Hello! Doing YouTube video dev-logs for my game projects has always been something I've considered doing, however making videos is a lot of work. Any attempts I've made to do so have just taken away from my productivity from actually making the games themselves and I've just found it to make the overall process more stressful. Still though, my interest in sharing the process has lingered around in my brain. Then I remembered newgrounds' news post feature! Just typing a few paragraphs isn't too stressful, it requires nothing of me while I'm actually working and it's linked directly to the website where I post my games. Seemed like the perfect fit for me, so I'm going to go ahead and make a dev-log for my current project!

so, where do we start?

Gamedev requires a lot of different skills, each of which must be learned individually. Even if I've made a thousand slow paced puzzle games, that skill probably wouldn't translate if I wanted to make a action heavy top down shooter.

I've always wanted to make a game with some kind of narrative. Telling stories though the medium of games is the reason I got into game development in the first place. I've never actually wrote a narrative for any game I've made however. So far I've just been sticking to shorter projects while trying to learn and become better at my craft.

If I want to make narrative games, I must learn how.

With that being said, I knew going into my next project that I wanted to have a story. I know its usually more advantageous to create gameplay mechanics and such BEFORE the story, so I started thinking about gameplay concepts I could easily mold into a story game.

Since I wanted to practice specifically narrative writing, I decided the gameplay should be something I already have experience with to ease the process as much as possible. My first 3 games on newgrounds are puzzle games, and I recently got platformer experience when making squadaddle.

I decided I was going to make a platformer puzzle game, with an overarching story.

I found inspiration from those hard ass puzzle levels in super mario maker, as well as the portal series, and began brainstorming with my partner to come up with ideas. I settled on a platformer game where your character can pick up "blocks" each of which have different properties and can interact with each other and other obstacles in interesting ways.

some initial concept sketches

getting to work!

The first step was creating the platformer movement. This is something I didn't struggle with, since I have done it quite a few times. The real tricky part was getting the player to fit the style of game I was going for. I initially made the character quick, a high jumper, and gave them the ability to wall jump. The movement felt great, and I was hesitant to change it, but I soon realized that their mobility was too good. Leaving their movement as it was could have taken away from the puzzle aspects, and made levels tricky to design as I would have to accommodate for all the crazy shit a player might figure out to cheese levels.

mister placeholder's basic movement

Next on the list, block grabbing. I started by creating a block class that all blocks would inherit from. This made programming the grabbing mechanics universal and made creating new blocks a lot simpler. When making the blocks themselves, I wanted to avoid using Godot's rigid bodies since I wanted the player's actions to be consistent and reliable. This way, the blocks physics are all hard coded. Even if they aren't super realistic, nobody likes a puzzle where they've figured out the solution but struggle to execute on it because of some weird fluke of the physics engine. After much tweaking, I got the blocks and grabbing to a place I liked.

block grabbing and throwing

Next up, specialized blocks.

The special blocks currently implemented are as follows:

• Fan Block - pushes blocks and the player in the direction of the fan.
• Spring - launches the player and blocks
• Anti-Gravity Block - when throw, will float to a halt rather than be affected by gravity.
• Mirror Block - Reflects lasers (I'll get to that)
• Glue - Can be throw against a wall to stick. Throwing another block onto it will cause that block to stick as well.

I have a few more in mind, but I'll update yall on that in the future :]

the fan block! it also changes the player's movement while held!

obstacles...

For these puzzles to work, I need other, non block objects for the player to interact with. I still have much more to do in this department, there isn't enough to start making levels yet. I got a good start though. Right now there is a door, a laser and a receptacle to aim that laser into.

example of mirror blocks, lasers, and the door. The flashing thing is the antigrav block, it does not look like that my screen recorder gif software just bugged out apologies

One thing I have implemented are classes for power "inputs" and power "outputs". Inputs are anything that the player can interact with, and outputs are things that are affected by inputs. Using godot's "@export" I can link inputs directly into the output's code, so an output can read the state of its assigned inputs. This makes it really simple to tie elements of the puzzle together, and should hopefully make designing levels significantly faster.

future..........

There is a LOT more to do on this project before it becomes anything presentable (keep in mind all the current assets are placeholders). I think I have a very solid concept, I must only now spend the time to execute on it and make this game a reality. I also have a bit of a story in mind, but I wont reveal anything until its fully fleshed out. I tend to have a bad track record of over scoping projects way too big and never finishing shit, but hopefully recent practice with my other games and solid planning will keep me on track. I'm also doing this dev-log to hold myself accountable! Wouldn't want to disappoint anybody whom I've excited through sharing all this...

I'm going to try to keep this dev-log as a weekly thing, however that's not a hard schedule and I'm retaining my right to post late (or early, lol). I also want to do bits of this dev-log that are more personal thoughts rather than just game related stuff. I'll keep yall updated.

Feel free to ask any questions!! I'd be very happy to answer them!

As for now, thanks for reading. I've gotta get back to work!