Fighting Panthalus on flying horseback is what the Elden Beast fight should have been like.

Actually I have a lot of mostly good things to say about Palworld, as it's eaten about 100 hours of my time and will be eating much more. An example of why I love this game: I was wandering around a volcano having lost my AC pal and my ride, and was forced to climb and grapple my way around. 1/

I went from chasing down hamsters on foot with a club, to jump-dash-gliding in a power suit as I leap off my fire-breathing demon god and plummet towards an enraged demigod, peppering it with a flurry of energy beams on the way. Palworld has one of the most satisfying tech trees I've used.

Marrying turn-based combat with time limited runs has been an interesting gamedev problem to work on. I came up with "msec" - a resource that counts up every frame while the player is in direct control, until it reaches the time limit. In combat, it is paused, but Actions have an msec cost. 1/

It's weird to see this as progress, but this is my ECS, behaviour, AStar grid management, and Action/Turn systems all working together seamlessly. Blue is directed. Red just tries to find an open green spot. I think this will be my last gamedev post for a bit. Maybe a rat or three though.

Clearing some gamedev negativity by infodumping about my entity behavioural system, which I'm proud of. The core thinking is a) an Entity's behaviour is in its Actions; and b) an Action knows how it is used. So logic trees are like octopus tentacles. The Root evaluates each Action as a subtree.

To be very clear. #godot #disability #gamedev #indiedev

Lex@snoozingrat.bsky.social · last mo.

Oh, I am definitely anti-LLM, anti-genAI. I have many reasons to be critical of the tech and how it is being abused. That's not really what this is about. Not all of us have the privilege of being able to just go to another engine or make our own. But anything I make will be considered tainted.

People are literally putting Godot and it's "we only allow LLM-assisted contributions under restrictions and subject to extra review" policy on the same tier as Unreal, Unity, or even GameMaker - all of which are heavily, and actively, adding genAI and vibe coding into the engine for end users.

If anti-Godot sentiment grows, I don't know what I'm going to do. I have a brain injury. I get cognitively overloaded very easily. Learning a new language and engine just isn't realistic for me anymore. Especially if there's no visual editor. So it's Godot or give up, I guess? I don't even know.

Aster had a busy morning chasing his brothers and getting rides around the house. Bet he's having some really good dreams. #rats #petrats #ratsky

Anyone else keep getting repeatedly added to spammy pro-AI/crypto/etc troll lists by certain accounts since they got on the anti-genAI gamedev list? The funniest part is how each time they make a new list, the list name/description gets more and more polite.

Spent two hours debugging my pathfinding heuristics... only to notice it wasn't taking the easiest path because of my code, but due to the hole I'd left in the floor, hidden by other geometry, just doing its job. I am smart gamedev.

Been a rough year, dealing with loss and injury. But I did finally scrounge up the energy for another gamedev log. Long story short: it's time for the direly needed combat refactoring. Now with A* and an ECS! snoozingrat.itch.io/the-megastru... #godot

Dev Log #3: Combat Refactor & Overall Progress

Megastructure progress continues despite * gestures vaguely *. Did a little dive into graph theory for procgen practice, and came out the other side with an implementation of Dijkstra's and some prett...

snoozingrat.itch.io

On the plus side, Mina the Hollower is a really great break from coding. I have some regrets about choosing the hammer going in, but I'm working on its nuances. It's very satisfying to use well. I would like it if the game gave me better feedback for some actions and attacks, but I'm having fun.

Coming up with easily identifiable symbols @ ~16x16 px for my 13 elements (air/fire/earth/water, + all 2- and 3-element combinations of those) is harder than I thought. I'm starting with assigning unique colours, and glyph later, but this game decision has made my UI job a *tad* more complex.

To all my new followers, hey! I'm a queer, disabled, neurodivergent. Main project is a roguelike - delve into a derelict megastructure for salvage and intel that might save your doomed space station. I code and do art and am relearning music. Also I have rats, which you will see from time to time.

Don't let the innocent face fool you. This one has managed to earn himself three nicknames: Shit Disturber, Hurricane, and most recently, Security Specialist. Should've just named him Zagreus. #rats #petrats #ratsky

I love rat circles so much. Also turns out I can avoid Samsung's shitty AI postprocessing entirely and take photos that actually look nice.

Hoping to make the game easier? Amp up the challenge? Looking to get WEIRD???? 🥸 We’ve got you covered. Mina the Hollower has tons of built-in modifiers that customize your experience from the lenient to the punishing. 💪 What kind of experience are YOU going to craft? 👾

Barely two steps into level design and realized I had coded neither doors nor a method of opening them. So I did that, then practised a little basic modelling and animation. I'm really happy with how the screen engages and disengages as it locks into place. #godot #gamedev #rpg #animation

For what its worth, I know I can change the various warnings in the project settings, but if I do that I'd never remember to set them back. A silent mode would be great, though. Having red and yellow pop up constantly while I'm typing is actually very distracting for my ADHD brain.

Lex@snoozingrat.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I wish Godot had a "chill out, I'm literally in the middle of typing the line" setting. Like, yes Godot, I know that variable doesn't exist. I've only typed half of its name.

I wish Godot had a "chill out, I'm literally in the middle of typing the line" setting. Like, yes Godot, I know that variable doesn't exist. I've only typed half of its name.

Enemies (and PCs) can now fall to their doom! Blue glowy canister things can explode (soon)! Hazards were the last thing I needed to round out the baseline combat system. Cleaned up the UI a bit, too. Now I can focus on making it playtestable. #godot #indiedev #rpg #roguelite

Flea's really taken to an older brother role with Aster and Beans. He's two, so he doesn't have the same energy, but he's so gentle when they play. More than anything, Flea's missed rat-grooms. Aster wants to be top rat, but Flea keeps patiently shutting him down. I love these rats. #rats #petrats

Three stages of generation so far! - base map - add clusters of edges to vary density - remove vertices with 2 or fewer edges Spending a lot of time playing with values. I am liking the planet-like layouts, though (even if they're not what I'm ultimately going for). #godot #gamedev #rpg

Pathfinding tests are soothing to watch. I'm sure it'll get a bit slower once I do a pass to add more edges. Areas dense with edges will be earmarked for rooms, while vertices with too few edges will be pruned entirely. At least, that's the plan. #godot #gamedev #rpg

Implemented Dijkstra's algorithm, for the first time ever. I'm working towards generating a golden path from the map's edge to the centre that will be respected by later passes of the world gen.

I accidentally made something pretty. So I created a graph class and upgraded my drunkard algorithm to work with it. Then I set four little crawlers running around the space. Edges are coloured by weight, which is graded on a bell curve based on distance from centre. #godot #gamedev #rpg #art

Still tinkering with the drunkard walk algorithm, and I'm thinking, "I could do *so much* more with this if every point held in/out connection data to work with." I think this falls into graph theory territory, which is new to me. But that's pretty exciting in its own right. Time to learn.

Stress continues to slow me down, but I'm learning about procedural generation while I put together a playable combat demo. Here's some early Drunkard Walk algorithm tests. It won't overlap itself on the first pass, but resets and tries again if it can't move without doing so. #godot #gamedev #rpg