Since Dot-DM is the first game I want to make, I wanted to start providing updates on my progression. My progression for this game will include things that aren’t related to the game since I am completely new to Godot and I want somewhere to write about everything I’m learning. That is why I made this thread.
When I start working on Dot-DM directly, I will unpin this topic and create separate progression updates as topics in this forum.
I started messing around with third-party first person shooter (FPS) player controllers and assets since I plan to use them as guidance when creating my own in the future.
I found there aren’t many working FPS controllers in Godot 4.2. I know Godot 4.x is in heavy development and also new, so there aren’t going to be many maintainers willing to create assets and maintain them between major versions. However, I hope this changes in the future as Godot gets better and becomes eventually stable. I hope to create our own FPS assets in the future to help developers!
2-26-24
I started following and completed about 75% of the Godot 3D game tutorial guide here. I stored the game files on GitHub here!
I’ve learned many new editor tools including how to create 3D meshes, view ports, and more!
The tutorial wasn’t confirmed to be working on Godot 4.2. So I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out and how many changes I’d need to make. However, I was able to follow the guide without any major changes or headaches! I do recall there being some very small changes, but I do not remember what they were since I breezed by the tutorial for the most part.
2-27-24
I finished the Godot 3D game tutorial on Godot 4.2. While the collision boxes and camera angle were very wonky, everything else worked pretty well! I plan to go back and improve on them!
I made a new project named source-engine-stuff and tested FPS controllers that were open source on GitHub and claimed to replicate Source Engine physics since Counter-Strike: Source and its game servers are a big inspiration for my games. I tested a controller by Atlrvrse here and another by BleyChimera here.
The controller by Atlrvrse was unfortunately not compatible with Godot 4.2 since it was made with Godot 3. I tried a few things in attempt to port it over, but those failed sadly due to my inexperience with the game engine.
The controller by BleyChimera worked pretty well! There are things missing like friction to the floor and such, but I was able to easily import and use it in my project.
Here’s a YouTube video by BleyChimera here which showcases their controller!
Here’s also a video of my source-engines-stuff project from February 27th.
Things I’d like to learn between now and the next progression update include the following.
How to improve directional lighting.
How to improve textures and scaling.
How to add crouching support.
Maybe make a singleplayer speed run game for testing where a player is timed from point A to point B?
I was very busy with work-related programming today, so I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked on game development.
I watched a YouTube video by Lukky which goes over how to add models, materials, and animations to create a first-person view port for weapons and such. I didn’t follow it, but plan on to in the future.
Installed Blender so that I can mess with modeling in the future or exporting existing models for Godot.
Created a new Godot project to mess with FPS controllers more along with plans to follow the tutorial above to add models, materials, and animations.
I wrote out each line of code from BleyChimera’s FPS controller to better understand movement and physics in Godot. I ran into a weird issue where I’ll be floating on the floor/ground and can ‘ice skate’. If I adjust the FLOOR_RAY_REACH exported variable in the player controller to 0.8 instead of 0.2, I stop when not pressing any keys like normal.
Improved overall movements by readjusting code that applies velocity to player.
Fixed collisions with “Step” prop by making FPS controller’s collision cylinder more wider (x,z axis).
Overhauled file structure of test program I was making by separating scenes and scripts.
Added dynamic loading of scenes (maps, player controller, and UI in our case). This allowed me to test how dynamic loading works which will play a VITAL part in our future ServerDot tool!
