Mudtato
I still like it!
I must be having a good time with GameMaker, as I didn’t switch engines or start building another one of my own this April 1st!
On the gamedev front, I’m quite happy with how things are progressing. Here’s a snapshot of my todo list:
[x] Linear moving platforms
[x] circular/diagonal moving platforms
[ ] Slippery platforms
[x] Gamepads
[ ] Prevent getting stuck in objects
[x] Flying enemies
[x] Jump on enemies
[x] Projectiles
[ ] Checkpoints
[x] Buddy pickup/swap
[x] Buddy follow
[x] Parallax
[ ] Particles
[x] Climbing
[ ] Pause/Resume
[x] Conveyors
[x] Springs
[x] Jumping enemies
[x] Portals/Pipes
The gif below shows most of these things, but it’s a bit hard to do a clean run through at the moment, with bugs and whatnot.
Maybe I should start recording some devlogs to really capture the process and progress.
The current artwork is all placeholder. I’ve created more physical assets for some of the environment doodads, but I reorganised my workspace recently and my camera gear is packed away. It’s on the list…
I like it!
I think I could get used to GameMaker. It’s a little bit quirky when it comes to the scripting, but for the most part it’s great.
Today I spent some time on camera and player movement and I’m happy with the results (especially the camera).
It’s Not Even April 1st
…and yet here I am announcing that I’m switching engine again.
Fortunately it’s not back to a custom built one (as tempting as it may be), but this time it’s to GameMaker.
I must have first used it back in 2005 or so and here I am, 18 years later, using it again 
Unity is good, but boy is it overkill for what I want to build. It’s a huge program that takes ages to load and has so many convoluted ways to do things that I thought would be easy. Maybe they are easy once you understand it all, but I just got frustrated.
I always wrote off GameMaker as amateur, and maybe it is a good choice for beginners, but I think it’s also very capable. As a solo developer with so much on my plate already I’m more than happy to use a simpler engine if it can deliver the result that I’m after.
It also supports exporting to consoles, which Godot doesn’t out of the box. And I don’t mind paying. I’m already investing time and money into the product, so I’m not going to be a cheapskate when it comes to the engine.
So I’ve spent a few hours with it today and set up a very basic prototype to see how it works, and I like it.
I may end up using Godot yet, who knows… 
Silicone Tests
So I’ve been pretty distracted over the last month, but have found a little bit of time to test out the silicone. See the nippl…hat below.
This was test to see if I can match the sausage’s clay colour (the clay is really dirty, which is another advantage of using silicone). This was a first attempt, just dropping in a few different colours and it seems to have worked out almost perfectly!
I’ve also got to try some armature related tests before I go any further with actual moulds for the game.
I’m really liking silicone! The colour, texture, strength and feel of it are really much more ideal to work with compared to clay (for animating. I still need to model with clay).
I might end up using it a lot more than I thought I would…
(The “hat” is a great stress toy…)
Toxic Mould
So I made a copy of the sausage model I’d been working with, set it in an A pose and baked it. I then had a go at making a plaster mould of it.
I first filled out around the model with clay and then poured in some plaster. I’m not really up to speed with mixing plaster, so I think it was too watery and the final result was crumbly in parts, but it held together well enough.
I finally got around to pouring in the other half today (a week or so later). This time I made a thicker mix of plaster, but it wasn’t enough and it cracked as it dried and so I had to break it up to remove it.
I also couldn’t remove the model from the other half without breaking it, and breaking a thumb off the model in the process. I’ll have to get some of that demould spray (not the one for the bathroom…)
It was a good test, but not useable in the end. I was actually surprised to see how much detail was retained in the plaster, like fingerprints, so I’m optimistic that future, more careful attempts might work out.
I’ll try out making silicone and resin moulds too, and go with what works best. I couldn’t find any information about making a mould out of resin, so that might fail completely.
Using plaster would be ideal, as it’s the cheapest of the lot.
Anyway, no silicone puppets to play with this week, but I’m a bit closer.
Biting Bullets
So there I was, all excited about getting started on my animation exercises… I created a little character (see below) and started with a walk, but then the legs weren’t staying straight, the body wasn’t staying in the right position, things were moving after I posed them, the usual.
So of course, I need to make an armature. Well the armature wasn’t cooperating with the plasticine.
So I guess I’ll use sculpey instead and bake it, but yet again the results weren’t what I was after…
And so there I was, faced with a reality that I (for some reason) chose to ignore when initially researching and planning the project, but is now obviously and abundantly clear: I need to use silicone puppets.
In the making of Skullmonkeys they talked about their process - modelling in clay and casting to silicone. I didn’t think it was as authentic as clay, and so I ignored it and now I feel a bit silly.
So the good news is that I still get to create the clay models, and when it comes time to animate them I won’t go insane.
The bad news is that there’s another, somewhat complicated step, and I’ll need to paint the models.
This sort of thing has happened several times with the project, and each time it’s a little bit painful but ultimately a huge relief.
