Bluzix Bytes

This day was all about trying to get some graphics into my game.  I know, they're not really that important, but I feel like having some graphics will help out with designing the world. As a warm up, I created a favicon for the webpage running the game.  I went into Microsoft Paint and designed a small, happy, bee.  I used the circle tool to draw the body and the paint brush at 1 px to add the outline, face, and wings.  I saved it as a PNG and then threw that into GIMP .  With GIMP, I can add an Alpha channel to the image, select the white part of it, and delete it to make everything around that bee transparent.  I just find that white box very unsightly.  Here's the image: It's a very small bee, only 16 by 16, but I thought it was pretty good.  The bees in the actual game will be much bigger.  It's just the standard size for favicons . The character for the original "Un-Bee Leap-able" was supposed to be a ninja.  I got the id...

Oh, man!  I've been so busy with work and stuff, that I forgot to make any progress on my game.  I'm going to have to abandon Godot and Blender for now, sorry.  I just don't have the time now to learn the tools and finish my game.  I'm moving back to HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript! This new game will actually be a spin-off game titled "Un-Bee Leap-able: Bee Flat".  Can I even have a spin-off game before the actual game is finished?  Sure!  Why not? Anyway, here's the GitHub repo for Bee Flat .  I'm hoping that I can take the platforming elements from Glide 4.0 and combine it with the upgrade system of Paper Plane !! to make an interesting game. I had made some progress, I got the HTML page and CSS going, when I noticed that Jedulz had made some progress on the JavaScript.  I pushed the code that I had for it into my repo and then I performed a tricky merge request.  It was tricky since we both create HTML and CSS for the game....

I managed to find a pretty good beginner's tutorial to Blender on YouTube.  It should cover modeling and sculpting with Blender, and I hope those are tools that I would need to create my game's world.  I'm a little worried that it won't cover things like rigging or exporting things to Godot.  Though, I think I found a good link to how to export Blender files to Godot and I'm sure I put it in yesterday's blog.  Nope, it was on day 5 that I linked to the export tutorial .  Hopefully, that DAE file will have information about the collision mesh and not just visual stuff. Speaking of written tutorials for Godot, I found this one on how to export the game for the web .  However, they don't recommend doing that, because they are going to remove Godot's WebGL 2 renderer.  They say it doesn't work with 3D; which, is pretty bad for a 3D engine.  So, I guess I should forget that idea.  They're still working on Vulkan support for Godot , and it won...

I tried to get a few things done while I was on my Veteran's Day vacation. I did find a nice video series on how to use the Godot Engine on Youtube .  The guy explaining it does a very nice job of telling me about each panel you will see in Godot, and what is the purpose of each thing in those panels.  However, I think I hit another snag creating this game... It looks like I can only add primitive 3D shapes (cubes, spheres, triangles, etc) using Godot.  I was hoping that I could take a flat shape and chisel, mold, or sculpt the canyon trial into it.  It seems that I'm going to have to use Blender if I want a custom 3D object in the game.  So now I have to find a Blender tutorial in order to get started on the game. Some good news though:  it seems that Godot will take care of all the physics and collisions that I would need for the game automatically.  I just need to add the correct "collision shape" to each object.  Hopefully, I can choose ...

Today, I told my friends at work that I was creating Un-bee Leap-able for the Game Off 2019 competition.  Jedulz said he would love to help me with the game.  He told me about how he was trying out the GDScript that is used by the Godot Engine .  It's very similar to Python, which sounds like it won't be a terribly difficult language to pick up.  Plus, I also checked out the features of Godot and it states that it can build games that can run on the web using HTML5 and WebAssembly.  Which would make it nice for testing:  we could run it from a GitHub.io page instead of rebuilding or reinstalling an executable game.  I also found this article on how to export Blender files for Godot .  When I used to play a lot of Garry's Mod, I wanted to learn how to use Blender to create 3D models that worked on Valve's Source Engine.  I think that settles it:  I'm choosing the Godot Engine for my game! Jedulz sent me a link to this site called op...

After a few days of trying to find a good idea for Game Off 2019 , I think I managed to come up with either the dumbest idea...or the best idea:  Un-bee leap-able! You play as a ninja that starts the level by leaping straight up into the air, and then you pull out a giant kite that you use to glide through the air.  Your objective is to land in a designated zone on the map.  While gliding through the air, you have to avoid giant bees.  If you touch a bee or land in an area that isn't the designated zone, you restart back at the starting point but with cash to spend on upgrades to help you glide around better. It's a really crazy idea!  I know!  I just came up with it while listening to  Jack Stauber's Micropop , and I think the idea has enough quirky charm to go really far in the competition. Now, the question is: what engine or whatever should I use to create the game?  I would love to make the game 3D and have it feel like gliding around a...

Sorry that I haven't kept this blog up to date.  My job has done its best to keep me too busy and exhausted to do much outside of work or sleep.  Here's just a few things that have happened between now and the last time I've updated this blog: After I finished the fourth Pull Request, I received an email congratulating me from dev.to on 10/21/2019.  It told me they would put a "badge" profile on its site, so I created my profile on dev.to . I got a confirmation email from Hacktoberfest 2019 that I've completed my Pull Requests on 10/29/2019; it came with a link to get my free shirt.  I'll show it off once I get it! I tried to learn Ruby on Codecademy , but I was super busy and only completed the first lesson.  I want to use it to enhance  my GitHub.io page with Jekyll . I bought another Game Dev book bundle from Humble Bundle: Developing Your Own Games Jedulz introduced me to the Godot Engine ; it looks promising, but I haven't had the ti...