Barn Burner Devlog 1 - Faceoff!

November 5th, 2024

For those who don't watch hockey, the term barn burner is typically used to
describe a hockey game that is extremely high-scoring and fast-paced.
These types of games are quite enjoyable to watch as a neutral fan; lots of
goals, lots of hits, lots of fights and plenty of tension throughout.
But how do you replicate the feelings that these games can invoke within a
video game? That is what I set out to answer when creating Barn Burner.

Towards the end of July, I began teaching myself the Godot game engine through
a series of Youtube videos of varying quality and comphrehensibility.
While most of these videos were either too hand-holdy or hand-wavy, they did
slowly allow me to grasp the basic concepts of game development within
the Godot engine. Before long, I had created my very own pong game, a game
whose physics ended up forming the basis of puck movement in Barn Burner.

At the same time, I began to dive into the world of pixel art and Aseprite,
once again through a series of hand-holdy or hand-wavy Youtube videos.
Each day, I set out to create a new piece of art, whether it be a palm tree,
an apple or a katana. None of the early art I created was any good, but
creating it allowed me to learn important pixel art techniques such as dithering
and shading/anti-aliasing - techniques I am still improving upon to
this day.

With my newfound knowledge of Godot and Aseprite, I spent about a week creating
the alpha v1.0 version of Barn Burner. During this time, I worked on
implementing the basic features of the game that would allow you to play from
start to finish, albeit without many of the planned features I wanted
that would make the game more fast-paced and exciting; that is, make the game a
barn burner. Player and puck movement, score and time keeping, and an
overtime system were the main sections of code that I wrote. As for art, I kept
it simple as well, creating 32 sprites for the 32 playable teams in the
game, as well as some basic UI art like buttons, arrows and the game scoreboard.
In addition, my first ever animated sprite made it into alpha v1.0, in
the form of a goal light that turns on and revolves after a goal is scored.

After completing alpha v1.0, I admittedly lost my motivation for continuing to
work on the game, in spite of the countless features left unimplemented.
Thankfully, a few weeks ago, that motivation returned once again, and I began
to get to work on alpha v1.1. I decided that, moving forward, updates to
the game would be small, with only 1 big feature contained in each one, with
some smaller changes as well. That way, I could get updates finished more
easily, rather than falling into the trap of excessive scope creep. For 1.1, I
decided to work on a boosting mechanic, which has hopefully increased the
pace of games and the overall skill ceiling as well. With a boost meter to keep
an eye on and 5 controls instead of 4, it should be harder to master the
game than it was before, and I am hoping for it to translate into more
competitive games between opponents.

So what's next for Barn Burner? Staying on the theme of increasing the pace and
excitement, I am currently working on implementing power-ups that spawn
periodically throughout the game, giving players the opportunity to temporarily
buff themselves or debuff their opponent. Moreover, I am working to add
sound effects to the game, and revamp much of the art as well (primarily the
hockey rink design). I can't promise all of these will make their way into
alpha v1.2, and I also can't promise a release date for alpha v1.2 either, but
rest assured that... actually don't. I might just never finish.