note to my future self: all you started with was an idea, interest, and a challenge to yourself.

Keep an eye out for more updates—I’ll have more to share very soon!

By the way - here is the photo of a project 2 months ago:

This white square is a house. Believe or not.

#godot #game development #gaming #indie games #devlog #city builder

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kandykittixd · 4 months ago

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Why you should NEVER use RpgMaker

I know the title sounds clickbaity but it's the best I could think of. I am going to use a lot of screenshots from my game “Foundational Agora Premises: Hardware And Resource Dynamics”, to illustrate my points.

Before anything, I want to make something clear:

Whoever plays your game will not care if said game is built in RPGMaker, Godot, Gamemaker, Unity, Unreal, WolfRPGMaker, RPGInABox, or if you coded it from scratch in ASM.

Gamers are not developers, nor are they coders. It is perfectly fine to mess-around with an engine if you just want to have fun, make a game for yourself, your friends or just make a tech demo, but I am writing this from the POV of someone that wants to make a cool game that plays smoothly and can actually be made without having to fight the engine itself. I would advice anyone reading this to also give a read to LogLog's “Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years”.

Now RPGMaker is advertised as a no-code, beginner-friendly engine. And for the most part this is true, you can make a very basic JRPG in RPGMaker with no experience at all. I myself made a terrible RPGMaker game when I was 13 years old. If you need to squish more juice out of the engine, you can always download plugins to add more capabilities and custom content. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows, as a matter of fact it's not at all like that. RPGMaker has a lot of limitations out of the box, for example the fact that the engine can only work with spritesheets formatted in a certain way, the fact that you have only a few layers to work with (parallax, background tiles, tiles A, B and C) and the fact that the code blocks you work with are simply terrible and teach you horrible programming practices. Most of these shortcomings can be addressed by installing plugins, for example a plugin to allow you to use .png files instead of sprite-sheets, a plugin to add more layers, a plugin to allow you to play .gif files in your game, etc. But plugins have problems of their own, some plugins are paid, others are incompatible with certain plugins you want to use, and other plugins simply do not exist at all so to add that functionality to your game you will either need to code it yourself or commission someone to do it. Or find a plugin that does what you want 'close enough' and settle-in for that. Besides, I know a lot of people are passionate about ARPG in RPGMaker but let's face it, 'Legend of mana' released in 199X plays a lot better than the best ARPG plugin written in 202X, the engine is simply not meant to handle this kind of work, and it shows whenever you try to push it too far from it's intended purpose. To put it simply, just because you can make brownies in a mug in your microwave does not mean it's going to taste the same as brownies made the traditional way in the oven.

Large 'complex' projects also suffer from performance problems, I do not know the details of why this happens but I have seen it enough times for it to become a noticeable problem with games with a lot of complex mechanics, really big maps or just a lot of things going-on.

Now, about the terrible code-blocks that RPGMaker offers:

They surely make everything look very straightforward. Let's think of the 'conditional branch' block, for example, it's basically an 'if'. The code in RPGMaker would look something like this for a simple operation:

If your actor is dead, we game over. Simple, right?

Sure is, but what if we want to add another condition? For example, maybe I want to also check if the enemy's HP is 0 so I can play a sound or something. What would that look like?

Itty bit harder to follow, but not terrible, right? Seems like it in the beginning, but what if you want to check for 4 or 5 conditions? This is normal depending on what you are doing... Your code will end-up looking like this:

Now, this is just a big if, else; if... chain. It takes about 5 minutes to write this thing depending on how far apart the variables are because you have to navigate a few menus, but the problem here is that RPGMaker conditionals do not offer a 'If, else if' by default, nor a switch statement. You have to chain together a lot of conditional branchs to emulate what a simple switch statement would do in any normal language.

Here's what the same code would look like if I used JavaScript instead of events:

Oh wow, with the power of the switch statement, we transformed 5 minutes of navigating menus and searching through variables to make a big chain of else if conditions into... A very short 30 seconds top condition check...

But the gist here is that not only do I need to actually know javascript to write this code in the no-code engine, this code as it is would not work out of the box. I know people love to claim 'you can always use JS if you need to', but RPGMaker makes even this a daunting task. For something like this to work, instead of switches, difficulty would need to be a variable, and we would also need to use the script box to set the value of 'difficulty' in RPGMaker so even then we will be writing javascript... For this to actually work first you'd have to set the code like this in the game:

Here we set the value of the 'difficulty' variable to hard, because we are not using switches anymore if we are moving to javascript. Now the actual javascript code would look like this, I'm adding variables to make it more readable since now we have to access the variables from the game itself:

Now this looks more in-line to what you can expect from modifying variables in RPGmaker through a script call. Notice that in the end of the switch statement I have to update the actual variable, we only retrieved the value at the start of the function but did not actually directly modify it so we have to assign it at the end.

Here we will run into another tiny problem, the script call box itself, what happens if I try to add my script to RPGMaker?

Hmmmm that does not seem right... What's happening here?Well, you see, for whatever unholy reason the script call box in RPGMaker extends infinitely to the right side, but it's only about 12 lines height. Meaning that any complex scripting you want to make in-game (without needing to mess with plugin writing) will end-up looking like this:

Now that's a tad harder to read innit? It's going to be hell to maintain too. But at least you can always copy-paste it. I had to manually remove spaces here to fit it in the script box, but what about a really big script? Removing spaces manually would be a daunting task, so I would use a tool like JS.minify to do it for me. Take a look at this script for example:

Can you tell what this thing is doing? No?

Well the name of the event is 'Restore power variables' so I guess it does something like restore the power variables? I did not leave a comment here and that's a bad practice on my side. However just by looking at this code you can tell it is impossible to rewrite or extend, if I ever need to add functionality to this I'd have to run the code through a LLM to un-minify it and then I'd be able to edit it.

Of course you could instead just use a service that removes white space from Javascript to make it all a big line, I'm not sure if a service like that exists, but it would make the whole process a little bit simpler if it does... Or you could just write a plugin...Right? Wait wasn't this a no-code engine...Oh well let's ignore that part.

Now, plugins. Good ol' plugins. I once wrote a whole self-driving car neural network in vanilla JavaScript following a YouTube tutorial, I'll admit JavaScript is not my forte, I like C/C++ best but let me tell you, even if you do know some JavaScript You don't know RPGMaker core.

At first this may not seem like a problem at all, after all you just want to create functions and set variables, right?

Here's a tiny plugin I wrote to convert tenths of a second to RPGMaker frames.

Now it's all standard JavaScript, but you see that window.timestampToFrames = timestampToFrames ? That's what actually lets you call the function from within the game itself, and it's part of RPGMaker. Without exposing your function like this you can only really run the plugin as soon as the game starts.

This is not a big issue when it comes to simple plugins like this one, with a lot of hard-coded values, but if you don't know your way around RPGMakers' core, and how to work with plugin parameters, you will have a bad time writing complex plugins or actually extending the engine at all. I ran into this issue after hitting my head on my keyboard for two hours in my 'last fireplace' game, I made a cute little plugin to make snow fall on the screen but for the life of me I could not figure out how to A: Make the snow fall in the background and not on top of everything else, and B: How to actually stop the snow from falling and delete every snowflake after I added them via scene_manager (My despawn function simply did not seem to work as expected).

This is, of course, a me issue here. I simply do not know enough about RPGMakers' core to extend the engine to allow me to do this sort of thing properly...

Now, darling, please sit down for a second and tell me, when was the last time you have heard a Godot developer tell you 'Damn I don't know enough C++ to extend Godot's core for this feature to work in my game'. Do you see my point?

Why am I trying to extend the game engine in order to make a game? It's a game ENGINE, it's supposed to make the game-making process easier, yet the amount of times I find myself coding everything from scratch is astounding. Simple quality of life things such as being able to play an animation through a sequence of PNGs numbered from 1 to 12 becomes an hour-long plugin development and debugging campaign, instead of the 5-minute experience that is setting-up an animation in other engines, such as Godot (I'm using Godot as an example because it's a simple engine and GDScript is truly a simple language).

Please if you have ever used RPGMaker in the past and DONT TRUST MY POST, just follow one simple Godot tutorial, I know you're going to feel annoyed after reading this post and tell me 'godot sux!!!! I don't want to h4xx0r code!!!' but please, please please just try to follow-through, I promise the code you will actually write is very, very basic and not at all hard to understand, just please try-out a real game engine to SEE by yourself what game-making should look like. I can recommend this tutorial here, it's what made me fall in love with Godot's simplicity: https://youtu.be/LOhfqjmasi0

In about an hour of work you can get yourself a working platformer, I did it myself with 0 knowledge of Godot and indeed I got myself a working platformer in about 2 hours (I took pauses).

Now If I made a similar game in RPGMaker (which I did), how long do you think it may take me?

Answer is, one day and a half (about 24 hours of work) to make this game: https://nxonk.itch.io/the-last-fireplace

And that is with 11 years of experience in this engine under my belt, and knowledge of javascript, C, C++, programming logic and a lot of functions and code I have written for old projects that never saw the light of day (https://lamadriguera.neocities.org/Games/Games)

And the end result is...Eh, honestly. I polished it a bit but there are many things that the engine does not like, for example I could not really make use of a pixel movement plugin because it messed-up a lot of the events in the game, so I had to rely on grid-based movement as that is the way the engine likes it (and there is no easy way to modify this).

Please remember that people that will actually PLAY the game don't really care which engine I used to make it, they only care about the game itself. Sure I made a game, I made it fast and slapped-together a very traumatic story about a past life experience of mine, but is the gameplay actually good?

Compared to my 1-hour Godot platformer, no, it sucks and it sucks bad. Maybe one or two RPGMaker devs will find the project cool cause I'm getting the engine to do something it's not supposed to do without 3000 lines of plugin code, but most people will just ignore the game altogether. And I don't blame them, why would anyone play this when they could be playing some other game with better gameplay or innovation?

Well is that all I have to say about RPGMaker?

No, not at all, I have even more bones to pick with this engine, the event system:

Now you may think that is a lot of events...Just wait till you see how many COMMON events I got going-on

removing unused common events (I have a template project with a few useful events I almost always use set-up) and white-space I use for organization, this game is using about 100 common-events to perform some basic tasks. Since some events simply cannot be a common event they are left on the map itself.

Now just by looking at it, you can get an idea of what the common events do, because they have actual names, but what about the map events? Just by glancing at it, it's impossible to tell what they do at all, maybe I know what they do today but will I know in 4 or 5 months?

Of course you can name events, and if you click on said event on the map you can see the event's name in the bottom-right corner:

Here's my event named 'HAHA MY EVENT' I just named it that as an example. Even then to figure out what each of these events do, I would have to click every single one of them and hope I named them all and that the name clearly states what the event is supposed to do.

Now I know it may seem like this map is cluttered with a lot of unnecessary events... Believe me, it's not. Every single event in that map is doing something important for the game, from the first to the last and I am willing to open source the project files (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XiiT72Ybhznapzmaz8lak6k5JLHtsO06/view) just to prove my point.

And as a last tiny bone to pick with the engine, there is no way to preview your parallax mapping as you edit the game, you have to actually launch it to figure out what it looks like. Here's what my game looks like when I launch it:

Not the biggest bone to pick but it is still annoying that I can't tell what's where unless I actually run the game (Takes about 10 seconds but you'll find yourself pressing that run button a lot of times as you playtest).

Speaking of which, you see that little computer screen In the map? I had to really big brain myself to get that simple thing working as intended, it may not seem like that big of a detail but that thing alone took about half an hour of brainstorming. The mechanic is simple, whenever an agent guy appears on the screen and you click them, you 'capture' them and their little icon is shown on the screen:

It looks simple, right?

It is, in theory. In practice it's a nightmare to implement, like every other mechanic in this game. The mouse clicks themselves have a problem if you play it for long enough, and it is a problem with RPGMaker itself:

When an event is moving, it will only execute code within said event if you activate it AFTER it has stopped moving. You can NOT activate events while they move, if you want to do that, you have to write a plugin to overwrite this behavior or find a workaround. It may not seem like a big deal but if you try and play my game for a while you will notice that it feels as if your mouse is not working properly because sometimes a click will simply not register. This is one of the obscure engine's limitations when it comes to games that are not something that looks like final fantasy 1.

As for some closing thoughts on all of this, if you are a beginner, don't waste your time using RPGMaker. It is painful to say for me because I wasted 11 years in this engine, but all the 'experience' you will gain by using this engine is worthless. The engine will force you into writing bad code, learn bad coding practices and over-rely on third-party plugins.

If you do happen to learn javascript, you will barely learn anything that can be translated to another engine, so you will have to start from scratch on a lot of things such as movement and physics.

The games you make with RPGMaker will look terrible at worst and unpolished at best. And if you do manage to squish the engine into making a game that's not samey and it's actually interesting, people can always just say 'it's an artsy fartsy game'. Plus developing in RPGMaker somehow makes the whole game-making process take twice as long for whatever reason.

EVEN if you want to make an old-style RPG game, you will just make a terrible game!

Please please please actually look-up what 199X RPG games actually played like.

Here's a tiny list of 199X games THAT DO NOT LOOK LIKE FINAL FANTASY:

Legend of Mana (1999)

Atelier Elie: The Alchemist of Salburg 2 (1998)

Blaze And Blade: Eternal Quest (1998)

Digimon World (1999)

I know a lot of people think of final-fantasy and final fantasy-like games when they think 'retro RPG' but GOD PLEASE ACTUALLY PLAY OLD GAMES, not every RPG out there was a gird-based final fantasy copy-paste! A ton of RPGs from the time had weird and interesting mechanics, 3d, 2d, grid and pixel movement, VN-style portraits and not, there was a lot of variety besides final fantasy-like games!

The argument that RPGMaker is an engine to make 'J-rpgs' is in itself flawed! RPGMaker only ever shines when it comes to make games that look like a cheap copy of a very old final fantasy game. And final fantasy itself has moved-on from that format for a few decades now. The engine is not even capable of doing something as basic as a retro dungeon crawler without plugins, have you seen what a retro dungeon crawler looks like?

Just take a look at Shin Megami Tensei 1 (1992), do you think vanilla RPGMaker can build something similar?

Please remember that RPGMakerMV was released just a few years ago and that it actually costs money to use, and it cannot even realistically replicate a game that's over 32 years old out of the box!

If you really REALLY want to use RPGMaker to make games, please do, but please, please at least once in your life try using a real game-making engine. You can pick any engine, Unity, unreal, godot even Scratch if you really want to, but please broaden your horizons.

RPGMaker is a terrible engine destined to make terrible games, anything but a VN or a terrible game will be VERY hard to make and take at the very least twice as long as it would take in a normal engine. You are only hurting yourself by using RPGMaker and I make this post because a lot of people don't realize this, using this engine is actually bad for you, and not enough people mention it. As a matter of fact, the amount of people that actively defend this terrible engine is astounding.

EVEN if you want to just make games 'for fun', please TRY A REAL ENGINE, you will have WAY more freedom and even if the learning process takes some time, the end result will be WAY better AND EASIER TO MAKE than anything you will ever produce in RPGMaker.

Do you ever wonder why every time people mention how 'great' RPGMaker is, they mention a very, very few games?

IB, Toiler wonderland, OFF, Hylics, Fear and hunger, Mad father, Witch house, Killer bear, Corpse party...

How long is the list? 50, maybe 100 games? RPGMaker has been out for about 24 years now, that's 24 years of people from all kinds of backgrounds making games, and in all of those 24 years we only got about 100 'awesome' games?

Please, if you want to make a game, if you really really want to make a game and you want your game to be pretty, and you want people to like your game and maybe even form a fan-base around it, please use a real engine. I know we all want to make games because we all want to make something fun, or tell a story, or build an experience, or maybe we just want to learn and have fun making games. Not everyone needs to learn game design, and not every game must be different from final fantasy 1, but please, even if all you want to do is an 1v1 replica of final fantasy 1, or a very simple visual novel, try another engine. Do not fall into the RPGMaker hole, it will only gobble-up your time giving back nothing in return.

In short, RpgMaker is the self-harm of game-making engines, in the long run it is only bad for you, and people that actually talk about this get shoved under the rug. Here's a devlog that more or less helped me finally take the jump, it's another dev's experience with RPGMaker development and it's totally worth a read: https://yobobgames.com/harvest-island-rpg-maker/

Thanks for reading my post, if I can convince even a single person to try a better engine, that's all that counts for me. I really hope everyone succeeds in their game-making projects, that is the reason why I made this post. After about 11 years I can surely say this engine is never worth it. PS: I forgot to mention it but some version of RPGMaker are literally just a cash grab, for example RPGMaker MZ and RPGMaker Unite (Unite barely works, MZ is just RPGMaker MV with a few QoL improvements). PSS: Sorry for all the grammar mistakes and the few lines of code/comments that don't make that much sense, it's 2AM rn and I need to sleep. I will probably edit these later.

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leo-regulus · 2 years ago

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I can't be assed to go find it atm, but Godot did make a statement about all of this, and honestly, it turned them from 'yeah if I needed it I'd look there first' in my mind to 'I will recommend them to the high heavens'.

Godot's statement, upon waking up with a shit ton of new users and tutorials and a huge burst in popularity, was "This fucking sucks for you guys, and while it's great for us, please do your research and check out all of the alternatives. We might be your best bet, but people are promoting other open-source engines right now too, and you should look into all options and think carefully which one is best for your game. Don't panic, do your research, and if we're the best for you, welcome to the Godot community."

They aren't taking their fifteen minutes of fame and running, they flat-out told everyone to do their research first and check out other engines, too. That's not coders who are delighted to have a bigger audience, that's coders who want all open-source to succeed and who want to make sure everyone's games are the best that they can be, even if they're not involved.

10/10. I absolutely am willing to trust them, and if Godot doesn't work for what I will be doing in my own games, I know I can ask them to point me in a direction. That's the sort of reliable you really like to see in FOSS.

I'm not a coder or game designer but I do follow a lot of game design channels on youtube so my reccommended list is usually full of random game design stuff. Anyway over the past few days my youtube recommended has been saturated with videos with titles like "Godot basics for Unity developers" and "How to learn Godot if you're used to Unity." For completely normal and random reasons I'm sure. No external reason why this might be a popular kind of video right now.

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exsanguinated-doves · 2 years ago

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Time to Bury Aseprite (Sorry!)

Now we all know that the leading pixel art software in the indie game developer community is Aseprite. And why wouldn't it be? It's 20 dollars, sometimes on sale, powerful engine, with a massive following and a very reliant dev team. Simple interface, beginner friendly, but catered to the needs of professionals, it's a blessing that it's only selling for 20 USD, compared to Adobe and the other industry standard "AAA" game publisher company dry-your-wallet software. (My recommendation to throw Adobe into the sea and replace it with Affinity Designer, which I use for professional* commercial work outside of game developing.)

But why am I pushing it aside the marvelous, magnificent, extraordinary, reliable Aseprite? With it's lovely, simple UI and the non-existent learning curve?

Alright, alright, save the fanfare. Now please don't misunderstand me. I do love the application just as much as you. I appreciate the hard work the devs put into it, the amazing community behind it, and the many successful indie games published using Aseprite as their primary tool for their voyeurs of pixel art.

But as I was scrolling through itch.io, (no surprise there) because of the November 2022 Big Sale Time Woohoo Event, where a massive amount of different games, game assets, game development tools with their prices chopped in half, I was very keen on looking at the tools page, because I seriously need to work on this project instead of daydreaming and playing other games.

And if you know me, you know how much I love FOSS--Free, Open Source Software. I spend a huge amount of time advocating for how great and amazing open source code is and why GitHub is the Library of Alexandria for coders, besides telling other people why my wife is absolutely gorgeous.

I'll stop with the ridiculous beating around the bush now. I came across these two pixel-art softwares, Pixelorama and Pixel Vision, which were both free, open source, and absolutely terrific. Pixelorama was created with the Godot engine, (which is also open source, licensed under the MIT license. Woohoo!!) and Pixel Vision is an all in one, 8 bit fantasy console, which is capable of making tunes, sprites, and your own games and share them with others. How fantastic! Pixel Vision also reminds me heavily of Pico8. But unlike Pico8, it's open source instead of proprietary.

Though because there are limitations in Pixel Vision's art application, (as it's more based on making sprites for the games you'l create using the game engine), if you're only looking for an art software, Pixelorama is your pal.

It is such a good software. A very powerful one, with a slight learning curve, but a very simple UI that feels more professional than Aseprite because of it's massive capabilities. It's like the Krita of Pixel art software. And it's free. Free! Not even 20 dollars. Free. But please do consider supporting the creators and the developers who put a lot of effort in making these.

How amazing is that?

*By professional/commercial, I mean things that I'm paid to do. I also work part time as a graphic designer. (And yes, I am quite ashamed to say that Canva has saved me more than once. But oh well, my employers are the ones paying me below minimum wage.)

#devlog

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cwispydev · 3 years ago

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16/04/2022 4:17 (edited 18/04/2022 17:38)

Merry Christmas, happy New Year, hope you enjoyed your Valentine's Day! All in all, a lot has happened but you know what hasn't happened? Any progress with my little Godot game.

Instead of really making progress with anything, I ended up fucking around with my very good friend and playing a lot of video games. A lot of the games that really caught my eye (especially recently) were text-based games.

Examples would be Corruption of Champions, Trials in Tainted Space and Degrees of Lewdity. They'd be my top three favourite. In fact, I loved them so much that I wanted to turn my dream of making a dating sim/otome game into something like that.

Problem is (because, of course, there's always a big fat problem) all of those kind of games are very code heavy and story heavy.

Story heavy is fine seeing as, like I've stated before, I'm a writer. No, the problem is that I'm not at all a coder.

I've coded in high school a little bit for my terny robotics club team but, as most nerds do, I graduated high school and erased all of my memories of that time.

I remember some things like variables, how if statements work, things like that. However, if you sat me in front of a computer, put a gun to my head, and asked me to code, I'd stick that gun into my mouth and laugh.

When I told my very good friend this predicament, he came up with a solution. He said it was probably a good idea to work towards big project with little projects. It would help me learn the skills I'd need to complete my ultimate dream game and it'd help me practice coding a little bit. So, that's what I decided to do.

I settled on using Twine/Sugarcube/JavaScript entirely on my own, no input from my friend at all. Maybe the fact that Degrees of Lewdity was coded using Twine/Sugarcube/JavaScript also helped a little.

Then, I decided to join a game jam with a little text-based choose-your-own-adventure game to kind of jump into the deep and see if I survive. This one is entirely my very good friend's idea and, honestly, I don't know if it's a great one. I don't even know anything about the game jam, just that it's over in 11 days (9 I think as I edit this post) and that it's only requirement is to make the game with JavaScript.

Together, we decided on a cute little dating sim/otome game concept where the character has just moved into a new town and, because they're so extremely busy and have had bad luck with romance and finding love, they join a little speed dating event in hopes of finding a connection with someone in this unfamiliar city.

I came up with the title Love on the Run because you're too busy to stop and find love so you need to have Love on the Run? Get it? Ha, I hope so because I'd be really embarassed if you didn't.

So, entirely on my own, I learnt how to make bubbles, buttons, drop downs. Also learnt how to fade text in and out and how to change text color by searching up Reddit posts and copying code. My friend jumped in later on to check on my code and streamline it as well as kind of pull it apart and explain it to me.

He doesn't want me to put any code I don't entirely understand in the game and I think that's pretty understandable.

Then, he continudd on to teach me how to assign variables and how to use functions, all the bread and butter of how to code with JavaScript.

So far, we've accomplished:

making half of a character creator with bubbles and drop downs

What I want to accomplish by tomorrow:

finishing the character creator part

finding a way to assign the starting stats of the player based on the background that they choose their character to have

a little quiz to see what type of person the player likes and see if any of the characters in the game suits their taste best

write a little bit more of the story so that there's actual content other than just dumb questions

Thanks for reading and, hopefully, by the time I write my next post, Ill have good news for you guys (me editing this post in the future: well, there's good news and bad news...)

#devblog #game dev #indie games #indiegame #indiedev #cwunchy blog post #16/04/2022 #04/2022 #2022 #Love on the Run

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ianasennus · 7 years ago

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[Udemy] Discovering Godot - Make Games in Python-like GDScript

Game development with Godot Engine 3 :: Learn to code in Python-like GDScript and later the industry standard C# What Will I Learn? Create video games in an object-oriented environment. Write code in GDScript, and transfer your knowledge to Python. Program compelling 2D word, platform & stealth games. How Godot can make your game idea come to life - for free. Re-use any existing C# knowledge in a user-friendly engine. How to code from scratch a fun-way by making games. Requirements Godot 3.0.6 or later (it’s free and we’ll show you how to install it) Basic familiarity with coding is a bonus, but we’ll get you up to speed if you’re brand new A desire to make make games, and improve your coding Description Learning to code by making games is a great idea, yet things can get in your way. Some game engines are over-specialised, overcomplicated and can overwhelm new users. Furthermore C-family languages like C-sharp and C++ can be cumbersome. It’s time to discover Godot, a general-purpose, simple and welcoming game engine. Powered by GDScript, a lightweight and easy to learn Python-like programming language, you’ll be up-to-speed with the fundamentals of coding in a jiffy. Whether you’re a complete beginner at writing code, an experienced developer wanting to explore this wonderful engine or a game designer who wants to embrace free and open-source software in your work, this course is for you. Frequently Asked Questions… Do I really need to learn a new programming language? Absolutely, GDScript is based on Python - one of the most popular and productive coding languages in the world. As a beginner, this is a great place to start and experienced coders will find their coding improves with the perspective Python brings. What if I don’t like “dynamically-typed” languages like Python? Give them another chance. You’ll be sold in the first section when you see how easy it is to import a JSON file. Remember less typing means less typing! If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck… Do I really need to learn yet another game engine? Like learning a 2nd or 3rd spoken language, the perspective you will gain from a new engine is invaluable, even if you decide to settle on another engine. You’ll re-use your existing knowledge, and discover much easier ways to do some things. Once expanded your mind will never go back to its original shape :-) Are the any decent games made in Godot? There are loads in the pipeline, and we want you to be amongst the first to bring yours to market. You can develop simple games fast and painlessly in Godot, and now is the perfect time to great a head-start on your competitors. This is why we have chosen to teach this wonderful game engine. But I’ve had a look and it feels a bit “noddy”! That’s what we thought at first, but we were wrong. It reminds me of the quote by Abraham Lincoln: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better”. What’s actually going on here is Godot makes great use of information hiding, and shows you only what’s relevant to getting the job at-hand done. Take a look at the reviews our students have taken the time to leave. Here are just few we like… “… the course is fun and seems well designed for beginners to the Godot Engine. Yann is fun to listen to and explains everything very well.” Benjamin Anderson - Godot Developer “this is hands down the best game development course I have taken.” Simone Bosi “If you want to learn game development or if you’re just curious about programming, Godot and this course are perfect for you!” Sindre Sømme We start with simple 2D games, that help you focus on learning to code. We have a word game, a platform game and a stealth game. By the end of these projects you’ll have a thorough working knowledge of both GDScript and Godot as an engine. Every lecture contains challenges, to make you literally stop and think. Every project builds on your knowledge, and spaced-repetition ensures you remember what you learn. Yann will be your main instructor, building each game in GDScript. Once Godot version 3.1 is stable we will help you convert the projects to C#. There’s no better time to learn to code by making games, and this course is a great place to start - guaranteed! Who is the target audience? Beginners who want to learn game development in a friendly, lightweight and powerful engine Game developers who want to learn to use a dynamic and versatile programming language based on Python Indie Developers looking for an open-source engine that won’t ask for a share of the revenue or logo-space in your game source https://ttorial.com/discovering-godot-make-games-python-like-gdscript

source https://ttorialcom.tumblr.com/post/178522787453

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ttorialcom · 7 years ago

Text

[Udemy] Discovering Godot - Make Games in Python-like GDScript

Game development with Godot Engine 3 :: Learn to code in Python-like GDScript and later the industry standard C# What Will I Learn? Create video games in an object-oriented environment. Write code in GDScript, and transfer your knowledge to Python. Program compelling 2D word, platform & stealth games. How Godot can make your game idea come to life - for free. Re-use any existing C# knowledge in a user-friendly engine. How to code from scratch a fun-way by making games. Requirements Godot 3.0.6 or later (it's free and we'll show you how to install it) Basic familiarity with coding is a bonus, but we'll get you up to speed if you're brand new A desire to make make games, and improve your coding Description Learning to code by making games is a great idea, yet things can get in your way. Some game engines are over-specialised, overcomplicated and can overwhelm new users. Furthermore C-family languages like C-sharp and C++ can be cumbersome. It's time to discover Godot, a general-purpose, simple and welcoming game engine. Powered by GDScript, a lightweight and easy to learn Python-like programming language, you'll be up-to-speed with the fundamentals of coding in a jiffy. Whether you’re a complete beginner at writing code, an experienced developer wanting to explore this wonderful engine or a game designer who wants to embrace free and open-source software in your work, this course is for you. Frequently Asked Questions… Do I really need to learn a new programming language? Absolutely, GDScript is based on Python - one of the most popular and productive coding languages in the world. As a beginner, this is a great place to start and experienced coders will find their coding improves with the perspective Python brings. What if I don’t like “dynamically-typed” languages like Python? Give them another chance. You’ll be sold in the first section when you see how easy it is to import a JSON file. Remember less typing means less typing! If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck... Do I really need to learn yet another game engine? Like learning a 2nd or 3rd spoken language, the perspective you will gain from a new engine is invaluable, even if you decide to settle on another engine. You’ll re-use your existing knowledge, and discover much easier ways to do some things. Once expanded your mind will never go back to its original shape :-) Are the any decent games made in Godot? There are loads in the pipeline, and we want you to be amongst the first to bring yours to market. You can develop simple games fast and painlessly in Godot, and now is the perfect time to great a head-start on your competitors. This is why we have chosen to teach this wonderful game engine. But I’ve had a look and it feels a bit “noddy”! That’s what we thought at first, but we were wrong. It reminds me of the quote by Abraham Lincoln: “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better”. What’s actually going on here is Godot makes great use of information hiding, and shows you only what’s relevant to getting the job at-hand done. Take a look at the reviews our students have taken the time to leave. Here are just few we like... “... the course is fun and seems well designed for beginners to the Godot Engine. Yann is fun to listen to and explains everything very well.” Benjamin Anderson - Godot Developer “this is hands down the best game development course I have taken.” Simone Bosi “If you want to learn game development or if you're just curious about programming, Godot and this course are perfect for you!” Sindre Sømme We start with simple 2D games, that help you focus on learning to code. We have a word game, a platform game and a stealth game. By the end of these projects you’ll have a thorough working knowledge of both GDScript and Godot as an engine. Every lecture contains challenges, to make you literally stop and think. Every project builds on your knowledge, and spaced-repetition ensures you remember what you learn. Yann will be your main instructor, building each game in GDScript. Once Godot version 3.1 is stable we will help you convert the projects to C#. There’s no better time to learn to code by making games, and this course is a great place to start - guaranteed! Who is the target audience? Beginners who want to learn game development in a friendly, lightweight and powerful engine Game developers who want to learn to use a dynamic and versatile programming language based on Python Indie Developers looking for an open-source engine that won't ask for a share of the revenue or logo-space in your game source https://ttorial.com/discovering-godot-make-games-python-like-gdscript

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