Hello, I just want to let you guys know that I’m very excited to learn that you have done a Godot lecture, and I hope you will do many more. After quitting Flash, I tried Unity for a while, but using that program always felt like a fist-fight. Godot is so much nicer, the only thing wrong with it is that it’s too new to have a lot of good tutorials around, and you guys are the perfect group to fix that. I really want to extend my appreciation and support, and I hope you make many more Godot tutorials in the future.
If you are looking for future series ideas,
I am a huge fan of twin-stick shooters. I have a huge collection of them from Steam, so I can recommend: Dungeon Souls, Enter the Gungeon, Feral Fury, GALAK-Z, Heat Signature, Hero Siege, Hotline Miami, Huygens Principle, Neurovoider, Overture, Pressure Overdrive, Reassembly, Startide, Sandstorm, Streets of Rogue, and I really like the Flash twin-stick shooter, Endless War 3 (which is really Endless War 1, 2 & 3) which you can find for free. Of those, Heat Signature, Reassembly and Streets of Rogue do some really out-of-the-box game mechanics that really show the versatility of the twin-stick format. Most of those titles use Rogue-like or randomized elements, which would be a cool topic to address as well. Even low-budget titles like Overture, Huygens Principle and Sandstorm and lots of fun, so I think that would be a perfect fit for Godot, which currently strikes me as the indiest of indie platforms.
I’ve made minor games for many years, mostly learning from online tutorials, and there’s a specific topic that I’ve always had trouble with and never seen a tutorial for. I don’t know if there’s an industry standard name for it, but basically the idea of Final Polish. Most game tutorials give you something that you could show off to your friends, but not something you could sell. You’re left to figure out the Final Polish on your own, and that’s the kind of thing that I can sort of do, but not elegantly. So topics within the Final Polish idea would include: Menu State Machine (Title Screen, Game Mode Select (like Arcade Mode, Survival Mode, Boss Rush Mode, etc), Character Select (like Strong Slow Character, Medium Character, Fast Weak Character), Options), Good Menu Design, Transitions (like sliding menu buttons, fading screens, a player death sequence like when Mario goes upside down and falls off the screen instead of just ending the level abruptly), Cutscenes (like playing a movie file, taking control of game objects mid-level, or just displaying dialog or rolling text on screen), Level Progression (like, first load level 1, then load level 2, continue from a level or checkpoint later, interior level progression, like first a goblin shows up from the right, when you’ve defeated that goblin, two new goblins show up from the right, when you’ve defeated them, a big red goblin drops from the ceiling), Level Results Screen, Leveling Up, Upgrade Shop, Achievements, Loading Screens, Saving Data, and so on, there’s probably a few things I’m not thinking of. I can muddle my way through one or two of those things, but when I’m muddling my way through all of them, my code starts to look like a Cthulhu monster, even sometimes breaking the game.
And a topic that I feel like I already know about, but would be good for the gaming community in general would be Applying the 12 Principles of Animation to Programming. A lot of people get it into their heads that programmers can only do programming and artist can only do art, but animation means “to bring to life” and in games, the programmer is ultimately the one who brings the game to life. The 12 Principles are: Squash & Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight Ahead vs Pose to Pose, Follow Through & Overlap, Slow In Slow Out, Arcs, Secondary Actions, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing and Appeal. I’d be happy to bounce some ideas around with you about this topic.
And a quick word, I’m a 3D artist with a 3D animation degree, and I want to make 3D games. I’m often bummed by the lack of 3D tutorials for Godot, so it would mean a lot to me to see tutorials that cover 3D. I get that 2D has a broader appeal with indie developers (although I think 3D game assets are way easier to work with), so maybe it would be possible to do both a 2D and 3D version of certain topics. And if you feel like you don’t have the 3D assets to do a particular 3D topic, let me know and maybe I can help you out.