December Adventure

Posted on November 30, 2025

Day 11 - 15

My adventure took a fun but unexpected pivot towards real-life, so put this on hold for a bit.

The rest of this week and next weekend will be filled with the expected interruption of moving, primarily in terms of packing. Ideally will pick up this project again next week.

In the meantime I've been thinking about the character in this game. It might make more sense (from a practicality standpoint and a lore standpoint) for this to be a "city" under construction. Our character could then be a component of the city that's making it's way to it's spot. This could explain why large chunks of the area are off limits / out of bounds for the player.

I'll continue to think on this.

Day 10

Woo day 10! Idk, this game doesn't look 1/3 done, even though this month is.

Of the systems need to understand and make work, I have:

• camera
• lighting
• geometry
• enough character movement for a walking sim

And still need:

• sound
  • effects
  • music
• character
  • design
  • feel
    • better jumping
    • better sprinting
• world
  • moving bits
  • reactionary bits
  • the actual build out of the city

I think to trim everything, this may become a walking sim. I've been enjoying the planning and building this world. May swap to 1st person if I can't get a character design working that "fits" the feel. I see why NaissancE was first person, no way to make a character that fits that world and mine is (hopefully clearly) inspired a lot by that game aesthetically.

Day 9

Today spent a bit of time laying out the city at a very high level.

Did this up in TLDraw, then exported as svg. There are some limitations with using svg's in Godot, but for being an outline to fill in this has been working out fine.

It is going to be a lot to fill in, so may need to limit scope down and pick a path or subsection to we'll be working through in this game. I would like the full city to be explorable eventually but its currently ~3500m^2, so there's no way that's going to get properly filled in with the detail it needs this month.

Day 8

Had some fun and made the car for the gondola transit system. Gave it some lights on the inside and everything.

I am realizing now that it is a pain to have the camera jumping when walking around in the car, so may have to rethink/adjust some things in that regard.

I am also a bit concerned about the performance concerns that could come form relying on tons of shapes. But that's a problem for later me.

Day 7

D&D night! My gnome bard continued his adventure, and otherwise I went for a longer run with more sunlight today and did not do much else.

Didn't get much time in on the game today. Did confirm that you can build basic interiors like I wanted by adding boxes that subtract. Functions similarly to Unreal Engine, which makes it intuitive for me, and hopefully cover enough of my 3d modeling needs.

Day 6

Today I:

• Went for a short run
• Walked around downtown w/ friends
• Stopped by the library and checked out the roof which is available to the public apparently. Bit cold for it today and not a wild view in any direction but still was cool

Day 5

• Basic reusable pylon shapes made
• Basic menacing building in background made

This looks like progress but is effectively not much more than shapes on a screen.

What's cool is each of the pylons is a scene, so I can re-use them, and they can have their own logic running within them. What they need to truly work great is a bit of logic connecting them together in a chain. But that's more detail than we're going for here.

Still thinking through exactly what I want the path to look like, so no sketch of the layout today.

Looked a bit in to volumetric fog but that'll need more tinkering and research.

Day 4

Tired ramblings, but not travel induced this time and generally focused on planning out this game.

I'm not sure how weather should/would work in this world. Clouds, or at least Fog can form within large enough buildings but I'm not quite sure how the condensation could precipitate operate. For sure Details for later, but something to consider when working on laying it all out. (even if what gets built is all dry.)

But the layout itself, I'm thinking a sorta train station vibe. Well, more a cable car/ski lift/gondola based transit system. This will be heavily abstracted into hollow rectangle you can step into that moves ( ideally, it will start as immobile and just there for show ). But it should suggest the idea a gondola, and I should work on this instead of writing about it. So that I have a todo list:

• sketch what the entrance to this looks like, so that it can be built
• build a pylon that can be reused in places
• build some super basic building off in the distance (literally a rectangle)
• look into fog area affects in Godot, so that the abyss below is an abyss below (maybe like day 28 of drawtober)

In terms of gameplay, descending down into a city below to make your way to the top of that tower sticking up out over the mist would be cool, and a clear target to aim for. That would require building a large portion of a city. Let's start with the building you start in and fill in the gaps to get to the building you're aiming for.

Day 3

Travel day: travel rambles!

• Would have been yesterday, but weather got in the way
• Flying is always fun, but I am exhausted so not squeezing in technical work today
• Packing a Penny board for the flight back has been surprisingly fine, no concerns from security (Which I guess why would there be?). Not useful for the small airport I've been sitting at though.

I think the architecture of airports could be a good source of inspiration for some of the building in the game. Lots of fun hallways and several floor levels, with clear paths you should and some where you shouldn't go. Should have snapped some pics for reference. Maybe next flight.

While waiting for the flight I watched/listened to the Linus Torvalds interview on LTT. Mostly it was just a fun video. "Do anything once", "Respond in 15 minutes or delete it" (for e-mail), and "If I knew how much work it would've been I wouldn't have done it" (re: starting the linux project) were some fun lines from Torvalds. Not quite words to live by but certainly fun words to consider.

Note from mid flight:

Once on the plane, if your phone charger doesn't work in the outlet immediately try again after take off. Don't just unplug from the phone. Unplug from the outlet as well and plug it back in.

Listened to the Cortex episode featuring Hank Green during the flight.

• It was good.
• I do not have as many or as varied of projects Hank Green.
• I think I could do with a bit more of that kinda chaos.
• Bonus section at the end, with more John Gruber. It was also good.

Getting off the last train home I got to use the penny board. I think it halved the time it would've take to walk from the stop, saved a whole 3 minutes maybe. It was a blast.

Only had the energy for listening to stuff today, no mid-travel tinkering. Collapsing now that I'm home.

Day 2

Getting over a light cold tonight, fixed the image that was posted yesterday so that it shows up correctly. I think that's enough for tonight.

Day 1

Dinked around a bit with stuff in the engine. Been using a premade 3d character, and am working on adjusting that a bit. The 3d model is a bit more detail than I'm ready to work with for the moment, so it's been swapped for a block.

Also featured are some cubes in the background from earlier tinkering.

Day 0

Welcome to my December Adventure Log!

Usually these are relatively coding related and focused on doing what you want and what you can. Eli has a more complete explanation.

My 2024 December Adventure was broad in scope and occasionally dubious of consistent coding, instead branching out into repair, musical noodling and compatibility ramblings. This was fun but also left the month feeling lacking on a concrete bit of progress on real projects.

This year I'll be focusing primarily¹ on building a game in Godot. A game should overlap many interests, so regardless of what I do it'll usually be moving the game forward. After some tinkering with the engine this November I'm feeling fairly confident going in, but I've never built a full "game" so we'll see exactly what shape this end result takes.