Preamble Ramble
To the uninitiated, to the Abrahamic religions have a story of a man who made great risk and gained a great reward.
Abraham, an old man past his 100’s finally found his wife, in her late 90’s was with child. As unbelievable as the event was, it gets better. God in his infinite wisdom asked the centenarian to go climb up a stupidly high mountain with his prepubescent miracle kid to sacrifice him in hopes of getting a family that spans the stars in the visible sky.
Luckily for the boy, it was a test to see if Abraham’s faith was dauntless. A question was asked once: If God hadn’t supplied a lamb for the slaughter, would Abraham have killed his son?
The Meat of it
Now, if you’re irreligious, you might be tossing that entire preamble in the trash and not really thinking about it so I’ll cut the the chase and rephrase the question.
If you had to destroy your prized possession, if given the opportunity to start again with a potential higher return on investment, would you do it?
That’s where I am at the moment. I’m currently back at University. so my Ludo project is on hiatus till I can find time to work on it. But there are some things that come to mind.
I made this video after a series of events which began with having an hour to spare and trrying to test my skills. It brought some things into perspective. This also posed an important question: should I restart my ludo project in a different environment?
Initially I’ve been programming the game in the Processing IDE. IT is useful for simple applets and graphics oriented apps but for gaming it is not very compatible. I picked it for two reasons.
Compatiblity
I can code in any OS, at any time. Since my code is in Java, I can easily port it to Android if need be, but also means it would be incredibly cross compatible.
It is personally compatible with me in another respect. It’s 100% free! As an aside, if you could donate to the Foundation that will help keep it free.
Flexibility
Nothing is as freeing as a Tabula Rasa, so making a game where I don’t have the limitations of a predefined engine seemed incredibly appealing. I could make my own engine even… maybe… if I had time.
Prior Experience (Meaning Laziness)
I knew the environment well enough to know most of it’s limitations. Event management was not on my mind because the game is turned based so polling or interrupts being imprecise and slow to respond was not a concern.
The problem I find is that these are not compelling reasons to code in, and design based on Processing. Convenience and portablity can be solved with one word: Godot.
Look, There’s Godot!
Godot seems to have some of what I require. It is highly portable, Compatible with most systems, and it’s games can be played on Android. I could potentially code in C# if I don’t want to take time with learning GDScript.
If you’ve watched the above video (please do, the numbers are good for my self-esteem) I did mention getting the right tool for the job. That is one reason that I started to question the IDE I was using. Doing something for the sake of challenge is just absurd bravado.
One shouldn’t try to use a gavel and flat head screwdriver to recreate Michelangelo’s David (without any sculpting training). If you want to make a game, either build an engine for the job, or use one that has been made purposefully for the type of game you wish to make.
And what of flexibility? Well creativity does not exist in a vacuum, but blossoms with restriction.
And compatibility? Godot runs on everything from windows to the Raspberry Pi (soon apparently) How’s that for compatible.
Why not Jump in?
“Sometimes you have to kill your babies”
Prof. Dr. Eva Hornecker
I’m quoting her due to the fact it was her interpretation of the phrase, “kill your darlings” originated by William Faulkner, is the version of the phrase I first heard when I was a wee silly first year at Strathclyde University.
We had this awesome fanciful idea about making multimedia pods you can place anywhere. It was a great idea but it was the wrong idea for the time.
Maybe I need to “sacrifice” my ideas for the better.
HomeKick Games 