2025-08-18
Since march I’ve been, on and off, working on an online multiplayer FPS Godot game called Spelloff. It plays kind of like Quake, but mostly like TF2’s MGE mod, which is the game’s inspiration.
https://covacha.net.ar/~ramiro/public_git/spelloff/
A week ago I deemed it functional enough for the 2.7 version of the game to be considered “release”. As a prototype at least. I published it on Flathub and itch.io.
https://flathub.org/apps/ar.net.covacha.spelloff
https://rbasile.itch.io/spelloff
It’s a bit light on visuals, but the thecnical aspects of it are good enough. The netcode is nothing special but it works, the gameplay and movement manage the feel I was going for: air-strafing, rocket jumping, damage falloff, all of those tiny old engine quirks from other games captured quite faithfully.
I do realize this is a game for just me, mostly. It tells no story, it cannot be played alone and is PVP-only, and it expects of the player familiarity and knowlage of obscure exploits from other games. It has been an excuse to learn some netcode on Godot since its inception. And at that it has been useful, and it also helped me learn how to create functionally decent UIs, how to do releases, package flatpaks, and how to effectively test and fix bugs.
I accomplished the goals I set myself with this game. But even though I’d like to move on to smaller-scoped games, either focused on narratives or single mechanics, I think I’ll keep at it with Spelloff a tad longer. It’s the perfect excuse I realized to hone a skill I’m lacking: 3D modeling.
The game needs an animated character model, and not being able to do 3D modeling has limited my games' scope for a while now. I’ve always felt my toolbox lacked the 3D equivalent to the pixel-art I can manage.
I’ve been dipping my toes into low-poly character modeling on Blender this past weekend. I’m not impressed with my progress, but it’s more than I’ve done all these years and good enough for my literal frist time opening the program. I’m posting below my first try (horrible), and the progress to this day made on the second one (just as horrible). I’m aiming for a PSX-era character here.
– rb