Plinko!

I did it! The games finished!!! I published it on Itch.io and everything. Wow, it took so much more work than I had originally expected. Its definitely a big mess of a project. Its about 15 scripts over the needed number of scripts for the game to work. But I did it, and that feeling of looking at this disgusting, broken down, hardly running project knowing that its mine, and the hard work that I put in these last couple of days is a feeling unmatched. I'm so proud of this little mess and i'm excited to move on to something new as well.

In terms of project management I finished a week and a half ahead of schedule. Granted, I knew that two weeks was generous and during classes I will not have the same luxury of time that I have now to put into the project. But regardless this game gave me a really good idea of what it takes to make a game. In terms of process it was about 20% building the game, functions like core mechanics and gameplay. 20% visuals and music, and 60% bug fixing. Oh my god so many bugs. 

Looking back I think I would have tried to be a little more organized with the project. Even though I did try to be organized there were ways I definitely could've improved. And I really need to get my coding skills up. Coding is what took up 90% of my time with this and I am absolutely terrible at it. So before I dive into another project I'm going to practice some coding skills. However as Monsoon Studios first game I'm really happy to say that I did it! And there's plenty more to come!

Another good day of coding. I finally fixed that stupid big where there were to different variable for the number of balls left. So the variable that managed the text was ONLY updating the text and the variable that managed the actual amount of balls left wasnt been managed at all. So basically I had accidentally made two variables.

In my opinion the reason is stupid. I made the script for the main level "Plinko" a global script, which means that any variables inside that script can be called from anywhere else. But for whatever reason now I had to specificy INSIDE OF THE PLINKO SCRIPT that these variables were global. So basically when I made the global script it duplicated my variables. I could be completely wrong but the solution to the bug was to just add Plinko before the balls_left variable and it worked.

Now that its fixed though the gameplay is done! The balls fall from the platform and the counters and score work properly! The only thing left to do in terms of gameplay is add a game over function so that when the player runs out of balls it shows game over and shows their score. After that its just a title menu, changing the sprites, music and sfx and It's done! Im very surprised and very happy with the progress im making. Im learning a whole bunch about Godot along the way and its going super well!

Today was also very productive! Lots of bug fixing and error correction however. I started by getting the moving platform to summon the balls. Which took a couple tries but eventually I got it and it works pretty well. Then I made the coliders for the ball and had them update the score depending on which one the ball collided with. It worked fine until all of a sudden the balls just stopped recognizing the Area 2D node and I couldnt figure it out. Eventually I tried a completely different system where I made each score detection a different scene and connected them that way. Luckily that seemed to work. 

Now I just need to figure out why if you land in the "Ball Get" squares, your # of balls updates but for some reason you cant actually summon anymore. But I ran out of time today and have to go to class. Maybe later tonight I'll come back and see if I can fix it. But still realy good progress is made! Once that small bug fix is complete all the gameplay mechanics are done and I can move on to audio, visual and polish!

Today went very well! I started by coming up with a new idea for a very simple game to make on Godot. Of course even this simple concept is still taking more effort than I anticipated by I enjoy it. The games Plinko, all you gotta do is get your ball down the dots and hope it lands in the right squares to get your number up, and maybe get a few more balls along the way. It was pretty simple creating the board and the moving platform as well as the collisions, that stuff barely took an hour.

What really threw me for a loop was the lables. For whatever reason the  button was acting up and I couldnt figure out how to get the button to update the global number of balls left. Finally after some research and tweaks. I decided to scrap my old button and just start with text that can be easily updated with one line of code. (Sometimes the stupid decision is the correct decision).

Another funny incident that I didnt expect to happen was when I was creating the Plinko blocks (or dots as they're named in the project. I accidently created too many and had to go back and manually delete all the overlapping dots. Only took around 15 minutes but that was time I really could've used somewhere else. 

Next thing to do is figure out how to get the ball to be summoned from the platform when you press the button, and maybe impliment the score system if im feeling fancy. Later!

(I also forgot to mention that yes, I will be updating the textures once the gampleay is done)