Today’s log might be a little shorter than the previous couple. I’ve not had as much time this evening for project work, which originally led me to think that today hadn’t been a day of much progress. But now, as I sit down to write up my achievements for today, I realise that I’ve still made some significant progress.

Starting Development of Prototype 002

The key milestone for today was kicking off the next step in Godot learning, and undertaking the beginnings of programming Prototype 002. The first step was recreating Prototype 001, but this time with using the sprites I’d created over the past few days. Although it was only movement and collision, it still feels like the start of The Inventor has well and truly begun.

I then looked at adding some of the objects and items into the game. So far I’ve added Tree’s and a Rock as static objects, with collision, and I’ve added some logs and stones as area items. These items trigger a “+1 item” message in the console window, just to test the mechanism work.

I also spent some of the evening making a sprite for the walls – something I missed from my original list of prototype sprites. I’m happy with the overall look for now, and think it works well. As with all my art, I expect it will be updated as my skills develop.

Here’s a brief snip from the game view window in Godot. As you can see, player, a very basic building and some objects and items outside. The art is basic and there’s no variation in sprites, but I can truly see the start of my idea becoming a reality. I know I still have a long way to go, but this has been a really exiting step for me.

Whats next?

The next few things I need to tackle for continuing with Prototype 002 are:

• Use Aseprite to make some artwork for UI sprites, for basic inventory display.
• Coding in of item pick up, inventory addition and UI navigation.
• Animation of the Player Character in direction of travel
• Addition of basic interaction items (crate, barrel, workbench) and coding of interaction with those.

One idea that’s been on my mind over the last couple of days is creating  Video Development logs to complement my Development Journals. The journals will contain the details of what I’ve made and what I’m learning, with the videos showing some behind the scenes of me doing this, and some footage of the Prototypes I’m working on. What did you think? would you be interested in seeing these kind of Video Dev Logs.

Life outside of the project

As always, I like to give a glimpse of my daily life, which is what I have to try and fit my project work around. Today was fairly uneventful. A morning full of meetings at work, and an afternoon and evening of baby support classes.

So, that leaves me with not much else to tell you. My bedtime reading for tonight will likely be some YouTube videos on UI making in Godot, which I plan to undertake tomorrow evening.

Hope you have a good evening, whatever you plans may be,

Steve.