development blog
entry 032.
Hi! Art first then text: As you can see, I am trying to narrow down what exact style of movement I want. (Got loads more but as much as I detest photo editing, this is also already 7MB in webp-format, which is heavy for a post according to me.) So, yeah, forget the pixel art... I will do all on paper first (especially in light of the AMAZINGFANTASTIC "renaissance" that is happening over the internet... (more on this later) - Not the backgrounds and effects for sure, those I will paint in Krita but the characters and props will start as ballpoint pen and graphite drawings. There are three "ready made" templates I plan on merging (and well, various other free assets are awaiting to be assimilated...) The important ones are: - the one I find most sophisticated and set for "proper" rpg needs, truly impressive to be sorted and tied all together by one very generous person: Cat's Godot 4 Souls-Like Template & Asset Pack - i will extract the vaulting and mantling and rope climbing from this one, but it is practically just a whole bunch of raycasts and license-problematic animations (...dude...), thought that climbing and "shimmy" over the corners are just too neat: Ledge Climbing In Godot 4 - Shimmy Turn and Ladder by Brokencircuit - and this, this one slams me in the face in it's simplicity and look, that negative light as a shadow (now, i haven't thought about it), how intuitive: https://github.com/golddotasksquestions/2.5D_isometric_pixelart_with_height by "golddotasksquestions" So... In my mind, the character(s) are "fully animated". Ideally I loved to make it like a living cartoon - otherwise I don't see much reason for this whole endeavour... THEREFORE - again, I call out for anyone who's interested in working with me. No idea what role, but obviously, I want to take art lead and this is my absolute passion project I am working on for more than a decade (if counting all forms). I need to paint out more stuff, to show what I is the ideal aim, I know. Yet I think the contours are here, I hope it shows. And narrowing down: Another World (dos game) + Kenshi (obviously not as vast) Third person 2D (in 3D, but all art on top is flat/drawn/painted). Ideal would be 3D for sure but I loved to see this done within the decade... Sorry for the compressed styel of writing, the heat here and my amazing life is taking the best of me. Thank you for reading. Have a great time!
entry 031.
Okay, so, it appears that modifying the camera and applying a 2d sprite onto the 3d template I mentioned took close to nothing. Camera follows fine, character actions and directions intact. Cool. I will dump a wall of art and some progress tomorrow. At least I did something.
entry 030.
I was thinking of the whole ordeal in a bad way, truly not in the right way. So, as I was requesting the delete of "the main game post" I made on the Godot Forums - just for kicks I decided to check on a certain template I was examining a few times, which one person was developing for a while, one that would've ironed out so many questions and problems for my non-programmer ass - and lo, BEHOLD, yes, they've just updated it... Ah, the amount of irony in my life, you wouldn't know... Yes, I It kept bothering me a lot. Yes, I've been drawing a lot... Merged and organized all my roadmap/plan/todo/howto text files into one and bottlenecked, squeezed and x-rayed the remaining important parts. Graphics-wise - I feel so stupid... pixelart, what pixelart? I could but I am no pixel artist, I excel in traditional freehand and in the transaltion of that to digital. Through the years, I just kept accumulating building blocks and elements, all this large, fat thing needs is a sharp hatchet or hammer and chisel... Also, this project helps me keep sane and going... I get depressed and anxious, as anybody else - but at times I consider just burning all I have. Injured my knee too, couldn't even walk for a week and I wasn't sure it will start healing, something I've never experienced as an adult. So, making some more art... I am some obscure white guy lost somewhere in Europe. The whole internet is f'd, majority of people take insane, obnoxious nonsense as bread and water and I do not even know how to connect with people. I can barely orientate on this sea of malevolent nonsense and I question my own thoughts. I couldn't be lonlier, maybe if I was truly lost at sea. On top of that I most often think video games are utter waste of time and something the world doesn't need at all. Zero ease. Nothing has value - at least not "out there", most things are taken as a bar of chocolate: ah, shiny, yum, throw, discard, useless. Passion, vision - barely alive. Horrid times, horrid, f'd times. And horrid people want to profit on and over it. I feel as if my compass is broken. What do you do in a completely mad world? Reach out to who? Have you catched that fantastic comment by that - "person" the other day? One being: "Maybe some jobs were not meant to be there in the first place." I truly can not say my actual thoughts and feelings about each and every person who does not think this LLM bullshittery is pure cancer. Rot of the mind. And I have that with multiple major things in life. The writing is on the wall, there are very facts we know for certain, yet the majority are setting the world on fire. WHY Release, man... I still refuse to take any drugs. My only vice is coffee. Yes, I know it only enhances this anxiety. Yet, why is that so, that I feel as a sane person in an insane world? What can I do? Drive it into art. Meditation and self-therapy seems to work, to be honest but only to a certain extent. Censoring yourself drives you crazy, fighting it back is tough. What kind of people encourage you to do that? What world tells you to keep smiling and obey? ... I don't hate people, I enjoy people but most of them truly put me off and make me want to leave the planet. So. Art. Artwork it is. Ratscock.
entry 029.
Sadly this goes back to the freezer again. Actually, I have decided this is not only going to a regular home freezer but into a hybernation chamber - until I bump into somebody who is willing to work with me on this. Developing a video game is a full-time or more like full-life commitment and I am unable to make that in the present or near future. ...Unless somebody dumps a million moneys on me, it is not happening. I am known to rotate between three outlets: visual art and traditional "crafting", music and singing and software programming. - Visual art (drawing, making little sculptures, arranging things) I can not stop, if my hands are tied I do it within my skull. - Programming and arranging things on the computer is how I try to escape the world around me and is absolute luxury (or irresponsible depression etc.). - Music is purely visceral and personal, it is a certain way I 'therapy myself' and ----- I am not able to explain but something I can do rarely and I am repairing my person in the present and foreseeable future. It is a time for that. In short, while I do have some available space and time to be creative, for various reasons I allocate what I have to making music now. There is an abudance of video games so the world is not exactly making a loss here. Hope you are all well in this crazy world. May the positivity of Mark Hamill be with you. Best regards, Richard 2024, May 4th
entry 028.
I have relocated to my home country for a while as I was facing depression and paranoia. I am okay and in a few weeks, and when I can squeeze time until, I will start posting again. +++
entry 027.
I redo the whole thing in 3D cause this template I started to build upon, the "25d demo template" is a !"#@**(^&*). Or at least a whole lot of extra work and confusing me altogether. [Edit: AAAAaaand looking into how tedious is it to rig and animate low-poly characters.] [Edit edit: It don't seem to be so scary but I first try a whole work-out in 2D with one character.] #godoting #gotgodot #gogodottodogood #godotingitoutgood
entry 026.
Started an entry on the official Godot Forum [forum.godotengine.org] if anyone else is godoting, the project is debatable over there.
entry 025.
Hello again! To get back on track with programming in GodotEngine properly, I went through a few things: So, it all based on the 2.5 Godot (3.6.3beta) template, mixed 2d and 3d elements, as it allows to use "simple" animation, show a lot and have the capability to utilize engine physics, gravity and overall "3d capabilities". I would of course loved to model and animate the whole thing with rigged bodies and so on but keeping it "flat" is what I have time for if I do not want this to take forever-forever. Hopefully in the future there will be a hospitable planet to live on... and I will be able to continue to create more, maybe a 3d sequel. Anyhow. Before I get to the actual fun part of it all, drawing characters properly, animating them, drawing backgrounds, making props and interactions, I must get through with the "boring" coding part. Fortunately, thanks to the vast busy-busy community this game engine attracted, the resources are plenty and I do not have to figure out everything on my own, amazing people share their work and discuss their troubles on forums and all in all, this is a superior software to work with. Yay. Here is a list of most things I've done apart from the "old code". Will upload a video soon and then some silly pre-alpha to mess with. I decided to disclose my actual roadmap [it is still heavily cropped for brevity], see it at the bottom, after the posts: Roadmap ⌁ Created off-screen point-of-interest indicators by merging two different sources and then managed to fix and trim it down to about 50 lines. Now it all works as expected. ⌁ Got a placeholder parallax background for clouds/depth. ⌁ Drew the rough animations for the first own character, walks, falls and jumps in 8 directions. ⌁ Fixed unwanted sliding of the player again: after about three hours of coding i realized i just need to adjust a slider. ⌁ Experimented with a logo idea, worked it out it in Inkscape. ⌁ Created a transparent boot splash, when the game loads, there is a neat semi-transparent logo popping up, and did some icons for files and folders. ⌁ Discovered this spatial/panning audio function: the sound pans left or right depending on where the source is on the screen. ⌁ Added a screenshot function I am at a dilemma, a problem where I have to decide to go with just a single-player mode or introduce and take on building a multiplayer option as it would make great sense according to my "story" and beyond. There will be party/team-based gameplay either way. Keeping simple but not too simple. Thank you for reading.
entry 024.
Just a few more images. Photo from 2020: Figuring how the character avatar/hud should look. This is too distracting but looks cool, would take a few shaders: I think I go with small eyes for this character:
ROADMAP
PHASE 1, mainly programming:
⬂ port all existing work to the new orthographic setup
⬂ port all existing work to the new 3D setup
⬂ port all existing work to Godot 4.2
⬂ Core:
merge:
➨ "Cat's Godot 4 Souls-Like Template & Asset Pack" by Cat Prisbrey
➨ "Ledge Climbing, Mantling, Vaulting, Shimmy Turn and Rope Climbing" by "Brokencircuit"
➨ "2.5D Isometric Pixelart With Height" by "golddotasksquestions"
⬂New logo
⬂Camera actions
⬂Inventory system
⬂Save/Load system
⬂Implement further character actions
stamina, hurt state
dashing
sneaking, hiding
crouching
push-pull, invisibility, interactions etc.
mid-states
⬂Basic character animations
⬂GUI, HUD, Screens and menus
⬂T.B.S.S. (the boring skill system)
test new shaders
offscreen enemy/poi indicator
parallax background
make own basic anims in 8 directions
fix sliding again
create cool transparent boot splash for no reason\
create cool icons for no reason
spatial/panning audio
screenshot function
2020-2021:
experiment with pixelart styles
decide on character sizes
decide on resolution and zoom levels
sketch first map/level
decide on color and mood
fix character "sliding"
unify shaders, (move on if taking too long) *it didn't
add shadows (nope, i'll just draw them, 3d shadows look rather off)
pause menu
track that credit list! (tutorials used etc.)
player attack
test movable object
get deeper into Godot by implementing
placeholder animations
modifier keys and animations
basic shaders
sketch first characters
familiarize with Godot
PHASE 2, Art: ⬂ Blocking out colour palettes "uniforming" ⬂ Environment, Levels: draw & paint map falling ground moving rocks rooms ⬂ Character Art: characters (with quirky cartoon style of mine) character animations and effects ⬂Sounds ⬂Shaders ⬂Animated avatars ⬂Cutscene test ⬂Waypoints ⬂Weather PHASE 3, "the rest": ⬂ icons ⬂ music ⬂ text ⬂ posters ⬂ stickers ⬂ promo... onto PHASE 3...
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