DevLog 34 - Back To Square One

I’m not sure if this was a good idea… but I’ve already started!

Hello, I’m Tobi. Every week I write about the development process of our game, Paul. Paul combines turn-based combat, dungeon crawling, and exploration in a hand-crafted world. This DevLog is a way for me to reflect on and document the different stages of development, but also for anyone interested in seeing how the world of Paul gradually takes shape.

Over the past few years, I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the game engines I’ve been using, so I started looking for alternatives. Unsurprisingly, I eventually landed on Godot. It has excellent documentation, and while it’s still a bit lightweight in certain areas, that’s also part of its appeal. More importantly, there are no constantly changing licensing agreements to worry about—it’s open source. No built-in AI tools (thank goodness), and no always-online requirement. Freedom!

Now I’m curious to see how long it’ll take me to move Paul over to Godot. Thankfully, I’ve still got Mr. J by my side, whose big brain usually helps me out whenever I get stuck.

So, everything is in motion once again, and at this point in my life I’m learning a whole new set of skills. It’s definitely exciting, even if the first screenshot of what I’ve managed to port over in the last couple of days still leaves plenty of room for improvement.

It took me about six days to get a proper grid-based system working and to implement a basic weapon system from scratch. While doing all of this, I can already see my workflow inside Godot gradually evolving, and I’m starting to feel more at home with the engine every day.

That’s it for now. We’ll see where this Godot journey takes me next.

Best,

Tobi