I have, once again, kind of started over on this project.  The thing that’s changed since April of last year when I last updated on this is AI.  I have been using Google’s Gemini product to help with basically all of the game dev tasks and it’s pretty amazing.  From helping to flesh out designs, to ideas about the code structure, to actually coding big parts of the game, Gemini has been able to basically do it all.  That’s not to say I haven’t done a lot.  Gemini isn’t perfect and a human coder is still definitely needed to put all the pieces together and refactor all the fluff that AI systems are notorious for including, but it’s helped me make tremendous progress in a short period of time.  Therefore…

I’m going back to THREE.js.  I know, yet another spin of the broken record but I’m optimistic this time because I have some really good tools at my disposal to help keep me moving when I get discouraged or stuck.

Another thing I’m going to be more upfront about is funding.  I’m doing this completely as a side project but I would like to be able to finish a fully playable game that is engaging and fun.  I want to host the thing on my own server and, ideally, have it be completely free.  Unfortunately, it’s probably a little unrealistic to think I can develop and host the game completely free.  Even if I consider my time free, there will still be real world costs I can’t avoid.  So, I’ve come up with a slightly unconventional method I would like to try if anyone is interested in contributing: Telcoin.  If you aren’t familiar with Telcoin it’s a cryptocurrency that is intended to run in/on/with telecom networks.  The project has been in the works for several years and is gaining momentum, but is still pretty niche right now.  I’ve purchased a little Telcoin over the years so there are two ways you can support this project if you would like.  First, you can send me Telcoin tokens directly.  I haven’t published an address that can receive them yet, but I will eventually so if that’s something you want to do just keep an eye out here.  Second, just buy some Telcoin for yourself.  If enough people purchased some Telcoin tokens, even small amounts, it would drive the price of the tokens up and I would benefit indirectly.  Depending on how far the project gets and whether I eventually have to bring in other resources or people I might consider Patreon, Kickstarter, etc.  But I would much rather just raise what funding I can directly and cryptocurrency is a fantastic way to do that.

I’ll back soon with a new v0.00.001, so stay tuned. 

I didn’t get much done tonight but I did at least sit down and try.  I’m making a concerted effort to schedule my evenings more rigidly so that I don’t just waste every night watching TV and playing games.  I’m only two nights in, but so far I like it.  This means I have some time dedicated to game development every few days.  Hopefully if I can be more consistent and intentional with my efforts it will actually help produce something real.  Tonight I really just downloaded the latest version of Godot (4.4.1), updated the game to be compatible with 4.4.1, and fumbled around with adding another scene.  I have a simple portal in the main scene and I want to test transitions between scenes because that will be important to get right from the beginning so that the design of the world as a whole fits with the functionality that allows the player to move around in it.  Small, slow progress, but it’s something.  See you in a few days.

I’m fully aware that my pattern over the last several years of trying to create a game is very cyclical: I get all jazzed up, try to make something in THREE, hit a roadblock, punt and decide to use Godot, then give up because I find some nit-picky thing about Godot that isn’t just perfect for me.  Well no more!  I have hit step 4 in which I decide to use Godot, but this time I’m sticking with it.  My issue always seems to be the load time for the engine.  I much prefer THREE because it loads basically instantaneously, but THREE is a graphics library, not a game engine, so if I want all the very nice game engine features that Godot has, I simply have to accept the fact that loading the wasm file is going to take a minute.  At least when a user visits the site for the first time.  After that the file will be cached and the game should load in just a few seconds.

I don’t have an exported version of the game yet but I’ve been able to get some very basic functionality up and running very quickly in Godot.  I have a test scene just to show some nice assets loaded in, and a terrain scene with some very poorly drawn grass. 

The character controller is shockingly easy to set up and use now with the right plugin, but I did have to modify the input to work with the keyboard the way I want it to.

I’m trying to stay focused and work on very small, very accomplishable goals for now and hopefully that will add up to something worth having eventually.  I’ll try to get a new version out this weekend.  I would like to have a way for the player to transition between the test scene and the terrain scene, so if I can figure that out I will put it out as a v0.00.001 and that will be a decent starting point.

My idea for the game visually is basically a 3D world on a 2D grid with a top-down point of view.  This way I don’t have to deal with all of the complexities of 3D collision detection but I still have some stylistic freedom with the world rather than being cornered into standard pixel art if I did a straight 2D game.  The player will be able to move in any direction and the camera will be looking down at a fixed angle.  To avoid needing any kind of “x-ray” functionality where the player character is visible behind objects that are blocking him/her from the camera, the camera will be able to rotate 90 degrees at a time around the player character.  So, if the player character is behind a tree or a building or some other obstacle, the player can just rotate the camera until he can see the character again to control him/her.  This will also take full advantage of the fully rendered 3D world and hopefully create a fun exploration experience.

I have the very basic of some cubes moving around on a plane to represent the look that I eventually want, but once I get the simplest of environments put together I’ll start publishing some screenshots and even very, very early versions of the “game.”

I’ve been a way for quite a while just because of a lack of motivation (mostly due to my working situation) but as of January, 2025 I have a new job and a renewed sense of direction so I’m getting back to the game.  I’ve decided that if I don’t have something concrete that is at least beginning to resemble a playable game by December 31, 2025, I’m just going to drop the idea entirely and find something else to spend my free time on.

That being said, I have an idea for how the game could look and I really like it.  I’ve been working on some basic visuals and I think this one is finally going to work.  I’ll provide some actual details in the near future, but I think I have an idea that I really like and is actually doable.  I’ve also been considering some, let’s say “novel” approaches to funding the game.  I don’t know how that’s going to pan out right now, but all options are on the table.  I don’t need the game to make enough money for me to live on right away, but it’s also not a charity project and I would like to make at least some money for my efforts eventually.  But that will all come later.  For now, I’m cleaning up some stuff on the site and will get back to posting here somewhat regularly, so stay tuned.

It should come as a shock to absolutely no one, but I’ve changed direction yet again.  I really think this one is going to stick because I’m going back to a single-player, 2d RPG.  And I’m using an actual game engine, instead of trying to make all the tools myself from scratch.  It has taken me a little time to get used to it, but the Godot Engine is absolutely amazing.  I’ve messed around with Godot before but was never serious about it because I didn’t like the idea of exporting a game to HTML5 because it would be packed together and it would create a delay for the game to initially load.  Eventually I thought, “Screw it!” because every game on earth has some kind of load time.  Besides that, the browser caches quite a bit of that data so it really only slows down the very first time you run the game.  

I’ve been working on a new story and doing some preliminary testing with Godot’s 2d tools and I’ve made really, really fast progress, at least as compared with other times I’ve tried doing everything from scratch.  The game’s view is top-down.  I have a player character that moves in 8 directions and animates in 4.  I have three very basic scenes: a town, a house in the town, and a bedroom in the house.  The player can use the doors to go in between the scenes and everything generally works.  Just this basic level of functionality is really fantastic to reach because a lot of the important building blocks of how Godot works were necessary to get to this point, and it really hasn’t been too bad.  The map editing tools are a little clunky but totally work, and the whole process is just like 1,000% faster than trying to figure out how to do absolutely everything in code, or with tools I’ve made myself.

I still like the idea of incremental development where I frequently release versions of the game with minor improvements between versions.  I’m already up to v0.00.005, but I may wait until I have something that at least resembles a game before I really put it up here for public consumption.

This will still be a huge project but I think I’m off to a better start than I’ve maybe ever been before because I’m using tools that lots of other people have used to successfully make completed games, and that’s always encouraging.  I’ll try to post here regularly as I make progress, so stay tuned.