It’s been a while since I’ve last done a Ludum Dare. I felt the itch though, so let’s do it again.

Ludum Dare is an online event where games are made from scratch in a weekend. Check us out every April and October!

The theme this time: Keep it alive

I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way through or actually finish a game. But I’m going to give it a try!

Basic idea: smoosh together Tetris and a Falling Sand style game. I know that’s more or less what I did last time (and years before that), but it’s fun! And something I know.

Getting dynamic texture in Godot working from scratch proved to be interesting™. But I finally got something working:

extends Sprite

# The image size can be changed for various blocks in the editor
export var IMAGE_SIZE = Vector2(800, 600)

const IMAGE_FORMAT = Image.FORMAT_RGBA8
var rng = RandomNumberGenerator.new()

var my_image
var my_texture

func _ready():
	# Resize the sprite to our given size
	region_rect = Rect2(0, 0, IMAGE_SIZE.x, IMAGE_SIZE.y)
	
	# Create the image we will actually draw to
	my_image = Image.new()
	my_image.create(IMAGE_SIZE.x, IMAGE_SIZE.y, false, IMAGE_FORMAT)
	
	# Create a texture that the image will render to and that we can use on this sprite
	my_texture = ImageTexture.new()
	my_texture.create_from_image(my_image)
	
	# Lock the image, this has to be done to draw to it
	my_image.lock()
	for _i in range(1000):
		my_image.set_pixel(
			rng.randi_range(0, IMAGE_SIZE.x - 1),
			rng.randi_range(0, IMAGE_SIZE.y - 1),
			Color(
				rng.randf(),
				rng.randf(),
				rng.randf()
			)
		)
	my_image.unlock()
	set_texture(my_texture)

The main gotcha was reading through the Image documentation and finally finding the Image.lock method. Without locking the image, you cannot modify it. Doh.

So what do I have after a few hours?

Yeah. It’s not much. But it renders and you can use your mouse to move it around. And you can play with it in a browser if you want!

(Click the link to open it, click and drag to move it around. That’s really all it does…)

The ability to compile that to WASM and run it in a browser (even if it’s a bit hefty at 20MB) out of the box is pretty awesome.

Tomorrow:

• Make the tetris part work
• Make the falling sand part work
• …
• Profit?