Hey! I build games and websites.
Unlike many game devs, I'm a Linux fan. I build my games using free software, and blog about what I learn along the way.
michaelb on web-dev, whiteboard, teaching, desktop, software
“Adventures in indie game development (on Linux!)” --
👀 heyyyy there
watch me code
People wanted to watch me code, so I started streaming on Twitch. Follow mbdev to watch my stream or videos!
use my code
I've written a few little libraries for Godot, which I release as free software to help my fellow game devs. I hope you find them useful!
Introducing: Whiteboard
I made a cool thing: Whiteboard is slideshow application for teaching programming. It embeds a code editor, terminal, and web browser into a slide-show like interface to eliminate context-switches and dead-space, while enabling more content content to be set-up ahead of time. It's great for guiding code-heavy classroom lectures, tutorials,... Read »
Web Developer to Game Developer: Understanding game dev as a web dev using Godot
Already a front-end (or back-end) web developer, and curious about writing your own video games? Maybe want to try a new hobby in indie game dev for PC or console, or publish some mobile games? I made the transition, and so can you! I hope this 10 minute read will... Read »
Snippet: Implement an ability cooldown (in the Godot game engine)
Perhaps you are working on an action game or action RPG where different abilities need different cooldowns, but here's a tiny snippet that can be a re-usable Cooldown utility to check for when abilities can be re-used. Also useful for "rate-limiting" in general, e.g. adding a maximum rate of... Read »
JavaScript syntax cheat-sheet for total newbies
Earlier this year I realized that there aren't any good cheat-sheets for students new to JavaScript and coding in general to learn the (relatively dense!) syntax of JavaScript. Today I decided to make my own! In the past I've really like printing up cheat-sheets as I learned new technologies. It's... Read »
Snippet: Draining all pending coroutines with Python 3's async features
When writing tasks for asynchronous functions in Python 3 I realized I needed a way to run through all tasks that were queued up with asyncio.ensure_future and similar functions. I wrote an async function to do this. The result is a little hacky, as it needs to catch... Read »
The Right Wayâ„¢ to do global npm install without sudo
I'm writing this post since there were a lot of guides online on how to set up NPM so you can do npm install -g (that is, a global NPM install) on macOS or Linux without superuser privileges, but all those guides recommended a rather strange directory structure, such as... Read »
Bash profile trick: Open last used directory when starting a new terminal emulator
As I was configuring my new system (using dotfiles configuration app I wrote for this purpose: stowage), I was exploring the current options for minimalist terminal emulators, and I realized a common pattern I wanted was for new terminals to pop up in the same working directory that I was... Read »
Porting a legacy browser graphics JS script (JSC3D) to Node.js with node-canvas and VM
In this post I will describe my my process to port JSC3D, an unmaintained 3D library that uses the browser's <canvas> 2D context, to run entirely in node.js. This allows a quite fast, easy-to-use CLI-based 3D model renderer. It looks quite good, without the need for GPU,... Read »
Sawdust
Drag and drop blocks onto the board to rack up points and advance to the next level in this addictive new spin on the classic game of tangrams. Two different modes cater to both casual and hardcore-puzzler game styles: Zen mode allows you to take your time to use the... Read »
Releasing Sawdust: Mini-post-mortem
A couple months ago I wrote about realizing "enough was enough" with my feature-creeped game. Along with working on other projects, I spent some time in the next couple months cutting out features and polishing existing ones, all working under a "late-May" deadline. Now, my new (much smaller) vision for... Read »
The Blocklings
I had a blast with my Ludum Dare 38 Compo entry! It's a short (but complete!) puzzle game with 9 levels, something of a cross between Lemmings and Minecraft. Check it out here: Pretty rough in spots, and programmer art galore, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I'll... Read »
Ludum Dare 38
I'm all ready to start Ludum Dare 38! In case you don't know, it's a game dev competition / game jam to make an entire game in 48 hours. It'll be my first go at it, so I'm super pumped.... Read »
Godot Gestures: Pinch, twist, and drag gesture detection for mobile games
As it turns out, writing gesture detection is not an easy task. I gave it a shot anyway, and wrote a re-usable scene for the awesome free software Godot Game Engine. It all started when I decided to switch the focus of my work-in-progress game Sawdust to "mobile-first". To provide... Read »
My pre-post-mortem of rescuing my scope creeped-out puzzle game
It's been nearly 6 months now that I jumped head-first into game development, I've had a fantastic time so far. During these 6 months, in addition to teaching a program on web development, I've been working primarily two game concepts: One ambitious 3D game that is still top-secret , and another,... Read »
Wow, I've made quite a few free Godot packages by now
I've noticed I've written a total of 9 open source packages for the Godot engine! I'm pretty pleased with this number, nothing makes me happier than giving back to the world of free software. I created a page that I'll keep updated with links to all of the repos: http:... Read »
Godot Pannable Camera: A re-usable camera helper for Godot
I put together a little camera script that should be useful for RPGs, platformers, and RTS games in the free software Godot Game Engine. It has a top-down (or angled) camera that has built in key-bindings for panning around using WASD keys. I wrote it to quickly prototype things like... Read »
Simple puzzle game graphics with Inkscape bevels
I'm about the opposite of a graphics expert, but I have discovered that by using Inkscape's built-in filters you can very quickly make some basic, initial assets for puzzle games, or UI elements for games of other genres. This is less a tutorial, more just to inspire other artistically-challenged people... Read »
Snippet: Godot Resource Queue
Need to build a loading screen in Godot? I took the resource queue example from the Godot Documentation, and cleaned it up a bit and put it in its own repo. This allows for background loading, a progress bar type screen, etc. Maybe other people will find a use for... Read »
Game dev with Godot: I wrote a Godot package to crossfade between playlists and make adaptive music
For the puzzle game Sawdust, I needed a powerful enough playlist and music mixing system so I could crossfade between tracks based on what's going on in the game, and so that I could make the soundtrack less repetitive by composing a collection of shorter ambient pieces that are played... Read »
Snippet: NIUM's 3D effect, in Godot
Recently on /r/gamedev there was a nice article about achieving NIUM's isometric voxel-ish 3D effect using layers of sprites. It's a very simple and obvious technique, you should read it if have a minute: 2D 3D in GameMaker Studio. Well, I implemented it in Godot! A hastily put-together example... Read »
