Dan

Had a massive deadline at work so that took all my energy the last few weeks, made it though and now on holiday in Cornwall for 2 weeks. Going to dream up some ideas and try and get a mostly full formed gameplay loop in my head.

Spent some time doing some housekeeping, moved some "temporary" files, setup a scene manager, game manager, and a main menu scene. Nothing very exciting, but all progress is progress. At some point I'll have to think of a name for this... #GameDev #IndieGame

Looking forward to seeing what you make!

Yeah it could do with an outline effect or something as well

Trees got a bit bigger, feels a bit more like a forest now. They also get out of the way when they're blocking the player which makes life a bit easier. #GameDev #IndieGame

Had to drive up to the office today so spent the time pondering game mechanics, I think I have a few roughly worked out in theory. I feel like I'll need something overarching in the end but a few smaller mechanics to get started will be enough.

The camp now actually gets given a spot during the map generation and I have the player spawning there... At some point I'll make it do something and be upgradable, eventually. When I stop just making environments and start making actual mechanics... #GameDev #IndieGame

I added bushes and flowers that are both coloured based on the season this morning. Things are starting to feel a little more alive now... Next up is making paths. #GameDev #IndieGame

I also took the chance to throw in what I needed for easy seasonable changes... One variable change gives me autumnal trees. #ScreenshotSaturday #IndieGame #GameDev

Okay, so after a reasonable amount of thinking about it I have optimised the fps drops out of the tree updates. They flash "unstyled" - but you'll never see that at the regular zoom distance. #ScreenshotSaturday #IndieGame #GameDev

Screenshot of a pixel art video game that has trees in a varying shade of orange.

I’ve been working on a system to tweak my tree colours dynamically for seasons, and to add slight variance. It currently performs quite (very) badly but it produces cool looking results. I have optimisation ideas. #ScreenshotSaturday #IndieGame #GameDev

Extremely early version of "biomes" - each cell starts with a temperature, moisture level and elevation. Trees prefer certain conditions and are weighted heavily against things they don't like. Also good example of my chunk loading at this zoom distance. Tree materials need work #GameDev #IndieGame

So after spending 2 hours debugging a massive rabbit hole that was leaking memory all over the place (turned out to be my RNG class weirdly) - I have collisions on trees and a shoddy outline. Not sure why its offset, something to do with the camera. Sounds like tomorrows problem. #GameDev #IndieGame

Random grass density ✔️
Random tree positioning ✔️
Chunks that spawn in and out and remember stuff ✔️

This is further than I expected to get. Guess it's time to actually start putting some of this to use. I definitely didn't think about just making a random tree generator too...

#GameDev #IndieGame

Was pretty tired last night, but manged to poke out a little more progress. There's dynamic vegetation density for chunks now. Zoomed far out to try and demonstrate the effect somewhat... Grass and trees! #GameDev #IndieGames #IndieDev

Each cell has it's own associated json object that will record most of the stuff that is going to be static between renderings

It's just a noise map and then based on the shade I decide on what density that represents, currently just 3 brackets that it can fall into that are then presented as shades of green on this image output.

It’s early days but I envision a forest simulator where you act as a researcher and can influence how things grow/spread, encourage certain species growing… I do have a feature list somewhere 😂

Dynamic chunk loading... Greatly reduced range for demonstration purposes, but its mostly actually working. #GameDev #IndieDev #Godot

Crude representation of a map with paths and lakes.

Very early representation of my initial map generation… foliage density, paths, and oddly round pools. Each pixel is associated with a tile in the tile map and will be used to set its initial data… from there it’ll be up to the player how things develop. I need to add a river. #GameDev

Set up the scene a little more and added a night environment, and some flickering to the campfire. #ScreenshotSaturday #GameDev #Indie

It’s very good, the official intro 2d and 3d tutorials will get you started, then there’s loads of content on YouTube. Gdscript isn’t too bad to pick up, just gotta keep plugging at it

And the fire itself is a particle emitter

The tree and camp fire base are from kenney.nl - the dude was made using asset forge (also by Kenney) and then run through Mixamo and combined animations in blender before getting them into godot - annoying process to follow but functional enough for testing some ideas

Day 1 one of getting back around to working on my own game again. Managed to import some models, and make a camp fire. Great start... #gamedev

Three computers arranged on an L shaped desk. There is Minecraft on each screen. Two young girls are playing in two of the machines.

Happy to say our first family #gaming session was a big success. Probably need a smaller controller for the 4 year old, her hands are a bit small for the stadia controller.

A photo of three computers arranged on an L shaped desk, the screens are all showing a similar scene in Minecraft.

Been waiting years for the kids to age into #minecraft - tomorrow we're going to play it together so had to get the accounts and machines all setup. Not sure how I'll fit in the 4th when the baby ages up, but this is a start!

Got around to completing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Enjoyed the journey and the story, puzzles were cool. Less said about the last boss fight the better I think, really pissed on the whole parade. Still gonna play the DLC when it comes out though.

Amazon should publish the top 100 things people name their timers on Alexa

I have been thinking about taking a proper step back and working out what I actually want to produce... Make some kind of development document so I have a plan to work to.