Adventures in Godot

Hello friends! Since my last update I've been keeping pretty quiet, so I wanted to do a quick check-in. A lot of my capacity has gone towards learning Godot, and the more I learn, the more I want to keep learning to see if it's a good fit for Moonshell Island. It seems to have great potential for that, but I'll need more time to educate myself before I attempt what I hope will be the final reboot of the project.

Bunny Platformer

The video above is proof of how far I've come with my studies so far. It's a simple platformer using the assets I made for the Aseprite v1.3 Trailer, and since I'm allowed to use these assets for my own projects too, I might keep this as a side project to tinker with from time to time.

Moonshell Island Dating Sim??? (not really... sorry)

In an earlier phase of my learning, I also made a very quick visual novel style dialogue using art I had lying around. Godot's built-in features make things like this so easy to implement!

I didn't care to polish this much and I even kept the sound from the course module I based this on. The point isn't to make new fully-fledged projects, though maybe someday I will make a dating sim... But that would require effort that I can't spare right now.

Current Assessment on Godot vs GameMaker

I know these don't look like much next to how far I got with the Moonshell Island Reboot, but it would have taken a lot more time to do all this in GameMaker with my level of experience. I'm also only showing projects I bothered to integrate my own assets into.

Maybe it's the way I'm wired, but Godot's workflow seems much more accessible for me so far, and a lot of systems I'd previously code from scratch are built-in features I can use out of the box. It's still too early to make the switch official, but at this point I'm leaning toward cutting my losses and rebuilding Moonshell Island in Godot.

So the plan for now is to continue my education until the next big step is clear before me. I'll do my best to check in from time to time as I make shareable progress, but please know even in the quiet times that I'm still working hard to see Moonshell Island through in a way I can sustain within my limited capacity and means.

Thank you for continuing to support this journey through it all. I know the return on your investment is small right now, and that speaks to your generosity. I hope someday soon I'll be able to share progress a lot more consistently!

Your pal,
Sam