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did some work over here. Only a very small amount of changes got into the actual story. I wrote 2 scenes that happen nearer they end, but I haven't written any of the stuff in between so I opted to leave it out. As always, this story is in development so it won't make much sense if you try to read it right now. Still, you know, if you want to, click that link and read away.
If there is one thing I am truly terrible at (I know, I know, it’s more than one thing) It’s self promotion. I will, from time to time, point at a sign or logo while out in the world and say to whoever I’m with “hey I made that”, but that’s about the depths of my braggadocio. I have had animations I made in TV commercials and up on billboards. I never saved any of them for a demo reel. I have made logos and designs for products and companies. None of them are in my portfolio. I don’t really even have a proper portfolio right now. There are a few videos of me making some old models and doing some quick paintings, but that is about it. I should probably look at changing that.
I would like to start now, if even in a small way. For the few dozen people who read this (I get the metrics. On very rare occasions readership leaps all the way into the low hundreds!) I invite you to stop reading and head over to https://store.steampowered.com/app/990900/Neon_Noodles__Cyberpunk_Kitchen_Automation/ Neon Noodles is an open ended puzzle game being developed by Radu Muresan. I have been contributing on the art side. I happen to think it’s shaping up into a pretty cool game. A writer for Forbes seemed to think so too (https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissabrinks/2019/09/09/the-7-best-indie-games-i-played-at-pax-west-2019/#6d3f74443e1c ) so that’s a nice bit of outside validation. If you use Steam to buy games, please add Neon Noodles to your wish list and consider giving it a look when it releases later this year. If you don’t use Steam to buy games, tell someone you know who does. If you are better at promotion than me, go shout it from the rooftops. It might take me awhile to do any proper promotion. I’m still learning how. During the last weeks of their summer vacation, my kids and I started up a small game dev experiment. I described it as an extended Game Jam. We only worked on in a couple hours a day at most. The project is on a small hiatus while they got back into the regular rhythm of school again, but we still talk about how to solve certain problems and what we still need to do on the game.
Rather than teach them how to use Unity, I figured it would be more interesting if we all learned something we were unfamiliar with. We are using the open source Godot engine and writing all the code in the python-like GDscript. The only python experience I have is writing a few automation scripts for Blender, so I wasn’t coming to this with any sort of head start. The project is based off a concept I had a long time ago for a simple 3 Lane endless runner type game. The hook would be that rather than be about dodging items in your path, this game would be about holding up traffic and not letting it squeeze past you. So far we have gotten a player character into the game and we have set up controls for it. You can use the keyboard or gamepad to move your little person around. We have set up and used trigger objects to detect the position of the ‘people’ trying to make their way past you. We have messed around with the Godot physics engine to drop items from the sky and shoot them toward the player at variable speed. We have messed with the camera, but not yet done anything with lighting and shading. We have set up an object spawning system to create the objects we need when we need them and a culling system to remove objects when they are out of view. There is still a long way to go before I would call this project an actual game, but the kids have created some concepts for new characters along with their traits, and we have a decent plan on how to use what we have learned to add more structure to the game. Some of our ideas won’t work out, and I have been pretty clear with them that this is what happens every time you make something as large and ungainly as a game. Some things just don’t work and some things do, but either way you learn something new. I don’t feel like I am any more comfortable with python, but I think I understand some of the basic concepts of the Godot engine. I think that it is a very simple and elegant system, but one that can lead to a lot of clutter if not wrangled properly. When Godot can easily build to more platforms it will likely be a very viable game engine for indie devs. This past weekend we didn’t do any work on our project, but I plan to rectify that next weekend and we can all come back to it with fresh eyes and new ideas ready to be tested. |
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Owen McManus