Okay so first off, here we are again on the 16th of May. Weekly devlogs are actually happening somehow.
I wanted to keep this post a bit more game focused because I realised the last one became half game development and half me talking about gym, horses, work stress, cosplay and financial damage. Which is fair enough because that IS my life currently, but this week actually felt like a proper development week.
This week was mostly:
- camera controls
- interacting with objects
- attack animations
- sound effects
- some pixel art
Which feels good because it’s starting to become less “little guy walks around empty room” and more “there is an actual videogame happening here.”
Interacting With Objects
The first big thing this week was interacting with objects.
Following along with the tutorial series, there’s basically a bush object that you can destroy. The player has a hitbox, the bush has a hitbox, and when you swing the sword at it the bush breaks.
Very advanced gameplay.
Very revolutionary.
Nintendo is terrified.
But it was cool to implement because it was the first time the environment actually reacted to the player properly.
Alongside that, I also added:
- the sword swing sprite sheet
- attack animations
- sound effects for the sword
- slight pitch variation on the sounds
That last one was a tiny detail but it helped SO much immediately. The sword swings don’t all sound identical now, which makes it feel way less repetitive.
I think next week I’d like to start adding more sound stuff too. Walking sounds would be nice. Background ambience would be nice. UI sounds eventually too whenever I actually get to UI.
My sort-of-brother-in-law has also been helping make some little 8-bit/16-bit sound effects which has been really cool. The original versions were maybe TOO retro sounding though. Like arcade-machine levels of retro. So we’re sort of adjusting things a bit to fit the vibe better.
I still want the game to feel pixelated and stylised, but not “this could only exist because hardware limitations forced it to.”
Pixel Art & Trees
I also started making some actual sprites this week.
Currently:
trees.
That’s it.
Just trees.
They’re not ground-breaking. It’s literally the same tree recoloured one time, but I’m still pretty happy with them because it feels like the beginning of figuring out a visual style.
I still really like the idea of the game looking properly pixelated. Sometimes modern pixel art gets SO detailed that it almost stops feeling like pixel art entirely. Which looks beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but for Unchosen I still want it to feel distinctly gamey and stylised.
Less rendered.
Less complicated.
Cleaner colours.
Stronger silhouettes.
I was actually sitting in call with my friend Jud for almost seven hours while I worked on this stuff. He was programming while I did art and tried to fix camera issues, and weirdly enough it was insanely productive.
It was also strange not streaming while working because I’ve gotten very used to doing all of this live now, but I got through WAY more than I normally do because I wasn’t stopping every five seconds to:
- read chat
- go on tangents
- open TikTok
- explain what I was doing
- immediately get distracted by something shiny
So maybe the lesson there is that I’m the problem.
Camera Controls Are Evil
Speaking of problems, oh my god the camera controls. This stupid camera has genuinely been tormenting me for days now.
The tutorial itself was easy enough to follow, but somewhere along the line I have clearly missed something because the camera boundaries are completely broken.
Basically the camera SHOULD stop at the edge of the tilemap. Instead, mine has decided the boundaries are somewhere in another universe entirely.
For some reason it’s pulling random values from somewhere instead of reading the actual tilemap boundaries properly. So Jud and I spent ages trying to narrow down where the issue is and I still don’t fully know.
The print messages when it comes to debugging is my favourite bit.
FOR EXPLANATION SAKE- the owwww ow owwo wtf is the damage something takes when you hit it, (the bush and trees)
The erect one was because there’s something in gdscript called get_used_rect(), and I thought it was funny.
The quad size was because I was seeing what the rendering quadrant size was with, in relation to setting the tile map bounds. This was just for debugging/trying to narrow down to one problem. Also to note, none of these messages are making it into the end game lol.
I’m assuming I missed a tiny step somewhere and future me is going to discover it and immediately want to throw myself into the ocean, but currently I have no clue what’s causing it.
I think this was my first proper “real debugging” experience though.
And wow. I hate debugging.
I hate it SO much.
Because the problem could literally be:
- one wrong variable
- one missed checkbox
- one line of code
- one tiny thing somewhere hidden in a menu
And the game just looks at you like: “good luck idiot.”
Building The Camp
Once I sort the camera stuff out, I THINK the next step will either be UI or NPC/enemy movement.
I’m hoping it’s NPC stuff because I really want to start building out the camp area properly. That’s why I started making trees and environment pieces in the first place. I want to start making actual spaces instead of isolated mechanics.
I also started making a tent this week and then immediately got distracted halfway through because apparently my brain cannot stay focused on one task for longer than twenty minutes currently.
Streaming definitely contributes to that too. I get distracted by chat really easily, or I’ll suddenly want to test some random idea, or I’ll tab out to look at references and suddenly I’m watching videos completely unrelated to what I was doing.
So sitting quietly in call with somebody while both working ended up being really nice.
AI & Programming
I also finally had somebody come into stream and ask why I don’t just use AI to make the game, which honestly is a fair question now because so many people ARE doing that.
I don’t really have some huge anti-AI stance. I think AI is completely fine if you understand what it’s outputting. Like if you’re already an experienced programmer and AI helps speed up repetitive boring tasks, cool, makes sense to me.
But personally I don’t want AI doing my programming currently because I don’t understand enough yet. If something breaks, I want at least SOME chance of understanding why it broke. Right now if AI generated a giant block of code for me I’d basically just stare at it and go:
“yeah okay that probably looks right.”
Which feels dangerous. For this project specifically, I want the learning experience more than the speed. I don’t really have deadlines yet, so I’d rather slowly understand things properly than just stitch together code I can’t read. I also think people online get really weird about AI discourse in general.
Some people act morally superior because they use it.
Some people act morally superior because they DON’T use it.
I honestly don’t care either way. Just don’t take somebody’s work and pretend you made it entirely yourself. That’s the only part that feels weird to me.
Otherwise? It exists now.
The world keeps spinning.
Lady Dimitrescu Stream
Somewhere in the middle of all this was the Lady Dimitrescu RE8 stream.
Which was REALLY fun.
The body paint took two hours. The wig was
itchy the entire stream. Getting the paint off afterwards was horrible because I got it in my eyes in the shower.
I went to bed at like 3am.
So overall:
successful cosplay experience.
I also completely failed my macros that day because I didn’t have time to cook anything and ended up ordering GYG, which was delicious. One bad macro day is not going to destroy me unless I suddenly decide I’m entering competitive bodybuilding overnight.
Your body works off averages over time, not one singular burrito incident.
Life Stuff
Outside of game development stuff, life is pretty good currently.
I completely forgot to enter one day of a horse competition this month, so now I’m only riding on the Sunday which is annoying. So we’ve got campdrafting on Lenny this weekend, then another event next week, then the two-day-now-one-day comp after that.
Meanwhile we’re also still trying to slowly pack up the house and eventually move. Very slowly.
I think the biggest issue currently is honestly just energy. This cut is absolutely flattening me at the moment. Recovery has been rough lately and I’ve got a review with my coach Monday because it’s taking me DAYS to recover from gym sessions currently.
Weight is finally down into the 70 something range though which I’m really happy with. The rain has also made gym difficult because all I’ve currently got is the motorbike. I rode to the gym the other day and got absolutely drenched. Gloves soaked. Jacket soaked. Everything soaked. I had to literally wring water out of my gloves when I got there.
And it’s just unsafe riding in weather like that. I don’t particularly want to die because I decided leg day was more important than visibility and traction.
Still had a really good session though.
Work & Streaming
Unfortunately work has put me back onto another engagement as well. It’s only seven weeks currently so hopefully it stays low stress, but I genuinely don’t know yet what it’s going to mean for streaming consistency. It sucks because if I could choose my life priorities currently they’d probably be:
- gym
- streaming
- work
Unfortunately capitalism has ranked those slightly differently.
So realistically it has to be:
- work
- gym
- streaming/game dev around everything else
One day though. One day.
Anyway, life is good. I’m happy. I’m healthy. I’m making pixel trees and debugging broken cameras and slowly building a videogame. Could definitely be worse.
Thanks for reading team. And if you want to watch me slowly lose my mind live while learning all this stuff, definitely come hang out on Twitch because the streams lately have genuinely been really fun.
http://www.twitch.tv/ayeej is where you can find all the action as it happens.
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