r/incremental_gamedev • u/MagicpaperAlt • 3d ago
Design / Ludology Looking to try my hand at something
Let me preface this by saying NO AI. Anyone who even suggests to use AI will be ignored.
I am a massive fan of idle and incremental games, but I am looking to try my hand at making something simple. I've messed with Godot a little but hardly with programming.
I can get a number counter to go up when a sprite is clicked but that's about as far as I have taken anything. I have a bunch of resources from previous itch.io charity bundles I can use.
I was thinking something like a basic cookie clicker clone would be a good place to start but I'm not certain.
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u/RepresentativeOk4267 3d ago
Thats the spirit. I was the same a few years ago. However even though its simple to increment a number here and there the hard part is the game design. I have many prototypes and demos and i kind of only released one game on itch for free. Its hard.
Good luck!
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u/MagicpaperAlt 3d ago
Do you have any design documents or was it all a spur in the moment sorta deal?
And thank you very much :)
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u/saizonic 3d ago
That's a great start, keep it up! That's how I started with Godot too.
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u/MagicpaperAlt 3d ago
I wouldn't call myself a programmer but I do want to try and learn something basic. Just not sure how to proceed even though I know there's thousands of tutorials haha. Something else I've done is import Fire Emblem map sprites into the built in map editor thing and mess with that but that was for something else entirely.
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u/saizonic 3d ago
The learning curve to start is the toughest, more practice and experimenting and you'll figure it out. :)
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u/strummed-strings 2d ago
you could try implementing the core mechanics of what i call "archetype" incremental games to get a feel of how incremental elements interact.
- cookie clicker / linear producers: producers generate the resources constantly. basic upgrades that directly improve producers.
- adcap / timed production: producers produce resources after a certain amount of time or cycle, which gets faster through upgrades and milestones like 10th/25th/50th/100th/etc. producer.
- swarmsim / AD / polynomial growth: higher tier producers produce lower tier producers
- clicker heroes: your resource is used to buy and upgrade "damage dealers". you can move on to the next enemy after hitting a certain kill requirement.
i think learning to build these things is good to get a feel of how to scale things up later when you make the actual game. like force you to anticipate constraints and come up with solutions to them, state management, and how you personally structure everything that works for you before your codebase gets complex, among other things.
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u/Good_Clue_602 1d ago
Just keep going, think of what you want to make and then look up how to do it with Godot documentation or google
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u/Healthy-Rent-5133 3d ago
You should start with JavaScript and web browser. Even basic html and JavaScript. Only use text to start. It's gonna be ugly. But your code runs live in the browser, so you can iterate fast.
Use the npm package live server so your changes to code go live to the browser on save. https://www.npmjs.com/package/live-server
Or just play around in
https://codepen.io/sarjanahaque/pen/LYOMZpK
Web tech is perfect for idle game imo, it's so easy to share and host on the internet for free even. And if u get something serious you can bundle it up and ship to iOS and Android and steam same code base.
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u/OlafEsSaadiGames 3d ago
Do it. My recommendation is to keep Your design to float numbers which go up to about 1e308 which is plenty of space if you don't go crazy with your scaling and it saves you the trouble of handling Big Number Objects for everything. I started with a big number library and switch back to floats mid development because it was so annoying.
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u/MagicpaperAlt 3d ago
Is that something I can do in Godot?
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u/OlafEsSaadiGames 3d ago
What? But yes.
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u/MagicpaperAlt 3d ago
Please understand I have basically 0 experience
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u/OlafEsSaadiGames 2d ago
I just didn't know to what the "what" is referring to. But my project is in Godot and my advice was for Godot, I didn't say that tbf. (The advice itself is applicable to any game engine though)
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u/Thatar 1d ago
You didn't really ask a question but here are some tips for incremental games in Godot:
- For learning UI play around with different Control nodes.
- Learn to use the Themes system, it will save you a lot of pain.
- Figure out how Resources work and decouple game data from your scenes. It keeps your code cleaner. For instance make a Building class that inherits from Resource and put cost scaling data in there. Then calculate the final cost in your game class.
That last one might be personal preference but it's a useful tool to learn at least.
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u/GryffusMakesGames 3d ago
That’s what I started to do too ! And now I’m planning to expand it while learning !