Welcome to the 33rd week devlog for Cosmic Construct.
Each week in these devlogs we typically go over development goals established at the end of the previous weeks post.
To follow the game's progress you can join me at:
My bluesky account which gives more frequent updates.
Also Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow it's steam page.
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Framework for the first minigame.
Because minigames are a new feature. I don't want to share visual progress on them before they are complete. I'd rather dump them on you all at once. The frame work code for the first minigame is a little complicated, as I can't just pause the simulation in the background. Doing so would sort of defeat the purpose of including minigames in the first place.
There are at least 5 minigames that will be included with the game. All of them will generate currency or a particular valuable resource. There is even a building dedicated for pawns to play these minigames for recreation; the Casino. Not all of the games will be "betting" or "gambling" games, but most will. Almost all of the games will be "skill and luck" based. I do plan to add a slot machine which is pure luck. Of course, these use the in-game currencies; there are no microtransactions or anything like that.
Get the market UI and trading done.
The base of the UI is done. Trading wasn't fully completed. I found that the trading and exchange system is more complicated that I originally realized, as I need to add a bunch of corner case event handling. For example, what if the storage lacks the space for the coinage being given as change? That and the conversion itself is a little complex as the currency denomination conversion is in base 4.
Anyway, most of the visual work has been done to implement this feature. I'm going to let it hang out until I get it finished. I might do the pawn AI to operate the buildings related to it first. We'll see how I feel about it.
Art assets for the next biome.
I've done a few of the assets needed for a new biome. This biome will have a new kind of large tree, which will produce more logs by requiring more chops per tree. I plan to have it automatically chop the tree until it has fallen. This will be a good biome to find for the early game, if people take the option to explore. Building a chest will give access to the storage array. Since all chests are linked (they function as Minecraft Ender Chests), you can contribute to the colony at any distance.
Here is the ground layer shape. The layer art is fully complete, I'm just lazy and didn't want to take a new screenshot.
I still need to make two kinds of foliage for the biome, and determine a good color scheme for everything, which is much easier to do when I'm coding it all in. As I can rapidly prototype. I want this to be the "useful to early game" biome. That if someone is stuck not having the basic resources they need for some objective, they can look for this place to get them out of that rut.
New structure art. (if I have time)
I didn't start on any new structure art.
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That is what I got done this week. After writing about it, doesn't sound like much. Most of what I've done is in code.
Here is what I have planned for this week.
- Finish the new biome.
- Do some new structure art.
- Continue work on the first minigame.
- Make improvements to Pawn AI, to allow the game to be played further in.
That is all, thank you for reading.