March 28th, 9:00 AM. D-Day. Mini-Project Day. Chris cracked his knuckles. "Alright, team. Let's make this character move."
Max, already caffeinated, was raring to go. "One scene, one sprite, arrow keys. Got it."
Tyrone, armed with his trusty spaceship sprite, smirked. "Let's make this thing dance."
They started by combining everything they'd learned. Tyrone's animated spaceship was dragged into a new scene. Max wrote the movement script, referencing his notes from Day 4. Chris set up the input actions, carefully naming them "move_left," "move_right," "move_up," "move_down."
The first attempt...wasn't pretty. The spaceship moved, yes, but it jittered across the screen like it had consumed five espressos.
"Whoa, easy there, little fella," Tyrone chuckled.
Max frowned. "Delta time...forgot the delta time." He multiplied the movement speed by delta, smoothing out the animation. Much better.
Chris added a Camera2D node, making the view follow the spaceship. "Now we're talking! Cinematic!"
Then came the "optional" interaction. They decided on a simple goal: a star that the spaceship could collect. Tyrone created a star sprite. Max added a collision shape to both the spaceship and the star.
"Okay," Max said, "now the tricky part. Detecting the collision."
He used Area2D nodes and the body_entered signal. It took a few tries, some Googling, and a near-despair moment when the star kept vanishing before the spaceship touched it.
"I swear, this star has a personal vendetta against spaceships," Tyrone quipped.
Finally, after much debugging (and a few accidental deletions of the entire star), it worked. The spaceship touched the star, and the star disappeared with a satisfying poof (a sound effect Chris found online).
By 9:00 PM, they had a "game." It was incredibly simple: a spaceship that moved, animated, and could collect a single star. But it was theirs.
"Behold," Chris announced, with a dramatic flourish, "The Wobbling Wonder!" (The spaceship still had a slight wobble when changing direction).
Max laughed. "It's...beautifully basic." He was proud of the working collision detection and the smooth(ish) movement.
Tyrone, ever the artist, was already thinking of improvements. "Needs more stars. And maybe some asteroids. And a cool background." He was content that, he manage to use all his visual skills element into this project.
Chris leaned back, a genuine smile on his face. "Seven days ago, we were staring at a blank screen. Now, we have...this." He felt they have good progress, for someone who knew nothinh about game dev, now able to create a basic interactive scene.
Max nodded, a little awe in his voice. "We actually made something. A working, interactive...thing." Max's review, he can now say that, he is now know, how game work from the very basic.
"We're game developers," Tyrone declared, with mock seriousness. "Beginner game developers. But still." He can now tell his friend and family that he know how to make a basic game.
They were tired, their brains fried, but undeniably proud. They'd taken their first, wobbly steps into the world of game development. And they were hungry for more. The Wobbling Wonder was just the beginning.