Most of the improvements this week were to the backend (i.e. things you as a player will never see but are important to me as a developer to make things easier so that you, as a player, can actually play the game), mostly reorganizing node trees for interfaces to make them easier to work with as well as making each “window” its own scene to make it easier to copy/paste/edit them as needed across different interfaces. The biggest change is that dragging and dropping from an interface to your inventory and vice-versa now works without issues (which took a lot more work than you would think), since most players are not going to want to just double-click on an inventory item to use it; old habits die hard.
But I’d also like to take a moment to talk about one major annoyace I have with Godot: windows. It has a Window class in-place that behaves like I would like it to: you can resize it and it adjusts all of its elements accordingly. But it can’t be clipped or otherwise modified by other Control nodes, as its not a Control node, it’s a separate class. So I either have to add every feature that Window class already has into Control nodes or find a way to make Windows play nice with Control nodes, neither of which are fun. One of the first major shortcomings I’ve found with Godot (alongside Android exports), but a very significant one.
In summary:
- Added drag-and-drop system for inventory elements
- Computer interfaces are now much easier to work with (for me)
- Various other bug fixes/refactoring
Game of the Week
I’d first like to preface this by saying that last week’s game, Onechanbara, is not good. The combat is mediocre, the levels are bland, and the whole game feels as if it were slapped together on crunch time. If you want a good hack-n-slash, go play Lollipop Chainsaw instead from week 1 as it is better in every way.
On the contrary, a good game in a completely different genre is Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360, a JRPG tha spans four DVDs worth of content. Like most jarpigs JRPGs it takes a while to get to the actual plot and gameplay, but I’m having plenty of fun with it even though it’s been two hours with only one major combat section. The environments are pretty, the characters are compelling, and the mechanics don’t seem too convoluted or complicated (yet). Go play it (if you can), it’s fun.
