Broken record

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I’m fully aware that my pattern over the last several years of trying to create a game is very cyclical: I get all jazzed up, try to make something in THREE, hit a roadblock, punt and decide to use Godot, then give up because I find some nit-picky thing about Godot that isn’t just perfect for me.  Well no more!  I have hit step 4 in which I decide to use Godot, but this time I’m sticking with it.  My issue always seems to be the load time for the engine.  I much prefer THREE because it loads basically instantaneously, but THREE is a graphics library, not a game engine, so if I want all the very nice game engine features that Godot has, I simply have to accept the fact that loading the wasm file is going to take a minute.  At least when a user visits the site for the first time.  After that the file will be cached and the game should load in just a few seconds.

I don’t have an exported version of the game yet but I’ve been able to get some very basic functionality up and running very quickly in Godot.  I have a test scene just to show some nice assets loaded in, and a terrain scene with some very poorly drawn grass. 

The character controller is shockingly easy to set up and use now with the right plugin, but I did have to modify the input to work with the keyboard the way I want it to.

I’m trying to stay focused and work on very small, very accomplishable goals for now and hopefully that will add up to something worth having eventually.  I’ll try to get a new version out this weekend.  I would like to have a way for the player to transition between the test scene and the terrain scene, so if I can figure that out I will put it out as a v0.00.001 and that will be a decent starting point.

v0.00.002 (2025.01.25)

Release Announcement

I released a new version tonight, just a little ahead of schedule because I felt like I was at a decent cut-off spot.  This version of the “game” still isn’t really much of a game.  You can walk around in a very tiny world and a house loads in.  There is a very basic collision detection system running, but there is a rudimentary map that actually does control where the player can move.  I’m going to put together a development roadmap page to help me make decisions about what features to implement in what order, but for now go check out the little sphere you can walk around a house.

Version reset

Release Announcement

I’m releasing v0.00.001 (2025.01.20) today as a reset point for this round of trying to make a game.  As you might expect from v0.00.001 there isn’t much to it.  You can walk a sphere around a randomly generated world of cubes.  It’s very exciting.  But I started there to start establishing the look and feel I want for the game eventually.  I like the “top-down but in 3D” idea and I think I can stick with that.  I’ll get together a feature implementation list and try to start creating some more features of, you know, an actual game.  I would like to release a new version every week and Monday seems like as good a day as any, so I’ll do my best to get a new version 0.00.002 out on Monday the 27th.

The visuals

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My idea for the game visually is basically a 3D world on a 2D grid with a top-down point of view.  This way I don’t have to deal with all of the complexities of 3D collision detection but I still have some stylistic freedom with the world rather than being cornered into standard pixel art if I did a straight 2D game.  The player will be able to move in any direction and the camera will be looking down at a fixed angle.  To avoid needing any kind of “x-ray” functionality where the player character is visible behind objects that are blocking him/her from the camera, the camera will be able to rotate 90 degrees at a time around the player character.  So, if the player character is behind a tree or a building or some other obstacle, the player can just rotate the camera until he can see the character again to control him/her.  This will also take full advantage of the fully rendered 3D world and hopefully create a fun exploration experience.

I have the very basic of some cubes moving around on a plane to represent the look that I eventually want, but once I get the simplest of environments put together I’ll start publishing some screenshots and even very, very early versions of the “game.”

Here we go again

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I’ve been a way for quite a while just because of a lack of motivation (mostly due to my working situation) but as of January, 2025 I have a new job and a renewed sense of direction so I’m getting back to the game.  I’ve decided that if I don’t have something concrete that is at least beginning to resemble a playable game by December 31, 2025, I’m just going to drop the idea entirely and find something else to spend my free time on.

That being said, I have an idea for how the game could look and I really like it.  I’ve been working on some basic visuals and I think this one is finally going to work.  I’ll provide some actual details in the near future, but I think I have an idea that I really like and is actually doable.  I’ve also been considering some, let’s say “novel” approaches to funding the game.  I don’t know how that’s going to pan out right now, but all options are on the table.  I don’t need the game to make enough money for me to live on right away, but it’s also not a charity project and I would like to make at least some money for my efforts eventually.  But that will all come later.  For now, I’m cleaning up some stuff on the site and will get back to posting here somewhat regularly, so stay tuned.

v0.00.003

Release Announcement

This is a very small release update but it represents a good bit of education on my part.  I’m doing as much research on the Godot Engine as I can.  This includes learning what I can on code structure for an RPG, or really any game.  I know how to program, but I have very little experience as a software engineer, and even less as a game developer, so getting a base of knowledge about how to structure a project as big as an RPG is going to be crucial if there is any chance for this project to take off.

The only change in this release is that you can walk over the white block and the scene changes to the “battle arena.”  You can’t actually do anything once you get there, but the scene change does happen and the character can’t move while the scene is changing.  Also, there is a decent little fade-in and fade-out during the transition.

Again, this is a very small update, but that’s kind of the idea I’m going for with very small, hopefully very frequent updates.  If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments be sure to leave them below.

Small Update

Planning and Development

It’s been quite a while but I’m back to working on the game.  I’m sticking with Godot because it really is awesome.  I have the story somewhat fleshed out but there’s still plenty of work to do there.  I’ve started over from scratch (again) but I’m going to try to get to very basic “game” level of development, then start posting new versions regularly.  Of course, this is always what I try to do when I start over, so we’ll see how it goes this time.

Surprise, surprise

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It should come as a shock to absolutely no one, but I’ve changed direction yet again.  I really think this one is going to stick because I’m going back to a single-player, 2d RPG.  And I’m using an actual game engine, instead of trying to make all the tools myself from scratch.  It has taken me a little time to get used to it, but the Godot Engine is absolutely amazing.  I’ve messed around with Godot before but was never serious about it because I didn’t like the idea of exporting a game to HTML5 because it would be packed together and it would create a delay for the game to initially load.  Eventually I thought, “Screw it!” because every game on earth has some kind of load time.  Besides that, the browser caches quite a bit of that data so it really only slows down the very first time you run the game.  

I’ve been working on a new story and doing some preliminary testing with Godot’s 2d tools and I’ve made really, really fast progress, at least as compared with other times I’ve tried doing everything from scratch.  The game’s view is top-down.  I have a player character that moves in 8 directions and animates in 4.  I have three very basic scenes: a town, a house in the town, and a bedroom in the house.  The player can use the doors to go in between the scenes and everything generally works.  Just this basic level of functionality is really fantastic to reach because a lot of the important building blocks of how Godot works were necessary to get to this point, and it really hasn’t been too bad.  The map editing tools are a little clunky but totally work, and the whole process is just like 1,000% faster than trying to figure out how to do absolutely everything in code, or with tools I’ve made myself.

I still like the idea of incremental development where I frequently release versions of the game with minor improvements between versions.  I’m already up to v0.00.005, but I may wait until I have something that at least resembles a game before I really put it up here for public consumption.

This will still be a huge project but I think I’m off to a better start than I’ve maybe ever been before because I’m using tools that lots of other people have used to successfully make completed games, and that’s always encouraging.  I’ll try to post here regularly as I make progress, so stay tuned.

A Fence!

Asset Spotlight

This week’s assets spotlight is a bit of a cheat in a few different ways.  First, it’s obviously not done.  I like the geometry just fine but I haven’t event started on replacing the color UV pattern Blender generates for you.  Second, I actually made this fence for a previous project and have probably even featured it on here before, but I’m using it again because I want Isles of Arden to have all hand-painted textures whereas previously I was just using flat material colors.  So it’s semi-new, and semi-complete, but at least it’s something!

This week is also the first time I’m using a screenshot from inside the game itself as the asset spotlight image.  You can see the placeholder player character in there for scale reference.  This is possible now because the world editor makes it relatively easy to add new assets to the game.  That being said, the actual game makes it difficult to move the camera and get a good image, so I’ll probably use the world editor itself to create images for future asset spotlights.

This fence will get featured again eventually when I’ve had a chance to create a real texture for it, so look for that in the future.

v0.00.003 Release

Release Announcement

You can find the latest version of the “game” on the Isles of Arden page.  This release represents only very minor improvements to the actual game and is much more about the creation and integration of a world editor.  Having a functioning world/scene editor will make make it much easier to add new assets to the game in the future.  Check out the newest version and leave a comment letting me know what you think about the progress I’m making, and what features you would like to see in the game next.