Latest blog entry
2025-02-22 : Camera Adjustments
Oops, been a while. Well, I have no real excuse--I just plain didn't do any work on this project between my last update and today. Today, though, I've started to rework the camera--I realized I had the camera node itself tilted above the center viewpoint node, so I instead angled the springarm that links the camera to that point. I realized this oversight while adding zoom, as zoom was only sliding the camera forward and back rather than actually zooming in and out.
I'm still only barely sure how exactly this engine--and game development in general--works, but I'm pretty sure that Godot isn't exactly built with the kind of game I'm making in mind. However, writing code in GDScript is pretty easy. I'll get the hang of it. Over the next few days, I want to get unit selection with the mouse worked out.
Speaking of the mouse, I'm building the game around KB+M, but I also want to implement controller support. I know that's not exactly a common input method for an RTS. However, one of my goals for this project is to make it multiplatform--a console release would require gamepad controls. I also happen to really like using a controller, sitting way back from my computer and getting comfy while I play. One of the analog sticks could control the cursor. And, maybe this is a bit of ego, but I think I can improve upon the standard control scheme of arrows/edgelook to move camera, mouse to select and direct units, and letter keys for actions such as (B)uild. That latter one is far from as intuitive as I think it's meant to be, and instead I'll take inspiration from things like MMOs and just assign active skills or strategies to keys, with prompts on screen to remind you what to do. There's a lot of screen economy with modern monitors in 1080p+ resolutions, way more than was available for displaying this kind of information back in the 90s and early 00s when I used to play RTS games all the time.
Dunno. Maybe that's just a long ramble of stupid shit. We'll see.
Prior entries
2025-02-11 : Starting Out
This page will contain my developer logs for a Real-Time Strategy game I'm developing, titled "Phase Clones" for the time being. I am developing it in Godot 4 using the default GDScript language. My background is in Java, so this is a bit new to me, but so far I've had very little trouble adapting to the different syntax.
Today, created a very sloppy prototype for moving the camera around using WASD and rotating with QE. I plan to implement edgelook and pivoting the camera around the the point the camera is looking at eventually. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do this, but right now the camera is attached to a CharacterModel3D node with an invisible cube (that node type requires a model for collisions so the debugger stops throwing up errors). The CharacterModel3D is what actually moves, since movement functions aren't built into the camera node like they are with character nodes.
In addition, I chose to spend a little time today refamiliarizing myself with other RTS games I used to play. I get to call this research now. Today, it was Rise of Nations: Extended Edition. Fun times.