True! I'm certainly not the first. But compared to music, film or traditional art, there is definitely a deficit of Christian artist in games.

@@SDGGames true get to work next we need more Christian writers Especially in Horror Genre

I don't think violence and sexuality are fundamental to interactive digital media any more than they are fundamental to film. Video games are still in their infancy, and there are still many undiscovered genres out there. 4 of the top 10 best selling games of all time are fundamentally nonviolent. Cozy games are also a rapidly growing genre right now. There are a ton of possibilities beyond oversimplified puzzle/logic games. With that said, I don't have a problem with violence in the right context. I love what C.S. Lewis and Tolkien did to literature in their time. Their stories contained violence and conflict in service of a greater narrative. I want to play games that explore Christian faith like Narnia or LOTR did, and I don't believe that I'm the only one who feels this way. My concern right now is that "Christian Games" become limited to "experience the Bible" simulators, and we don't ever engage the art form in a more substantial way. There is so much to be discovered in this space, but someone has to take the first step.

>4 of the top 10 best selling games of all time are fundamentally nonviolent yes, but none of top 50 has anything to do with any religion(it may have with myths/old beliefs) I'm just trying to say that some people (excluding me) may find this topic controversial or blasphemous Looking forward to see some devlogs, hopefully soon

​@@markfaine2169 >Anyway I didn't see any "Buddhist"/"Muslim" or any other religions based games - imo its bc no one wants to hurt feelings or something, dunno... No. It's because most people are not fkin Buddhist or Muslim, lol. Even in a large country like USA, which holds 345 million people. Only 1.1%, which is ~3.79 million are Muslim. Let's look at statistics (all public!): 44% are aged 18-29, 37% are aged 30-49, 13% are aged 50-64, 5% are aged 65 and older. 23% of Muslims in the U.S. are under 18. So out of 3.79 we take out 23% -> 2.92 million. We then take out people from ages 30-65+, since they most likely won't play games -> 1.28 million people that *might* play games. Out of that. Stats says "62% of US adults are gamers" -> 794 thousand. Out of that (according to Statista): 33% play exclusively on mobile, 8% exclusively on console, 4% exclusively on PC. So we take 33+8=41% out of that, since those indie "religious" games most likely won't be ported LOL as it costs thousands. So we end up with 468 thousand potential pool of Muslims that are gamers and play on PC. You might think it's big, but it's a very small number comparatively... Vampire Survivors with 230k reviews is assumed to have sold on average 8.1 million copies. ULTRAKILL with 113k copies sold 1.5 million copies (assumed). Obviously it's, because of the price range. VS costs like 5$ (1$ on discount), ULTRAKILL costs 20-25$ (13$ on discount). These games are like HUUUUGE, massive successes everybody heard about. Ok. And they have huge pool of players to draw from. Religious game will most likely only relate to Muslims in the West. SINCE NOBODY ACTUALLY KNOWS OR UNDERSTANDS ISLAM ENOUGH TO RELATE TO IT. Buddhism is even more esoterical to most people, as it's non-dualistic Asian philosophy, while Islam has the "monotheistic-abrahamic" model. So how many copies can they sell... 10k? That is like the biggest pull they can have probably... The Buddhist game can probably pull like 2.5k copies sold, which is similar to a goofy game like 'Unicycle Pizza Time' made in 1 month that earned 100 reviews... The pull of Christians is substantial, as most of Western world recognizes the themes like Adam&Eve, Satan, temptation, Kain&Abel, and so on. All those main-stream stories that permit the culture on a shallow level and also seep through art on a deeper level. I never in my life heard about things like "Iblis" or "Al-Masih ad-Dajjal" (which is like a one-eyed anti-christ figure). I had learned those things on my own, because I looked them up, as I have an interest in philosophy, languages, religions, cultures, etc. Interest in "Humanities". According to some polls in 2021, there is like 63% Christians in USA which is 210 million. I don't want to re-do the calculations, but obviously it's 100x bigger. Unless what do you want to create...? Some hate-based games where you murder Muslims...? Is this your insinuation with the "oh my gosh, nobody wants their feelings hurt". In a fashion of: "HURR DURR NOBODY WANTS TO INSULT LE MUZLIMS, BUT WE CHRISTIUNS ARE SOOO OPRESSED!!!". Like you know Christians are such a "hard guys". I don't understand the moronic, paranoid psychosis of Christians that constantly feel persecuted. Christians are such a weaklings with a victim mentality. Like, dude... You live in a mostly Christian world, where most references are to christian culture or Bible or whatever. My country is literally run by a corrupt Catholic church for decades. Same probably goes for USA that has some deep ties with various religions that hide hundreds of thousand sexual abuse cases. So yes, YOU WILL GET CRITIQUED THE MOST. THERE IS LIKE... There is 1.6 million declared Buddhists in Europe. How many of these are hipsters? And how many of them play games? Hmm? Not much... 4 million declared Buddhists in USA. That is absurdly low number. I've never met a Buddhist in real life, only through watching interviews in my country. So how can I EVEN ARGUE OR DEBATE BUDDHISTS IF THERE IS LIKE 300 OF THEM AND THEY ALL SECLUDE THEMSELVES IN TEMPLES? If we take USA+Europe we have over almost 1 billion Christians vs 54 million Muslims. Wow... That is 18.5x more... IN LATIN AMERICA THERE IS 586 MILLION CHRISTIANS VS 890 thousand MUSLIMS!!!! That is 658x times more!!!!!!!! Most Muslims are in Asia-Pacific & Africa, which does not speak English. Does not care about Western world and they don't have a strong "game developer" or gaming community. If you watch documentaries or go there, you can see that they have like old consoles or some old classic games - when speaking of mainstream. The richer ones probably play Candy Crush on mobile. They don't play GTA or Assassin's Creed lol. So making "religious games" is like shooting yourself in the foot, while you try to make a living and survive... So... No, bro. It's a simple matter of "supply & demand". Overall there is no demand for "religious games" and when you pull from a pool of 6 million Buddhists vs 1 billion... There is a big difference. And even then... Most Christian games are just defrauding schemes for government aid & scam schemes. These games suck and treat themselves too seriously or "piously". They treat those games as "edutainment" instead of ENTERTAINMENT. Games are for ENTERTAINMENT. Nobody wants to "educate" themselves on religion or Bible through games, if somebody would want to... THEY CAN PICK UP THE BIBLE. That is why there is no games about engineering or relative physics or programming or something else. Because "edutainment" doesn't really work or attract enough people to warrant spending so much time and development costs on making the game. Also I don't consider games like "Poly Bridge" games about engineering lololo, those are like silly games you play for fun, not to learn anything useful. As to successful Christian game... FAITH:UNHOLY TRINITY has 5.7k reviews and 185k reviews. Is this some lame boring game about Jesus? No. It's about shooting demons and some satanic cults. Oh my gosh so blasphemous. But this game actually discusses and philosophizes about topics like "faith" or "losing faiths", "evil in the world" and so on. But is FAITH "edutainment" that teaches you some parables or whatever? No, not directly. But it's through exposition. There are some experiences that are meant to evoke or make you re-evaluate your Christianity.

The sliders are just a vector3 and are pre-normalized. Once I have my numbers I want, I normalize this (make it length of 1), and build a new quaternion in global space using Quaternion(ijk, w). I then apply it to the box when I'm ready to rotate. I, J, and K are aligned with the X, Z, and Y axis in world space.

Thanks! That was a fun one :)

Honestly, I would love to do a colony sim in the vein of the C.S Lewis Space trilogy. Right now, I'm doing a simple game with a Subnautica style story - again set in the age of space travel. In the medium term, I do want to explore parables, so I'd be doing all sorts of time periods, characters, etc. A few of those might be entirely fictional worlds with non-human protagonists.

@@SDGGames Awesome!

Yeah, I'm still figuring out a lot of details, but I definitely want to start collaborating more and more. Right now, the best place to connect is Discord (I have a link in the video description), but I have email, etc. too if you want to connect that way. My current project is a short game I'm trying to complete in 3 months. I'll be posting updates as I go

That's a good point about hedonism. I think that the taboos of the 90s played a large part in the way the industry grew. It's almost impossible to make art if you don't value the medium, and the "games are evil, but I should make one so my kids have something to play" approach results in a mediocre product at best. I love games, and believe that they have great potential. I think that great artists see the best in the art medium, and use their tools to make something beautiful, regardless of what others are doing.

Thanks!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thanks, I initially recorded a much longer video, but decided to shorten the announcement for now. Mainly, a lot of prayer :) I accepted a call to full-time vocational ministry 13 years ago, and have been looking for my place to serve ever since. The past 5 years have been a slow process of me falling in love with this industry and deciding to work here. A major moment for me was the failed launch of No Man's Sky. People weren't just looking for a game, they were looking for a better world than this one. I saw the desperation amid the hype, and wanted to make a game that pointed toward Heaven. No game can be the destination itself, but games can a sign that points to real sources of hope. I've been giving each year a theme in my end-of-year review videos. 2024 is my year of completion, and I secretly hoped that it would mean I go full time, though I didn't tell anyone (even my wife 🤪). I've been praying over the industry, but I started praying for my place in it more and more, and eventually started fasting "until I'm a full time Christian game developer." 1.5 months later, I was laid off. TL:DR, the decision made itself once I was let go. I already knew about the CLIMB program, so I signed up, and got funded. It's scary, but I keep reminding myself that my dad owns the planet, and the safest place to be is in the center of His will.

It's definitely an issue with the system, but I wonder how many teachers actually understand these concepts themselves. If you get a degree in teaching, then you will never have the practical knowledge that comes from using math in a career. If you get a degree as an engineer or programmer, then you can make at least 3X a teacher's salary by not teaching. I feel like schools should welcome retired professionals to help teach the advanced concepts. Most of my college professors had a lot of experience in the workplace, and it showed. They were 10X easier to understand than the math professor because they were able to go beyond the theory and root the concepts in real projects they worked on. All that to say, the system is broken, but I don't think it's malicious. Just underfunded and overregulated

I'm using unit tests for large or complex systems. While it's technically possible to test everything, I find things like player controller easier to just test manually. For systems with clear jobs (for example, saving and loading, or game state transitions), I write the unit tests first, then fill out the function so the test passes. For big, messy systems, I'll often do a prototype first, then re-make that particular system with a Test-Driven Development approach. I've found that it's quicker to throw away the prototype than it is to try to find and fix all of the bugs in a first draft

It's a hard balance to strike. If you re-invent the wheel, then the math people get upset because the function doesn't match reality. But, if you don't study the math, the game engine functions don't make much sense. I'm not sure what the ideal solution would be...

Thanks! I'll have to revisit those games again :)

Good question! A lot of the advice would overlap with advice for healthy communication in general. If she's really excited, share the moment. "I clicked on this rectangle and a text box appeared" sounds silly, but a lot of game development breakthroughs aren't glamorous. If she's stressed/self critical, offer encouragement. Sid Meyer talks a lot about the "Valley of Despair" partway through development. The game WILL suck, probably for a long time. It takes a lot of faith and determination to make it through that phase to the other side. When she's thinking critically and looking for honest feedback, give it. Specific things like "Did you notice that that text box isn't aligned" is 100X more valuable than the generic "Yeah, it looks good." I usually ask my wife for one positive and one negative. I want to know that she likes it, but I also want to make it better. Also, this is a later in development thing, but if you have the ability, you should definitely try to bring her game to life in some way. Physical memorabilia is just so special, even a card with a drawing of her character on it (or something similar) would be pretty magical. I designed my own channel logo, and I keep asking my wife to get an Etsy shop to put it on a hat for my birthday :)

Thanks for the pointers. I'm probably going to keep this as a debugging feature for now, so performance doesn't matter (as I can run in Movie Maker mode which ignores framerate). I'll have to look into RPCs more, though. If I need to squeeze more out of the feature, there are definitely a lot of tweaks I can make. It's pretty poorly optimized right now, but it works well enough for the applications

@@SDGGames that's very valid, an OK enough solution now is far superior to a perfect solution never :)

Eventually, I might want to try something like that. The game template is my working starting point, so I'm trying to only include addons that are useful for my next project. Right now, I'm primarily trying to finish and release a game. After that, I'll apply all lessons learned to the game template so I can skip as much boilerplate as possible for the next one. Eventually, accessibility features, mod support, etc. would be a part of the project. I would want to fully revisit mod support again in Godot 4, I feel like there might be a better solution than what I had for Godot 3. So, not today, but yes, eventually

They're just an animatable body, and I rotated them with the lerp function. The trick is that the object origin is exactly where I want the rotation to happen, so I don't have to translate anything, just rotate. I did link the source code in the video description, if you want to take a further look. It's under player_elements/flipper.gd

Yup, pretty much 😅

I think templeOS support is the number 1 priority for Godot's development team right now...