There's some really basic vector math I've been meaning to teach myself for ages that I'm messing around with today to build a super simple platforming engine.
Here I am using dot product to solve problems. Believe it or not I've made it this far in game dev without deliberately using a dot product!
Got some conservation of momentum in there. You can get a running start and horizontal velocity will be translated to vertical velocity (and vice versa) if you do it gradually. If you just slam into a nearly vertical wall you pretty much stop dead and start to slip down.
I brought this little physics-y platformer engine over to C++ so I can expand it a bit.
I probably spent about 3x as long recreating it in C++ as I did designing it from scratch in Pico-8.
However I am a nasty little guy and it is a joy to be writing engine stuff in C++ again. I don't know if this project will go anywhere but I'm having fun building it out.
I added rocket jumping and a really simple level editor!
Little rocket jump game is starting to feel like a real game!
Got the level editor in a pretty good place. Tragically, I think I need to ditch the vector approach in favor of a tile-based one. It'll make it a lot easier to get the visuals I want as well as making it easier to do procedural stuff.
But here is a video of the current editor in action. I even added a really simple inspector to give things labels (so I can make targets that remove walls when you hit them).
Making a lot of progress on this little game! Switched to a tile based level editor which makes it easier to apply a fill to the ground. I'm having fun playing it which feels like a good sign. It really needs a timer to actually make it feel like a game.
Art is placeholder to feel out the vibe I want. Wearing my inspirations on my sleeve with the background.
Ground texture is from https://clastic-artistic.itch.io/caabstracttextures by @clasticartistic
The dog sprite is from https://opengameart.org/content/husky-sprites
I switched up my built-in level editor to have a tile palette based on the one in N++.
It's so hard to not put all of my effort there because making tools is very fun and less nebulous than game design.
what if I just added an undo history to the level editor? That's game design right? right?
Added some simple "game" stuff! It tracks your time and the number of rockets you use to beat the course.
The plus side of using a ton of @clasticartistic textures is that the game looks rad. The downside is that all video compression gets crunchy as hell.
Giving the people what they want: rotating platforms.
Pretty pleased that my physics system supports moving surfaces with pretty much no extra work from me!
I took a lot of inspiration from Mario 64 (expertly explained in pannenkoek2012's videos on the subject). Surfaces are not labeled with a specific rule (floor, wall etc). Instead their effect is a function of their normal compared to the angle of collision.
Added simple editor support to set the values of the platforms!
The inspector panel is pretty clunky at the moment, but it's enough to let me experiment.
Having done some work on this project, it's time for me to get back to dwarf fortress.
I brought Rocket Dog out to Wonderville for playtest night last night!
This is the first time the game has been shown publicly and while it certainly has some issues* folks had a lot of fun with it and I'm feeling good about it!
*free space on the early game problem bingo card: the levels are all too hard because the only person testing them made the game.
At some point I should probably figure out a way to run it full screen lol. The joys of writing my own engine.*
* I am enjoying it a lot actually.
Working on a new enemy (obstacle?) for the rocket dog.
Simple impulse force every X seconds towards the player and they bounce off everything.
Pretty much right after I posted that demo vid last night, I hooked up the relevant values of this seeker enemy to my config system so I could mess with them while the game is running and it immediately became apparent that this nasty orb feels way better with much lower friction.
It is interesting taking the things I like about tools like Unity (such as being able to adjust values live in the inspector) and applying them to my own systems.
I can't use the Sonic 1 bonus stage background forever, so I'm messing around with some kaleidoscopic shader effects for this game.
Using some @clasticartistic textures and an overlay from this Glitch Lab pack https://glitchlabs.itch.io/generative-design-patterns
Could this be the project where I finally learn shaders?
Popped in a ton of textures and overlays and the game randomly selects from the pool and makes a kaleidoscope pattern for the backgrounds.
All of it needs to be tuned down a bit but I'm very happy with the vibe.
They look really nice animated but I'll try to capture some gameplay later.
Video of the kaleidoscope background in action.
So far on this project I've been deliberately limiting myself to a single txt file for a todo list.
I'm a sucker for plain txt files anyway, so this is not a major departure. But for larger scale things I tend to create a Notion page with a kanban board.
BUT once I do that the scope tends to balloon and I want to keep this one simple at least for now. If a task isn't critical it doesn't make the list. And if it isn't still in my head by the time I have room it wasn't important.
@andymakes for Star Scum, I started with a kanban board and then over time it just naturally migrated into a single page on Notion that is basically just a text file where the hard TODOs are mixed with random less important ideas. it's nice to have it all be on one page and then i can move things up and down to de/prioritize things.
@ivan That makes total sense. Probably a good way to occasionally be reminded about harder tasks that have been put off too.