Devlog III

Hi guys I have done a lot these past few days including revamping the entire fishing mechanic and the first version of the inventory system.

Whats new?

Revamped fishing mechanic to be more sustainable for the future rather than what I used to have with the prototype

Fishing revamps include:

• actual list and data of fishes stored in fish.csv
• FIRST 25 FISHES!!!
• depth mechanic (more fish the deeper you go)
• revamped RNG mechanic and rarity of the fishes

Depth Mechanic

This has to be one of the first unique mechanics I have added in the game and definitely needs its own header just to talk about.

• This mechanic makes it possible for you to have progression in the game by going deeper to catch newer and exciting fishes!
• So far there are 3 levels for this mechanic: Shallow, Mid, Deep waters (might change names later idk, mid as a name is buns).
• You can catch all sorts of fishes depending on which level you are in.
• Here’s the catch: the depth level accumulate. Meaning if you want to fish in deeper waters you may also catch fishes in levels above it. This makes deeper fishes rarer despite having common fishes below.
• RNG mechanic is interesting because the rarity increases depending on the depth even if it were common. Meaning there are two things you have to keep in track to be able to catch specific fishes.

I also managed to create the first version of the inventory system! (and it saves too after you leave the game).

The inventory system includes:

• your very own inv.json file which is where your items and fishes stored in.
• a “add to inventory” function that can work for any category of items I will ad in the future
• a way to insert your catches and items inside the inv.json file. Technically creating the first version of saving in the game.

Those are the big chunks and I would like to add the small updates here too with little detail so skip if you’d like. and these include:

• RNG system uses the random library in python to keep track of which fish to take in rarity and which fish to take from the available scope.
• creating display.py which has the sole job to start the pygame display. This is then imported from game.py and menu.py. This overall makes the code not repetitive and circular import errors would happen less.
• removing a lot of the fishing action inside game.py making it cleaner. Moving all of it in fishingState.py where the action does begin.
• changed pygame’s time mechanics with python’s time library. This choice make’s it easier for development and faster when importing to the ESP32.
• inv.py and fishingState.py have their own function coordinator turning each python file into a clean puzzle piece that gets connected at the end. (it is also the function that will be called out in game.py and menu.py.
• fixed multiple bugs but ones I remember was the display, proper quitting in the state machine, setup for the UI in menu.py and cleaning.

During development

Its honestly just the usual… bugs because you misread something or because your logic turns out to be a fallacy.

Conclusion

I had so much things to say but it was all gone because of the body cap… I’ll just end it here. Goodnight.

P.S watch the vid on mute I had a lot of discord notifs, sorry.

Devlog II

I’m starting to get how to kind of devlog post… I think? It’s been a while since my last one anyway.

What’s new?

Fishing Mechanic that includes:

• x key for fishing
• RNG mechanic that includes 3 fish: minnow, shark and whatever this ><))*> is
• random time mechanic for wait time (the most weird one to code)

Since my last devlog was just about starting out and executing my idea now we finally have the game loop. Kind of. The game so far has the most bare bones fishing mechanic that runs on the terminal.

Most of the 8 hours and 40 minutes logged here is just debugging the entire thing. Pretty much the entire thing was a mess and I tried my best doing professional practices and keeping my code clean as much as possible…

During development

Like in my statement above when I first even started to add the mechanic I did not know the architecture. Maybe I should’ve asked AI for at least some suggestion but I went in head first and tried my best!

The entire thing was messy. I don’t know how to describe how messy it is, its messy. I had to keep rearranging functions, blocks of code from place to place. It’s like a puzzle that can fit anywhere. This is all in attempt to make it clean AND work.

I also had problems with using time.sleep() as it actually freezes everything rather than just stopping at one thing. I had to move to a different tactic where I count instead of how much time has passed rather than stop it.

The easiest problem I had was just organizing the code better. Especially for the menu script where it felt like HTML but on python so it was naturally bulky and difficult to keep clean.

My last problem that will continue to haunt my development is optimizing it for micro python and the esp32. The game as it is will not be able to run on esp32 so I had to ask AI for possible optimization in hopes it can be translated easier and less complicated. The only reason I have this problem is because I don’t have the hardware yet. I really do need to get it soon.

Conclusion

With all the bug fixes and organization that I did, my code is probably still not the best to look at… I hope to continue redesigning it to hopefully make it look clean. I also need to work on designing the architecture of this program.

The plan

Going forward this game will take a while to develop because of how actually big it is and my lack of experience in software to hardware.

SO WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? I’ll go make this project dedicated to the pygame version first. Afterwards, if possible with the time I will push through with the console.

That’s it for today have a great one.

Devlog i

I am pretty much new to creating projects in tech and this is my first devlog!!! I do not know how to write one and I barely read the guide for devlogs here in Stardance. Anyway, FishOS Minnow is one of the greatest ideas for creation I ever had. The idea of my weird interest and obsession with fishing; this device is a portable hardware console that you can fish passively on! Honestly, this is the idea that balances my cool unreachable imaginations and feasibility. I just started with projects and I’m pretty sure I can’t make an unmanned aerial vehicle for defence that can dive in and out of water that replicates the nature of flying fishes as a first project. Yes, this is a real idea that I spent a really long time consulting ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. They all said to not make this my summer project because I would probably not enjoy life, not have enough time and get hundreds of Rpi wet while still not making it take off. Maybe next time.

With all that Introductory yap done, trying to actually get started on making Minnow was a pain. I didn’t know how and where to start. I pressed play on the timelapse of lookout and spent 2 hours figuring out what to do… I had to first, actually figure out what I wanted to do, which I started with Wokwi, an simulator for ESP32 (The reason for using a simulator is because I don’t have hardware). I tried to start by installing the extension for Wokwi. Since I was on the free plan I had to type out the entire simulator… I had to ask from Gemini and overall it was a bad experience. Therefore, I decided to make the game through pygame first then translate it (AI recommended this because I couldn’t take it anymore). I opened up vscode and installed everything needed then planned everything out in Microsoft Whiteboard (the attachment below). The experience planning things out was amazing. I demonstrated my art and image editing skills as well as my out of this world organized mind through this. I truly hope all of you reading this (if there’s any lol), take that image to heart as that is the beginning. I started learning pygame right after and I admit to using a lot of AI to learn commands and concepts… I READ THE DOCS TOO BTW. The coding took like 2 hour and 20 minutes for the ui and selection cursor and 1 hour for the additional code for actually pressing the buttons and putting it inside a repo. Other than that I made a Main Menu screen! Yay. 

This is embarrassing to say that I used ai and still took 3+ hours for coding but I learned a lot and victory still felt like victory. I learned a lot of things in python like how to import variables and functions from other files and how to avoid making an error due to using those variables and functions… Either way, it was a fun first day. I hope I can actually complete it.

P.S holy yap, cheers to whoever actually read all that. I’m so sorry, I’ll make the next one shorter.