Despite a strong start time is already creeping up on me with the end of the challenge at the end of May. I actually have to go away before this so I have even less time. However I'm confident I can have a couple of playable levels.

Android

I managed to waste a week trying to convert the project to Android. Support for OpenGLES 2.0 is new in Godot 3.1, and well, it's a bit flakey. This is not entirely Godot's fault, the GLES2 scene is a nightmare in general I know from writing GLES2 code.

The problem is mostly down to a lack of standardization in what features devices will support, and bugs in the devices and drivers. Really they should have standardized a number of tiers for GLES2 devices, and mandated support for certain elements in each, and had rigorous testing. But instead, the situation is like the wild west, with devices picking and choosing features to support. This makes development and testing a nightmare.

So my current situation I have an Android phone which Godot doesn't support at all (too early Android version, godot had to update the signing method, something to do with security at google play not allowing older APKs), and on my tablet, I can run the game up until a skinned character appears on screen and then it crashes. The godot skinning method is not supported on all devices.

Open source of course means that the onus is on ME to fix these bugs .. and I have Godot compiling in QT Creator and the export templates, but clearly a significant investment in time will be necessary to be able to fix such things in the renderer. Unfortunately the core team don't seem to be working on ES2, perhaps more working on Vulkan now. That would be one thing I have noticed about the Godot project, is that there is a lot of effort towards implementing new features, however some would argue that bug fixing should take greater priority. This is perhaps a feature of open source, where people will work in preference on interesting new features rather than boring bug fixes.

Anyway I have decided fixing Godot has to take a back seat for now and I am concentrating on getting working gameplay.

Some things I have been working on:

• Improved terrain rendering / collision
• Procedural level generator
• Artwork for platforms, health and fuel generator platforms
• Camera improvements

I still haven't decided on the objective for completing the levels. It may be just crossing from A to B, or it may be transporting an item with the tractor beam. Or destroying a certain number of things .. perhaps I could have varying requirements on different levels.

I'm not sure what is going to happen on the artwork side, it depends how much time I have. Ideally I'd like to create a full set of specific space models, but if no time I can reuse some of the frogger ones.

Once again, 3D Paint is proving awesome on the artwork creation front. I must get around to making some windows builds.