Indie Devs: Best Practices: Page 4 - Godot Community Forums

Indie Devs: Best Practices

Nerdzmasterz

Hello, indie devs!

So now that you have your game mostly done, completed with all the action from your heroes and villains... how do you make it stop just long enough to go to the options menu?

For me, I have added a new Control node to the player, as I have him in each of the scenes- and in the inspector, you will notice something called Pause Mode. It is currently set to Inherit.

What does this mean?

It means that it will inherit the method which this node's parent handles being paused. We don't want that, we want the player to stop moving on pause. To fix this, we switch the mode to Process. If you don't have anything set to Process and you pause the game, it will freeze everything.

Now, how do we pause the game? Through a new script.

Now, if you didn't rename your last Control nodes, then you will notice that we can load the Control script- we don't want that. So, we'll rename the Control node and/or script and click on create.

To pause a game, we use the line get_tree().paused = true. However, we need to also be able to switch it to false when we're done as well.

This will be handy to get you started with a pause menu. From there, you can also add a UI that needs to appear after Pause is triggered, but, again, make sure the UI's pause mode is set to Process.

So, set up your pause menu/ UI however you want, and I will see you in the next one.

Nerdzmasterz

Hello, indie devs!

Now, before we dig into the last few parts of this, there is something you should know which will make your lives so much easier: get_children() in a for loop.

First, what is a loop? A loop is something that will do something within a certain period of time.

Now, for get_children().

Let's say, in the pause menu, you have a lot of child nodes which serve as buttons:

You could type something like button1.visible = true, button2.visible = true, and so on. However, this is rather time consuming. Instead, you can use get_children and put them in a for loop to grab each child node, and set them each to be visible or not, like so:

Hopefully, this will help you as you build your game, and the rest of your games in the future. I will see you in the next one.

Nerdzmasterz

Hello, indie devs. Are you ready to finish up the game?

It's getting close. You may even have already claimed your game is finally done- which is fantastic! There is, however, a nice trick that some games have which makes the players like it a little more.

Choosing the character.

How can you switch your character to be another character?

First off, how many different characters do you want to be able to choose from in your game? This is important. Each different animation, if it's being done with an animated sprite or animation player, will need to be named based on the type of character it is, or by its number. I will use a letter for this test, which I saved for the main player. For enemies, you can just have the code randomly pick a number, so you won't have to actually save it for them.

Why have the animations marked with a letter or name? Check out the code:

If I wanted another character, say, a female, I could instead use f_idle_down, and all the other animations, and because it starts with an f, if I use a button to switch the m to the f, the code will perfectly for the female character. You can do the exact same thing for multiple characters, and just change one little letter and make something to switch characters automatically for you.

The next part might take a bit to actually make, as I still have to finish up this game- still, if you have already read all of this, you have gotten very far. If your game is done, great! Make another one, then! You can release as many games as you have, right?

My challenge for you now, however, is a rather long one- but it is something you have to do before you release your game. This is actually a two-part challenge.

1: Go back and look at the assets you have used for your game, and do everything to ensure their licenses are being followed. If you don't know what license something has, pick something else, unless you would like to get in more than a little trouble with the law. I don't mean to scare you. After coming so far along with your game, you need to follow the rules so you can be successful. Also, make sure you follow the license for Godot.

Once you have set up everything and your game is done, find some friends to play your game- but not just anyone, you need to find friends who want to see you succeed- they could be family members, friends from wherever you work or study, it could be at a church you go to, wherever. Pay attention to their reactions to the game, as they will offer you your first game reviews. 🙂

Nerdzmasterz

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