Not sure if anyone reads these, but it's a good way to vent my frustrations.

After finishing LowRezJam 2024, another jam caught my attention: the GMTK Jam.  I wanted to challenge myself given the short time frame and interesting theme for the jam. I really liked the 'built to scale' theme idea, but I couldn't think of a good mechanic to implement it. I decided on scaling the character model up every time it 'consumes' something. That idea turned into Zorbie5. My goal was to test out Terrain3D and some other terrain options inside Godot. I wanted to make something cute, quick and simple. I think I accomplished that task.

I stayed up until 2 AM to wait for the jam to end because I live in Japan. I'm exhausted. The game worked fine. I downloaded it, extracted it to my desktop and everything was working fine. Anddddddddd, other people downloaded it and it... crashed? I woke up at 6AM and checked the submission page to find out that it's broken. I'm humbled. I admit defeat. I don't feel like the knowledge I gained while jamming was wasted. I removed my submission. There's always next year's jam!

But... I still wanted to fix my game and figure out what was going on. It worked fine for me. So, I rebuilt it, and it worked fine again. Was I losing my mind? I was seriously about to throw in the game dev towel on this project. Actually, I love problem solving too much to quit... maybe...

Godot's one file packaged executable is clean and easy. It's kind of the primary reason I use Godot so much. I don't want anyone to fumble with extra files after downloading my games. Due to it being just one file, I was just building the game to my desktop and zipping it up.

Now, my desktop after a jam is.... cluttered (to put it nicely). I decided to just save it to its own folder. Oh!? A new file appeared. I checked my desktop, and the same file is there, too.... Terrain3D generates a dll file that has to be in the same directory as the game. I guess it's not packaged with the executable. I read the documentation, too... After deleting the file, the game crashed again; adding the file back, no crash. I am so happy it's fixed!

I feel kind of stupid for not considering extra files as an option. In summary, Terrain3D is an impressive plugin. I'm glad I used it. I will continue to use it. My brain can relax now that the game seems fixed.

Until the next problem pops up...