tiniuclx

Factorio has got to be one of the best games of all time in my book, and it actually teaches a lot about software engineering, optimization, finding & fixing bottlenecks and dealing with legacy code.

Space Age introduces four new planets for the player to build on, space platforms acting as transportation between platforms and a quality mechanic which lets the player build better items by investing more resources into constructing items. We also finally get to play around with elevated rails!

Hah, I did not expect _this_ question! I've been playing the Stick since 2020. Most of my technique is self-taught, or based on the book that comes with the instrument, but I did take lessons with the late Greg Howard for a while

It doesn't play anything like a traditional guitar! Some of the shapes are the same on the melody side, but you're now tapping them with your right hand instead of fretting them with your left. In a lot of ways it's more like playing the piano than any other fretboard instrument.

Lately I've been performing in a band, where the Stick slots into the traditional 'bass guitar' slot. There the technique is quite similar, a lot of the time I am playing it exactly like a bass. However it has a much bigger pallette of sounds available to you: tapping the strings (instead of plucking) creates a much more aggressive & throaty bass tone. And at the same time you can very easily play broad, airy chords, or harmony & melody.

My only wish is that it came with a sustain pedal like the piano ;)

Thanks - it's good to know there really is demand for iOS!

Parts of Harmony Explorer are kind of still in the app to this very day, namely the modulo-12 arithmetic for notes. And once support for sounding chords is added, that will also be heavily based on how things were done in Harmony Explorer.

Godot is great for UI, mostly thanks to the editor itself being made in Godot.

I've written another blog post about this very topic: https://tiniuc.com/godot-for-apps/

Thanks a lot, definitely! Education would be a great usecase for this, as it is so easy to create charts on the go for students to play or practice.

My go-to for figuring out chords I don't know on guitar is Oolimo - I hope that suits your usecase.

Many thanks for your purchase!

Not at the moment, but a "Preferences" menu is in the works. This would be a great addition to that, alongside an option jazz notation and the like.

I haven't thought about that, thanks! I'll probably have to write my own NFC integration with Godot...

Yes you are right! I'll fix it straight away.

The transposition is correct because I used the app for it ;)

Thanks a lot!

You are already able to input inversions, using the Slash Chords feature. Once the sound engine is implemented, being able to hear the specified inversion will come for free.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep them in mind!

Not yet! That's a planned feature - chords will sound out when entered and when tapped within the chart.

Chord Chart Memo is much cheaper than iReal Pro, and it is laser-focused on making it as easy as possible to enter your own charts. Most apps on the market are designed for playing charts made by other people - Chord Chart Memo aims to serve musicians and songwriters working on original music which might not have a widely available chart online.

Chord Chart Memo is also specifically designed with the stage in mind: charts load quickly & work entirely offline.

A share button is pretty high on the priority list, as that's what musicians in bands would need the most.

As for libraries of charts, there are many other apps that do that very well already! I wanted to focus on fast editing of charts for musicians writing original songs, who are not really served that well by other apps at the moment.

Yes I have considered support for roman numeral notation! It would not be too hard to put the keyboard into a mode where roman numerals are displayed for the note keys & chart itself.

No sounds just yet - but that is a planned feature. The sounds of the chords will play every time a chord is input, and upon tapping any given chord, for feedbock.

Interesting suggestion about showing the note names that make up each chord! The data will definitely be in the app when sounds are added, I'll have to think about adding that.

Thanks a lot! Yeah, when I had the idea for the circle of fifths keyboard, I knew I just had to build it because it has so many benefits compared to the naive approach, especially when thinking "harmonically".

Yes, there are plans for an iOS version! Godot has native support for iOS, so it should be pretty much plug-and-play. I haven't done it yet because of the developer fee that Apple charges, and because I am mainly an Android user myself. If there is enough interest though, I'm sure my partner would let me borrow her Macbook & iPad in order to bring this out though :)

Unlike most other game engines, Godot has been designed from the very start to build a very specific application... The Godot Editor! Features for building the Editor have been added to the engine since the beginning of development.

Native file dialogs would be nice, agreed. Same for drag and drop support. The great thing about Godot is that it is, after all, "just" an open source application written in C++, and if someone wants to add support for this badly enough it is definitely doable, especially if you limit yourself to just one or two platforms.

As for menu bar, why do you think a native one in particular is better? Godot has great support for menu bars already, and I'm just not sure what the native one would add to the table.

Unfortunately I don't think this is great out of the box. Godot renders using very low level graphics API, which I believe would bypass any OS-level accessibility features. However there is work being done in this area, specifically for blind users: https://github.com/lightsoutgames/godot-accessibility

Yes! I was vaguely aware of a DAW project in Godot, just couldn't remember the specifics. A DAW seems like a fantastic application because Godot has great support for playing sounds thanks to being a game engine.

Already done so, but thanks!

I've written an article about why I think Godot is a good tool for general app development, not just for building games. The article talks about my experience working with Godot for a mobile app for musicians, as well as some insight from a WIP game project. At the end there is a list of other tools and applications that are built on top of Godot.

I hope you find it useful!

Frieren is a modern classic, with some of the best animation I've ever seen & deals with the themes of companionship and regret in a surprisingly mature way. It would be my recommendation for sure!

This is great news for the Open Source Godot game engine - Slay the Spire is a massive indie hit and the developers have ported the sequel to Godot after the recent Unity licensing fiasco.

If Slay the Spire 2 is even half as successful as the original, I think it's gonna be one of the most popular Godot titles ever launched.

Gathering requirement & making sure you are building the right thing will always be a tough & important task for SW Engineers, no matter how good language models get.

Given how extensive the latest wave of gamedev layoffs was, I'm worried that this is gonna impact game development going forwards. Many devs will just... not work on games anymore and find a more stable career, and those people will be out of this market forever.

Godot has very comprehensive GUI components. You're working with buttons, labels & windows, not at the rendering level (unless you want to!)

Here's an overview of what's available: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/ui/index.ht...

One of the great things about Godot is that the editor itself is a "game" running on top of the Godot game engine! This means that improvements to the Linux port will be noticeable in both published games and the editor itself.

As a consequence of running the editor, Godot also has great support for UI primitives, which I'm taking great advantage of in my own game!

I don't think it's as black and white as that. I'm not looking to take shortcuts, I'm looking to use the tools at my disposal to make a game that couldn't be otherwise possible.

On that note, the plan is to make certain icons & portraits on my own, in a consistent artstyle that's easy enough for me. Some assets will be purchased from traditional asset stores, while critical pieces of artwork such as the Steam capsule art will be commissioned. Chiefly I wanna use image generation for background images & pictures describing events - arguably not that important or up-front, so not a great use of artist time.

As a solo game dev, I'm quite happy with this change. I'm a programmer & musician by trade, art is definitely my weak point.

I don't think paying artists for their work is gonna go away any time soon, there's just so much that can't be done well by AI right now (UI, rigging, animation, particle effects). However I think allowing AI assets will enable many new types of games to be financially viable. Yes, that will include low effort asset flips, but I think it will also include unique games made by developers with a powerful, singular vision.