I tried to take a nap, found a video on game development I really like, wrote the previous log, and now I sit at my Pi trying to get a game engine working so I can at least start learning game development. So far, so frustrating.

Between the crappy internet connection(only a problem on the Pi), and me being tired, it's off to a slightly rocky start. I did manage to get Godot game engine running on here, but it's so slow as to be basically unusable. I am too tired to deal with that, so I'm working on getting Pygame installed. I'd prefer Pygame as it will teach me more than other game engines. I'm not great with Python yet and need to be, so it works out great. I couldn't even get pip3 installed, so I had to use my phone's hotspot to get a stable enough internet connection to download and install it.

Installing Pip3 worked, Pygame is still running. It tried to create a new keyring, but I denied it after it failed the first time. Seems to be installing now. Will test when done. The Aliens example game worked great, so I at least now have Pygame working on the Pi 400 under Pop!_OS.

I am starting with This Tutorial and working my way up from there. Assuming I know nothing, as I basically do. I'll start reading through that later. Too tired to absorb any of it right now. Don't become a tow truck driver... 2/10, do not recommend...

I think a better path for me to take, and a little later, would be to get my VideoCodecRenameUtility program running on the Pi and start working with it to get more experience. I made that little Python program to open a video file with ffmpeg, find the codec used for the video stream, then send it back out to Python, where it inserts it into the file name in square brackets. It works well enough, but has plenty of bugs I need to work out. It's on my Github, which I also need to set up on here. Another reason to start on that project again. I use that program to find various types of files and prioritize their connversion to more reasonable formats.

I find software development daunting, but I understand the basic concepts well enough. I just can't code when tired and anxious about work. Once I get that program on here, I can start getting back into the groove, and decide what program I want to code with.

As much as I want to use something as fancy as Godot or Unity to make my games, it's important to me that I do so on something lower level and on the machine I have. If the program can't even run on the Pi 400, I won't use it. Uninstalling Godot engine now...Done. Pygame it is. I like to watch DaFluffyPotato on YouTube as he works with Pygame and does some neat stuff

I was quite excited to get some coding done, but I don't think I will. I've pushed myself too hard in the past on projects and often gotten burned out and either stopped working on the project for long periods of time, or gave up entirely. I'll spend some of my driving time thinking of what to do next.

Actually, I decided what to do next before posting this and laying down. I'm seeing if I can get Inkscape installed and working on the Pi, then if I can set it up for creating pixel art and such. I like Inkscape and would like to get to know it better. Inkscape installed and runs fine on here from what I can tell so far. I made a bunch of shapes, drug them all around and just played with things. Very little slow down. I think I can make this work. I'll learn more Inkscape later.

That's it for this log. Going to set up the Pi to convert a video for me and see how long that takes. Separate log on that later.