That took a moment. Had to rewire some spaghetti that was the wondrous mess of my first GdScript, and first ‘game’, let alone in Godot. We had visuals and sound effects, and timers, and every side effect in ~two methods 🫠 But now, I have an almost RPC/multiplayer ready core, and some code that doesn’t make me wince.
We struck out in some bold design directions this week visually (Caaaats), and technically we ended up adding more than expected too. Our characters now have a ton of life, thanks to animations, shaders, and a few new effects.
We also got to fix a bunch of layout issues - now it’s playable at most resolutions. Learnt a lot about control nodes, and how Godot uses conventions.
We added a new card fan component for the player hand that I think works better, and gives us a better feel on joypads and controllers.
Finally also created a decent title screen that plays while the game title loads in the background, and our global audio manager, making for seamless transitions, and continuous soundtrack. Arcade ready!
The Godot 4.7 update let us find some new tools, and the Dialogue Manager was one of them. A useful DSL for writing dialogue, and completely extensible/pluggable. Pretty good as a UI system, as opposed to regular menu options. Trying it out!
One of our core goals was a better tutorial mechanism, and dialogue looks like a great way to get an NPC character to provide an interactive introduction to the game rules.
Our player creator is now also in-game (say “let me get setup” during Bobby’s intro). This is just a prototype - save won’t work, random isn’t talking to the forms, but it’s awesome nonetheless.
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Play it!#
Some other bits:#
More SFX linked to actions.
Custom art for the deck backs, card ranks and dialogue bubbles.
Custom UI theme of appropriate retro kitsch.