Keep on keepin' on

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Laura_D's avatar
Laura_D
  • 24 Apr, 2020
  • 323 words
  • ~1-2 mins
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Another week in lockdown. It’s all starting to feel a bit samey isn’t it?

Well, in all honesty I’ve done NOTHING on my game this week. I did recently buy myself an Xbone controller, so I have been messing about adding gamepad controls to my menu example projects. Just need to get the wording together and those can go out into the world as a new tutorial soon! Fun fact, the browser API for gamepads picked up my Bluetooth Jabra mic as a controller. Weird.

Last week, someone did request a video of my game in its current state, and I will put something together, but not quite yet. There are a few strange things that have cropped up since making the giant layout and I want to see if I can figure those out first. But the good news is that stuff I’ve not looked at in forever like the random encounter thing still works as it did before I started messing with the project again! One less broken thing to worry about!

I have started sketching a mock-up of how I think the inventory might look in the game, which means I can start working out what functionality each bit will need to have.

The main idea is that items will be sorted into categories, so the inventory will have several different ‘tabs’ to show different kinds of items. Small icons will show all the items in an individual tab, while the currently selected item will be highlighted and showcased on the right-hand side with a larger image and a small bit of text about the item.

Once I’ve got it figured out and in a working state I can start both creating a tutorial for it and importing it into my own game! But currently, getting my brain to actually focus on these things is proving to be a challenge – thanks lockdown. Ah well, we soldier on anyway.

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  • Very nice to see you drawing on paper, which is really how I think sketches of ideas for games should be done, since they were done that way before (and still are in many cases). All the great games of the past era were drafted on paper and many of the animations were drawn, even after being converted to pixel art. I write everything down on paper first, and on the same paper I write down ideas, mechanics and even the logic of programming (when I can). Paper, pen and pencil are my best friends. Your inventory is very interesting already on paper ...

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      • Laura_D
      • Construct Team Community Manager
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      I agree with you on the pen/paper thing - it's great to be able to scribble ideas down, erase things, annotate things and quickly compare sketches side by side as you create stuff.

  • Hi Laura. I love how your inventory looks, even in the sketchy form. Good idea using the grid style paper - you could use that for all kinds of stuff.

    Lockdown is kinda weird. I discovered Construct just before the lockdown started so I've managed to get a fair bit of time in on a couple of my games. One thing to be thankful about. :)

    Looking forward to seeing your game progress. Cool you're taking on such an ambitious project. I'm sticking to mini games for the time being - and they're taking enough time :)

    All the best!

    Tom

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      • Laura_D
      • Construct Team Community Manager
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      Hi Tom, appreciate the comments!

      Yeah, I've had that pad of paper kicking around forever, so it's good that it's getting some use! When you're designing a game that's based on a grid, the squared paper makes it much easier to visualise ideas - well, it does for me anyway!

      Glad you're making good progress on your games! People ask me why I didn't start by making small games. And realistically, I probably should have. But actually focussing on one mechanic at a time has been quite useful and has taught me a lot about the engine that I was clueless about - JSON for example. We all progress in different ways!

      Good luck with your projects!

  • Nice! Can't wait for the tutorial!

  • whats tht not to be rude