<30 October 2018; 00:18am> [The reason for switching to Godot]
I’m starting this project because I want to make my JC bear guy game more diverse. The JC Bear guy game that I dubbed ‘an unfinished adventure’ began when I was in matric I believe, created in game maker 8.1, my first game engine.
At a later stage I exported that project to Game Maker Studio 1, at that time it was the latest GM software. That action served me well for a time, however as the game became more complex Game Maker Studio started to show it’s flaws.
Game Maker is great software, and a beautiful platform to learn and work on, but it is a bit too exclusive for my liking. taking into account project management, GMS1 wasn’t all that great, specially during Jam events, I tried experimenting importing friend’s creations into my GMS jam games, but there was a lot of struggle involved. Being a Linux user as well, and wanting to switch to becoming a mainstream Linux user, I am unable to use Game Maker optimally since it is not available on Linux.
Godot seems to be a great choice since it is very modularly designed, it is easy to add, remove, merge resources and such. On top of that, it is a multi-platform open source application, that is able to be used portably (e.g. run from a flashdrive). So Godot is hecka convenient. To be honest though, I haven’t much experience with Game Maker Studio 2, from what I’ve experienced it’s very nice and a lot more user friendly and advanced than GMS1, but my reasons for switching have already been stated.
I shall miss Game Maker, I have a very nostalgic bond with the software, but it is a good time to expand my reaches out to a more diverse set of tools. I’ve dabbled in Unity and Unreal as well, I think Godot will serve me best tho, since it is open source and openly designed and available to Linux. Not sure what the deal is with Unreal though, I’ve heard some of its open source, and some of it is not, idk. For unreal, there is a very high bar of entry, so while I’m interested in it, I shall stick with the simpler option for now, and hopefully adopt the higher fidelity engines along the way for the experience and benefits it brings.

So ja, This is essentially me recreating JC bear guy: An unfinished adventure for the Godot game engine, but not exactly.
This project is not the recreated JC bear guy game, but rather a precusor to it. Since while I do have experience with godot, I don’t have a lot, and I’d say I don’t have enough just yet.
So I’m making this project to just experiment with all the concepts that would go into making a platformer like JCBG-AUA. So tiles, sprites, animation, level design, audio, etc. I shall just make a random game using any assets open or not, for the sake of learning. Then when the real deal comes along, I shall be more meticulous with the designing of my game.
I guess this is a no holds barred abstract version of JC Bear Guy, a spiritual precursor.

Then the rest of my future games/applications could follow suit.

<1 November 2018; 9:35pm>
Recently worked on tilemaps and tilesets. Used GIMP and dived in deeper than usual actually, found a script that helps me split up images in GIMP. This process has its pros and cons. its not as fast as the way Game Maker did it, far less intuitive too. GM used to take one image, you put in the parameters and bam! tileset ready to use. With Godot and GIMP its more complicated, I used a script to cut selections into layers and a script to export all layers as images.
a lot less intuitive indeed. But Godot also allows tiles to have collision detection so thats nice, but you also only have one layer in every tilemap, so no overlapping tiles.
well anywey… developing on from that I guess I’ll work on getting a character to move in tandem with with the built-in collision system. perhaps a built-in-physics based character and a non-built-in-physics based character.
That gives me an idea, perhaps I should make JC a non-physics based character, like my classic game maker games, and make Stevie a physics based character (haha, flappy bird vibes incoming).

<3 November 2018; 3:10pm>
worked on physics, got kinematic, static, and rigid bodies working in a stage.
I should look into getting animated sprites happening. and cutscenes in general. and movement. Perhaps the tag like action system should be implemented where JC can be jumping, and attacking.

<4 November 2018>
worked on scripts and changing stages. The SceneTree is like the master of all scenes.
I worked on the title screen, added a button to enter the first stage, and also worked on random movement scripts. A lot of functions are built right into GDScript, much like the nostalgic GameMaker.

<5 November 2018; 1:14am>
I should make a Roadmap, like I’ve seen recently on open source projects like GIMP and Godot Engine.
Here’s what I have
?Get familiar with kinematic physics
?make a stage
?make a title screen
-make an animated sprite
-create movement script
-property based status script (isJumping, isAttacking, isIdle, etc)
?switch between levels
-make a level transition
-change the view resolution thing (how big the screen is. like view and port in Game Maker)
-Animate a cutscene (Through code yeah, but also try using the built-in animation tools)
-Dialogue system (yes again. But do research this time on tutorials and such. This is the no holds barred version, so you may import external tools)

<<NEW YEAR 2019>>

<7 January 2019>
I’m bringing in the tanks and laying seige downtown straight up to the underground!
Talking about getting sprite sheets over to this place, not even the Creative Commons type.
Yes! Going full on Robotize man on this game, because I’m able to. This is not the main game and I don’t want to slog away on sprite work for a super long time.
So I’ve lost track in my mind on how to get sprites.
But these come to mind:
OpenGameArt.org
Spriters Resource
Shyguy Kingdom
Sprite Database

I decided to go with Sketch Turner (Comix Zone) sprites from Sprite Database
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