Learn, code, note, repeat

Two weeks ago, while talking about tutorial hell, I gave you a glimpse of what I’m doing while doing tutorials now. In case you don’t remember I’m writing down my handwritten notes to Notion.

My current process of making notes is a little flawed, as I have more written down than in Notion at that point, but that is a matter of time. And yes, I wanted to write about how I handle managing time, but truth is…

None the less, the table has changed a little bit:

If you are familiar with Notion you will notice the two main pillars of my strategy: views and groups.

All the steps are still “grouped by phase” (although, I’m not sure whether this approach will become deprecated with time).

As I’m making notes from Brackey’s platformer tutorial I added a Game Type column to mark specific steps as platformer-related. In the view “2D platformer” I will view common tasks (no game type) and game type-specific steps. This way they will be fast to navigate.

Ofcourse, every common step is linked to the step that started it all, as you can see in the “Creating a 2D player”. All those “Next steps” (not the best name, I agree) are in fact extracted mini steps. But they were extracted because they’re common enough to be repeated.

In time, I will finish more tutorials (and right now I’m aiming for those long tutorials that will make me an entire game), and then I will see (hopefully) that some of the common steps are indeed common. And this way, I will turn notes to muscle memory!

And maybe even have a game prototype ready in the meantime. Or a skeleton of a 2D platformer at least…

Questions?

Wait, why are you categorizing tutorials like that? What if you want to do something original?

Well, the reason that I started with a 2D platformer is because… I started with a 2D platformer tutorial 😉 And nothing I will make will be 100% original. And neither does your work (sorry!).

But what will make my life (and yours too) easier, would be stating the obvious answer to what are you working on. And when you start programming you’re not making a story, you are not making a complex genre, you are making a simple mechanic. Perhaps I shouldn’t even call it a “2D platformer”, but right now it should do. Everything else will be pearl mass. Whether it will become a Metroidvania, a Super Mario clone (maybe let’s not risk it, with Nintendo suing Palworld devs), or whatever. Before it becomes that, it’s something simple and repeatable. A sidescroller, a top-down, a first-person perspective. And that’s what a game developer should focus on first. To make that working prototype.

Are you gonna make it public?

Well, they’re notes from someone else’s work. Wouldn’t that be… stealing?

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When not learning Godot I’m enjoying…

I started to read a little about the history of RPG games. And to be honest, I felt inspired in making highlights whenever I learn about what features did it have. I’m wondering if it will be possible to create a roadmap for developers on how to make RPGs starting from basics and landing to a complete system. More of an excercise than a real project. I don’t that the complexity of RPGs is rising. On the contrary. But… it’s a good thing to do while reading 😉 Keeps the mind sharp.

You can get the digital version here.

Damn, I wish Substack would let me to put an image on the left, and text on the right…