An artist tries to program | Aardvark Agriculture Devlog #1

In this video, Stem goes over how they made our armadillo and then is promptly crushed by the weight of basic programming!
After two videos about theory and art, I promise it'll start to look more like a video game in the next one.
tumblr: / stump-and-stem
cohost: cohost.org/stump-and-stem

[@auroraspersonal]

as a huge Godot fan, this video is the perfect example of why Godot being "the linux of game engines" can be a bad thing. it's very much "by programmers for programmers" which is one area I hope it changes down the line. that said, it's great you're able to make the engine work! very excited for more devlogs! :D

[@byucknahthered3914]

Oh my god your art style is so adorable! Reminds me of like the old Whiney the Poo books or old timey fairy tail books. Super adorable! Keep up the work, you both can do it!

[@Xeros08]

You respect us programmers, and we respect you artists! We both have different skill sets and are creative in different ways, but both work together to create some beautiful stuff. Love your art style, and keep up the good work!

[@thekingscrown8931]

Absolutely, I've always been a logical thinker, so things like programming come rather easily to me (Apologies for the brag), but art I just can't wrap my head around how people make some of the stuff I've seen; it's like magic. Seriously, artists are always appreciated as a programmer.

[@hentaisailor5951]

@@thekingscrown8931 I've always been creative, but on the more logical side of thinking, so I decided to learn 3D modeling for my art needs. 3D graphics are much more like programming than, say, drawing. It's also really fun, especially at first when you have no idea what you're doing.

[@jjrubes1880]

About the multiple angles with 2d animations, Courtney Quinones' game Crimson Hollow has 3d characters models and animations which are then used to generate all 2d animations by rendering the models from all the necessary angles. Courtney talks about the process in here second devlog on youtube. If you're sticking with 3d, that doesn't mean you can't have 2d sprites for plants and other things, like paper mario or other 2.5d games. Of course, these require a lot of thought about how camera angles and object-object interaction, so it makes sense if you want to avoid it for your first solo game.

[@Anerisian]

Your assumptions at the start are mostly wrong. There’s 2D rigging, skeletal animation or spine animation. You can combine 2D sprites (as billboards) in a 3d space and so on, 2.5D techniques etc.

[@Stump-and-Stem]

ah, you're right! sorry, I completely forgot about those techniques. truthfully, the reason is that I don't care for how 2d rigging looks, so it didn't even show up as an option in my mind, but that's a very good and valid option (and fairly quick!) for someone to animate with

[@Griffin519x]

I agree. I’ve never liked how 2D rigging looks

[@someuser4166]

very cute game, i like it. the title screens or whatever you wanna call it reminds me of beatrix potters work

[@Teathling]

Something that you can actually do to save time is create 2D assets to be placed in a 3D environment that you only render from one angle, it doesn't matter if they're 2D since you'll only see them from one side, that way you can have your character be 3D and save time making props in 2D.

[@stampede-nu1zy]

i really like ur style of commentary very engaging but relaxing and not too fast paced,

[@chonsojuega5408]

the project so far looks really cute! as someone whos started this solo-developer trip not so long ago, i can relate soooo so much to your struggles. programming has a very hard learning curve, but once you get some fundamentals and good practices settled, everything starts to make more sense. its great to have a community of people following the same path, and also people out there who are experienced developers and great communicators wishing to help. looking forward to the release of this game!

[@mike_wake]

Such a familiar struggle with programming! It gets easier though. Love how your project looks, and the devlogs are interesting to watch

[@pricemedlin5651]

I love the armadillo model

[@LighthoofDryden]

Yer goin places. Excellent storytelling, a lovely game, and the cutest art. Can’t wait to see more :)

[@kbhasi]

I just came here from a recommendation on my KZbin homepage and I'm already impressed! (0:00) I like that 2D art style as it reminds me of some book illustrators who'd illustrate picture books ("children's books") and/or illustrated novels. I imagine that art style would be used for game artwork (e.g. Steam and Nintendo eShop pages, game icon, etc). I did also imagine the art style being used for UI elements, but only because I imagined doing the same thing with an art style I pictured for a game idea I'm working on as a side project. (0:08) The game world would be 3D. That's understandable. (0:22) That reminds me of the game idea I mentioned further up in my comment. I came up with the that after experiencing a daydream in which I saw myself playing the game and some of the in-game elements including a vague representation of what one of the main protagonists looked like. That daydream lingered in my mind and, after tracing what influenced the daydream, I decided to just develop the game as a side project so I had somewhere to pour in the inspiration and ideas I'd get as the idea displaced a fanfiction idea that previously lingered in the same space in my mind. As such, I'm the only one working on it. (0:41) That reminded me of a challenge I ended up with for my game idea, which is that in order to stay true to the daydream, I needed to have the game world be 3D and the UI be 2D. (The artwork would use a mix of 3D and 2D art) As much as I wanted to imitate the art style of the game that indirectly influenced the daydream and other games with similar art styles, I recently came up with the idea of sneaking my own planned art style, which would be a 2D art style I'm developing with book illustrations and comics in mind, into the game. I think I came up with the idea after drawing inspiration from an Aardman behind-the-scenes video which showed a character design on paper before being creating various sculpts of the character and making a cast to create multiple puppets. (0:56) That's understandable, especially for a first game. I did think of another game that did its menu differently, but that game was made by a large internal studio at a major publisher so it'd be unfair to compare your game with that. (1:15) I agree. Some of the games I drew inspiration from were in 2D, but as far as I could tell, that was just due to limitations of early '90s 16-bit (4th console gen) graphics hardware, leading the designers to build clay puppets, pose them, and capture video stills using camcorders with clean video outputs through Targa cards in their development PCs. (3:26) One of the reasons why my game idea is a side project is that my interests are more in books (including comics) and animation aimed at children, not so much video games. Following that and wanting to be an artist, that answers the question of why most of my planning work for the game have been with visuals. (7:00) I can somehow relate!

[@an_asp]

It's wild how different people are good at different things. Programmers are often so intimidated by art that they'll sooner do some wild procedural generation than try to draw something. 3D art in my experience has kind of been a weird middle ground for programmers and 2D artists where both groups can transfer some of their intuition into 3D art tools. On that note, great armadillo!

[@archums.]

This looks so cute! And is also the exact problem I'm currently having being an artist trying to work in godot haha

[@Dashmaster305]

I like the storytelling and getting to see your decision making behind the scenes! Subscribed.

[@HitoriSanzo]

Your voice is gorgeous ♥ And that Armadillo is the cutest f*cl I've seen in months ♥

[@jikkermanccini]

Love to see a fellow artist-turned-programmer! This project looks adorable, iIcan't wait to see what comes of it. Taking the python course was the right move; I spent far too many sleepless nights trying to muscle Godot into obedience, to no avail. Through that I developed a hatred for programming that I just have to get over if I want to continue haha. Cool to see that I'm not the only guy who drew a cute character and decided 'Oh! I want to turn this into a game!'

[@Beryesa.]

And developers struggle a lot with art... That respect is surely mutual 🔥😅 Nice video!

[@peakpineapplestudio]

This project is gonna be absolutely stunning when completed ❗️welcome to community new game devs 😊 can’t wait to see more progress

[@eneekmot]

What a cute critter! I wan to try this game out when it's done.

[@bbomb11]

Great devlog! The armadillo is so cute!! I can’t wait to see more, the game looks so fun!

[@starsnatcher4659]

i love this video.... the struggles are very relatable your game looks lovely so far. im rooting for you both !! this is very inspiring

[@commonbook]

This is so real I had the opposite problem going into game development as a programmer Trying to make a game solo, I've been fine programming, but art has been a struggle 💀 And getting it to work with the engine doesn't help lol Either way, seems you're having fun. I can't wait to see where this goes 👍

[@Stump-and-Stem]

it's so easy on both sides to forget that both art and programming are skills that take years to learn and hone. I don't know how there are people out there that successfully do both at once! 😭 good luck with your game! I hope you can get something sorted with the art, or find someone who's also passionate about what you're doing who can help out!!

[@mr_sauce_cooks]

im suffering that right now, so you're not alone man

[@bigcat9765]

Oh wow, you made a state machine like that. I just write my state machines in a script. It feels more intuitive to me that way. The godot editor is this big beastie full of features. It's so easy to get lost in. But code is code. You don't get lost. You write. And if you get lost writing, then that's because you didn't write it good enough! At least this is comforting to me, I appreciate how it might be scary to others. Pink purple armadillo is very lovely. I didn't think the camouflage thing was much of an issue, farming sim protags often have plainer character designs. I think making the protag a colourful animal then is very clever!

[@hjay5534]

Just came home from work... as a programmer... to see this! Thank you, yes, I am pretty amazing. Seriously though, this is looking wonderful so far :D I love the style you've got for the armadillo and their animations, just adorable. And the mix of 2d and 3d sounds like it'll work really well for a game of this scope, really looking forward to seeing more of that. And whatever it is we'll see code-wise next time (cooking minigame?)! really just looking forwards to seeing more in general :)

[@Stump-and-Stem]

You are amazing! This stuff's hard 😂 Thank you! I'm glad you like everything so far :D

[@Luzo14]

wonderful video and your game looks amazing so far! Can't wait to see more of it :)

[@ninjoshday]

I've always wanted to play a game about an armadillo. This is perfect!

[@djebrayass]

loved this video, looking forward for the next episodes :D

[@kushs-labs]

This is top notch polished content. All the best in this adventure. Subbed :)

[@ElinOskarsson]

looking forward to seeing more

[@NeoChrisOmega]

Looking forward to seeing your progress! Just don't give up on learning, programming is literally a different language, just takes time and practice to recognize the patterns of how things work~

[@eobet]

This is why I dread moving from Unreal to Godot… I never want to code! Blueprints are way superior for an artist!

[@Obbsnja]

This is so cool! I really love the cute little armadillo I can’t wait for the next one Also, I don’t know if you’re taking suggestions or not but would you consider, while rolling, to have the armadillo tail stick out instead of rolling in when the ball form?(Like tails from sonic)

[@Grantis]

I’m so playing this game when it comes out

[@migsy1]

This looks adorable!

[@mayuwu4408]

super cute!!!! excited to see how this goes :3

[@BarcelonaMove]

What a beautiful journey :)

[@Pabloparsil]

My unsolicited advice is: don't spend too much time learning python because a lot of what you are going to do is calling godot functions and doing things in its way. It's good that you learn the basics to not be intimidated but after a couple of weeks I'd just practice with godot itself. Btw your armadillo is very cute, keep it up!

[@LetsSmiley]

This is just soooo CUUUUTEEEEEE

[@BEZA_YT]

Oh my gosh, this is so cool!!!

[@auesip]

Got you to that crispy 100, keep up the great work!

[@Stump-and-Stem]

Thank you!! :D

[@auesip]

@@Stump-and-Stem No worries, Love the idea of the game! Also the armadillo reminds me of a certain section of Crash Bandicoot: Mind over Mutant, where you can control armadillo-like creatures to traverse the map, odd comparison but it reminded me of it immedietly

[@Manical]

I respect it! ❤

[@Te3time]

Ohh this sounds like a really cute game and I can relate to the blend tree struggle Btw if you're using godot 4 and you attach a script to the characterbody3d it already comes with a premade character controller unless you deselect the script preset

[@Stump-and-Stem]

Thank you! I think it might have started with the premade script, but because I didn't know what I was doing, I totally ruined it 😭 If only I could remember what actually happened.... but next time... next time I will remember this 👍

[@HeroG9000]

The Armadillo is sooooo cute!!!!

[@hirola]

this is awesome

[@BEZA_YT]

Here before this blows up

[@Kopellis]

I really like your channel

[@Kirbo76]

Suggestion, what if the Armadillo uses a push plow instead of digging and walking, this will give the player a sense of progression due to the fact they're digging faster than normal. Edit: and it might be easier to animate

[@kitohanma]

thats sick fr

[@yummy_brot]

As a programmer my ego has been boosted

[@ondrakavan4119]

It's interesting seeing development from the opposite perspective. I can program but can't for the life of me make any art. When I do draw/model something it takes me forever and I'm mentally drained at the end of it😅

[@kozmobotgames]

I am developing my own 3D game in Unity and I am very proud 😊

[@lydierayn]

But hopefully you two won't give up... Right? 😊

[@mr.shplorb662]

Godor mentioned 🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@MichaelEmbers]

lovely

[@RaulLopez-rq6wh]

I think it would had been easier to just have a rolled up model and then swap it after doing a crouching animation for rolling, kinda like 2d animation does, but its cooler if it actually rolls up. Also it would be good to learn about linear math, you can do most of the things you were trying to do by calculating vectors.

[@BEE-CO]

Good luck 👍

[@jktech2117]

u could actually render the 3d animations with cel shading to look like 2d.

[@aadenlopez5670]

Wait this looks so cute 😭😭😭

[@shadowthemusicplayer]

i want to learn programming but I'm an artist completely

[@wellhellotherekyle]

Project looks promoising! Coding is what I still struggle with too. I've given so many half assed attempts to learning it over the last 5 or so years.... I'm really trying now (using Mimo to learn). What are you using to learn Python?

[@Stump-and-Stem]

thanks! I've been following freecodecamp.org's python for everyone course (I've also already fallen off the wagon pretty hard, haha. but I'll get back to it!)

[@wellhellotherekyle]

@@Stump-and-Stem well good luck! I’ve found Mimo is great for me, but coding is just hard in general haha.

[@inksword6029]

cool! :]

[@xylvnking]

hype

[@daviio]

when he rolls he just crushes his tail

[@anodomaniD]

so cute!

[@rhoharane]

I'm a technical artist and programmer. Having experienced several engines and programming languages, honestly, I think Godot's scripting isn't a great place to start/learn programming. An experienced programmer may have the necessary architecture vocabulary to know how to work around its limitations or just be ok with not having basic things an artist wants to do. Don't blame yourself if you're struggling with it. I'm not hating on Godot. I say this as someone who wants Godot to be a decent alternative to things like Unity and Unreal.

[@matthewbenedict5923]

[@nicks4727]

Godot Lets GO

[@naelpontes8444]

You could try using Unity instead of Godot, there are many more tutorials available

[@tonyanimations5377]

Well, if you ever do a 2D game, i would love helping out with the Coding. As iam a Godot programmer specialised in 2D. Oh, and i just like programming so iam not trying to sell services, just to have fun on a project.

[@xapg5]

an easy way to learn programing is scratch

[@grublord6215]

I have seen alot of artists get into coding over the past 3 years, once you hit a certain point it will all become clear I think Dont be afraid to ask the discord for help, I am sure they are sick of seeing the "can godot make X game" post now and would love to give input, the engine does have some weird caveats to compare to others, but with how easy it is to swap 2d/3d its nice And you are making great progress for someone new to it

[@Jack_______]

gotta go slow

[@swrcPATCH]

Just go unreal As in right now, there is NO reason to NOT use unreal, so just go for unreal

[@Stump-and-Stem]

There are actually a lot of reasons! We may have a good work PC that's able to run unreal, but godot runs on our crappy laptops so we're still free to work on the game if we travel somewhere. Unreal takes up like 50 gigabytes of hard drive space and takes ages to load in compared to godot. Plus all the fancy lighting stuff built into unreal and the networking stuff and... everything else? It's all bloat to us. This tiny game wouldn't make use of any of that, we'd just have to rip it out when the time came to optimize.

[@swrcPATCH]

@@Stump-and-Stem That is not even true. There is absolutely no need to rip off networking or you probably mean lumen by "fancy lighting stuff". If you are not using it in your game it will not affect performance at all. Just proves you have no idea about unreal whatsoever. I do understand the argument regarding performance when it comes to working on the game with a "crappy laptop". The other one is just a bad argument tbh. I think it'll make a lot of stuff easier doing unreal which I can already confirm by watching this video, I mean you described some of your struggles inside godot and unreal offers an easy solution to most if not all of these. Plus I think the engine does help making assets etc. a lot more easy than other engines. I've been around since 2013 but unreal is here since 1998. They've put a lot of stuff into UE5 which makes my life so much easier. At the very beginning I did not want to switch to UE5 cause the performance on my end was a lot better in UE4. But the performance cost is only in editor, not ingame and with all the new features I can do a lot of stuff 20 times faster than before and we decided to go unreal not for lumen or world partition (the cool new tech) but for all the tools that help us create faster. Nanite alone is a big optimization that can be used for mobile as well even tho mobile does not support nanite and it saves sooo much time compared to creating LODs manually. All I can say is give it a try, it'll be worth it in my opinion but obviously you can do whatever you want. I still think unreal is a nobrainer (for 3D, not 2D) as in right now when it comes to game engines and honestly I think the new features do help indies more than AAA studios.

[@swrcPATCH]

@@Stump-and-Stem Oh and also, just a quick tipp: There is no "time to optimize". You should be thinking about optimization from the start and not like something that can be done at the end.

[@ravenanne1734]

​@@swrcPATCH your take is so unbelievably bad and privileged why would you even give it? Go hang out in the comment sections of unreal developers if you can't understand godot. Leave everyone else out of it.

[@swrcPATCH]

@@ravenanne1734 Please stop being emotional. All I said is that we all want to be creative and create games and we should not limit ourselves to the tools we use. If she prefers godot for personal reasons, sure. But objectively there is no reason not to go unreal as in right now. And I have explained why based on my own experience. Idk why it's so hard to understand. The reason why I was starting this comment in the first place is because of the struggles she was showing in the video and she was talking about unreal herself and all I said is that unreal could make your life easier. But again, I am just explaining, not forcing someone to switch. If you prefer unity, godot or your own engine then sure. I just want to create, not stick to an engine. I switched from cinema 4d to blender, even tho I like Cinema 4d a lot more than blender, it did hinder my creativity so blender was the way to go.

[@fishingfishka]

So like, what's the catch? Is there some kind of cooking minigames, economics, intricate farming systems? What makes the game unique?

[@Stump-and-Stem]

possibly cooking minigames and ideally a food based economy (not fully figured that out yet), and the movement mechanics are kind of strange, but we're not really trying to make the Next Big Thing here. I hesitate to say there's a particular "catch", because we're just trying to make a game and seeing where it takes us as we go. this series is less for marketing purposes (though getting more eyes on it is a great side effect!), and more to record our learning journey in a way that's fun to look back at in the future :)

[@fishingfishka]

@@Stump-and-Stem I don't think i quite understand. What's the point of making something, if there isn't anything to make it off of? Or is this just practice?

[@Stump-and-Stem]

@@fishingfishka we're doing this because we think it's fun, but it is also practice, yeah. we have other games we want to make but we aren't confident enough in our skills yet to make those ones because they're meant to be far larger than this

[@FortbloxNET]

If keypress = w ???? For real? It should be == …. And nobody complained? ….

[@wherearemypants2213]

Yeah trying to write code with no programming background nor interest in learning is a recipe for disaster ; shortcuts usually bite you down the road, and eventually you have to start at the beginning. Cool project, cheers !

[@nonbinarybastard]

Do u two have pronouns?

[@Stump-and-Stem]

god i wish (they/them for both of us! thank you for asking!)