Daily Workshop Log #1

I’ve decided to produce daily level posts on my progress today. These won’t be as specific as my Development Journals, but i thought it was important to share some of my achievements and progress, no matter how small. Everything is a new concept or a learning curve, so even a small success should be celebrated.

My plan for now

Firstly I’ve thought of a new name for what I’m currently undertaking. This will always be Building The Inventor, but for now this part is also Learning The Inventor. I’ve seen many people say to make small games first, or to copy a game in Godot to learn it. While there is no issue with this method at all, and if it works for you then I’m glad, but it doesn’t work for me. I need to be working on what I want to be, and that’s the Inventor.

So what’s my plan? I’m starting small. Very small. But I’m starting on prototypes for systems I actually plan to have in the final game. These won’t be used in the final project, but they are my building block for learning game development, for learning coding, for learning Godot. I’ll share a little bit more about this in my next Development Journal.

So let’s get into it. And for anyone who does feel like kicking off their own video game project (or any project that may find these resources useful) I’ll provide some links at the end of the post for you to find the tools and resources I am using.

Now the introduction is over, on to today’s Daily Workshop Log! Today has been a day of many firsts, which I’d like to share with you.

I Built My First Godot Game

Today I took my first dive into Godot. My first target was to get a player character moving in a 2D top down perspective, and perhaps to include some walls. That’s it.

I followed the YouTube Tutorial I had found from Brackeys (link below) for how to make a game. I found it helpful, and only used some of it to get myself up to player movement and collisions. I’m taking small chunks at first as lessons, and building from there.

One thing I have found is nearly every Godot tutorial is for a 2D platform type game. I know that 2D top down tutorials are available, but I don’t want to just copy. I want to learn and explore Godot, make mistakes of my own and try to fix them.

So in this way, I used what I could from the video, and experimented to make what i wanted. I edited Godot’s built-in 2DPlayerMovement script to include vertical movement. I pressed run, and my player moved diagonally. Not what I was looking for! I was able to fix this by assessing my code, and realising I’d reused an argument for horizontal velocity. Fixing this, my game worked as I wanted it to.

I also added some collision objects as walls for the player to move into and be stopped. This was relatively simple following the tutorial, and using Godot is quite intuitive I find.

But at the end of it, I had a game I could launch. A game that had a player character move in both x and y directions. A game that has some walls. It’s really not a lot, but it’s the first of my game development goals that I can tick off.

Another first I can tick off is doing my first bit of debugging. I had some code that wasn’t what I expected, I looked at the code and found my error, and then I fixed it. I can see this happening many hundreds if not thousands of times in this project, but I’ve successfully done it once!

I Used Aseprite to Make My First Artwork

As you can probably tell from the game footage, the artwork for the assets used is crude and not well done, but I can be proud and say this is my first sprite art in Aseprite. I’ve seen good things about the program for pixel art in games, and not wanting to do things by halves, I wanted to start using my own assets from the start.

It was actually quite helpful in teaching me about sizing of canvases correctly, and making it easier for myself when loading and processing them in Godot. I’ll be working on my skills in art itself a lot more over the project, and may even involve my Wife, who is much more artistically inclined that me!

But although crude, not well drawn and very simple, its another first and another goal that I can tick off my list. I also preemptively drew some different perspectives in a plan to make the sprite animated for different movements. This is next on my list of small milestones.

I Set Up a GitHub Repository

The final, more mundane thing I can say I’ve done today is set up and start to use my own GitHub Repository. This one is specifically for Learning The Inventor. I plan to use it not only for storage and back ups, but also to give me some flexibility on the platform I work on, whether that’s the PC in my office, on the MacBook while i chill with my family, or the iPad when I’m out and about.

There’s not really much else to say on this other than it seems to work well for all these purposes, and I’ll give any hints or tips I pick up along the way.

Life’s Other Little Things

I thought it might be nice to also share what I’ve done outside of the project today. I know this may not interest many, but it gives you sight that this isn’t something I’m working on every minute of the day. As well as make some good progress today I’ve also:

• spent some time sorting the house
• done some interview preparation for an internal job opportunity tomorrow (wish me luck!)
• most importantly I’ve spent some quality time with my family, chilling in the living room, watching a film, and picking up my MacBook when I have a quiet moment to make some notes, or play with a line of code.

So that’s it. I’m writing this post while I sit in the cool evening sun, making the most of the breeze before I head to bed. I plan to do some practice drawing on the iPad, which if I’m feeling bold I may share with you tomorrow. If you’ve got any art tips, or any advice at all you think i might find useful then please leave a comment and let me know.

Until Tomorrow,
Steve