🌙 lotus protocol ✨

hello! i'm a solo game dev working on a variety of projects, and i'll post updates here every now and then to share what i've done so far. here are some of my projects:

dreamcatcher (story based platformer) // this has been my primary long term project on and off since early 2023. there's no publicly playable version yet, and it'll probably be a while before there is one, since as of writing this i haven't started reevaluating my plan for the game.

fourfold (rougelike arcade platformer) // i made this in 96 hours for gmtk 2024, and it's my best work for a jam so far! go check it out here :3 (not in development unless i decide to come back and update it)

modarchy (red ball port for modding) // this is an open source project i've been working on since august 2024, which aims to port the flash game series red ball to godot for better performance and powerful mods. it's still in heavy development, but go check it out here!

that's about it! my posts tend to get long most of the time since i have a lot to say about my projects, but i hope you take some time to check out what i'm up to :>

dreamcatcher discord server: https://discord.gg/umPNp5QTCu

bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lotusprotocol.bsky.social

forgot to say something about this earlier but i’m back to working on the game! this time around i have a lot more organization, a much clearer plan, and some better tools and experience.

it’s still too early to make any estimates but i’d like to get a demo out sometime next year; optimistically at some point in the summer. i’ll also be condensing the demo down to the first half of act 1 instead of the full act; i might update it to the rest of the act once i make more progress past that though. the full 5 act scope is still the same, which shouldn’t take quite as long since the first act also involves getting the general systems for the entire game working. once again, still to early to guess, but i’m aiming for roughly 2028 when the entire game is finished.

one last thing: once i have stuff to post again i’ll be migrating to bluesky for the most part, since it seems a lot more promising. i made an account for it a while ago, but there’s still some stuff i need to set up so i won’t share it quite yet (then again you can just look it up)

also! i just made a bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/lotusprotocol.bsky.social

i’ll probably come back to dreamcatcher in december this year or early next year, since i’m busy until then and still don’t have a solidified plan or enough motivation to get back on the grind rn

i didn’t have the perfect plan first try, and that’s ok. it’s always okay to fail, but what matters is being able to get back up. and even if i improve the game experience as much as i possibly can, i don’t think it’ll ever be perfect. and that’s ok. nobody’s perfect. it’s a fact of life that took me years to take to heart, but it’s a hurdle everyone has to get over.

and at this point, i don’t know when i’ll be done with this game, but that doesn’t matter to me anymore. and i won’t give up this time. this change in direction will probably set me back a bit, but i’m hoping that i can come back ready.

but for now, i’m taking my time.

(i’ll be posting a devlog about it on its itch.io page)

play it here!

it's been a few weeks since i posted here but there's three quick things i want to say:

i've been doing a ton of work on the gmtk game jam, so i'll be releasing a game on tuesday! i might do a couple updates after that point but there'll be enough when it comes out to be interesting

school started last week so i have a lot less time to do gamedev, because of being at school (of course) and being drained after the day's over. i think i'll eventually have my energy back though

i'm considering using the rapier physics engine instead of the default godot physics engine, because of both the performance upgrade, and the determinism fix, which might give built in tas tools a chance of working

new level's been going pretty good so far! apart from one thing, which i'll talk about in a sec.

i think one of my favorite parts of level design is getting to playtest yourself. it helps me take a step back from placing things with an idea of how it'll work, and puts myself in the shoes of an actual player. i also end up trying to find fast routes often, which i probably spend more time than i need to on.

going off that last part, it's really important to give the player just the right amount of freedom for what to do in a level. you don't want to lock the gameplay to one very specific route, but you don't want them to cheese the level either. another important thing, if this applies to you, is to not intentionally design speedrunning strats or skips. this can work if you do it sparingly, but featuring it in every part of the level takes the fun out of finding good routes.

although level design is going well, the main issue i've put myself in is that i've had to place a lot of things manually through copying and pasting, which was fine at first, but quickly became very cumbersome, and made me run into other issues. however, i had an idea for a way to use a tileset and convert it back to what i've been using. the only reason i'm not keeping it as a tileset is because that actually gives me less options for customization for what i want to do.

< part of the level i'm working on! >

it's that time again! i've been making some good progress on this game within the past couple months, and i'm excited to share some of it with y'all! i'll also be trying out a more organized format this time around instead of pure bullet points.

burnout :[

the main reason i didn't do a single devlog for may was because barely anything happened in may. since the school year was wrapping up, i had a lot of tests to take, work to catch up on, and an overbearing amount of stress on top of that. unfortunately, all that left me with almost no energy to work on dreamcatcher. the only thing i did was make a track for the game, which turned out good, but not much else to report.

summer camp

i also worked at a summer camp for the first three weeks of june! this was my fourth year there, and the environment and community are still just as amazing. i won't disclose which camp it was for my own privacy, but i thought it was worth mentioning since it ties into the next point.

music

for the first half of june, i did a lot of work on the musical side of things, since it was the only thing i had motivation for at that point, and since i was working on music for the filmmaking class i was with at the summer camp i mentioned. i managed to get most of the soundtrack down, with only a few things i need to polish! i'll make it public once the demo is close to or already released. as of right now i'll probably put it on youtube, soundcloud, and bandcamp.

i've also been working on a custom audio visualizer on the side! i'll be using it for the yt music uploads when that happens

< still very much a work in progress >

masterplan

i've been using masterplan for a while, and it's been working out great! i think this has helped me stay more organized than anything else i've used. huge shoutouts to @solarlunedev for making it :]

i mostly did a bit more organization and set up a reward system, which has worked out well so far!

< zoomed out; no spoilers here! >

< one pixel = a half hour of work, more on that in this post! also i had to substitute the brown for purple because the map doesn't have that color right now >

gameplay

i started working on a new level a couple weeks ago (the one in the picture at the top)! it's been going great so far, especially since i came in with the strong motivation to make it.

on top of that, i made a debug panel and console! this doesn't affect the actual gameplay, but it's really useful for optimizing the memory the game takes up, as well as other important factors. the console's been a big help as well, since i can use those commands to test things instead of hardcoding certain things. in fact, i used the console to set up the camera in the picture!

< what the panel looks like >

art & visuals

right now, there's some parts of the visual side that are well off, but there's still quite a bit to take care of. the only art i did in these past couple weeks was for the tileset and background of the new level, and one frame of the player sprites i've been putting off. my main priorities here are:

finish player sprites to a basic level at the very least

finish character references, especially since art fight is in less than a day

make emojis for the discord server (which i'll shamelessly plug again)

speaking of art fight, i'll be doing some art for that too this year! i'm on team stardust, and i might not be too active but i'll put some character there. here's my account btw

right now there's just some art block i need to work through, but once i'm past that i'll be back and better than ever!

what's next

i'll keep this part within bullet points, but for the next month, i want to:

do all the things in the art section

finish the level and start a new one

finish the masterplan maddy

have fun :]

since i have adhd, i think it would help to have an award system in an attempt to keep motivation. so, last night, i decided to give myself one point for every half hour i work on dreamcatcher, and since i work with 30 minute focus periods and 5 minute break periods, i can open masterplan and give myself a point and play the autism creature yippee sound whenever i start a break. and that's good and all, but i still didn't have anything to do with those points until now.

i've decided that for every point i get, i'll place one pixel on this map here. i'll be starting off with madeline celeste, and i've placed 6/171 pixels so far, meaning it'll take me 82.5 hours to completely finish it.

(my coworker be losing her mind)

however, i just realized that godot actually has the ability to make audio visualizers (see this documentation page)! with that in mind, i'm planning on making my own audio visualizer in godot!

not only that, i also want it to be:

as simple as choosing the audio and a few options and clicking play

available for anyone to use

completely free and open source