this is literally just a 2012 human karkat
Dev Blog #1 - The Boring Introduction
I suppose I’m going to try and turn this blog into something now. In an effort to stay focused on something, with that something being learning the Godot engine, I will be taking a base template and turning it into a game I’ve been planning for quite a long time now. I won’t go into detail as I don’t want to spoil anything but the basic idea is a 2D Platformer reminiscent of the Megaman X series with focus on roguelite mechanics very similar to The Binding of Isaac. In a perfect world I will be posting several updates a week, but I am not perfect and neither is this world.
A “short” introduction from me: You can call me Bob. I’ve been playing video games ever since I could pick up a snes controller. Its always been a passion of mine and I don’t see myself ever giving them up. I first learned how to program by watching a bunch of C++ tutorial videos on Youtube while I was still in High School, and while I’m still not very good I can at least pick up on concepts fairly easily and implement them. My first foray into game design was learning the goofy Hammer Editor for Valve’s Source engine games. Eventually I discovered I absolutely love listening to music and imagining scenarios to go along with the songs. At some point this evolved into me wanting to make my own music and coming up with stories to go along with my own songs. Then finally I couldn’t take it anymore and bit the bullet and started trying to really teach myself game design so I could make my goofy ass stories into real things for other people to enjoy as well. I have a fun story planned for this game, but I won’t spoil anything unless its necessary for context purposes. After several on and off attempts at getting into the craft I jumped between several different platforms, Source, Unreal, Unity, Gamemaker Studio, even doing it from scratch using SDL alongside C++. The farthest progress I made was in Gamemaker Studio where I got a very near working prototype of the exact game I plan on making here. Most of the movement and combat mechanics were finished and ready to go. Unfortunately real life happened and I fell off the wagon. It also did not help when GMS2 decided to become a sub model. Later on I said screw it and downloaded Godot to try out and actually really liked what I saw. It got me back into the mood to start working on this again. So here we are.
The actual juicy bits:
Moving on, the template shown in the video above is a pretty generous one in my honest opinion. It gets a lot of the boring work done right from the get go. Movement is dynamic with your speed gradually building up or slowing down to a maximum/minimum value based on your input. I’m a big fan of this type of movement as it just looks smoother and makes the character feel weighty. One problem I have with it is that it actually feels a little too smooth. For example, when the player turns around after reaching full speed they slide for a bit longer before moving in the new direction. As nice as that looks I want an immediate effect similar to older style platformers such as the previously mentioned Megaman.
While this is ZX Advent it still captures the same gameplay as the X series much like its ZX’s predecessor Zero even though its visual style has evolved. Its fast, responsive and really smooth. I will essentially be using these games as a reference for how I want my own to feel.
Other than adjusting the basic movement another thing I’ll be working on first is adding Coyote Time. Its something almost all games in this genre have including some 3D platformers. Without going too far into it because this post is already really long, its essentially a short time frame that starts when your character walks off an edge and begins falling. Normally if you walk off an edge you would expect to just fall right? Well thats not fun. What Coyote Time does is allow the player to jump for a certain amount of time even after they fall off an edge. It prevents the player from having to perform pixel perfect jumps, unless of course the game calls for it, and makes platforming far more of a forgiving experience. I’ll go over it more when I reach that point.
There is a lot more I’d like to talk about but I think I’ll save that for when I have something to show for it. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Stay tuned for more.
