godot can ignore specific folders by adding a .gdignore

note that this does not work like other .*ignore files - the contents are never read. it just signals that everything in the same dir should be ignored.

i.e. do not put it at your project root!

trying to work through godot monorepo export for dino

tho i'm not sure that the web builds can expect different inputs... maybe the different opts can get wrapped up in the build process?

yep! these feature flags/tags are great - i was able to attach them to each build and override project settings per-ff. the key being the main scene for the mini-games.

getting my godot -> itch.io pipeline going

itch.io 's tool is butler. (See also butler ).

rabbit hole: wtf is this? https://docs.itch.ovh/wharf/master/ wharf specification?

some fun bits and beeps, deep in butler's documentation

itch.io dino launch post

I worked out a deploy process for Dino today!

Here's a very early bundle of menus and prototypes. If you jump into the webview, you'll see it's pretty scrappy so far. For now, it's a menu that I've been adding scenes/links to.

You can pause and return to the main menu with `ESC` from pretty much anywhere.

Don't worry if things feel off - this sandbox is still coming together, and there are quite a few known bugs - e.g. completing the OneGeon leaves you stuck on the 'WIN' screen. More work to come on these, as well as individual projects for the 'mini-games'.

• streaming on twitch
• adding written devlogs to my blog
• hopefully soon pushing devlog and update videos on youtube.

Feel free to ping me if you're interested in any details!

You can support me on patreon.

itch.io runner launch post

The inspiration for this game comes from running in park during the fall - or as I call it, leaf-catching season. The beautifully colored leaves are a game to distract me from the distance remaining - catch as many as you can!

I built a little process for putting rooms in front of the player until they are 'complete', so that's the game that's running right now.

• The 'room' api decouples the level creation pretty nicely - they don't depend on each other, and arbitrary 'sets of rooms' can be specified pretty easily in godot.
• The auto-run makes for an simple experience for the player - this could end up working fairly well on mobile.

I'll next fix the win-state for this 'Park' run, add some HUD elements, and then experiment with some more room design. I'm hopeful to get into some procedural generation in the rooms themselves, or some cross-room tasks/keys/doors.

itch.io dungeon-crawler launch post

Dungeon Crawler is a classic genre, so in many ways I couldn't _not_ implement this.

The work on the launch version of this game was done in roughly a week, during which I battled scope-creep down to this bare bones map. There are two locked doors and two keys, and the bosses are indeed flintstone-inspired. If they survive long enough to attack you, you'll see they throw bowling balls.

At the moment, the arrows fail to fire - I'll hunt that bug down soon! If you _must_ play it, you can play it at the higher-level Dino game, and select 'OneGeon' from the menu.

I next hope to refactor towards a more independent room implementation, which will more easily support procedural generation and a wider variety of games.

patreon one-off update

Hello patrons!

I spent some time today working with Godot exports, and getting a deploy-to-itch.io pipeline running via itch's tool, butler.

I have been somewhat concerned that approaching godot with this monorepo mindset would hit some roadblocks (e.g. can I export a subset of a godot project that works?). I'm happy to report that I was able to work through it without too much trouble! Mad props to Godot's custom feature tags!

Godot and Butler are great, and I have wrangled them into useful babashka tasks. We now have one-line godot export, serve (for local testing), and deploy-via-butler bb commands in the dino repo.

The games are _very_ early prototypes - plenty more work to do on them before they are truly presentable. (There are quite a few known issues to work through, e.g. the dungeon crawler arrows are broken).

But! It feels great to have surfaced them, and they are now at least playable by people other than me. ('Playable' meaning, the local version actually runs... not yet in terms of game quality... but soon we can get into all that!).

I created a higher level Dino game, which should evolve into a hub full of tests, demos, and prototypes. I also created games for Runner and Dungeon Crawler, two games implemented completely within Dino. These games should be able to build and run outside of the Dino context.

These experiments will help validate Dino's monorepo strategy. Either they will work great, or we'll learn that 'proper' Godot games need their own project. (In which case, we'll still be able to re-use code from Dino via Godot's addons structure).

Thanks again for the much appreciated support and motivation! Stay tuned for more!

some new things today!

I published some games, devlogs, and a patreon update today!

• https://russmatney.itch.io/

• https://russmatney.itch.io/dino
• https://russmatney.itch.io/dino/devlog/447095/first-deploy

• https://russmatney.itch.io/runner
• https://russmatney.itch.io/runner/devlog/447113/first-dev-log

• https://russmatney.itch.io/dungeon-crawler
• https://russmatney.itch.io/dungeon-crawler/devlog/447124/first-dev-log

• https://www.patreon.com/posts/freshly-dino-74144023