#wildport

Well, I went through all the stages of grief the last 2 days. Trying to get the fighters to look at the right direction. No matter what the documentation, No matter the tutorial, Every time it failed always spinning around in circles like crazy. However it dawned on me ages after starting, The code was actually working...! However I moved the mesh NOT the spatial holding it. Seeing the below image made me scream a sigh of relief. You need to make stupid mistakes to learn from stupid mistakes.

🔭I’m watching you, Wazowski. Always watching...

With the above discovery I was able to immediately add it to the ships code and voilà, My own creations want to murder me! Not something someone should be excited about but I reassure you it is for my best interest.

✨Na, Na, Nana, Na. You can’t catch me!

With this code I was also able to make stationary turrets that shoot up into the player, I will however will need to deactivate units that the player passes so they don’t get shot from a blind spot. I have two of my major enemy types complete! I have 2 more in mind for play testing. 

Missiles Fire off a single missile to track and hit the player. The launch pad will need to be destroyed to stop a launch on the next attack run.

Spider Drones A little more interesting, A spider drone will bounce from surface to surface to keep in front of the player. Dealing weak damage will bounce it back prematurely.

And with that I am done for the night, If you got this far thanks for your interest. I am hoping to get a playable demo into the hands of some friends and family to play test and get an idea on what they are thinking. Once I have the core run in place then I will think about making it all look prettier.

Someone Has Been Busy - January 26th, 2020 🦘

For once I think I can actually say...

“This is a work in progress and subject to change”

So let us start from the top... 

I have programmed the escape loop today, Now the player can leave the trench to rebuild and repair and with it I made a neat little GUI interface for it. Which means finally I can use the interface I made at the beginning of the year.

🏃‍♂️ Run away! Run away! That sounds like a tomorrow problem!

On top of that I started work on the new spider drone prototype. However I came to the discovery that the new version of Blender does not work with the DAE importer/exporter and I saved over my 2.6X model. If anyone know’s how to get it working with Blender 2.8 let me know! However I can still show him off! That red ball with the cone in the video will be this guy. He will proceed to open up and reveal his weak point to take a shot at the player.

👅 You look mighty tasty!

As you heard in video I also have two sound files made all by me. Amazing what you can do with post processing. To risk ruining the magic for the laser I gently slapped my glass whiskey bottle against my fan and for the rocket I grumbled into a bottle of sparkling water. These sounds are no way final however it was fun to learn how audio works in Godot Engine.

I have also messed around with a terrain add on to help make maps. That was more because I was getting bored of coding and procrastination more than anything. I may not keep it in the final game but you can still check out the plugin here! You can see the results below...

https://github.com/Zylann/godot_heightmap_plugin Thank’s Zylann!

🏡 Location, Location, Location. Automated Security for your Families Safety!

Well that was a lot learned and little to show for it. My relationship with CSV, JSON and Dictionary was put to the test the last two days. Although I can see the strength of a JSON, A CSV feels ten times more convenient. When I get to the ship part database my tone may change, but for now CSV to Dictionary is king.

📖 (While I have no code to actually USE the data, It is still reading it)

😰  (I feel embarrassed that this is all I have to show for two days work) 

Well that was an emotional wreckage. After my little beach holiday I came back to realize that the pathing system I showed off on the last post. Ruined everything! However I have finally gotten out of my demoralized drunken stupor to give the covenant back their bomb. Went through the full cycle of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance and came out on top

However it is 12:30am, so I wont go into too much detail about all of it but feel free to look at the fruit of my labour! Goodnight all, I am slamming that pillow with my face so hard.

Can you take me for a Date? - January 4, 2020

I added a few things today, Saturday gave me the opportunity to add a lot of new features. The 3 Major Things are dates, exhaustion and fatigue. 

The date system was not so hard to whip together, Date’s are also the key seed for the random event generator. If two players enter the same seed when they start a new day, The weather will opportunities sync and shops will cycle the same wares.

Exhaustion and Fatigue force the player to spend time recovering. Fatigue is gained from events but Exhaustion can be gained from running out of food, overworking and other major events I haven’t created yet. The player will gain tips about future bounties and job opportunities. So they will have to balance rest with work. (I made cute little sweat drops to represent exhaustion)

Well it has been a quiet few days, I have not had much to show however now I can spill the beans on the progress I have made for the missiles. First the modeling!

👙 No... Not that kind of modeling, Although I believe I have the strut.

Very simple model. Mainly need to have it to see how players would react. I ended up thinning the model even further in Godot because it looked a little too chunky. I am definitely not the best blender modeler but I will have to continue to to practice to do even better.

Next up the orientation code, Back to the sandbox to test this one.

💘 Straight through the heart and your to blame.

With a little bit of tinkering I was able to get the chaser to continue pursue the ball. Once I had that code ready to go I could apply it with a few more tweaks to the missiles. I also added a timer the ignition time, to send it skyward for a few more seconds to give the player time to identify and deal with the new threat. Below I have added just a simple particle effect to make it look a little nicer.

🚬 Who said smoking wasn’t cool...? Don’t smoke it is actually terrible for you...

With all that we have the final product. I need to tweak and modify the finer points and fix up the collision, However it is a healthy baby missile! Next up is to get the Spider Drones working and then I can get a trench run completed. See the finale below!

Incoming enemy fighters! - January 15, 2020

Small update today, Added the destruction script to the enemy and added them to their own collision layer. Now bullets can be set to deal damage to the player or the world. Still having trouble with the fighters handing the bullets back to the world. Will hopefully have that fixed tomorrow.

Coming through! - January 14, 2020

Figured it out! Now bullets will query a target and apply damage where possible! If the target can’t receive damage, the bullet it gets deleted. Extremely happy with this. I still would like to apply a flash or impact effect to give a little more feedback but baby steps, we need to walk before we detonate.

🙅‍♀️ (Please don’t judge my horizontal bullets, too tired to fix)