I will be using #30daydev to help get me back on my feet following a difficult two and a half months with depression and anxiety.
My primary goal is to work on content, resources and tools for #devinfocus; my upcoming game industry initiative.
Main Quest: Create module 1 of #devblueprint; a tool I am designing for game developers to help aid, define and support their entire game development process.
These weekday submissions will usually be small since I work full time and come home to a wife and two kids. My time is very limited but if I focus on making progress one larger task, then even my short sessions can add up over the long run.
Today I watched two videos, one from GDQuest and one more of the GameFromScratch Godot 3 tutorial series. I'm also coding along and referencing the documentation for extra knowledge absorption.
Just one video under my belt from Game From Scratch this time around. Working on another but that will go under tomorrow's tally due to the time cut off of the system here.
Tomorrow will also be fairly constrained so I'm only expecting another single video day there too, but things should start opening up again come the weekend.
I had a bit more downtime today than expected so I was able to multi-task and watch 3 videos today. A lot of stuff is coming back to me and I'm switching to more of an output focus after today... well after tomorrow since I won't have anything concrete by the mid-evening deadline of the daily cut-off for me.
I won't say more of the plans and just wait until I have something to show.
Goal: Learn Godot Engine
Timeline: Until Dec 31st, 2018
Today I watched the first two videos of GameFromScratch's Godot 3 Tutorial Series.
https://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Godot-3-Tutorial-Series-Index.aspx
I should be done working through his videos by the 19th and ready to move on to GDQuest's course that I bought back in March.
I also got the files downloaded from GDQuest's [PRO] Make Professional 2d Games with the Godot Game Engine course. https://gumroad.com/gdquest
I'm looking forward to working through that over the rest of my time and getting a good base to work from in future projects. This 30 (49) Day Dev period won't have a direct game project to show off at the end of this most likely, but I could end up pivoting once I feel I've gotten enough of a feel for Godot working through these courses.
Working on getting the UI working with keyboard and gamepad in Godot Engine for They Got In
same issue and slow progress for multiple days so I will copy and paste the same message
Finally got all of the UI functionality working with the keyboard and gamepad. Need to make a version of the updates playable, but that will be a task for another day.
The team has agreed to attempt the Ludum Dare 43. I've been watching some videos on Godot and on some other general coding things. I'll probably do a day break from Godot and code some web related stuff as a mini break before the jam starting Friday night.
Was great to finally be able to throw my hand at a light bit of game dev. Started a remake of Calcul8 which I've very cleverly named Calcul8² (Calcul8 squared)
Check it out at: https://www.adliberum.com/x/calcul82
Today Mini Jam 15 begins. The theme is technology and the limitation is a very limited 8 color palette with no gradients or use of alpha channels/transparency (other than fully transparent). Paired up with a sound designer so it should be an interesting time.
Now to see if I can overcome two years of negative reinforcement of starting a jam and life finding a way to interrupt it. (Every time... for two whole years... ugh...)
The good news is I got a title screen mocked up in the engine. We have a good start!
That's right, if the last two months have taught me nothing else its the importance of taking breaks. So apart from making a few slight changes to Calcul8² I've been busy with life today.
Also managed to hit my Samsung health 60 minutes of activity target too.
Been a while since I did any what I'd deem 'hardcore' coding, all about the wysiwyg and fast iteration nowadays, so I spent a few hours working through Chris Deleon's JS+HTML5 tutorial.
Reminded me no matter how many years away from it you'll never forget the solid coding principles, so found myself jumping ahead and predicting what was to come next.
Here is the result. Rusty, but still, a solid result.
It has been a rough day but I've made some significant progress on the jam game. My goal was to get to feature completion by tonight but that probably won't happen with only another hour before I need to be in bed. Should get pretty close to where I wanted to end up though by tomorrow's jam deadline.
Spent the day implementing a smart save system to replace the old 'rudimentary' version. Plus interstitial ads will be in this time round (shall see how they pan out).
Point your devices at: https://www.adliberum.com/x/calcul82
The remainder of my #30daydev will now be spent making all the images, icons, banners, screenshots and video required in order to pass review xD
I've gotten really close to feature complete for this jam. There are 5 hours left until the submission deadline and I will probably be able to work for another 3. I'm really proud of what I have accomplished so far and glad that I'll finally be able to break my two year curse!
I've attached a picture of the credits scene. Tomorrow I'll record a gif of the completed jam game.
Today has been spent creating the plethora of images required to submit your game to Facebook Instant Games.
All done, and Calcul8² has now been submitted for review! Fingers crossed I covered every base.
Point your device/s at https://www.adliberum.com/x/calcul82 to play!
OR on itchio at https://liamtwose.itch.io/calcul82
The game jam is finished, my curse is broken, and you can play the game if you want!
https://renaudmarshall.itch.io/they-got-in
Since I was up until almost midnight coding furiously to make the submission deadline, today was a recovery day for the most part.
Because Calcul8² is so simple there really is little to change / update (unless bugs surface) so I've just spend half the day pushing to Amazon App Store to make it available on Kindle Fire devices etc.
Another 7 images! All of which 'again' required unique image resolutions. Super easy to submit though which used a .zip file with html5 genned code inside.
Hoping the approval process is swift! In the meantime I will see what other stores I could release to.
Backed off for today. I just watched a couple tutorial videos to keep things going while I recover from the game jam.
Thought I'd get this one in early, gives me the rest of the day to chillax. Literally just submitted Calcul8² to Google Play, to gauge interest from the mobile side. This will be the first time I've actually published an app on Amazon / Google that will be paid. So interested to see whether there's any precedence over paid vs free from 'store' side.
Relatively easy as a few images matched the resolutions from amazon images and the APK signing was a doddle and all handled with Construct 3's export functions.
Today I got my refurbished laptop in and have been taking the time to immediately put Ubuntu on it. Time to go fully into linux for my development laptop. There has been no specific focus on Godot today, but plenty of learning around development and setup to get ready to dive back into it tomorrow.
It's pretty crazy that I tried to do a linux machine just a couple of years ago but ran into walls with software that I was used to not being cross platform or having viable alternatives. With applications being built on electron more now and Steam providing a solid layer for Windows games to run in linux, I don't really have much reason to stick with Windows outside of specific gaming needs (which I will maintain a gaming desktop for).
Well let me tell you, publishing to Windows Store is complex and was far from smooth. However I did it and now await their decision =D
Lot's of things that threw me with this one:
Huge install times (hours)
Problems importing the package.
Lengthy validation fail process and packaging.
Revision number kept firing back as incorrect. Revision numbers MUST have 0 on the end (i.e. 1.0.0.0) as the final 0 is reserved for MS use.
Plethora of new image (90+ so far) assets to create (there is supposed to be a generator tool, but it wasn't there so... manual)
Thanksgiving break. I managed a couple of lines, starting the process of adding keyboard and gamepad support. Overall though I spent the time with friends and family and didn't feel guilty for not trying harder to get stuff done.
Got keyboard and gamepad support functional on the main menu and during the gameplay scene. Still need to add it to the credits and game over scenes.
