Learn You a Game Jam Day 4 devlog

SO Day 4, I had to run a charity event and that on top of my job, I only had 2 hours free but I'm way too tired to work on the game. Therefore, let's talk about game developments and everything I know and what I've learned over the past couple of days like a little recap.

The thing about tutorials

If you've watched any video related to game development you may or may not have watched professionals saying "don't follow tutorials, you don't learn anything" and personally I think that is both correct and incorrect. It is very difficult to learn through tutorials, especially through video tutorials, which, if you're ADHD like me, is incredibly difficult to follow. Not only do you have to pause it every 2 seconds to rapidly type out the code the person is doing AS they're typing it (because they'll scroll down and move away from the screen if you're not fast enough) but you also have to deal with when the person in the video makes a mistake and has to go back and fix it.

None of these video tutorials seem to consider cutting out the times the compiler doesn't work but I digress.

Tutorials are hard to learn from if you've turned off your brain and are just copying blinding without understanding the reasons why one function is used here over the other or you don't even try to type it all by hand and just copy and paste from a repository. I at least try to type it all, hoping my unconscious brain will keep track of everything.

But I genuinely think that for each tutorial you do and try to sit down and understand the code, you come away with it a little smarter. Sure it's a very slow way of learning but if you're not sure where to start, sometimes that's the best way to hit the ground running.

Which is why I'm currently following a tutorial; I wasn't sure how to go about what I wanted and I'm more than likely not going to use everything from this tutorial, I can see the logic and take bits and pieces away from it. I think about what I could change and how I would change it and it's a little bit like giving myself homework - which sounds unappealing, I'm sure, but it really does work.

My current thoughts and progress

I'm at a point in this gamejam, 4 days in, where I'm not sure if I should continue with the tutorial or if I should abandon it and try to write down what I've learned. I normally would do that when I've completed the tutorial, but now I'm under a time constraint, my backup plan is to just complete the tutorial the whole way through and then modify what I need. This is also my first game jam so I don't even know if a tutorial made program would even be accepted haha

The tutorial gives a very rudimentary way to set tiles and it works for something quick but ultimately useless when you actually want to fine tune maps or have different terrain on it. My idea is also to use a flat plane that's always facing the camera to render sprites on so I'd be removing the 3D models as well (it is a gamejam for pixel art).

Either way, it looks extremely impressive for something I've made while following something for 3 days straight (I didn't have time to work on the game at all today) and I feel pretty proud of myself already. When this gamejam is over I'll probably try to redo everything from scratch but without a tutorial and see if I've retained anything (like giving myself a pop quiz).

Ideas on how to improve what I have

I've given a lot of thought on how I would make the maps and it's either I create and entire map builder specific to my needs (which sounds like something I should do either way) or I craft a map through files.

What do I mean by that? So I'm thinking maybe have a function that reads through a file and places tiles dependent on the number or letter there. For example writing down 3W would be like a water tile at the height of 3. So I would build a map like:

2W 2W 4G 4G 4P 4G 4G 4G
2W 2W 2W 4G 4P 4G 4G 4G
2W 2W 2W 4G 4P 4P 4P 4G
2W 2W 2W 4G 4P 4G 4P 4G
2W 2W 4G 4G 4P 4G 4P 4P
2W 2W 4G 4G 4P 4G 4G 4G

With 2W = Water with a height of 2, 4G = Grass with a height of 4, 4P = Path with a height of 4, and so on and so forth and I think that would also be a great start but if I ever wanted to do something creative like put in buildings or a big tree, this wouldn't work. I like the idea though and if I have enough time I want to implement this.

Anyways, that's all I have today. Apologizing to my future self for not working on it. I still have more charity stuff Friday and Saturday so I technically have..... 5 - 2 = 3 days left??? Help, I'm in danger.