CoolBean

I am slowly fleshing out all the functions of the UI and trying to make an intuitive design. Jack joined flavortown, so I’m all on my own for this one. By summoning my inner Tantacrul, I think I was able to make some improvements compared the web editor, but I guess you’ll just have to compare the two and decide for yourself once they are both done.

The editor is fully underway now. There was some backend code I had to rewrite for it to play nice with the editor viewport, but other than that, things are going smoothly. Below is a screenshot of the very first level to be imported into the editor!

The tile generation refactor is finally useable! There were definitely some… interesting bugs along the way, but loading times are now about 32x faster. The level “Part 2” (https://platformed.jmeow.net/level/28) took about 8 seconds to load on my school computer. Now it only takes a quarter of a second. The rewrite was a complete pain to do, but I’m super happy with it. Now the editor will be sigificantly easier to implement.

I am reworking the entire tile system from scratch to be more effecient by using Godot 4’s new TileMapLayers so I can facilitate lag-free editing on low end PCs. The only problem? I HATE TILEMAPLAYERS SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!! COLLISION DETECTION IS BARELY USABLE AND GETTING INFORMATION ABOUT A SPECIFIC TILE VIA COLLISIONS IS MISERABLE AND LAUGHABLY OVERENGINEERED.
I M L O S I N G M Y M I N D

A couple of bug fixes and improvements. No spoilers for you. SHIPPING TIME!!!

Oh boy. I have finished my AAA story. I put so much work in to finish it today (the Unity Hackatime tracker only tracks like half of my time spent on average). There are so many cool things I’d rather not spoil, so suffice it to say please try the game. I will probably upload a bug-fix devlog or two, then it’s shippin’ time. Thanks… for sloppin’ by.

Tim has been furiously adding and updating features as the March 31st deadline approaches, so I have been trying my best to keep parity. He will be shipping soon, and I can renew my focus solely on the editor which I have laid the basic groundwork for.
(sorry for the long gap between devlogs. there were some weird flavortown issues)
¯_(ツ)_/¯

Many incredible new features were introduced in this momentous update. There is now a skill tree (a staple in every AAA game of course), and lots of new content for the player to be immersed in. Boxman has also received a visual overhaul courtesy of my good friend, Jack McClendon, and a few dialogue changes.

My name is Walter Hartwell White, and this is my confession: I cooked. Just look at these screenshots. I am singlehandedly winning every conceivable award for this, and there is no convincing me otherwise. I will hear no complaints about excessive post-processing effects. Just get a better PC bro.

I added a genius-level mind-bending labyrinth that the player absolutely could not traverse without their trusty sidekick Boxman (I changed the name). Additionally, the game is now live on GitHub pages to demonstrate my unparalleled optimization powers.

Every good AAA game needs a companion to chime in with helpful advice to guide the player through the game, and I do not intend to break away from tradition. Introducing Boxman: Blocko’s sidekick and confidant. I have given him highly useful and deep dialogue to match his solemn appearance.

Using my expertise in level design, I created a bone-tingling, gut-wrenching, jaw-clenching, mind-bending experience. However, I am the most humble man alive; therefore, I will admit there is still some polish left to do before my piece de resistance is ready to be demoed out into the world.

I have begun my masterful journey to create the greatest AAA experience ever to grace the gaming world, beginning with the humble player character.

The My Levels button actually does something now!!! Click it to be taken to the magical land of an empty page. All you have to do is click the Set Levels Folder button to select a folder on your computer, and as long as it contains level .json files, LEVELS WILL APPEAR (☉o☉)

In the future, you will hopefully be able to save levels you like from the web into your levels folder.

I’ve been busy trying to keep up with the rapid updates that are coming alongside the new trigger system added to Platformed. Lots and lots of new blocks to add. At the time of writing, I have all three trigger block types and all four trigger command types accounted for.

Pictured is the level Trigger Happy, created by the lead developer of Platformed to demonstrate the capabilities of triggers. It is officially fully functional in my Godot client!(https://platformed.jmeow.net/level/44)

After much anticipation (by nobody), TRIGGERS ARE OFFICIALLY HERE!!! Also in this update are a few small bug fixes to movement.

I redid the whole UI to be easier to work with now that I have a better understanding of Godot’s UI system. I also added a preview page so you can see the ratings and completion percentage for a level before you jump straight into it. This page will also be a nice place to implement saving to My Levels. Godot’s UI takes a lot more code than Unity to get certain things set up, but the experience is still better in every way.

I completely rewrote the tile system. Tile is now an abstract class from which each type of tile inherits. This is in service of the upcoming trigger update to platformed. The rewrite also let me implement sound! Also included in this update are a couple of bug fixes to Godot things my Unity brain could not understand.

Lots and lots of UI/UX. The game now lets you browse uploaded levels just like the site, and click to play them. I finally added a feature the website doesn’t have: pausing!

Lots of little movement tweaks to get different levels working right. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to move on to adding features that actually justify this client existing!

Pictured is me getting to the end of https://platformed.jmeow.net/level/28 in the Godot client. This is the hardest level anyone has made so far, rendering it the perfect test of how accurate my movement code is to the web client.

I did a mountain of Quality of Life work. Better code segmentation, correct block rotations, custom block behaviors, small movement tweaks to match the web version, custom hitbox shapes for different block types, and a whole lot of other small things that together make all the difference.

The user interface is now functional and visually perceptible to the naked human eye. You can type in a level ID to load into that level. Next is to make all the special blocks work and to allow you to actually leave and load new levels.

I have officially become the greatest Godot UI developer in all of human history.

(but fr i figured out all the ui stuff i need. time to start implementing)

Movement now has acceleration, which brings it a lot closer to platformed AND just makes the movement feel a lot nicer overall.

Tiles can now actually tell what kind of tile they are. I made them change their textures and disable collisions accordingly

I added wall jumping. Feature parity went up by like 2%, but fun went up 1000%

Adjacencies are now working properly!!!

Blocks now know the directions in which they are surrounded by other blocks. I made a little test visualization to make sure it was working properly and i think it looks pretty cool :) Next is to get the blocks to update to the correct texture based on what blocks surround it.

DecodeRLE now returns a list of rows instead of just an array of ints. This gave me more trouble than I expected.