Restarting My Dream Game | Godot Game Devlog

[@mz_eth]

The first 500 people to use my link skl.sh/mzeth10241 will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare premium!

[@BookInBlack]

Yo

[@guilhermegonzatti7300]

Post processing effects really do make a huge difference in the aesthetic of the game. Talented dev, cool games and awesome videos, easy one of my favorite content creators on youtube!

[@mz_eth]

Thank you!

[@cheesymcnuggets]

nice to see youtube game devs actually refactoring their code instead of letting the pile grow astronomically high and then dropping the game, good work!

[@caffeinated-studios]

I was freaking out from the title, glad you went with the heavy refactor route. I've been at the "restart" or "refactor" stage before, and I'll just say that if it is salvageable do it. Otherwise, work on another project for a while, then come back to the original. You'll see all of the glaring issues, and clearly see the next steps.

[@cubegaming21]

Now for anyone here, this might look like a pretty good game. But from a somewhat experienced game dev, I can tell you that this looks REALLY F***ING GOOD. Keep up the great work!

[@mimic-dev]

Just wanted to say thanks. This video got me to open my project up again for the first time in a couple weeks and get back to work

[@mz_eth]

@@mimic-dev I love that! You got this!

[@savvyslick1812]

I'm pursuing a major in Interactive Narrative rn (used to be Game Design, but I swapped majors when I realized how much I sucked at coding), and I can absolutely imagine how much anxiety and sunk cost fallacy would be looming over your head at the thought of completely refactoring your project. Kudos for seeing it through, and I'm glad that you're becoming satisfied with the results of your work! It can be boggling to see how much progress you've made over time, especially when you're redoing what you did earlier in your creative career. Excited for the next devlog

[@mz_eth]

Thank you so much, and good luck with your major! I definitely wish I pursued something like this in college

[@BrandonShep]

top notch work, love the style!

[@AnAngryOwl]

Good luck on this - rooting for you! Game looks gorgeous!

[@zekenebel]

One tip I would give for future projects is, it’s not enough to just become a better programmer. Infact as you learn more you may reach this new sense of overwhelming ideas for implementation that make it difficult to even begin something. Always plan out systems in the design phase. Before I implement anything I always have a docs open doing a system write up , this will help iron out any potential future conflicts you may run into and keep the codebase much cleaner.

[@horizonb1744]

Sadly I started my college classes again and i've been severely slacking. I'm trying not to completely abandoned it because i spent so much time learning godot. Great video

[@AtelicDev]

That's clean video editing. Good work!

[@foldupgames]

YES! Seems like you're in a really good headspace about this. Making decisions. Fixing stuff that was broken. Get after it!!!!

[@SVRJO_01]

First off, the game seems no less than already big success games. And I've become a big fan of ur atmospheric art style just from this one video. Great job at the game bro, ur doing awesome! Love from a fellow indie game dev aspirant 😁

[@Selrisitai]

If I hadn't cultivated a "You have to finish it" mindset, I'd have probably started over or given up on my current novel. Fortunately, we writers have a little thing we like to call, "Fix it in the edit."

[@Beets_Creations]

Great progress dude! Keep up the good work!

[@Rise_GameDev]

While it may seem like going back to simplifying code or improving systems you've built in the past is a step backwards or a waste of time, it's really a good step forward for implementing new content in future versions. Keep up the good work!

[@RomanDallafior]

on everything I love, I NEED you to make a tutorial on how u set up your lighting nodes to get the post-processing effects, or im going to crash out. There is exclusively simplistic tutorials on Godot lighting, and you clearly learned more advanced techniques. I feel like you're really missing out on the niche that is advanced Godot tutorials.

[@RKIOrbMage]

Commenting out code forever is so relatable I do it all the time too 😭

[@speedboiiii2722]

Start using version control / git. That way you can just delete code and still have the history in case you need to restore or look it up some time later

[@AidanBlume]

Thank you for making such amazing game dev videos.

[@Super09Zero]

Blessings, yet another banger from my favorite YT game dev! Keep them coming

[@deadslapTV]

Sick video bro! The refactor scares me, which is why I'm just making a demo so if it doesn't go anywhere I can just say "It's just a demo"

[@thatlolcat]

Amazing video! The refactoring must've been quite a lot of work to do, glad to see that you've sorted it out!

[@timondalton8731]

Something which completely changed the way we do our startup is getting an experienced dev to help us with architecture. Spent 2 months refactoring and was so worth it. Now we all understand how to do proper architecture even without input from that experienced dev. Moral of the story is code with people who have been doing it much longer than you every now and then. You could save yourself months by spending weeks or even days.

[@mystvv]

Anyone else not see the past few videos in their feed? I thought you finally came back but you uploaded other vids lol

[@FrostKing104]

Same!

[@guillemrv6]

Same

[@cubegaming21]

Same here

[@itzzmando]

Love ur videos bro they're like my go to when im studying and bored

[@mz_eth]

@@itzzmando thanks I really appreciate it!

[@popplr]

You deserve more subs and likes. You’re videos are amazing and you’re so talented :)

[@that.dawson]

Always love your videos, man! Keep up the good work.

[@joellecabbage]

10:06 Good video as always, man

[@D.KRyley-mq1do]

Hey man first video I've seen from you. Just want to say your game looks really good. I really like the animation of the shop rolling up and the overall look of the game. Keep up the good work

[@mz_eth]

@@D.KRyley-mq1do thank you! I really appreciate it

[@OxAA00]

Man I really like your energy in your videos

[@slBrelaz]

If it's as heavy as you're describing, playing a video will be lighter and ensure good frames on lower-end hardware. Having said that it can be a bit tricky if you're supporting multiple screen resolutions to provide multiple video files without bloating out the game's file size. Feel free to ask more specific questions if you want, I've been working professionally on games for 10+ years and did do a stint on optimisation (for VR games).

[@thecoweggs]

THIS CHANNEL IS SO GOOD I JUST BINGED THE ENTIRE THING HELPA AAG

[@mz_eth]

@@thecoweggs WTF THANK YOU ❤️

[@KeithMakesGames]

Great job making the decision to refactor dude, that's honestly one of the hardest moves to make lol I feel like lots of us want to just bulldoze through the funk and hope for the best 😂 alright now for me to restart my game for the third time

[@TechWithJohannes]

Long time Zeth. Good luck with the restart!

[@mz_eth]

Hope you’re doing well buddy! I miss our long chats

[@TechWithJohannes]

@@mz_eth Same! We'll chat again soon.

[@deneiro]

The visuals of this game always looked very coll. I have only one suggestion: enemies' feedback when they take a hit should be more evident, like a sort of falsh or something

[@Sylfa]

Things that *really* help with that "I might need this later" urge: Source control. Even as a solo-dev it's incredibly useful to have a useful backup of your game, it allows you to delete code without worry since the source control system can help you restore it properly if you realise you needed it later. It's especially useful when you get to release when you need access to the released version, a test version for bug fixing, and potentially a vNext for DLC.

[@owenblankenship8314]

I love that smoke effect. A patreon tutorial would be AMAZING!

[@mz_eth]

@@owenblankenship8314 easy! Okay it’s officially on my list

[@ka3n]

Game devs trying not to restart their project challenge:impossible

[@DiegoDevPro]

Wow. It's full of juice and looks really nice!!!

[@Tolatayo-nh8mr]

Love your vids man 👍

[@mz_eth]

@@Tolatayo-nh8mr thank you so much!!

[@loipesmas]

The gamedev urge to restart your project... But seriously man, you gotta use version control, at least for the code. Learn you some basic Git, so you don't have to keep commented code laying around. It also makes refactoring easier, because you can just go back if something goes wrong. And the project looks really cool, it's got that vibe!

[@mz_eth]

I started! It still scares me but I’m doing it :)

[@daniellyons6269]

The lighting effects on this game are very impressive.

[@Skeffles]

Great video and it's excellent to see you realise a restart was needed. It's looking awesome and I hope it goes well. Also you mentioned you used to always comment out code that you no longer need. Are you using source control because if you are then all those changes would be saved in the history and you can delete until your hearts content.

[@element1111]

Cool to see. Best of luck.

[@magnetomage]

For me, source control is a huge help with removing unused code(rather than just commenting it out) if you ever need it again you can get it from your repo, but most likely you just end up with a cleaner code-base.

[@mz_eth]

@@magnetomage absolutely, actually recently I lost my laptop (water damage) which is where I do all my work and I had never been happier to be using GitHub. So glad everyone told me too lol

[@Garniy_Hlopchik]

Refactoring is a great choice! Restarting would be a big setback, I restarted stuff enough to know lol. And it ends up messy anyway

[@CptnAntihero]

looking good, good luck! Commitment mode activated!

[@Niles_Games]

Love to see you continuing to work away at this!

[@mz_eth]

Thanks dude! Also hope your stuff is going well too! Saw your music upload the other day nice job!

[@sorensaket]

Wow the game looks so juicy!

[@mz_eth]

Thank you!

[@druidofpies]

A few tips from a mostly-programmy dev here, unsolicited but hey you don't have to read it: 1. Messy code always exists, and can always be refactored/optimized. If "fixing" it doesn't affect player experience nor your dev experience, then it's not worth it. All that matters is if the end result looks and plays nice, and is not hell to develop later on. Any jankiness under the hood doesn't really* matter as long as it functions fine with few bugs. I think you did a good job with that here, just be aware for the future. 2. Restarting your game is always tempting, especially after learning so much. Been there, done that, not worth it usually if you want to make this into a commercial release unless it legit runs at 10 FPS and looks like it was made in MS Paint. Granted this does depend on the project and your budget/timeframe etc., but I think refactoring here was the right choice. 3. If you really need to optimize code for performance or whatever, do it last in the project scope, as doing it too early (i.e. anytime before you're 95% done with the game) could very well result in you optimizing code that never even makes it to the final release, i.e. if you were to have optimized the melee-attack code. 4. In Godot, the Marker2D node is perfect for designating a position in the world that the dev can see/control, but is invisible to the player and doesn't contain much other overhead compared to some nodes. Perfect for setting those spawn positions! 5. When implementing something you're not sure about, or don't know if you really want that clutter, i.e. a new wacky gun that doesn't really fit your vision, I recommend not spending much time on art for it. See how it feels to use, and see if you'd like it in the game, then make good art for it if it feels like a good permanent addition. This will save you valuable time in the dev phases and, like with code optimization, should be done later to avoid deleting hard work and wasting that time. That all being said, this game looks amazing and I hope it's much cleaner for you as a dev. Sometimes we gotta cut corners as you mentioned, and "good enough" is way more achievable, and gives just as good of a result compared to "perfect"

[@AmbienceAmber-is2qz]

Love your videos man you inspired me to make games myself

[@ShadowOverflow]

Proud of you for cleaning up messy code ✊ Not always easy to do, but big step in the right direction. The commented lines of code part was too real 💀

[@zendarva]

source control. Get source control.

[@MysticMixer09]

Did you add your project to a source control like Git yet? It really helps when removing stuff, because you know you can always go back to older versions of the project and reapply the removed code. Also it's a nice backup in case your PC corrupts, breaks or gets stolen.

[@thebigman1413]

The graphing notebook is so real 😭

[@luciferlovegood]

This game look fun as hell

[@normalertyp5467]

How very brave, facing your past

[@OkCoffeeIsNice]

Refactoring my Dream Game | Godot Game Devlog

[@ReginaCæliLætare]

God spoke to me through this video, you let the angels through.

[@yourlocal7khourbeamer]

How did you learn to do post processing so well the atmosphere looks so good I’m making a 2d top down game and I’m trying to make it look good and it still looks so bad 😂

[@GilbertTheCow]

Laser stick my beloved

[@cubegaming21]

I’m poor can you please make a free version of the Patreon lighting tutorial

[@Ndrici]

Good luck!

[@ithinkicanwrite]

If you're refactoring anyway, might I recommend declaring variable types and static typing instead of dynamic typing? You'll get performance benefits and easy bug-fixing like this!

[@kallanshrynen3650]

Honesty I don’t think there’s anything wrong with restarting the project. As long as the person’s still working on it, I’ve always seen it as a good sign.

[@felbecker]

There is nothing wrong, except that in most cases you‘ll never finish anything with that attitude.

[@ultimaxkom8728]

_"I've always seen it as a good sign"_ until it is all that you see.

[@FeyFen]

The game looks really good. Great job! Can I ask you if you use a shader to make your weapon sfx and other stuff glow like that?

[@Rohan-q1x2t]

Commenting to raise engagement

[@d_deli]

Not sure if you use version control, I'm only two minutes in. When you mentioned leaving in commented code because you're scared to delete it - that's one of the benefits of git. As long as that code existed in one of the commits in your history, you'll always be able to find it again

[@EmiloGrande]

Have you considered adding a white outline to the player to make it stand out more from the background?

[@outercloud]

Yooo new zeth vid!!

[@mz_eth]

Yo cloud! Hope you’re doing well!!

[@PokimBarran]

Cool Beans

[@w1szpYT]

we have gungeon at home

[@mz_eth]

😠

[@tomekk.1889]

Looks nice but isn't it a bit too similar to gungeon

[@dwilly8408]

How did you get the gorgeous lighting effects??? I use godot too and haven’t looked into lighting at all and this looks amazing

[@mbg4681]

1:11 Subscribed for EPICTITTIES

[@calebpagan2226]

Enter The Gungeon

[@ghrenix2300]

sick mousepad

[@louxie6367]

Does anyone know how he achieves having so many lights in one scene? Is he using some sort of shader? or overwriting the 16 lights restriction? :0

[@mz_eth]

@@louxie6367 16 light restriction? I never heard about that?

[@louxie6367]

@@mz_eth I am pretty sure there is a cap on the amount of 2D lights you can in a scene (at least I can't have more than 16, and people seem to say the same online). Are you perhaps making the game with 3D lights? :o

[@mz_eth]

@@louxie6367 nope all light 2ds, thats really weird, this is the first I'm hearing of any limit on lights

[@louxie6367]

​@@mz_eth Well it's a relief to know that is possible to make a game with lights like yours without it causing troubles! :D I guess you only have few lights in one scene at a time then? Like the major lights in the room? Do you then just use a shader for all of the smaller lights (bullets and particles), or do you just set them to glow via the environment node? Also sorry for the flood of questions, I really like the content you create and the lighting in your game just looks so satisfying! ^^

[@mz_eth]

@ I utilize real and fake lights, so early on I put a light2d on a bullet and discovered I’d rather have more chaotic game play than really flashy bullets. Shooting fast with light2ds on bullets slowed performance quite a bit. Instead what I do is put a shader material on the bullet sprite and set it to unshaded so it is unaffected by lights. Usually in any given scene I’m only using around 5 -10 lights

[@JeremyCarlsten]

Take it from a Sr. Enterprise dev. Learn to use a version control like Git. Then nothing is actually lost when you delete code.

[@imnugget8085]

Wait wait wait YOU MADE A STICK.... SHOOT FUCKEN LAZER 😮WTF

[@slBrelaz]

Get source version control software! Then if you ever delete code you can get it back off the cloud if you need it in the future!

[@mkaks22gamerserise16]

you look good!

[@alecwebb5670]

love me a good update

[@Cat-astr0phe]

Noice

[@OaziahVehlrey]

Are you sure you don't need a state machine? Gunna get real messy the more code you put in but maybe that's just me lol

[@mz_eth]

Yeah 100% main characters in my type of games never really need them. In the beginning I did it because everyone suggested it, but after experiencing both, state machines make more sense for enemies

[@hhoney7]

gr8 vid

[@PhonyLyzard]

Ok, how do you get so many sponsors with less than 50k subs. I promise this isn't an insult I'm just curious?

[@ultimaxkom8728]

Step 1: Be appealing (to sponsors) Step 2: Be active (in seeking) Step 3: Be lucky (by retrying) Step 4: Be confident (on accepting)

[@PhonyLyzard]

@@ultimaxkom8728 Cool!

[@FortbloxNET]

5:55 player has dynamic shadow but other entities not?

[@FortbloxNET]

The mixing of light and shadow is super inconsistent 😅 why does the fire throw a long shadow for you but not the lamp you are holding? The lamp isn’t even lightning up anything…. The dynamic shadow looks good but it inconsistent then it looks bad like why only this emits shadows but not other light sources…..

[@mz_eth]

@@FortbloxNET utilizing shadows is a big performance hit, so I use it sparingly for important elements. Nothing will be perfect, I think the lamp not having a shadow is fine, if anything I push for less shadows

[@FortbloxNET]

@ naaaah I had a project similar to this. With top down. And shadows everywhere. It depends on the implementation. Not everything muss be a performance killer, it’s 2d and not 3d RTX whatever 😅 if that’s your artistic art style then do it as you wish.

[@mz_eth]

@ the shader that makes fog mixed with shadows absolutely has performance hits. Don’t you use unity? Also your games don’t have much lighting or effects at all it seems? Also are you testing in 4K or ultra wide?

[@FortbloxNET]

@ yes unity. My mentioned game is not on my KZbin channel 😊 I don’t test with 4K or wide support. Why would I? If the game is made for 16:9 1080p that means it zooms in on 4K. You don’t get more stuff to see. Don’t know if I explained well. And my game has chunks. I render shadows only for the part what you see and not somewhere offscreen. It should not matter how much shadows you use if you show 2d shadow only on screen. It should not really matter if you have one shadow emitting objects or 100. it should all be rendered on one kind of shadow layer that you display. Why can you zoom out on terraria in 4k like hell and every tile has its shadow „theoretically“ and your pc doesn’t explode?

[@BlueOctopusDev]

If you want free content, just add mod support and i’ll add so many cool things

[@dracothegolden]

Are you gonna port this game to Redot? I love the look of this game but i dont know if i can support a company that goes political in something that doesnt need to be

[@mz_eth]

@@dracothegolden I’m totally out of the loop, what did they do that was political?

[@dracothegolden]

@@mz_eth The gadot twitter randomby tweeted about games being woke and wanted to community to show off their woke game. The community manager then went to blocking a bunch of people on twitter who rightfully said "Hey you guys are a game engine. Why do you care about politics?" this led to a lot of revilations about the community manager the creator of Gadot and eventually a fork of Gadot called Redot that is apolitical and plans to add and fix features the Gadot team has said they's do for years. there's a lot more honestly please look it up on youtube there's plenty of videos to give you better detail than I can in just a comment.

[@static7950]

What do you use to make pixel art?

[@mz_eth]

@@static7950 I do it in photoshop

[@static7950]

@@mz_eth Thank You!

[@FeliJj]

You should try to make a 3D game.

[@kalp-k7l]

source code, please.......

[@lostinkanji]

it's his game lmfao

[@emkin6128]

Please tell me you're using Git

[@soupstack-o2d]

yayyyyy

[@DyIanGaming]

Woah you’re still alive??!??!?

[@mz_eth]

I am :)

[@DyIanGaming]

@@mz_eth that’s good. Convenient timing to post too cause we just made the art name theme you today

[@AnesPro0]

What do you think about ReDot ?

[@mz_eth]

@@AnesPro0 I’m just starting to hear about it, but I haven’t looked into it. What is it?

[@AnesPro0]

@@mz_eth It’s a fork of the Godot engine, built under the principle of 'focusing on the engine.' It seems to be heading in the right direction, but it’s still in its early stages.

[@justliving7970]

@@mz_ethRedot is just a "reskin" of Godot made because of a Culture War spat on twitter. It hasn't even attracted actual developers yet and heavily relies on a fleeting "controversy" to remain relevant.

[@Immdumb]

Currently, I'm just teaching myself everything except for the coding.

[@seoulpeterson432]

I keep seeing people restarting their games and it bugs me so much. Are you trying to create something or are you trying to be an amazing programmer? There is ALWAYS going to be bad code and if you spend all your time trying to fix your ugly code, you'll never release anything. Thats not to say that you shouldn't strive for cleaner code, but projects have a life span and its already all too easy to end up in development hell. Don't make it harder for yourself. I commend you for not just throwing the project out, at the very least.