Goblins vs. Fishfolk launched

A fan-game of Pixeljunk's "Monsters 2".

My (our) first 3D game, powered by godot 4.

Many thanks go out to my creative manager, son, and author of the musical scores: くコ:彡Amna at bandlab. 

Without him, there would have been no HP bars, no damage indicators shouting "Overkill", no sound and no music in this game.

Development story

I kept track of all the stages of development since inception on April 20th of this year. If you'd like more detailed accounts on any aspect, or have any interest whatsoever, get in touch! 

Milestone 0 - the inception (April 20th 2024)

• We were playing Monsters 2 a lot on the switch
• We loved the local multiplayer co-op
• I wanted to make a 2D tower defense game
• The family thought the tree-mechanic was cool
• ...that only works well in 3D

Milestone 1 - multiplayer goblins (April 25th 2024)

• DeltaBlock font CC0
• Youtube tutorial: Godot 4 / Blender - Third Person Character From Scratch
• timescale in AnimationTree
• goblin model and scene, can run and jump
• 1-5 players, 1 keyboard, up to 4 controllers

Milestone 2 - interactive tree(s) (April 30th 2024)

• Highlight closest tree with outline mesh
• Coloration of terrain close to tree
• Open menu on B
• Use menu with L

Milestone 3 - Convert a tree into an arrow-tower (May 3rd 2024)

• Show the range of the tower while selecting
• make the tower rise out of the ground when built
• fell all the trees within the radius of the tower
• point the tower at something (a goblin)
• animate the tower shooting (bow string)
• point the tower at the first something within range (a goblin)
• show the range of the tower and highlight the tower when hugging the tower
• make both towers and trees huggable
• goblin can only hug 1 thing at at time

Milestone 4 - Monsters (May 5th 2024)

• make a monster model
• make arrow towers point at the closest monster within range
• animate the monster
• make an arrow model
• align the arrow model to the shaft of the arrow tower model
• let the monster walk along a path
• make the arrow towers shoot arrows at the closest monster within range with the speed of the released bow string
• spawn in a new arrow aligned with the shaft and the tightening bowstring

Milestone 5 - Cannon tower (May 9th 2024)

• add cannon tower to the Tree context menu options for Ground
• make a cannon tower model
• write _point_at code in cannon_tower.gd
• write _shoot code
• use a different range when highlighting (5 metres)
• make a cannonball sphere
• use a radius to deal impact damage scaled by distance from epicenter of impact
• animate the lighted fuse with particles
• cannonball smoke particles
• use particles to animate the explosion
• use a shader to show impact tattooed on the terrain

Milestone 6 - Monster-life, Monster-afterlife (May 10th 2024)

• allow the monsters to die when HP runs out
• make monster model react to being hit
• make monster model react to dying (spinning around 3 axes, flying through the air like the little fish chibi's they are)
• give the monsters HP bars
• flying damage numbers

Milestone 7 - Flying fish, Anti-Air (May 13th 2024)

• model aerial defense tower
• shoot some sort of projectile(s)
• cannot shoot grounded monsters
• cannon will not target flying monsters
• model flying fish
• create flying route for flying fish

Milestone 8 - Capitalism (May 16th 2024)

• model out builder gems
• make monsters drop currency
• model out magic crystals
• keep track of currency (start with 300 builder gems)
• more readable font for numbers
• make towers cost currency in context menu
• in a nice price tag icon

Milestone 9 - Giant turtle (May 20th 2024)

• create a turtle model
• use a photo by photographer as texture
• and another photo for the flippers and head <-- did not go as planned
• animate the model, dragging over the sand
• use tattooed-shader for dragging coloration on terrain
• use dust to hide flipper-clipping

Milestone 10 - Editable stages (June 1st 2024)

• Add MonsterPath scene with anchors that auto-generates a Curve3D to follow
• Add a MonsterTargetZone area that despawns monsters for now
• Add Spawner with MonsterPath and Timed Wave scenes
• Add Wave scenes with child PackedScene resource as monster type to be released using timer
• Create a second stage which can be run with the debug.gd script
• create true level terrain, with water for the fish-folk to crawl out of

Milestone 11 - Surfing (June 1st 2024)

• Make goblin piggyback on turtle
• Add surfing animation for goblin
• Make goblin surf on flying fish

Milestone 12 - Stage select (June 2nd 2024)

• Make a main game scene which handles the title screen and menus
• Extract 2 reusable stage scenes
• Make a StageHolder to hold the current stage
• Make it possible to switch between stages (select in title screen)
• Use a stage in the StageHolder as a nice background for the title screen
• Add a title screen, which detects controller device via start button
• Add some MonsterSpawners with a couple of infinite waves to both scenes

Milestone 13 - UI controls (June 12th 2024)

• fix game joining / keep better track of controllers input in one singleton
• make all menus use controls, so when paused no buggy stuff
• add an (optional) goblin spawn pos to the stage
• add cooldown times for confirm and pause actions for button overloading
• hide mouse cursor when middle mouse button is held
• give the game over spash screen a working delay

Milestone 14 - Game over (June 12th 2024)

• with little baby goblins in cribs (model a crib with a cute baby in it, 20 of which make a nice target for the monsters to attack)
• make an attack animation when reaching the goal
• make the baby goblin and the attacking monster disappear in a cloud of dust
• Make lose condition -> all goblin babies gone
• Show gameover splash
• show a baby goblin counter

Milestone 15 - Winning the game, prepping soft launch (July 13th 2024)

• add stage music by: くコ:彡Amna
• show current wave progression
• Implement a MonsterWaveEmitter, which starts waves and reports which wave of how many just started
• Make win condition for stage (all waves passed)
• intro with back story
• tutorial stage for gamepad and keyboard+mouse
• Short screen recordings for promo and intro
• Windows installer (maybe test other platforms? - Linux worked)