God's Reject (a Surreal Biopunk RPG)

[jaggedjagd]

Guess what this is?

Spoiler: show

That's the ability to save more than a single savegame. That's what i spent my day on. Multiple save files are gooooo


Seriously, saving/loading is one of the toughest things to figure out in Godot. Everybody can attest to that.

[jaggedjagd]

General Update: Tinkering with Status Effects

Been hard at work at refining status ailments. Testing what is too punishing, and what could work different/better. Added some nice visual effects like these to indicate that the player was hit with something nasty.

Also, did you know that you can use scripts in @exports? It's something i figured out this week, you don't have to rely on Nodes and Resources for everything, you can just load a script and use it on whatever you want. I've been using this for my enemy's attack animations. Have a few scripts with tweens that do stuff like inflate the enemy's sprite, or scrunch it up, then when that animation is finished, call the actual attack() function. This video sums the principle behind it up nicely:



Also also, why not use functionS as arguments? Send them via a signal, and use.call() when needed. I'm using that strat now for the different functions of status effects. At the beginning of the player's turn, you go through a status check function, if a status ailment is detected, run the according function. So if Player.poisoned > run posion() function and do damage to player+show visual indicator of poision status. Again, nicely summed up here:




So yeah, things have been going exceedingly smoothly from a programming standpoint. A cheer for me. /*3*/


You know what the hardest part still is? The art. Not so much the actual drawing of the at, but settling on a style. I constantly have to balane funcitonality and appeal. I want the sprites to look good, i want the art to stay true to my own style, but i also have to make it clear and readable to the player... it's a tightrope walk of self-doubt.

[Rikku159]

This is giving me Hello Charlotte vibes and I am all for it.

Looking forward to the first release!

[jaggedjagd]

This is giving me Hello Charlotte vibes and I am all for it.

Looking forward to the first release!

If i can make a game at least half as trippy & stylish as Hello Charlotte, my life will be complete. xD

Noooo idea when a release, or even a demo is anywhere near possible. I'm barely even in what you may call an alpha build atm. Still prototyping a lot of stuff, and just testing what works and what doesn't gameplay-wise. My sincere estimate would be 2 years till i have a demo to show, and that is only a guess. I'm still very new to this gamedev thing. :S But i'm having fun doing it, so imma keep doing it.

[jaggedjagd]

Update: I spent the last 3 days reworking my dialogue system.


I removed a LOT of Global reliances, dialogue now relies on a local state machine instead. Which is infinitely more manageable than the abomination of a spaghetti system i had previously. >:T Heeey, did you know if you put a reference to a dictionary into a variable, and then clear that variable... that clears the original dictionary too? HAHA, i learned that the hard way.

ANYHOW.

What i accomplished with all this:

- You can skip the scrolling of text with a button press to show the entire text.
- I can add custom responses for special events + change events & the behavior of NPCs according to the response you choose.


Basically what this means is, i can have dialogue puzzle. Oh yeah. Dialogue puzzles. Eeeverybody's faaaavoriteeee

A small test example i did is this interaction, where the house will not let you enter unless you respond with ellipses several times.

Oh yeah, houses can talk. They're like organic robots. And they look like ammonites and other sea creatures. Why? Cuz it's cute.

[jaggedjagd]

Oh and one more little thing: I added vending machines.

Pay 10#MEAT to buy a random restorative item! (With a chance that the purchased item will be past expiration date...Ooops.)

vending machine.gif (147.18 KiB) Viewed 5651 times

[Rikku159]

Update: I spent the last 3 days reworking my dialogue system.


I removed a LOT of Global reliances, dialogue now relies on a local state machine instead. Which is infinitely more manageable than the abomination of a spaghetti system i had previously. >:T Heeey, did you know if you put a reference to a dictionary into a variable, and then clear that variable... that clears the original dictionary too? HAHA, i learned that the hard way.

ANYHOW.

What i accomplished with all this:

- You can skip the scrolling of text with a button press to show the entire text.
- I can add custom responses for special events + change events & the behavior of NPCs according to the response you choose.


Basically what this means is, i can have dialogue puzzle. Oh yeah. Dialogue puzzles. Eeeverybody's faaaavoriteeee

A small test example i did is this interaction, where the house will not let you enter unless you respond with ellipses several times.

Screenshot 2025-02-28 192832.png

Oh yeah, houses can talk. They're like organic robots. And they look like ammonites and other sea creatures. Why? Cuz it's cute.

Ah, the classic "myThing = differentThing" instead of "myThing = new thing(differentThing)" coding dilema. A classic.
References vs copies, really is a catcher.

[jaggedjagd]

Ah, the classic "myThing = differentThing" instead of "myThing = new thing(differentThing)" coding dilema. A classic.

Yeeeeah. I don't come from a programming background, so simple things like this can still trip me up pretty badly. xD

[jaggedjagd]

Update: Eeeeey fellas. Know what i'm proud of ? My focus icon code.

Why? Because i utilized actual math to figure out how large a button is, and the where to position the focus icon next to it.

...That may not sound impressive, but you have to understand. For someone with severe dyscalculia, this is a feat.

Spoiler: show

Code: Select all

func _process(_delta: float) -> void:
   if get_viewport().gui_get_focus_owner() == null:
      if visible: hide()
      return; #EXIT function
   else:
      target = get_viewport().gui_get_focus_owner()
      if !target.is_visible_in_tree():
         if visible: hide()
         return; #EXIT FUNCTION
      if is_instance_valid(target):
         if target is EnemyButton\
         or target is CombatMenuButton:
            if visible: hide()
            return; #EXIT FUNCTION
         
         elif target is ButtonComponent:
            global_position = Vector2(\
            target.global_position.x - X_POS_OFFSET,\
            target.global_position.y + (target.size.y/2))
            if !visible: show();

In practice, it looks like this:

GIF 07.03.2025 07-58-26.gif (1.55 MiB) Viewed 2426 times

I dunno if i'll keep that art for the fous icon, i might put something more impressive looking than a simple arrow there, eventually. It also does a little "tweet, tweet" sound when changing focus, for that extra game juice.


What's your favorite menu sounds? I always liked the ones in Kingdom Hearts, sound super juicy.