Build a desktop pet in Godot

You’ll build a little pet that lives on your desktop: a Godot game with no window frame and no background, just your sprite. It walks along your screen, turns around at the edges, stops for a rest now and then, and you can pick it up and drag it around.

Set up Godot

Godot is a free, open source game engine. Game engines are used to make games easily. Go to godotengine.org to install it.

Open Godot, click Create New Project, name your game, select the Compatibility renderer, for Project Path select a Game folder, and click Create.

Install Godot Hackatime, and set up Hackatime on your machine

Open the Asset Store tab, search for Wakatime, and install “Godot Super Wakatime” by BartoszB

Then enable the plugin. Go to Project > Project Settings > Plugins, find “Godot Super Wakatime” in the list, and tick its Enabled checkbox.

Godot's Project Settings window on the Plugins tab, with Godot Super-Wakatime listed and its Enabled checkbox ticked.

If needed, set up Hackatime according to the guide, here: https://hackatime.hackclub.com/docs/getting-started/quick-start

Make a GitHub Repository

GitHub is a website that allows anyone to share their code, and keep it safe.

open https://github.com/new to create a new repository, name it, make it public. Don’t add a license or gitignore as this will make the next step harder. You can add one later !

Sync your Godot project with the GitHub repo you just made

macOS

open your project folder in the terminal, you can do that by navigating to your project folder in Finder, and right clicking on it in the path bar and selecting ‘Open in terminal’

Finder's View menu, with Show Path Bar highlighted.

A Finder window of the my-very-cool-pet folder. The folder is right-clicked in the path bar at the bottom, and Open in Terminal is highlighted in the menu.

Windows

open your project folder in the terminal, you can do that by navigating to your project folder in the file explorer, holding down Shift, and then right clicking to open a context menu, and then click open in Terminal.

File Explorer in an empty folder, with its right-click menu open and Open in Terminal in the list.

Linux

open your project folder in the terminal, you can do that by right clicking the folder in your file manager and choosing ‘Open in Terminal’

in the terminal, run

shell

git init
git branch -M main

Go to the GitHub repository you created in the browser earlier and copy the link, and replace <your-github-repository-link> with your link, and then run it

shell

git remote add origin <your-github-repository-link>
git add .
git commit -m "initialize"
git push -u origin main

Important commands

In Godot

Save your project often using ⌘SCommand S on macOS or Ctrl+S on Windows and Linux.

Play your game with ⌘BCommand B on macOS or F5 on Windows and Linux.

In the terminal

Be sure to commit regularly

shell

git add .
git commit -m "things-added"
git push