Sarah Hart

Software engineer by day, hobbyist game developer by night, currently playing with #SpriteKit and #GodotEngine. Mom of two and occasional half marathon runner.

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

Managed to release a new version of @BiteyTrees on this last day of 2020! Adding some new levels and such. It's been a crazy year in so many ways though, and not as productive as I would've liked on the #GameDev front - Here's to a better 2021 & good luck in all your endeavors 😇

[BiteyTrees @BiteyTrees]

#BiteyTrees has now been updated to version 1.4.0 on the App Store! Link: https://t.co/sCLv2mkDEf - This version features 9 additional levels along with a new type of obstacle (water) that blocks movement but not spells. #IndieGame #MobileGaming #iOSGaming #RPG

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

After a solid few months of neglecting my #GameDev hobbies, I've been feeling suddenly inspired to dust off this idea and try to make something of it. Maybe exploring some kind of "merge things" mechanic, which seem to be pretty popular and engaging... https://t.co/w8YWf7JOvb

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

Still slowly planning out my next game -- I mentioned wanting to explore the monster catching / virtual pet genre, and sketched out this concept where you can evolve a critter into many different forms via a branching evolution tree. What do you think? #GameDev #MobileGames

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@endavid It's weird how smoothly it went from "maybe a month or two" to "probably forever" 😆 Working from home has its perks of course, but I do kinda miss seeing coworkers in person and the daily walk to the train station etc. at times

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

It's weird looking back on this tweet... Almost 15 months later I'm still working from home, with no end in sight, even though everything's starting to open back up. I suspect a lot of companies are questioning the value of making tech people commute to a physical office now...

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

So we'll be bunkering down for a while due to #Coronavirus - our offices have been told to work from home, and school for the kids is closing as well. It's going to be a weird few weeks, but hopefully these measures will lessen the impact and help save lives. Stay safe everyone.

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@Elmernite @Akien Thanks!! Yeah the "thickness" of the cards is something I might keep tweaking a bit more -- I did want them to feel a little more substantial (rather than completely paper thin), but probably not so chunky that they stop seeming like cards that could be stacked into a deck etc.

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

For this week's #ScreenshotSaturday, here is an attempt at a card flip animation I made for a 2D game in #GodotEngine, using sprite nodes and a skew shader to simulate a pseudo 3D-ish effect. What do you think? Any ideas for improvement and/or other approaches entirely? #GameDev

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@Farfalk @godotshaders Oh thanks!! I hadn't heard of the @godotshaders site before, but it looks supper useful and well-organized 😀 The skew shader I'm using for the card flip was actually mostly based on this Reddit post though: https://t.co/uYEYXDLkSh

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@brettkromkamp Thanks!! 😁

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@biruleke @Akien Thanks!! 😁 I was experimenting with rotating them a bit as they flip, but seemed to be ending up with much more noticeable jaggedy edges (I probably just need to figure out anti-aliasing or something for it though)

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@Jantho1990 Thanks!! 😁

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@PerardgayotDev @Akien Thanks!! That makes sense, I'll have to see about tweaking the animation speed and possibly softening the edges 😄

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@xphere @Akien Thanks!! It's only been pretty recently that I've started exploring shaders, but it's almost magical how much they can do haha 😆

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@RightAngleGames Aww thanks!! The whole thing is mixed in with a big messy project at the moment, but I should see about cleaning it up and making a dev blog post or something about it soon 😅

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

Latest post on the dev blog: A postmortem of a game jam I did a little while back, including the approach for generating & mutating 2D critters, inspiration on "evolution" themed games, & thoughts on short (weekend) vs. longer (2+ week) game jams:
https://t.co/EFYEE1uQzX #GameDev

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@balmut_ @aseprite Aww thanks!! 😁 Yeah I really enjoyed the cute / silly aspect of how these little guys turned out -- I had some ideas for gameplay mechanics to try to prototype with them, but that's on my ever-growing list of "ideas to maybe revisit someday" haha

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

After dabbling mainly in vector art for my various #GameDev endeavors up until now, I finally decided to try out @Aseprite have been taking a stab at making some pixel art! Here is my first super basic animation - I call these little guys "Blockomon" #ScreenshotSaturday #PixelArt

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@Vesuviian @BiteyTrees Cool! I've found Godot pretty intuitive coming from SpriteKit, as far as working with the node hierarchy and such 👍 And yep, I'm currently working on a "2.0" version of @BiteyTrees (partially for practice, but also to finally be able to release an Android version haha)

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

Managed to release a new version of @BiteyTrees on this last day of 2020! Adding some new levels and such. It's been a crazy year in so many ways though, and not as productive as I would've liked on the #GameDev front - Here's to a better 2021 & good luck in all your endeavors 😇

[BiteyTrees @BiteyTrees]

#BiteyTrees has now been updated to version 1.4.0 on the App Store! Link: https://t.co/sCLv2mkDEf - This version features 9 additional levels along with a new type of obstacle (water) that blocks movement but not spells. #IndieGame #MobileGaming #iOSGaming #RPG

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@lukehollenback Thanks!! Yeah I've definitely been enjoying working with it 😁

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

Playing around with creating a mini HP meter in #GodotEngine, and using the GDScript "exports" feature to get controls to view and edit properties in the editor - Super handy feature that I probably haven't been making use of well enough before now 😆 #GameDev #ScreenshotSaturday

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@viiiiiiibe @Akien Oh yep, it's an option in the engine! Under Editor Settings -> Interface -> Theme -> Preset, I have it set to the "Light" option (although I was using Godot for probably about a year before I realized that was a thing, haha)

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@lentsius_bark Ah thanks! It probably took around a month to get used to it (way back in 2005 or so) -- The original motivation was just stumbling upon an article from someone who had switched and liked it, and I almost immediately found it to be way more comfortable / less strain than QWERTY

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

I thought it would be fun to look up the #DvorakKeyboard hashtag, and found that it has like 6 posts over the past year - so I am pleased to now join this tiny exclusive Twitter club, haha

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

So it turns out that the Dvorak keyboard cover from @KBCovers ("Apple Magic Keyboard" style) fits perfectly on a @System76 Lemur Pro if you just cut out the part with the keys 😆😆 I'm ridiculously happy about this discovery after years of enjoying a MacBook with one of these

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@Vesuviian @BiteyTrees Aww thanks!! Building it with SpriteKit was a lot of fun, although it'll probably be my last SpriteKit game now that I've been playing with Godot Engine 😄

[Sarah Hart @devharts]

@joaomarinheiro LOL!! Yeah I get the feeling I'm in the minority on that front -- I like light themes for pretty much everything, and was super happy when I realized Godot Engine had one haha 😆