Ded's Game Dev Blog @iamded-dev - Tumblr Blog

Haha, guess who started a new project

Keeping things as simple as I can for this one in the hopes that it actually progresses.

I've successfully implemented a basic game mechanic this time, so new progress record there

That's all for now. If I say I've done too much, I'll trick my brain into thinking I've done enough, and then motivation tapers off. I've done nothing! I have so much to do! Wish me luck

trashpit

Ha ha, just a couple o gals

Ahh so rn I'm dabbling in 3 different test games in Godot, I have my renpy monster girl dating game indefinitely in progress, and also. I played this wacky little RPG maker game called Purgatory Dungeoneer and was like, "hey, I have RPG maker don't I?" and since my tablet's not working I thought I'd give pixel art a go since I'm relegated to mouse drawing so I grabbed aseprite and have been messing around with that and anyway here's some guys from an RPG maker game I'm workin' on......

2 characters down!

58 to go

#pixel art

godot

just a lil guy

Oh hey, yes I am in uhhh Japan now? And have been for uhhh a few months? Anyway my laptop I bought before moving is, as it turns out, absolute dog-shite. So I can't do any 3D modelling or anything too strenous LOL, which includes use my tablet which I DID bring but does NOT work on this infernal machine because it lags so hard.

So maybe in 6 months I'll have saved enough to cobble together a bare-bones PC that's still beefy enough to run stuff? But like, I could also just use that money to enjoy Japan and other nearby countries, because I'm only here for a few years and gotta enjoy it while I am right?

Anyway. Renpy runs on my laptop....

Just checkin' in - and making progress! I have done some fantastic Godot tutorials and now have a working lil' bit of functionality to my game. Now I just need to do the 99% of the rest of it. But the core gameplay bit is in play and working!

Now the todo is just:

Create all the actual scenes (main menu etc) and link them together

Implement the system to store and swap out various characters

Implement the other half of the gameplay i.e. score tracking, victory/loss state etc

Do all of the sound and artwork

Bugfix

So overall, getting pretty close to completion! In all seriousness, just having what I have now is an interesting hallmark of "oh, I can actually do this" which is encouraging. Lots still to do, but I'm aiming small and I'm aiming low and I'm aiming to get a barebone functional game in place first before expanding upon it with the myriad of ideas I have for it.

Oh also I got a new job in Japan so am moving there soon and completely upending my life into a whole new area and job, and I won't have my computer, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back into the rhythm of gamedev. But once I'm settled I"m sure I'll find a slot for it! My dream of making a game before I turn 33 may not come to fruition, but I'll never give up on my dream of making a game.

Taking a break from deving to do a bit of blending. Found an Aussie lad name of Dikko (lol) who has rad tutorials on modelling for animation, which is how you should be modelling characters for game design if you don't want them moving all janky. The way the mesh is built around the joints and face has a huge impact on how smoothly the shapes deform and how normal it looks, and these teach you how to do it right.

Actually... this tutorial is 3 years old, which in the software world is like forever ago, so maybe I should be reading more up-to-date documentation when it comes to the technical nitty gritty. But like, the overall core concepts still hold strong and true. It's also my first time having a proper go at sculpting and actually learning the tools, which has been interesting. I prefer vertex/poly modelling but it's good to learn new things! Actually, I see Dikko has a more recent tutorial doing exactly what I've just done but without any sculpting... hmm....

Also I just wanna mention totally unrelated stuff, but I've been playing Elden Ring again what with the first DLC trailer finally dropping and god that game is so good but I'm so bad qq sigh. Pacific Drive and Nightingale also dropped this past week, so I foolishly picked both of them up even though I have not enough time to spare and am now poor again lmao, ah, when will I start making good decisions...

Anyway, here's my first face sculpt, viewer beware, you're in for a scare lmao. The render has tiny pupils for some reason, I've included how it looks in the software on the right for comparison (which is slightly less horrifying). I don't know good lighting or render setups yet gomen!

Oh I forgot to mention I got horribly addicted to idle games for a while and concepted up a pizza themed clicker game, so hah maybe that'll exist someday

Hello trumblo, Ded back with another bideogeimu update

So I was doing some good ol' Godot tutorials on Zenva until I got to one that was not cooperating and I couldn't figure out why. Now, with Udemy, there's a handy discussion area where you can see other people who have had the same problem as you and people have come together and found a solution, or maybe not and you can ask about it yourself. But Zenva... does not have that. Well, not for free. Zenva gates it's Help page behind a subscription paywall, which is absolute garbage. You want to gate your courses behind a subscription? Absolutely reasonable, a tried and true business model. You want to gate support for purchased courses behind that same paywall? Absolute fucking trash. Unforgivable. So, fickle that I am, I'm ditching Zenva out of spite just like I did with Unity after they pulled their bullshit. Which is fine, because Udemy worked fine for me in the past so I've gone back to do some of my unfinished courses... and a handful of new ones I picked up.

Currently I'm working on a Godot complete course for 2D game learnin', hosted on Udemy by a chap named Richard Allbert. Now, maybe I got accustomed to mediocrity with some of the other courses I was doing, but this course is phenomenal. For a dumbass like myself who doesn't understand shit, this dude explains everything so clearly and concisely, I'm learning basic things about Godot that countless other tutorials never even touched on. His tutorials are long, but they're comprehensive and they do a good job of actually teaching you the how and why, rather than just having you copy/paste what they tell you to, and you can watch 'em on 1.5x speed and zoom through. When relevant, he explains other ways people might do something and why he's doing it the way he does. It's so good, I checked out his other courses - of which there's only one, and it's about like programming a currency exchange market bot or something, and I almost bought it just because he's a great teacher despite my having no interest in that. I wish he had a huge backlog of other content I could buy to support his making even more content, but the fact he doesn't kind of supports that what he does make is quality over quantity. ANyway, enough praise and worship of this guy, (I'm still on the first game, maybe it gets totally shite later) but definitely check out his course if you want to learn Godot like me.

#game dev

Some character sketches

For posterity's sake, I've completed the following Zenva courses thus far:

Intro to Game Design (26/09/23)

UI/UX for Game Design (30/09/23)

Level Design for Beginners (01/10/23)

Godot 3 Game Development for Beginners (02/10/23)

Intro to Godot 4 Game Development (09/10/23)

So far all of the theory work has been very basic and is nothing new that I haven't heard back in Uni, but it's been a fun refresher and a good look at what concepts are being taught in the present, given that it's been like 8 years since I graduated. I'm 31 now! My goal is to have a completed game published at least to itch.io, and maybe to Steam, by the time I'm 33. That gives me about a year and a half, which is kinda cutting it close given how abysmal my time management skills are. But it's my goal! My dream, even! And I'm going to do my best to achieve it.

So I been doin some Godot. Did you know it's pronounced Gudoh and not Go Dot? Because I did not.

Anyway, I've done a couple of Zenva tyoots (that's hip&cool shorthand for "tutorials") as well as the basic 2D game tutorial available on the Godot site.

I'm definitely learning a lot, but there were certainly points where I was following the instructions and typing out the code and shaking my head with quiet exasperation because I didn't understand what I was actually doing at all, and that's the frustrating part about learning, well, anything new. But you just gotta keep at it, keep reading and squeezing that knowledge through your brain pipes until those little neurons zap together, and then keep at it for the next part, and the next part, and so on forever.

I'm hoping if I can run through the remaining Zenva game tyoot courses I have, that will impart enough additional knowledge to give me some sort of foundation to build on. I also want to go over just the "Getting Started" section of the Godot site and really hammer that into my brain, because I struggle so much with understanding this stuff and I really wanna get it down pat.

Anyway look at me following instructions (from the Godot 2D tyoot):

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

It's been 7 months since my last post and I'm still dreaming of making a game one day. So hey, Unity kinda shit the bed by implementing a charge-per-install model, which has widely been regarded as just an absolutely braindead move and has turned a lot of people off Unity completely. To that end I've tearfully waved goodbye to the Unity tutorials I had amassed, left to gather dust in Udemy (an online tutorial/course marketplace). Meanwhile Humble Bundle saw the Unity hubbub and took the opportunity to offer a Godot (a free open-source game engine) learning bundle through Zenva (another online tutorial/course marketplace). Soo I grabbed that and have been working through these tutorials. Maybe one day I'll release a game using Godot! It's an option!

I also started a uh, what's it called... like a text based dating game. Like a dating sim. But like, mystery. It's like that Dead by Daylight spin-off 'Hooked on You' combined with the tv show LOST and like... Monster Girl Island I guess lmao. Anyway I started working on that using renpy because it's the easiest 'game dev' tool in the world and I figure I can probably make a visual novel adventure, right?

Anyway, I'm still here, I still have dreams and countless lofty game ideas, and I'm trying my darnedest to actually do something about it instead of spending all my free time playing video games (which at this point in time, with Baldurs Gate 3 and Starfield and Phantom Liberty, is exceedingly difficult to do). Anyway, back to it!

Upd8

So that post down there I made about that zombie game idea was back in twenny-nineteen, that’s like 4 years ago! And I haven’t thought about that game at all! But there are other game ideas that have stuck with me all this time. I have my notebooks and more recently, my Google docs (because paper will wither and fade, but the cloud is immortal) which I keep track of these all along with all the details and tid-bits that come to mind. But to list them quickly, I have dreams of making...

• Junkyard salvaging game based on TWRP songs “Built 4 Love” and “Computer Wife” - This one I’ve put a lot of thought into in terms of gameplay and how to actually make it, as well as art style etc. Initially inspired by those two songs as well as RamHeadedGirl’s character generator “Ship of Theseus” (nsfw)

• Tamagotchi but with anime girls - This was prompted almost entirely by the Steam game "Your amazing T-Gotchi!” and my wish for a brighter outcome. I haven’t the programming knowledge or gameplay ideas to pursue this one too far, but we’ll see

• Monster-girl dating game - I’m gonna be real, that Dead by Daylight dating sim spin-off spoke to me. Romance, horror and mystery blend very well together. After a quick Steam browse I found “Occult Rewrite” and “Project Vostok” that fit the same vibe and provided some good inspiration. Also, the visual novel game engine ‘Renpy’ is incredibly easy to learn.

• Necromancer game - This is an ultimate dream of mine, but one I haven’t put nearly enough thought or time into. I mean look at me, I’m ded. Skeletons are my pals! I want a game where you can raise an undead army and cause mayhem! “Boneraiser Minion” and “Necrosmith” are two games that fit the vibe and nailed some of my ideas before I got there, but I’ve still got plans...

Back from the Ded

Ha haaaah, see this is why I started this blog. It’s been over a year since my last post (Nov ‘19 — Jan ‘21). We skipped all of 2020 without a hint of game dev! To be fair, it was 2020... But as I was saying, I started this blog in the first place with the full knowledge that I might abandon it for long stretches of time. Then when I was ready, it would always be here to come back to and continue the documentation of my game dev journey.

So it’s Jan 2021, I’m older but none-the-wiser, but I’ve got a hint of New Years motivation that’s kicked me into gear just a bit. Unity’s redownloaded, tutorials bookmarked, I even did a very basic tutorial game thingy that you can see here as proof that I’m making things happen.

I have a lil’ notebook that I’ve been keeping track of my game ideas in, writing down bits and pieces, and it only occurred to me recently that I could use google docs to host a word file that can be accessed anywhere and sits safely in the cloud. So I did that. I’ve started up a design doc where I’m writing out all my ideas for the game I wanna make. It’s not the zombie game I mentioned last time (which I had forgotten completely about lmao), this is the futuristic junk-yard salvage build-a-robot-wife game. It’s an idea I’ve been developing, you’ll see. Hopefully.

Finally, I discovered CodeMiko and it blew my mind. CodeMiko is a Twitch streamer created by “the Technician” that uses a 3d avatar is a virtual 3d space, with a tonne of interactivity with chat, customisation, all these fun features and it’s so cool. I’ve been wanting to break into Twitch livestreaming for a while and was in the process of drawing up one of those face-tracking 2-d illustrated heads to use instead of a web-cam. My physical appearance isn’t a totaly mystery and I’m sure anyone with enough google-fu could find an old pic of me somewhere online, but I’d like to keep it out of streaming y’know. So I was gonna use a little cartoon v-tuber avatar thing, but then I discovered CodeMiko. And my eyes were opened to the possibilities and the potential that someone with true creativity can accomplish. And I’m not sure if I have what it takes, because I don’t have years of 3d modelling experience and I’m garbage at coding, but just maybe with enough tutorials and googling and duct tape and tears I can accomplish something. And again, I have ideas, and I’ve been keeping a document of it all. But I love the idea of an interactive almost game-like avatar to use on Twitch. In the long run I’ll need to learn real out-of-my-current-reach stuff like realtime face-tracking in Unity and Twitch integration for chat and channel points and what-not, but for now - well, I have plans. Hopefully a future post will expand on them with something to show for it!

God I’ve really become one of them people that writes out pages of content for an audience of none huh. Ah well! It’s a self-journey!

First game idea - yeah, it’s zombies

First thing’s first, and that’s familiarising myself with the very basics of Unity. I’ll be using Unity solely because I’ve dabbled in it before, and feel it better suits 2d pixel style games than Unreal. Because of this, I want to start reeeeaaal simple - as simple as possible. The most basic of basic. And that’s zombies.

#zombie-game

Ded’s adventures in game dev

So here’s the plan: I wanna make a game. Ever since, I dunno, forever maybe? But at the very least since high school, I wanted to make games. And high school was like, 10 years ago for me now.

Thankfully, dreams of game development are a lot more achievable these days. You ever take a look at some of the crap on Steam and think, “Man, I could make something like that.” Well, I think maybe I could make something like that.

Especially with the accessibility of development tools and tutorials in this day and age. Unreal and Unity are both free to use with tons of resources available. Aside from official guides and tutorials, there are countless websites that offer their own tutorials, and you’ll find innumerable youtube tutorials offered by professionals and other aspiring game developers alike.

So with all these resources available, what the heck am I doing sitting here not making my dreams come true? So here I am, starting up a blog and making this post in the hopes that it will help keep me on track in regards to game making. I hope to keep posting updates, including game progress, any tutorials used, ideation, and anything else involved in my game making journey. With any luck and a lot of hard work, maybe one day I’ll be posting a link to a finished game!

#intro

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