Update Post #2
Hey everyone!
With September soon drawing to a close, I thought I’d make a update post sharing what’s happening with RandomMomentania.
September has been an exciting and productive month, and I am happy to say there is lots to share:
First Patron And Tutorial Sponsor
First of all, I wanted to give a huge thanks to RandomMomentania’s first patron, and first tutorial sponsor, for supporting RandomMomentania!
I was surprised to even get a patron within the first month, let alone a tutorial sponsor!
For context, there are thousands of Patreon accounts out there that make less than 5$ dollars a month, or have no patrons at all.
This is a huge milestone and the first step towards making RandomMomentania a fully funded tutorial website where I can provide quality tutorials for everyone!
I am very thankful to RandomMomentania’s first patron! Thanks so much for your support!
Tower Defense Tutorial
I am happy to say that the entire 11 part tower defense tutorial series is completely finished!
This is the longest tutorial series I currently have on RandomMomentania, and it represents the bulk of the work I have been able to do in September.
The tutorial series shows you how to make a complete tower defense game. Everything from tower logic, to AI, to sounds, it’s all there! If you have ever wanted to make a tower defense game in Godot, this is the tutorial for you!
The entire tutorial series will be released on RandomMomentania on the 26th. The reason behind the delay is I still need to go through the entire series and edit everything to hopefully fix and polish everything up as much as possible.
Right now you can view the entire tutorial series while it is in WIP form if you are a tutorial sponsor on Patreon.
This tutorial will be a paid tutorial only for patrons on Patreon, so if you want to see the tutorial when it is released, please consider becoming a patron if you are not already.
New Free Tutorial Coming
I also have a new tutorial to announce! On the 26th, when the tower defense tutorial is released, I will be releasing the WIP form of a new Gimp tutorial!
This tutorial will show you how to make bump maps (sometimes called height maps) entirely in Gimp. These bump maps can give a huge visual boost to your games and textures, especially if you are using pixel art or low resolution textures.
This tutorial will also show how to convert the bump maps you make in Gimp into normal maps so you can use them in game engines like Godot and Unity.
This tutorial will be available for free on the 28th.
Updated Roadmap
Due to tutorials being finished/worked on, I have updated the roadmap accordingly.
I originally planned to start working on a shader tutorial showing how to make a clipping shader, and then various ways to use said shader, but until a Godot engine bug is fixed, that tutorial will have to stay on the back burner.
Despite that, I have more tutorials planned and in the works for October!
I have started to work on a text messaging tutorial which I think will be a great introduction to show how to write networking code in Godot. Right now the project is in it’s early stages, but I am optimistic that I will be able to start writing the tutorial for it soon and it should be released sometime in October!
RandomMomentania Changes
I want to be transparent about how RandomMomentania is moving forward and so I wanted to share with all of you a few changes I am making going forward.
TLDR: I will be making shorter, more focused tutorials. Tutorial series are not going anywhere but rather they will just be less frequent. These changes are just so it is easier to manage RandomMomentania and provide high quality tutorials.
Tutorial Changes
Over the past several months, I have been working hard on making tutorial series for RandomMomentania where I show how to make entire games.
This has been how I have been doing tutorials before I even started RandomMomentania, and I love doing it. I feel one of the best ways to learn is to make a complete project, that when finished, leaves you with something that looks great and is fun to play.
However, there are a couple problems I have encountered while trying to maintain this style of tutorial creation here on RandomMomentania.
The first problem is that it takes a lot of time. I would love to keep a somewhat steady stream of tutorials coming out, but when I am working on these massive tutorial series, I have little time to work on anything else.
This means other sides of running RandomMomentania do not get nearly as much attention. It also means I have little time to start other tutorials, which makes it where as soon as I finish the tutorial series I am working on, I have to jump straight in to working on the next tutorial series if I want to keep a somewhat consistent stream of tutorials coming out.
As a business model, this does not really work and ultimately will lead to burn out. Obviously burning out helps no one, so I have decided to change how I am doing tutorials moving forward and I think it is a win-win for everyone!
Moving forward, tutorials will be shorter and more focused on teaching a single concept (or only a few concepts). This means that tutorials will be less broad (like “3D platformer tutorial”) and instead will be more focused (like “3rd person character template tutorial”).
One benefit is with smaller tutorials instead of long tutorial series, you can really hone in and only read through tutorials you are interested in, and skip anything that does not interest you.
Another benefit is it’s easier to read and learn from smaller, more focused tutorials. It is a whole lot less overwhelming when a tutorial is focused on just showing how to do one thing, without also throwing in a bunch of other, additional complexities at you that you may, or may not, care about.
However, tutorial series are not going away, as I still feel there is a lot you can learn from making a entire project!
I still plan to have fully featured, full length tutorial series in the future. They are just going to be less frequent and there will be shorter tutorials in between. This will allow me to keep a more consistent and steady stream of tutorials.
EDIT: Security Changes
First of all: do not worry! There has been no security breaches or anything!
After reading some articles about WordPress site security (or rather, security breaches), I decided it would be best to increase security a bit.
While the old measures in place were by no means insufficient, reading that article, I realized there was a few additional things that would be nice to add.
I have taken some additional steps to better secure RandomMomentania. Many of these changes are under the hood and do not visibly change anything.
The only change that directly effects everyone is I have now put a maximum login attempt system in place. Now after three failed login attempts, you will be locked out of RandomMomentania for an hour.
This functionality is provided by Login LockDown. The reason this was added is to make it much, much harder for brute force login attacks.
The other change is the addition of Google Authenticator. While this visually changes the login page, it is only enabled on select accounts.
This was added so important accounts that can dramatically change RandomMomentania are now protected, meaning hackers will have a much, much harder time breaking in and changing things on RandomMomentania.
Both of these changes were implemented to better protect and secure your information. If you have any problems, please do not hesitate to email me at TwistedTwigleg@RandomMomentania.com with any problems you may have.
To summarize:
- The tower defense tutorial will be out for patrons on September 26th.
- A new Gimp tutorial will be released in WIP form on September 26th, and will be fully released on the 28th for free.
- Future tutorials will be shorter and more focused, with longer tutorial series being more infrequent.
- (Edit) Security has been improved. After three failed login attempts, you will have to wait 1 hour before being able to try to login again.
That is all I have to share for now! If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please let me know in the comments below!