Progress Report 2/2/2024 (Patreon)

Hello again, everyone! Here's what I got done this week:

• Adjusted the rock and boulder sprites to look a little better and pop more
• Created three different flower patch sprites
• Created prototype sprites for logs, ponds, and rivers
• Added rocks, boulders, logs, ponds and flower patches into the game
• Added a functional setup to the rivers for pushing the player downstream
• Made five obstacle groups to show off the new prototype obstacles

Ah, the wind is blowing, the birds are chirping, the giantess is trying to step on me, Godot is yelling at me... it's good to be back!

So this week, I've decided to stop trying to perfect the art and instead just try to get it into the game. This... seems to be a lesson that I have to learn with every project, but hey! I made some nice progress as a result!

Obviously the lakes and logs look very bare-bones compared to everything else (as will future obstacles for a time), but once they've reached a functional state that fits well into the game, I'll polish them up. The important thing is that I have their shape and collision working correctly for now.

Speaking of collision, that was something that I really had to rub braincells together to figure out! The lakes are these large, bulbous things that a simple circle collider won't cover so I had to make a custom mesh collider for them. Ugh, and don't even get me started on the rivers! Since they push the player downstream, I had to create a line of box colliders all the way down, then figure out how to apply force to the player since they're a KinematicBody and not a RigidBody and-... let's just say there are several reasons I didn't finish the rivers. ._.  I'm close, though!

Other than that, I'm also working on figuring out a workaround for the depth of obstacles. I got them working by themselves, but as soon as I threw them into "Obstacle Groups" scenes for spawning, the player and NPCs started appearing above/beneath the obstacle sprites at inappropriate times. I do understand why this is happening: the YSort node only affects its direct children, and since I put the obstacles in a scene and only that scene is a direct child of YSort, the obstacles themselves aren't being sorted. At least, not correctly. It's a bit of a pickle, but thankfully I like pickles. *Munch munch*

Anyhoo, that's it for this week! In light of my recent game jam experience, I'm setting a goal for myself this month: I want to have all Grasslands obstacles prototyped by the end of the month. That is, all obstacles should be fully complete save for finalized art. This seems like a very obtainable goal; more than anything, I'm just worried about the time it takes for the art. But even that shouldn't be an issue since I'm only making the silhouettes, basically!

Now then, I'm gonna go have a Taco Bell picnic in a nice, grassy area, and there's nothing you can do to stop me! I'll see you guys again next week!