Hat Trick 🧩 a Hockey Romance Visual Novel Game 🐉 Devlog Week #1

Total Time Blocks: 12 time blocks
Total Hours: 6
Days: 3

Week summary of tasks and goals.

🗓️ Week 1

🧱 Project setup — Create Godot project, folder structure, and connect base scenes (title, main menu, settings).
🎯 Goal: Base structure working smoothly.

Journal

Hat Trick 🧩 a Hockey Romance Visual Novel Game 1 🐉 Devlog Week #1

In case the link to youtube doesn’t work?

🐉 Link Tree 🐉

Indie Game Developer
🌼 Purple Dragon Dev – Game Dev
🌼 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PurpleDragonDev
🌼 Twitch : https://www.twitch.tv/purpledragondev

Partner Indie Game Publisher
💖 Kids Hide Away – Indie Games, Educational Games, Stickers, Merch:
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💖 Itch.IO: https://kidshideaway.itch.io

💖 Itch.IO: https://kidshideaway.itch.io/
💖 Itch.IO Dev Log:

Mister Taft – Godot Match 3 Play List
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhykrMFHOV4&list=PL4vbr3u7UKWqwQlvwvgNcgDL1p_3hcNn2

BlackHallow – VODS Wolf Amoung Us
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQQq7vBZIdI

BlackHallow – VODS Stardew!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfcyAOiAxAqskL_R4m4wTNmLdf1uIaNrZ

BlackHallow – Twitch
https://www.twitch.tv/blackhallow

🎙️ Voice-Over Transcript — Hat Trick a Hockey Romance Visual Novel Game Devlog Week #1

🧱 Week One Progress

Hat Trick is a Hockey Romance Visual Novel, with Hockey Themed match 3 game woven into it.

Ok so the story with this one was that I started it in Godot 3 with GDscript,
About a year and half ago. End of 2023 I guess. This was my first project in Godot.
I followed a Match 3 tutorial original by Mister Taft on YouTube.
I’ll try to find the tutorial and link to it.

It was a good little tutorial. I had some fun with that and got the match 3 idea working,
and then I went on to make a suite of hockey themed little pocket games.

I had an endless runner where you punted pucks and body checked other hockey players off
the ice as you skated forward as a skill practice.

I had a turn based hockey team where you could play the AI team, and a couple others
including a solitaire game.

I built the infrastructure so that you could setup an account, with an encryption key
on my server, and your games could communicate with each other via the server, so
that the players you created on the team, would show up in the other games as options
you could select to play as. Then you could go to the other games and improve their
skills, and then those skills would be saved to the server, and then the team game
would load those updated skills, and your team would player better against the AI.

It was a fun little project, and there were lots of issues, at the time it was just
a hobby, so no polish and most of the art was whatever I drew in gimp. I’m not a digital artist, by any means.
Then Godot 4 rolled out, and I failed to think before I clicked and I updated the
game projects and GUESS what happened?….
Yep you got it. AND I KNOW BETTER. I know your not supposed to upgrade existing projects
unless you absolutely need that upgrade. I was dumb. It was however just a fun hobby project.
I continued on trying to repair it and get it running and THEN I ran into the UUID issues.
After I finally figured out the UUID issue is godot engine problem, I threw in the towel on this set of games.
I still have not managed to figure out how to get those projects to work, and I probably never will.

I have decided I still liked the idea, but I didn’t like the implementation.
So I’m building a new version, but I’ve learned alot in the last two years about what I do and don’t like about making games.
One thing I’ve learned is that I don’t like side scrollers, they are the most annoying game style I’ve ever tried to make.
But I did like the team, turn based games, and I like the card systems I’ve seen in some games.
I learned that I like playing solitaire, but I don’t like making solitaire games.
I like making match 3 games, those are fun both to play and to make.
I really like visual novels, both to play, plan and make.

I really like story telling. I like visual novels. I like comics. I like paranormal romance, and murder mysteries.
I like pseudo historical novels, especially if there mostly historical but if magic was really instead.
I like simple cozy games like solitaire, sodoku, match 3, snake eats tail, and a few others.
By watching Twitch streamers, I’ve learned I like games like “Wolf Among Us”, and “Stardew”.
I like the game play, I like the art styles, and I like the story telling.

I’ve been messing with writing some paranormal, adventure, and romance lite books based in 1920 Cleveland OH, with the twist
that magic was revealed to all humans in 1820 and is now common part of every day. Magical creatures are normal, and magic users
live out in the open. But humans are still nervous of things they don’t understand.

This new version of HatTrick exists in that story universe of my books.
It’s based in 1920’s, and it’s hockey themed visual novel.
I’m working on the art myself (No I don’t have money, so can’t hire an artist.. your stuck with me,
and if I’m very lucky some of my family members will participate or at the very minimum offer critiques
of my art and store so I can improve. Constructive feedback that does not crush my soul is always welcome.
Be kind there’s enough negativity in the world. Be blunt and honest though, don’t sugar coat feedback.
If it sucks, then it sucks, just try to explain WHY you think it sucks.. Kay?)

So that’s where we are going with this reboot of the project.
So this devlog series is about building this NEW project in Godot 4.4.1. and finishing it.
This MONTH I started a new repository. Started a new project.
I created all the nodes from scratch. Most of the GSscript from the previous version is useless so there not included.
I’m just writing it all from scratch in C#.
I already checked the source code of the new nodes, there are no duplicate UUID’s.
So I’m all set to work on the project next week.

Video is just showing the current state of the project, with the new file structure.
I’ve already started about a month ago on this new version.
I’m not very far, but the first step was getting the basic menu’s scenes.
Which I’ve done.
I think I finished up dating the physical planner with the new idea.
I have a little bit of video of that.
I’m building a non traditional kanban board on my wall, that has (or will have) all the parts on it.
I’m having to work around my families needs, so it’s not completed yet.
I included a little bit of video of the wall.

This is my primary project and get’s the most of my time.
I decided this year that I want to finish some project and try to sell them.
So I purchased a steam app ($100) for a store page.
I’m trying to figure out how all of that works.
It’s not my first attempt but we can talk about my failures with Black Cat Adventures in a different video.

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