Working on a new game - Turbowarp Extensions

Hello!

Today I am making a casual devlog about my working and progress on my new game. I made my previous game - "An Apple a Day" - on Turbowarp. However as it turns out, the final product was quite simple. There were things I cut corners on too, but the game in general was quite cut down by scratch's limitations. So these days while drafting a more solid workflow, I have been exploring all the extensions available in extension library.

It does seem really daunting when you see so many extensions of so many varieties in the library, not knowing what to use and where! So first I explored each extension individually, including their sample projects. I didn't really spend time building scripts or using the extension's blocks, rather only got an idea of what the extension provides

Then I started grouping them into same type of groups as the default blocks. Within group I ordered them by complexity and potential usage. Here is my result:

- turbowarp 
- custom reporters
- Comments!

Motion:
- more motion
- tweening
- camera very buggy
- cursor lock
- box2d

Looks:
- color picker
- stretch
- clip&blend
- looks+
- skins
- font manager
- animated text
- cursor looks
- rgb channels
- canvas effects
- custom styles
- images
- video

Sound:
- tts
- music
- sound url
- sound expanded

Events:
- makey makey
- key simulation
- more events
- video sensing

Control:
- hidden blocks?
- clones+

Sensing:
- Delta time
- More Timers
- Time

Operators:
- cast
- couplers
- data analysis
- Base
- Bitwise
- Math
- more comparisons
- graphics 2d
- BigInt
- lily's toolbox
- Translate
- utilities
- Text manip
- rixxyX
- regex
- num encoding v2
- encoding
- lz compress

Variables:
- temporary variables
- var and list

Lists:
- list tools
- dictionaries
- json
- rxfs
- zip
- local storage
- files

Extend control hehehe:
- control controls
- runtime options
- asset manager
- clipboard
- navigator
- battery
- ask before closing tab
- notifs
- screen res
- fullscreen
- window controls
- wake lock

Pen:
- pen
- pen+
- simple 3d

mobile:
- mobile keyboard
- sensing+

All menus?

--add hidden blocks and all menus at end again... non persistent

At first I suppose I was hesitant to explore extensions mainly because extensions felt like cheating, but also while coding, it is best practice to not load excessive amount of unused libraries. But as it turns out, when you save and close a project, it unloads all unused extensions. I had to anchor them in using a placeholder sprite where I placed one block from each extension. I think it would actually be better to have all often-needed extensions loaded so everything I could find use for is readily available. This way somewhat an order is also forced on extensions (although scratch extensions load before turbowarp extensions, and 2 extensions remain non-persistent even after anchoring)

And from these extensions I found that turbowarp can be used to make a mobile/touchscreen compatible project! This means my future projects can have portable versions. And this is not even a cheat, it is an extension of turbowarp's capabilities that I couldn't have jerry-rigged from existing blocks. 

Also it might sound silly that it feels like cheating, but from development point of view, it feels much more achieving to do something yourself instead of having a shortcut do it for you. This is what I felt about my game and the amount of math I did in it. While that's nice.. I have come to realise it should not be treated as a development project. I didn't do that project to showcase my development, or the code of the game. It is a commercial project, it is supposed to appeal to a buyer. A buyer does not care if I took a more difficult path to develop my game, or that I made this game in Scratch, a buyer wants a fun game. The end product matters more than the development here. So I have started exploring extensions, since these projects need to be more powerful and advanced to be a fully functional game.

There were many other flaws in my previous project as well, but seeing that it was the first project I managed to complete since my graduation and heavy burnout, it did quite well. Now that I am doing better, I am more focused on making a proper workflow to follow and make a good big project, even if it takes a while, rather than focusing on pushing a project to market as soon as possible.

Also for a sneak peek of the game I am working on, its going to be based on synthwave!