Oh you thought I'd flake already on the third day? You thought wrong, buddy- not only am I showing up, putting up my updates, and making sure I am living up to the spirit of National Game Design Month, but I'm also living up to the actual, y'know, thing of it. Because I spent basically all day today messing with the game, getting some base code in, testing out different pixel packs, putting together some generic, base objects and figuring out how to get them to talk to one another (today I learned, for example, how to create a 'detector' area that can check if there are 'actionable' areas underneath them when you press an action key, and if an 'actionable' area is found, then it triggers that area's specific action (in this case, kicking off a dialogue).
This is basically the simplest possible version of the game right now, but I think with this I can at least declare, just 3 days in to the project, that I have the basic building blocks in place from which I can then make the rest of the game: I have a player character that I can move around with WASD or the arrow keys, and that can try and take an action if I press enter or space. I have a simple tilemap with some walls and roof tiles that I can work with to create a few rooms, and I've got basic collision maps set on them so I won't be walking through walls. I've even got a simple NPC object that I can duplicate, change the sprite/animation on, and attach actionables to so I can kick off some, well, some actions, no?
And just to prove that I'm not even kidding on all this progress today, behold, a little gif below showing just those very same interactions and movements. I even had it record me pressing the keys, which is nice. And of course, all the artwork shown so far is ultra early and subject to change.
They've neither pants nor shame, alas.
Hell, I still don't have a trenchcoat for da boyz, or even the simplest of animation for them- but that's something I'll be able to take care of later. NPC style is very much going to change as well, I want something that better fits the blocky lofi style of the goblins themselves, and I did find a few likely suspects, including a kit to let me make all sorts of varieties of little weird humans, but it's like $20 and I've already been spending enough on icon packs and backgrounds and whatnot. But I'll pick it up once I'm ready to start diversifying the NPC's. For now, with these basics in place, I think I can get to work over the weekend with actually crafting the first official room where we would start our adventure- and from there build the very first puzzle.
Additionally, I need to look at creating some tracking objects so I can keep track of the goblin's various stats, their current trenchcoat and trenchcoat status, etc. Lots and lots of work to be done still, especially when it comes to the back-end plumbing for this game so that it's true to the tabletop version, but I'm feeling fairly hopeful about it given how far I've been able to come this early on- a previous attempt died as soon as I had to even think of arranging some kind of user interface for my game.
And it still might, to be fair, I haven't gotten to the UI yet, but I did watch a youtube video explaining Godot's Control and UI nodes in a better way than any other video I'd seen before, and I think if I can sit down with it again tomorrow along with a couple of the UI interface and icon packs I got before, I might be able to figure this stuff out after all.
But I'm not going to hold myself to that yet- first I want to create that initial room, and have a set of little conversations and challenges in it that can be used to test the dice rolling and the various stats and abilities that the goblins have.
Also, I am pretty excited to introduce a "Goblin Mode" mechanic reminiscent of BG3's Inspiration points, a mechanic I'm excited enough about that I may have to retrofit it back into the pen and paper game!
