Now that I knew why I wanted to develop the game, I needed to figure out how to do it. My mind was set on using libGDX, an OpenGL-based Java/Kotlin framework. Luckily I have a friend who knows Java/Kotlin and is crazy about the IntelliJ IDE. So I installed IntelliJ, downloaded the libGDX setup helper and implemented the drop catching example game from libGDX's wiki.

Feeling semi-secure about starting with Survivo, I created a repo on Github, used the setup helper to create the project and pushed it into the repo. Great! So now what? Since I have a vague idea what I want this game to be, I started creating issues on Github to document this idea. Each issue represents a feature or enhancement for the game and contains a loose collection of tasks.

The starting point was easy to find: Let's recreate the vision I carried since my first attempt at implementing Survivo: A dude that spawns on a beach and can walk around on a sand texture, but not on water texture. The example game gave me almost everything I needed to know. I added the sprite, added the textures and keyboard controls. But what about collision detection? At that point the dude was able to walk on water and off screen.

Whatever, let's divert and create a main menu, because the example game has a second step, which explains how to do that. My vision for the main menu is a logo and a few buttons (continue game, options, etc.). With a few minutes of research I had a brilliant idea for a (shitty) logo and quickly added it to the main menu. A button should be easy to implement, right? Right? Well, not for a noob. I found a lot of ways to implement what I was thinking about and then found a tutorial video about TextureAtlases, which I apparently needed for a skin to add to a button.

After watching the video I knew two things:

1. My game was broken because I made some stupid mistake (which I never found) during the implementation of the TextureAtlas
2. The guy who made the video (Pilzschaf, check him out if you're German and want to learn libGDX) has a whole playlist about how to create a game in libGDX

So I did what any sane person whould do. I threw my local state to git hell and started over, this time following the tutorial playlist from scratch. It helped me improve my project setup and a few parts of my code. The game hasn't broken since. Also I now have collision detection. After a week of coding and creative work I am still not done with the video playlist and I'm excited for what's yet to come.

I'll keep you posted.

Sincerely yours, Unkrass