DEV Community: Aby Noctel

Weekly update #22

Aby Noctel — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 09:09:56 +0000

Hello again to everyone reading this week's update

What I did

worked on player animation and moving it from animated sprite to animation player and animation tree which although were a problem at the start, with a bit of poking it here and there and trying out things I could get them working smoothly
worked on the player health mechanic, mainly the ability to take dmg, die, and be removed from the scene. I used to free it from the tree when it died but I encountered problems such as camera sharply panning to a completely different part of the level or it just not showing anything. But after using a timer on health after it reached 0 and using the timeout to reload the scene, I'd say it's looking better than before

Next steps

the immediate next step would be to work on the knockback force for the player/enemy. I have no idea how to implement it at the time of writing this, but I'm sure I'll figure something out
after that I will work on player attack actually registering and probably have to use another component for it like a weapon component or similar

Until next week, stay safe, and take care of yourselves!

Weekly update #21

Aby Noctel — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 20:12:17 +0000

Hi! This week was pretty hectic and busy due to midterms and the finals that are coming up but I still could put away some time to work on what I had lying around in the folder from last week

What I did

So far the solution I implemented after watching many tutorials and getting to know how to work with composition seems to be working
I worked on the animations for the enemy and its movement plus its physics
Still have the player attack animation and the player-enemy interaction to work on though

That's it for this week, hope you all stay safe and see you next week!

Weekly update #20

Aby Noctel — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:43:18 +0000

well hello again to everyone reading this! hope you've all been doing well since the last time we have talked
this week I bring you the struggles I went through, as always

What I went through

firstly, I learned that composition is really useful in terms of godot and how to handle similar things without doing much work
BUT there's also the hours I spent, and still am spending, to get that to work regarding the custom components I made for my game
They just don't seem to be able to get in sync with each other, either I'm doing it wrong or there's something that I'm missing here and I just can't see it
anyhow, that's the gist of it. If I get this compositions working I can expand my prototype and actually test my ideas and the features inside the game environment

When I do get through this hurdle, I will update you all in the next post
Until then, as always, take care of yourself, be good to one another, and I'll see you all again soon!

Weekly update #19

Aby Noctel — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 23:45:19 +0000

oh wow seems like i fell out of rhythm with my posting schedule, sorry bout that

this week was pretty simple though as i had some midterms to deal with and you know how it is

although i got to learn about ui in godot and made a small clicker thing to have sth for it i suppose

other than that i haven't been able to get to it, hopefully this weekend will be different

love you all, take care of yourselves, and believe that wonderful things are going to happen to you

Weekly Update #17 & 18

Aby Noctel — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:30:01 +0000

Hello to everyone!
Sorry for the late post, I was working on Godot on the past week to have sth to post about this week and I was completely bedridden and sick the week before; that's why I couldn't post anything

What I did

Started using Godot and my god it's way easier than coding in c++ and using sfml
made a whole thing that resembles a game, it has player, enemy, level, and even collectibles such as coins and hearts in it

Problems I faced

The biggest issue by far is to figure out how to make a ray cast to make sure the enemy doesn't walk off the edge of the thing it's supposed to be on, still got no idea how to do this
The second biggest was handling BG and foreground material which then I came to realize I could use different Z Indices to make them render on different levels

That's all I have for this week, see you all in the next one!

Weekly Update #16

Aby Noctel — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:29:39 +0000

Hello to the people reading this week's update
I would summarize this week's progress as it's late yet I wanted to post this one before bed

added collision with bottom of the screen with origin of the sprite being at the center
added Tile and TileMap classes
added the ability to add tiles and remove tiles, made them into a vector of vectors
implemented the tiles thingies inside the game class so I could see and test the results

That's all for this week
I hope I can get more work done as I am starting to feel worse than before but surely it's nothing serious and will pass by
Stay safe and I'll see you all again next week!

Weekly Update #15

Aby Noctel — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 15:02:27 +0000

Hello everyone!
This past week was pretty great!

What I did

created another project and did all the usual stuff before getting to the new things
this time i used delta time for movement which makes it independent from frame rate which i think is quite nice
also in this project i decided to work with animations and see how they are in sfml

What I learned

precompiled headers were a thing, helps with the speed of loading the project and testing it
also learned that when using delta time speed is SO SLOW cause it's pixels/sec so i had to give it a bigger number like 400 or sth
also using int rect and chopping down the sprite sheet into small parts i was able to play each sprite frame by frame to get animations! so far only wrote for idle and walking animations

What's next

next up would be implementing physics like gravity and speed and etc
after that i should go back to the animations and write for the jumping and falling animations as well using the physics i made previously
after these... i'm not sure what would follow in all honesty, i'll think of it when i get there i suppose

That's all for this week, I hope you all are safe and sound. Stay healthy, stay lovely, and I'll see you all again next week!

Weekly Update #14

Aby Noctel — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 13:21:17 +0000

Hi.
Sadly I have nothing to talk to y'all about this week. I've been struggling with my mental health more than ever and the university classes have been more draining than usual and so I couldn't get anything done in the past week.
I hope you all are doing great, see you all again next week hopefully with some news

Weekly Update #13

Aby Noctel — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 16:23:02 +0000

Finished another game since the last update!

What I did

added player collision with window bounds so it can't go out of the screen
added a background to the game, a change of pace compared to other ones which had a black BG
added a score system with a randomizer for enemy shape, size, and color
optimized and edited the code for better bullet and player spawning
added an hp bar which changes with the hits you take
made a game over screen when hp and hp bar reach zero

Problems I had

one problem was with the randomizer where it gave me warnings and such, solved it by figuring out if it is zero or not before doing anything else with it
had an error for indexing issues in vectors, can't remember what it said exactly, but I just needed to remove the part where I tried deleting the enemy twice or more in one loop, oops

And with that, another small game comes to a close
I really enjoyed making this one, I especially enjoy playing it XD
There's nothing else to say tbh so as always, take care of yourselves and I'll see you all again next week!

Weekly Update #12

Aby Noctel — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 16:40:32 +0000

Another week, another update!

With the fatigue of university classes which finally started since last week, I couldn't really do much as I was still getting used to the routine after being off routine for the whole summer haha

What Did I Do In The Past Week Though?

I looked more into my code and edited quite a few things.
First I organized functions to private and public, I realized that I had all my functions public in some classes so fixed that.
Secondly, optimized the deleting sequence for enemies and bullets when they get out of bounds
Finally added a couple of functions, one to handle combat (mainly deleting bullet AND the enemy when they connect) along with another for future GUI updates.
Also I went through all my comments and reread them, just to see if it's understandable if I was someone that came across that for the first time. I gotta say, I ended up adding, removing, and editing a lot of comments.

That was my week for you, not as flamboyant as you might imagine, spent most of my time editing stuff and sketching new things and ideas.
Hope you all are healthy and happy, take care of yourselves and I'll see you all next week!

Weekly Update #11

Aby Noctel — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 08:15:38 +0000

I'm back with another update!

What I Did

Learned that I need to delete the bullets and enemies from memory after certain time has passed so added a loop to do that
Also played around with sfml's CircleShape, point count, radius, and all that stuff
Used the CircleShape to spawn in enemies with random shapes
Overall changed some minor things in the code for better readability or just for my own comfort

Well, I suppose that's all for now. This week was rather calm and uneventful so I don't have a lot to talk about.
Until next week, stay safe, and see you all again soon!

Weekly Update #10

Aby Noctel — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:28:22 +0000

Greetings to all the people! I come here this week bringing updates as always!

What I did

Made a whole new project with the difference being this one will contain sprites and textures so that was a great thing to get the hang of!
Made game, player, and bullet classes so far

What I learned

Learned how to handle textures and sprites inside sfml Also for that I was also learning pixel art so that also came in handy!
I created the sprites I use in the game myself using aseprite so this project really is a great time to practice both my coding skills alongside drawing skills!

Problems I faced

Aside from some typing errors I made throughout the project, there wasn't any major problems I faced, or at least they weren't important enough for me to remember them until now

What's next?

Well, next up will be how to handle memory thing with this many sprites loading in the window
Another thing can be implementing enemies and their own mechanics

Notes

So far, I'm having a lot of fun on this path! I never thought I'd be this excited when I started; which might sound odd coming from me considering I'm kind of a newbie. But that doesn't mean I haven't grown!
That's all for this week, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let me know! Until next week, take care of yourself and see you later!