CodeWare

This marks v1.0.0! This is my FINAL devlog for CodeWare (at least the first ship)! It has really been a great project that has significantly pushed what I think about my development capabilities. But I will explain that more in the ship message!

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The main change made over the time of this devlog was a complete revamp of the README! Here is a summary of the changes made to it:

• The following shields have been added: Play on GitHub Pages, Made with Godot, GitHub Release (version number), and GitHub Commit Activity
• The hero image near the top of the README, depicting the title screen, has been replaced with a gameplay video for the game, with a hero of minigame 6 (Unintelligent Arrows)
• The minigames section has been moved to near the bottom of the README to make the start of the README a better hook. And the minigame descriptions and hero images inside the section have been put inside a spoiler notice, so the game can not be easily spoiled for players. And the hero images in the minigame section have been converted from Markdown tags to HTML tags in order to enforce a specific width.

This will be one of my very last devlogs before I ship CodeWare! I just created the gameplay trailer, which is a huge accomplishment!
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This is my first time making any sort of video for anything I make in the computer world, and I think it actually turned out very well!
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The video shows potential players what the game will look like and gives a glimpse of its unexpected win-and-lose endings. I also put the video on the game’s Itch.io page, which will be made public very soon.
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You can view the video on YouTube here: CodeWare - Official Gameplay Video

I just created the twelfth mingame of CodeWare, “Catch the Falling Orbs!” In it, you have 45 seconds to catch 35 falling orbs by moving left and right with your keyboard.

In the Newspaper department at my summer sleepaway camp this year, they always said, “If the number is less than 11, spell it out.” CodeWare has officially surpassed this guideline in the number of its minigames.
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Minigame 11 of CodeWare is titled “Type the Strings,” and players must type 15 five-character strings provided to them in less than one minute. The string is generated from a pool of characters with lookalikes (i.e., Z and 2, S and 5, O and 0, I and l, etc.) removed to ensure it is completely fair for the user.
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This was definitely one of the easier minigames to code, but it wasn’t the easiest thing ever. I still ran into some issues, like the vertical alignment of a RichTextLabel being a bit too low when dynamically updating its content in GDScript to show a custom notice to the user (I fixed it by changing it to a normal Label, after troubleshooting for way too long).

I just did a lot of asset updating and linting!
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The part I think would be most interesting to you is obviously the asset updates. I changed the assets in Minigame 1, 3, 4, and 9! I also updated the gallery, accessible in the extras menu, to include new assets I’ve forgotten to put in there for a while now. I’ll just show you how minigame one looks now; no need for a detailed explanation of everything.
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Now, I have to address the boring part, which took most of the three and a half hours. That would be linting! It’s pretty self-explanatory: I went through and made the scenes and scripts adhere to style guidelines.

I just made the tenth minigame for CodeWare! It is named “RGB Skills.” In the minigame, there are two colors: one generated automatically by the code, and one controlled by manual RGB Sliders.
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It validates the user’s guess using the GDScript method Vector3.distance_to(). The method uses the 3D Pythagorean theorem to calculate the Euclidean Distance between the RGB values, as if they were plotted in a 3D space. This works because the red value represents the x-axis, the green value represents the y-axis, and the blue value represents the z-axis on a 3D graph. This was very interesting for me to discover, since I only learned the 2D Pythagorean theorem last year (in seventh grade).
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The game also starts the sliders at the furthest possible points from the target color, which makes the minigame harder. If the player clicks the submit button without making any changes, they will not pass. And yes, I know they could easily invert the colors to find the right one. The only thing is, they probably didn’t read this devlog. So, they’ll have no clue of the fact the sliders were placed at the inversion of the target color.

I just made the ninth minigame for CodeWare, “The Maze!” In the minigame, the user needs to get to the center of the maze in less than 18 seconds! They move a mini tyleruploads texture with arrow keys and WASD to eventually get to the bigger one in the middle!
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I had a lot of trouble with physics here, hence the 2 hours! And, I’ve never made any sort of maze before, so this is a first!

I just made version v0.14.0 of CodeWare! In this version, I added the eighth minigame, “Choose the Boxes!” The user has 30 seconds to choose 20 boxes by clicking on the one matching the color of the center box.

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I also went through and removed unnecessary log statements and unused variables.

I just released version v0.13.0 of CodeWare! In this version, I have completely changed the sound environment of the game! I will explain it with two basic pseudocode (or Python) logic statements!

prev_sound = sound in v0.12.0
curr_sound = sound in v0.13.0

print(prev_sound, curr_sound)  # False, True

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that there was absolutely no sound before, and now there is! There is a background ticking noise playing (forever) through an autoload and sound effects corresponding to in-minigame events.
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Feel free to test it at https://tyleruploads.itch.io/codeware?secret=CDZUB2MTxYCmNQ70VRagItDLSTg! Send any feedback in the comments!

I just made two new assets for CodeWare! They are the players in minigames 4 and 6. Here is a photo of one of them.

After receiving feedback from the Hack Club community, I have made these changes to CodeWare.

• The icon has been updated to increase contrast and to look better at small resolutions
• Minigame 6, “Unintelligent Arrows,” has been balanced to be easier for users to complete
• WASD Movement has been added to all games
• Support for held jumps has been added to the first minigame, “Orb Collection Platformer”
• An ambiguity in the README about the objective has been corrected

I just balanced minigame 6, “Unintelligent Arrows,” after feedback from Hack Club members. I made users have more time to react before getting hit by the arrows. I have not released this update yet; once I apply some other suggestions from the community, I will release it as v0.11.0.

I just created the sixth minigame, “Unintelligent Arrows,” in CodeWare! In the minigame, users have to dodge countless arrows that are described as unintelligent purely based on their inability to change paths once shot. If you weren’t already guessing, I am planning on making an intelligent-arrow-themed minigame in the future, possibly inspired by 1948 in some ways.
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This game is actually getting nice and long, way longer than I thought it would be at the start. When I shared it with people a while ago, it was very short. Now, it’s decently long! Once I add a lot more minigames, I will consider making them go in random order and giving them difficulty tags to determine when they should be shown.

I just completely refactored, everything!
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I made many new directories in order to organize the entire repository much better! This took an hour because of the debugging and other related changes to the code associated with a complete structural refactor. It definitely was not a calm, easy hour.

I just added two minigames to CodeWare!
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The first minigame I just added, minigame 4, titled “Dodge the Flying Balls,” has users dodge flying balls (referred to as meteors in the code) for 45 seconds. Each hit takes away 10% of the user’s health. It can actually be pretty hard. A good strategy to stay alive is moving from side to side and never stopping, because there are really fast ones that come before you can even react.
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The second minigame I just added, minigame 5, titled “Click Very Fast,” has the user click on a big circular button in the middle 100 times in less than 20 seconds. I have tested it many times, and it is just the right time (at least for now).
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You can play the game at https://tyleruploads.github.io/code-ware/

This is a short one! I just integrated it with the Itch.io Butler API, so it will automatically update its Itch.io game whenever I make a new release! Currently, it is a draft on Itch.io.
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You can view the draft at https://tyleruploads.itch.io/codeware?secret=CDZUB2MTxYCmNQ70VRagItDLSTg.
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Sometime before I ship, I will make the Itch.io page public, which may bring in some players.

I just put CodeWare on GitHub pages! You can view it at https://tyleruploads.github.io/code-ware/!

I also upped the time for a minigame after a web playtest determined the amount of time given was not enough to complete the task at hand.

I just added the third minigame to CodeWare! It is titled “Hit the Circles.” In the minigame, you start with a balance of -15, and each circle you hit, you get +1 balance! It is kindove like Whack-a-Mole (don’t sue me Mattel.) This marks version 0.6.0 of the game!

I just made some nice changes to CodeWare!
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I added pause, unpause, and reset functionality. This was in the README as coming soon for a while.
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I relocated script locations and removed ambiguity from a script named ‘self_timer.gd’ by renaming it ‘minigame_1_timer.gd,’ which makes it not look wrong when next to ‘minigame_2_timer.gd.’
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And, I added the version number to the title menu!

Wow! 8 hours is a lot of time! Here’s what I did!

1. Create all new assets. I made a new icon and background for the title screen and both minigames. The icon features an infinity symbol cut in half but connected with the parts in between them in a bit of a 3D-like arrangement, symbolizing two sides of eternity connected by small paths. The first minigame background and the title scene background contain a mountain range, a sunset, and one or multiple bridges. The second minigame background is two eyes in many perfectly aligned rectangles.

2. Make death scene. Previously, I only had a win screen in the game (a very anticlimactic one at best, in a purposeful way). Now, I added a death scene too! The death scene links with the idea of the two sides of eternity (or infinity) connected by a small path because the user is showed specific text by automatic vertical scrolling, then they click a button to get thrown right back to the first minigame, as if nothing happened. They can do this as many times as they want; the bridges between the two halves of eternity represented by infinity are very strong, the same bridges connecting the mountains.

3. Replace unused settings button with extras. The main menu used to contain a button labeled “Settings,” which would take the user to a blank scene with no way to get back. It has now been replaced with an “Extras” button, which contains an Asset Gallery that allows users to look at the beautiful game assets and obviously, a credits section.

4. Universal back buttons. Now, users can always get back to some point in the game (including the title screen), even if they are in the infinite end scene.

I JUST MADE THE END SCENE!

It is very complex. But, I can’t spoil it!

Here’s the code. It’s your choice to go line by line and spoil it for yourself.

Well, that was very silly. I spent 45 minutes adding automatic cross-compilation via GitHub actions! The main issue was: macOS! I now officially hate macOS.

I essentially spent 12 commits trying to fix macOS, and 1 commit removing macOS. The commits mentioning Windows or Linux? They were never the issue. It was only macOS. Heres my commit history for this devlog:

Add basic src/export_presets.cfg


 1 file changed, 431 insertions(+)
Make publishing workflow to compile


 1 file changed, 66 insertions(+)
Fix Linux export in export_presets.cfg to work with workflow


 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
Set project directory in workflow


 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
Remove export_path for windows in export_presents.cfg to fix CI/CD


 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
Hopefully fixes CI/CD


 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
Make macOS only support x86_64 to fix CI/CD issue


 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
Add bundle identifier for macOS (why does it have to be such a pain?)


 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
The mac strikes back: import ETC2 ASTC compession for macOS


 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
Add initial project import step to CI/CD


 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
Cd into src before initializing godot


 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
Remove cding into src and add export_templates_path


 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
The mac struck back yet again: emancipated


 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 4 deletions(-)

I rebased it to “Add support for every OS; remove support for macOS (it struck back, like starwars)”

This is going to be my second to last devlog before I ship, assuming everything goes well! In these two and a half hours, I did SO MANY THINGS!
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The most obvious change has to be how I added the second minigame, the clicker! In the minigame, you have 12 seconds to collect 18 tyleruploads circles! Each circle is randomly placed on the screen, which makes it so you can’t just memorize it!
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I also added a license to the project. It contains five sections for different types of content. And, I updated the SECURITY.md so it is completed.
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Another nice thing I added is action and description messages before each minigame. It tells the player what to do, so they aren’t losing any time when it starts! I also fixed the text it shows you when you win, before it takes you to the win screen I am going to make soon.
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I also revamped the README! It is way better now! Check out the README on GitHub if you want! I also set up and configured GitHub Discussions!

I just did some play testing, added some comments, and made a basic README! Nothing much!

I just created the basic blueprint for my very own WarioWare style video game, CodeWare! In CodeWare, you are playing as GitHub, and for the first minigame, you are trying to capture 7 of me (that’s just a nice image I had available—I might consider changing it later).
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The time constraints are actually pretty balanced, you’ll generally finish right in the nick of time. There is still a lot more remaining. The reason there was so much time in this devlog is because of error correction. This is my first time using Godot—everything’s not meant to be correct the first time around. A lot of the error correction was silly stuff like scaling, timer pixelation, text getting cropped off (without me knowing), and etc.
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You jump on those little box thingeys to get to the mini-mes in order to collect. In order to get to the one near the big wall barrier, you need to make a big jump from one near it (NOT TO THE RIGHT!!). And, once you go to get the last ones on the very right, there’s no coming out! Hopefully, you got the other ones first!