Wednesday, June 18, 2025

The For Loop in GDScript (Or: Why I'm Gonna Hit Someone)

So I can write a for loop in other languages. I am aware that this makes me a member of an exclusive club called Everybody. But, like, look! See?

As you can tell from that thick, luscious error message, that ain't it chief. Sooooo, maybe:

But I don't want it to be a node. I want it to be an int. Apparently in GDScript, if you're writing a for loop, the for (variable) is always gonna be a node. Always and forever.

I didn't get a screenshot, but apparently the right answer is:

for i in button_container.get_children():
if i.disabled == false:
i.grab_focus()

But like with tabs that Blogger doesn't eat.

So of course, I immediately stepped on a rake and NEEDED i to be typed. Do you know how to do it?

Other sane languages would let you do i : whatever, but gdscript, you're typing that bad boy inside the loop.

Thanks! I hate it!

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

A Bad Word Filter

If you read this post, you're gonna agree that you're old enough to see some pretty bad words on the Internet! One of the last tasks I had to program in for Delia's game was a bad word filter. I taught, I am 100% aware that kids cannot be trusted and have to have that filter. But: what bad words do we include? I know that older games have bad word filters that have been cracked and are probably sitting around in the open on TCRF, but I didn't even know where to begin to find those. Soooooo I asked on the Kentucky Developer's website, and someone linked me to the Banned Word List. Did you know there's an official bad word list? Had no clue. I'm gonna link it here, and it's obviously not safe for work, so you're clicking at your own risk: The Banned Word List Just for good measure, some people put me up on these other two lists, which are also not safe for work, and you are also clicking these links at your own risk: Wikipedia's list of ethnic slurs and Wikipedia's list of common nouns derived from ethic group names. I went through and picked the ones I figured kids would be most likely to use. Now, if you've read down this far, you're grown enough to know this, but I still need to say it: I'm not providing this information so you have a cool new list of awful things to call people. I'm providing this in case you're ever in the same situation and you need to block words. When I would let kids choose names on Kahoot, to put it politely, they would use something off these lists pretty much every time. Kahoot has a feature where it picks names for the kids. It made them complain, but it also meant that I wasn't displaying the Banned Word List on my projector. I'm actually not sure how this factors into products for adults, but if you know I'd be interested to hear. (You know, for whatever reason they'd pick nice names for Blooket. Can't explain that.)

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Stickers!

My local library lets me print stickers!
Do you recognize that axolotl? That's Delia!
I have plans for promoting Delia's site, Makealotl Music, annnnnnnd I need stuff. My local library will let me print $8 worth of stuff a month, and apparently THIS many stickers is eight bucks. I get eight more bucks every month. It's my tax dollars, may as well go down to the library and use it. While I was down there, I printed a zine about Vaporwave Battler too. Free printing at the library.✌️
Give me some time, I'll give you your opportunity to get your own Delia sticker. Also, I wonder what I'm printing next week? 🤔

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Weird Marketing Tactics

I'm not sure if this is dumb or not, don't roast me. I've been thinking about other things that can go into little free libraries, ever since I saw a tiktok where some artists made tiny tiny paintings and left them in their libraries. So art is one, right? My husband's work place put together a bunch of children's stem kits to distribute in little free libraries. Hm.

To my little feral self, zines are a perfect fit in little free libraries. I'd love finding a zine in a little free library. (I actually did find one, I took it, it was awesome.) So I got a bunch of small posters printed at the public library, and I've been distributing them in little free libraries. If it's a library close to a place of buisness, I assume it's got more people coming in and out and I drop double.


Pictured: one of my drops. The bottom thing I'm pointing to is a flier for Warp Zine, the top thing is one of my husband's stem kits. I deliver a bunch by bike and have to drive the rest around town. My city's bikeable if you're creative, but it's 1) large and 2) not entirely safe to bike to every single place I'd need because cars go vroom. Those are my bike gloves in the picture, I'm not cool enough to just walk around with fingerless gloves.

So the obvious marketing benefit is that people are getting sent to the latest issue of Warp Zine, right? Right now, that's free advertising for anyone who's featured in Warp Zine. It could be me someday soon! But I still want to give Kentucky Developers some good karma out there.

I'm trying to think of other cool stuff to drop in little libraries, it seems like it could go hand in hand with indie dev stuff. Given that this blog is probably gonna hit video game fans, my two indie dev ideas are either direct advertisements for games or, if you're developing something narrative based, developing some comic zines to go with the story and drop those in little libraries. Get creative, and then leave me ideas in the comments, because right now I'm super into this idea.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Warp Zine Issue 1 Available NOW!

Hey! The Kentucky Developers have put out their new zine, Warp Zine Issue 1! You should come see:
Click here to read it! I already mentioned my tutorial ~~. I'm in particular excited over the world building article. I don't want to spoil too much, go read!

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Please Laugh

I was working on a request for my board game tutorial, where a user wanted the piece to be able to bounce back if it hit the end and still had some roll left. You all, when I tell you I worked for four days solid to try and figure out why the piece was moving where it was moving! First, it made me realize that I need to do an episode where I talk about the Godot debugger. 🤔 But the debugger wasn't actually being helpful in answering the questions I had. Second, I wound up writing this absolutely spectacular slop:
So, this is kinda nonsense. I'm showing you because I'm hoping it helps. I know that print statements aren't excellent debugging practice, but I actually got the answer doing this, and also???? Print statements can be deleted, it's not that serious.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Warp Zine Issue 0

Y'all! The Kentucky Game Developers published their own zine! You can read the first issue right here on Itch.io! I'm so proud of them.

Then they asked me to submit to the second issue, and help edit it too, and I'm like hol up becaue I'm only so smart 😵‍💫

But we did it, and you can see the next issue right here

This is what I made, I made a Godot tutorial (you can guess why they asked me, Queen Princess of Open Source,). Since it's a zine I wanted it to have that sick zine aesthetic, so I typed everything out, then cut and paste it up. Zine making takes more glue than I thought it would.