Getting the Godot Groove on

Every month the Godot Game engine meetup hangs out at the Noisebridge hackerspace in the SF Mission. We meetup a lot online, but after COVID there's something to be said about hanging out in person with other humans in the flesh.

We sat in one of the focus rooms full of hardware electronics everywhere around us. For this session I decided not to jump on my computer and code, although I have been having fun at hackathons and game jams at places like the MADE game museum in Oakland.

It was cool just hanging out and giving advice on how to design menus for Chrisknyfe's Flying Islands game! I liked talking about things without having to communicate with each other through a computer screen. I like and dislike how my entire social life is in little chat bubbles 99% of the time.

And even though we didn't use the white boards at Noisebridge this time, it's so cool to have whiteboards nearby.

A lot of the Godot in-person meetup is about moral support. It reminds me of having an artist's painting studio when I lived in Berlin, and helping other people overcome writer's block. Sometimes people are their own worst critics and it's great to encourage others that stuff is really great!

Something that's true in music, art and film is also true in game development programming - the last 10% of a project takes up 90% of the time.

hackerspace serendipity

Some kids were playing music next door, so we told them it ruled as they spilled out into the hallway when they were finished.

"Would you like to compose some game music for us for our games? We're not famous but maybe someday we can make you famous!" Just kidding!

The kids gave us their contacts and hopefully some cool music collaboration can rock our games.

Chloe from Scuppercut studios was working on algorithms for her DNA sequencing game CODON. A cool mathematician visiting from the Midwest wandered by and said he could help refactor stuff. Another good reason to hang out at a hackerspace. You never know who's going to stop by and what random encounters you'll have.

Godot's Design Philosophy

We talked about the way Godot embraces object-oriented programming, a little unfashionable in the tech world. However, life is a palette of grays, right?

"Object-oriented design can be such a dirty word but it can be done properly if used gently," chrisKnyfe said. So true!

I'm always impressed as well at how these large open-source projects are able to get so many different kinds of people all over the world to work together. It's hard enough doing it at work, but when everyone is a volunteer and everyone is especially passionate, you have to be super great at consensus and people skills!

As someone who's beginning to learn Godot, it's nice to take a 10,000 foot view of how the code is structured. I haven't even begun to check out the 3D version of Godot, and it's awesome to see how creative the community is since there doesn't seem to be a "Godot" look and feel across all the games made on this open source game engine and most work comes off as unique.

game design is hard

Game development isn't 100% about programming believe it or not. I personally find game design extremely difficult, and we spent some time talking about cool games we've seen, ChrisKnyfe mentioned Picross.

hackerspaces are for making friends

Afterwards the merry crew had dinner together, Senegalese food at the Bissau Baobab down the street from Noisebridge. While online meetups are great, there's something special about meeting in person. We even snagged the cool mathematician visiting from Chicago and made some cool connections, giving advice on where to live if they want to live in San Francisco.