#learning gamedev

Apparently I've learned not much, because it immediately did not work. I could either have the animation changed to death animation, or do queue_free and other stuff. But not together. It would just show first frame of the intended animation and then nothing. Then I've added some print()s so I could see where does it break, but it marginally helped - all I've got was the very first log, but, oh, was it in IN QUANTITY! Dozens of "animation starts" notes. This kept me awake at nights for a month which is a lot, but not so if you work and attend lessons, barely scraping time for anything else.

Today I may or may not have a breakthrough. Dozens of messages may have been the result of this code being in the _physics_process function, which is called every frame. So my code was called every frame, too, starting the animation again and again and again. I've also forgot to remove the "loop" flag from the said animation, which was like a broken nail during a tornado of course, but it's not good either. Quick googling revealed an easy and popular solution - to make a boolean variable which will become false at the end of the required function, thus preventing it from being called again. It worked the most smooth when I applied this variable to the _physics function itself, only going to the death function if normal flaw of thing is broken (i.e. player health is zero).

And it worked now! ...uh... mostly. It would change animation and count the timer, and then quit the game. But once the timer is replaced with what's supposed to be the animation end signal, it just plays said animation indefinitely. So, I got signals all wrong it seems. Did more googling on the matter. People suggest many various solutions, but each and every one starts with "why won't you use the state machine bro?"

As a first post here and a starting point - a little bit about me and what I have in mind.

Call me Patch. My whole life I loved computer games and played them a lot - first when I visited my friend, then - on my own computer. It started with platformers (Lion king, Aladdin, Frogger 2: Swampy's revenge, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Captain Claw, Woody Woodpecker) and point and click games (Patt-patt, Freddy Fish, Pink Panther, etc). As I grew older and smarter I learned to enjoy strategies, with HOMM3 and Warcraft 3 becoming a thing. And then came borderline obsession with RPGs, especially with Dragon Age: Origins, which felt like a whole other life to live. Such things as NWN and TES did not come unnoticed, too. After I left my university (which is eternity away from anything gamedev related) I learned to appreciate action and stealth games like Dishonored or Half-Life. And then it all make a full circle with Ori and the Blind Forest and Hollow Knight.

Now I work in a game development company as an artist and find myself more and more often thinking about making a game of my own. Nothing professional, though. Because if you make your hobby your job, you lose a hobby.