Hello there!

This blog post serves as a post-morten of sorts for my latest game: PulseHazard!

PulseHazard is a DOOM clone, built to replicate as close as possible the DOOM style of gameplay and atmosphere as and entrant to the GameDev.net August Challenge.

This was my first time using Godot, and that brought it pros and cons:

Pros:
Godot is REALLY easy to get started with, the editor is a mix of Unity/Game Maker and has a node tree organization system that makes communication between nodes very simple.
Godot supports several languages, but I stuck with GDScript, it is the more documented (more on that below) and has an easy to understand syntax. Its API has several ready to use functions for common tasks such as game pause

Cons:
Using Godot for anything 3D (even as simple as this game has) is a chore sometimes. Importing models from Blender can take some serious work (tip : always use the gltf exporter, over the Collada or Godot solutions) and be prepared to reassign all the textures if you plan to do so.
The editor is somewhat unstable and some weird bugs can occur, such as your nodes moving out of place without your consent.
Also, the documentation is seriously lacking. To the point that some examples are really old and don't work anymore. On the bright side, the docs are, along with the engine itself, open source. So, if you are up to the task, you can make changes and fix some issues with the editor, renderer etc.

Replicating the DOOM experience was really ease, thank to the extensive documentation about the original game, easily found on the internet. From enemy behaviors to graphic related parameters, anything can be found quite easily! In order to make this project, I barely played the original game, to be honest. However, I'm fully aware that some aspects of my game will not replicate 1:1 to the original DOOM because of that.

The hardest part to get right was definitely the 8-sided sprites. Godot offers dot product calculations to help with that. However, 3D math was never my "forte", ao I still thing this is one of several aspects that still need work. I also had problems with the Shotgun spread shot, but I didn't have time to finish it before the Challenge Deadline.

So that's it! I plan to keep working on this project and, who knows, maybe turn it into a commercial game someday!

Please, check PulseHazard and have fun!
Any feedback is appreciated

Have a nice day! Bye!