Null Confluence’s Dev Diary

It’s been a few weeks since an update. I was applying to a startup program and I wanted to be careful not to be working on the business until I was accepted; I wasn’t sure if the diary would count as a business website, so I erred on the side of caution.

I’ve been accepted into the startup program! Awkwardly, I’m also interviewing at a local business; I had an in-person yesterday, and I set aside the Godot work to focus on React. I did my best at the interview and feel it went reasonably well, but I won’t hear until next week about the outcome.

I wrapped up the fifth module of Learn 2D Gamedev From Zero, which despite its name (“Loot It All”) was focused on collisions, some rudimentary physics interactions (collision layers and masking), and tweening.

I’ve never been diagnosed with any type of ADHD, but I definitely get inspired and feel pulled when doing tutorials, and sometimes that will drag my progress out. Task lists keep me on track, and I like that there’s a very specific progression in this course.

I’ve been making my way through the 2D GDQuest Module 5, which is involving collisions and physics. Neat! So that got me thinking, what about dragging cards? Turns out there’s a lot of ways to do this. I went down a YouTube rabbithole comparing many techniques, and I wasn’t finding a lot of consensus.

I happened upon Drag and Drop Systems in Godot by Snoeyz, which compares three different techniques: native drag and drop, button-based drag and drop, and mouse event-based drag and drop. The author preferred their mouse event-based solution over native, but that may also be biased. The true takeaway:

I’m trying to find the balance between being passionate and being human. I’ve experienced what it’s like to not be able to turn off and working myself at the expense of my relationships, and I don’t want to do that.

Yesterday, I did make some progress, but not on the course itself, but on a simple playing card. I managed to render a ColorRect background and created two RichTextLabel nodes for a value and suit. The root Node2D script isn’t going to win any awards:

Yesterday, I restarted working my way through the GDQuest Learn 2D Gamedev from Zero with Godot 4.

One of the lessons talked about approaching this with a learning mindset, and included suggestions like a learning plan and a Pomodoro timer.

I interpreted the learning plan as the need to document my journey; this was something I had been planning on doing anyway, but this was an explicit push.

I had originally called this a blog; that’s from muscle memory, reflecting my emerging experiences on the Internet. More accurately, this is a dev diary, and I’ve named it as such. Names are important; they set clear expectations.