I actually went to nerdy chess and “code” camp back in elementary school and built a simple 2d shooter game.
A several years ago I tinkered with Unity for about a month but lost interest as work at the startup I was with picked up a lot.
Two years ago I discovered Godot and went through the getting started docs.
I built a simple 2D dodge the creeps game.
Yesterday I rebuilt it following along with a GDQuest tutorial and that brings us to today.
I am starting the Learn 2D Gamedev Godot 4 course.
Why am I getting back into gamedev and why am I writing this down?
As to why gamedev:
I have always loved games since I was a kid like Super Smash Bros Melee, Sly Cooper, FIFA, Uncharted 2, CoD Modern Warfare 2, and League of Legends.
I always thought it would be fun to try making one of the several game ideas I have jotted down in my notebooks over the years.
I now know how to code decently well.
I think games are a valuable way to spread ideas, especially on issues I care about like veganism, animal activism, and conservation.
Why am I writing this down?
Mostly to keep myself accountable.
As echoed in both the fastai and GDQuest curriculum, social pressure is inevitablely motivating for every single person wether we admit it or not.
As I don’t have a group of study partners nearby to work on either of those, I am resorting to posting a daily blog that I will share on social media.
I’ll try to keep these short and to the point in 250ish words.
What I learned so far on gamdev and Godot:
* pixel art isn’t as easy as it looks
* vector art is great to start with for beginners making their earliest games
* signals are a convenient design pattern to broadcast events from different game objects to each other to determine what should happen next
* rendering animations for some basic sprites is way simpler than I thought it would be (at least in Godot)
* music and sounds add a lot to how a game feels
For tomorrow I want to continue with the course and hopefully have finished answering the fastai end of chapter questions I have put off for a while.