An Update To Last Week's Post

Whoops. I actually think this might be the right answer. I won't be tearing my code up to check, but I wanted to make sure this was seen. Thank you, Hyvernox!

I Don't Get It Either!

I had an issue, I solved it, and I have no idea why my solution works. I also don't know why my old solution didn't work. This sort of thing makes me cranky, so I'm hoping someone else understands it and explains it to me!

Makealotl Music is getting a new game with a lilipad piano. I wanted to include a mode where you play Simon Says with Delia to learn some of the songs in the program. You can see the final version working here:

An oversimplification of what's going on under the hood is that the game stores the song in several different arrays, and then as you progress through the song, it glues the arrays together to build what Delia "listens" for to check if you're wrong or right. Originally I had the arrays stashed on the button itself that you click to pick a song. So, for example, the Mary Had A Little Lamb would store C D E D in an array, and then the game would load C D E D and see if that's what you were playing. You can read the code here in this Pastebin if you want the technical-atude of it all.

This worked great until I added a second button to add a second song. (Brother John, if you were curious.) Once I did that, Godot would not read any array at all, and would crash with a null reference error. (Are those called null reference errors in GDScript? That's what they're called in C#, I've never heard them called anything in GDScript.) I cannot explain why the code would work fine with one object and go south with two objects.

I got to a point where whatever the explanation was wasn't important, I needed the code to work. I got the idea to:

• Have ONE object, just a regular ol node, run the code that lets Delia check what notes the user plays
• Store all these arrays in a resource
• Have the button send the resource up to the regular ol node and force it to read the arrays out that way. Tell me it's null now, you sonofabitch.

Godot 4.5 have a feature that I have been vibrating for. See that fancy "append node" checkbox? A signaling node can now send itself up with a signal! So we can store the resource on the button, have the button signal up, send the button on that signal, then read the resource!

Wow! Except it doesn't work!

If that song_data variable is null then I'm in Unity Engine. No. For whatever reason Godot simply would not read the resource off the button. Notice that the button itself isn't null? I guess it did manage to send itself, but none of its own data?????

Google suggested that sometimes you had to read the resource, duplicate it, then send it up. This doesn't work either.

So, like, don't do that, I guess, or suggest it.

Godot really loves the load() and preload() functions, those are pretty secure, so I tried this on the button:

Which doesn't work, but it lead me to the working solution. I don't love this solution, it's not slick and clean, but it's the only thing that actually works and allows the game to run multiple songs so let's goooo:

Using the connect dialog, send the resource's path as a string.

Then force the Teach Me object to load the path.

So I got this far, I got this working, party party, and then I remembered that I totally forgot that .bind() exists. Oh well, I can't promise that it would work, given that append node wasn't working.

Again, this makes me cranky, I'd rather just merrily be putting .tres files in the inspector by drag and drop. I'd love to know why the other solutions didn't work, and I'm curious to know if any of these will actually work in the upcoming 4.6. If you can explain it, let me know!

Dialogic Alternative Styles -- I Had No Clue!

I'll tell the full story in my visual novel tutorial, but I had someone ask me about a feature that, as I played with it, I really felt should be in Dialogic properly. So when I asked, they're like, no, those features exist, here, take this:

It's the Dialogic Test Project! You can use it to play with some Dialogic samples, and see some alternative default styles as well. Hope it helps you!

Game Harvest 2025

Just making sure you wish you developed games in Kentucky: all us Kentucky Developers got together and showed off our games to the public during the fancy fancy event Game Harvest, put on by Louisville Makes Games. We held it in an art musem, because we're art ~

So that's us, and all our little booths, before we turn the lights off. You can see Makealotl Music over on the far left!

You can see Makealotl even better here:

And on the left of that picture, you can see Vaporwave Battler running too.

I gave out stickers! That was fun, I love giving stickers to people.

I got to talk to a tonnnnn of people, too, and watch them play both Note Nab and Vaporwave Battler. It was also excellent to talk to my fellow dev pals, get ideas, and play with their games as well. I walked off with so many ideas, you guys, I have so many ideas now.

My list of ideas for me for next year:

• Get little yard sale signs -- you know, the neon cut out ones? -- to give people a call to action about the game ("Buy on Itch.io!" or "Visit Delia on the web!"). Also use the signs to mark the stickers as free
• Reprint my buisness card holder, it busted right before
• Maybe Game Harvest specific builds that reset or give directions after a time so my booth needs less babysitting
• Headphones. I brought purple ones for Makealotl Music just because Delia has purple headphones and I think I'm funny, and I noticed they got used when the bands were playing really loud. They're just 5 Below headphones, I think another pair of cheapies would be a fine investment.

"How Do I Start Learning Game Development?"

This was my entry for Warp Zine Issue 3. I think it's worth looking at again, so here it is, reposted:

Too many people want to learn development, but don't really know where to start. This infographic is your jumping off point. If you try it and it doesn't work, at least you tried -- come tell me, so I know to change my infographic and set you on a better path!

Warp Zine #3 Out Now!

Warp Zine #3 is out NOW! You can check it out by clicking here

you'll never guess who was a contributor ~~~

Page 4 needs some explanation -- everyone on the Kentucky Developer's discord submitted games they gave up on making. Get it? They're dead games.

Warp Zine 2 Out NOW!

That was fast. It honestly felt like no time at all, yeah?

Click here to read Warp Zine Issue 2!

I actually wrote a feature on Vaporwave Battler that got included. But you should check everyone else's stuff out too.