We have a main character!

Well, this is what ten days of progress looks like. A lot has happened since the last video update, including I've now settled (almost) on a name for the game, and we have a main character!

Everyone, meet Grogbeard! Our tipsy and careless pirate has lost his ship! What cruel fate has befallen his vessel? Can he fight his way across the high seas to find it?

I knew this would be an involved project when I started out on it, and we've hit the end of April. It was of course ambitious to think I'd be able to create a whole pixel art platformer in 30 days, so it comes as no surprise that I'll be continuing this project into May. But a lot of the game mechanics are present, and most of the work has gone into building my own Tiled map loading system in the Panda3D engine.

I know some folks in the Panda3D scene have been working on a similar project to import Tiled maps, but I always like to put my own spin on things to make sure I not only understand and remember how to use them, but to make sure any bugs are only my own.

It all goes into building my knowledge not just of Panda3D, but also of game design in general. This whole 2024 challenge is meant to squash my perfectionistic tendencies when it comes to these projects. They don't have to be perfect in order to learn from them! My goal by the end of 2024 is to have gained a lot of experience and be able to set out on my next projects with the knowledge I need to execute them successfully.

I never like cutting corners, but there's also a point of diminishing returns, and the time constraints of these projects are meant to make sure I recognize that.

My pixel art skills are improving as well I think, and I'm taking my inspiration largely from the art style of the early Metal Slug arcade games, which is reportedly one of the more difficult pixel art styles to master. That said, I'm very happy with the overall character design of Grogbeard -- save perhaps an eyepatch, which I'm still on the fence about. I'm starting to flesh out Grogbeard's other animations, and also workshop other characters and enemies. I'm hoping to make some progress on those and also to be able to make them generic enough I can reuse them across multiple levels. Again, this is a learning experience! There'll be time to polish it later if there's interest.

I hope to post my next update in a week or two, and by then I hope to have:

• Graphical glitches in the Tiled map worked out
• Loaded animations working (the water you see in the video should be animated)
• Main Grogbeard animations finished
• At least one enemy sprite with working combat and health
• Barebones versions of all 4-5 levels