Oh hai there! Yeah, I know… It’s been a whole month since I have worked on my game. Between feeling shitty heath- and mental-health-wise, and working on other projects (here, here, here, and here), I hadn’t taken the time. It all felt very overwhelming.

I needed to have a plan, so I decided that today was game dev day.

It may seem like a very small step all in all, but it’s still a step forward.

Choosing the Game Title

It’s been challenging. I keep switching between ideas, because I wanted to have keywords in my game title.

In the end, I have settled on “Save the Geddonverse“.

I am plotting an idle tower defense and Vampire-Survivors-like bullet heaven/hell crafting game, and I will just use the corresponding keywords elsewhere (for example, in the description).

Changing the Button From Labels to Icons to Avoid Localization

Localization is very important if you want, at some point, to sell your game. Yes, a ton of people know English, so it’s a good bet to make it in English… but what about other languages, like Chinese? It is a huge market that is hard to crack due to language issues. Non-English speakers will not buy what they can’t read.

As someone who suffered as a young girl with the game localization space, that used to inflict weird translations upon French gamers for a lack of space in the dialogs, I really don’t want to have to think about that.

So I’m using a strategy to avoid text altogether. I will do my best to do everything with images. Buttons, resources, dialogs, character needs, etc.

I still don’t know if it is totally doable, and I have already a first problem with it (the title and description!), but if I can contain the problem to a few areas, it’ll be fine.

My Start Menu Buttons Do Stuff Now

I created a scene where the game will start. So far, it has nothing in it, it is just to allow the Start Menu to point to it when I click the Play button.

I also have created a scene for the Options. I still need to implement stuff (like volume, for example).

The Quit button already worked, but I’m including it as well.

All the buttons are still sending information to the console in Godot, so that I can check they work.

Preloading Useful Scenes

Maybe this is not useful yet. My files are not that big, they shouldn’t take too long to load. Even then, why not future-proof things—they might get bigger in size in the future, and I’ll be happy I made sure to preload them.

I guess professional coders are probably laughing at me right now. It’s FINE, I accept that I am a complete n00b. 😊

Trying to Organize the Scenes and Assets in My FileSystem

In order to make it simple on me to reuse code in the future, I’m striving to stay organized. I’m dividing everything into self-contained scenes, easy to find in the FileSystem in Godot Engine.

All the assets are also organized by usefulness and type, in order for me to be able to call them from wherever in the game as need be.

Starting on the Options Menu

I already only implemented a way to go back to the Start Menu. It’s a start!

Now I want to have the option to toggle my game to fullscreen (I’m old, my vision isn’t as good as it once was… also it feels better for immersion).

After a little bit of testing, it works!

It’s still a little bare, and I want to add another functionality today.

Adding Some Music for the Menu!

In October, I played a little with LMMS.

This is in no way some kind of professional music, but I’m pretty pleased with the simple loop I made for my Start Menu background music.

You can listen to it here:

It may or may not change in the future, I don’t know yet. For now, it will be a perfectly fine stand in for the background music in the menus.

Sadly, in WordPress, there is a tiny pause when the track loops, but when it’s in the game it works fine.

Back to the Options Menu to Add a Volume Slider

I don’t have any SFX yet, but I want to add a volume slider for the background music. I added both buses in the Audio console in Godot Engine, for future use, to allow for customized tweaking for players.

I created a slider for the background music’s volume.

One point that stumped me was that the slider was always showing at muted even though the music was on—I found that adding the HSlider’s Value property at 1.5 put the slider at the maximum volume.

And then declared variables and created a function to be able to modify the volume.

This is it for today!

I’ll probably go back to the Options Menu at a later date, if need be, but I’m hoping to start programming the Start Level next. I need to brainstorm how I want it to go, though!

See you next time! 😊