Let's Begin

WHAT IS THIS?

        Hello fellow gamer, or developer, or... who cares! This is my very first dev-log! After failing to host a blog site by using various services, I found out that I can create a dev-log just here, in itch.io, how nice that is! Being new to the game development, I wanted to keep track of my first serious game project's development process by creating a dev-log, and I'm planning to update it along the way.

WHAT GAME?

        Haven't you heard? It's the best selling game ever, I wish... The Champions is an action role-playing game proudly powered by the Godot Engine. Heavily inspired by Timing Hero, which is a game developed by 21c.Ducks. I'm aiming to develop a game similar to it, but in a completely different style! By the way, the name may not be final yet!

COOL, WHAT IS YOUR ROUTE?

        As you would imagine, being a college student does not come with many perks... so I don't have any budget! Although that might sound a little pathetic, believe me It's not; even, It encourages you to handle each and every aspect of your game by achieving different skill sets such as graphic design, managing sounds...

        Although I don't have any experience in making sounds for games, I kind of got my hands on graphics. Since the game uses pixel-art for it's resources, after a quick research, I found a couple software for pixel-art, one of them being Aseprite.

        I fell in love with Aseprite in no time and wanted to get better as soon as possible; thus, I came across Heartbeast on YouTube. The channel has amazing game-dev content overall, be sure to check it out! Scrolling down the channel's videos, I found out that there is also a couple Udemy courses published by Benjamin Anderson, one of them being about Aseprite!

        Coding wise, I have been playing around with a couple engines and game mechanics, across different genres; but, It didn't take much time for me to fall in love with Godot Engine! After realizing It's capabilities, I quickly switched to it and continued developing games powered by it. It being some months playing around with the engine, I finally felt comfortable enough to get my hands on the project I had in mind for a while and started developing as much as I can; in fact, the community is so helpful that you can get answers to any of your questions in seconds!

        Spending indefinite hours on role-playing games, I can somewhat say that I have a sense of role-playing, especially making games based on it! Considering that I have been 'developing' games on notebook papers, really sophisticated ones, since I was little, I hope, the journey won't be too hard for myself.

SHOW US SOME STUFF!

        Alrighty! After transferring my thoughts about the project onto sheets, I realized that I need some character sprites and animations to begin developing from scratch. Struggling a little with Aseprite, I finally managed to create something considerable to start developing the game.

        The very first character I created is a warrior-ish, ninja-ish, samurai-ish, ish... hero! Even, let's name him Frank! Frank, basically, uses a sword and loves to swing it at his opponents.

        The second character I got my hands on with is an enemy, particularly a knight. It has a halberd to desecrate it's foes!

        I also needed some animations, at least for Frank, to begin coding a couple core mechanics and get myself a simple introduction to animation; so, I animated a basic attacking animation for beloved Frank.

        Coding approximately about a hundred lines then I had my health bars and attacking mechanics completed. Then, by playing with the engine's animation player and state machine, I imported the sprite sheet from the engine and revivified Frank! Paving my own way to a little victory, the development phase had started...