Skele-Tom Day 1

The jam started today. The theme was a picture/3D model. This one:

So I did some brainstorming, and decided with the assets provided, the easiest thing to do would be a platformer. I decided on a skeleton that steals candy and decided to call him Skele-Tom. I immediately went over to Suno, wrote some song lyrics and created a song that I felt really gave me a vibe for the character and the game. Then used the cover feature to create some 8-bit level music that matched the theme song. I wanted a Nightmare Before Christmas vibe to the game.

The TV

So the TV was provided as a model, and I started thinking about how it was an old school CRT, so why not make a game that felt like an old school platformer? Basically jump, collect candy and avoid traps. The "monsters" could be angry costumed trick-or-treaters. I thought I would try incorporating the TV model itself into the beginning of the game.

I started googling and found a VHS and Monitor Effect that had been updated for Godot 4. Then I found a tutorial on how to add it to a curved CRT model. It did not work. It did not work despite me creating new Visual Shaders. Then I decided to go look up just a normal play a video tutorial. I found one and realized that it worked fine on a flat mesh. So, I hid the curved screen and used the flat mesh.

Then I started integrating it with my Dragonforge Game Template. With very little work, I was able to get all my splash screens to show up on the TV!

But as soon as I got to the Main Menu, the TV disappeared. So, I stuck my entire game state machine inside the TV. Then I tweaked the font to look creepier thanks to Google fonts.

The next problem was that no inputs were reaching the menu. After some googling, I found it was pretty easy to pass them in. At least, for keyboard and gamepad inputs. For most games I try to support keyboard, mouse, and gamepad, but I think for this one I'm going to skip mouse inputs because raycasting just to make it work seems like a lot of work for very little benefit. Maybe if I have time once the game is working.

I've decided this is a good place to stop for the night.