Welcome to the 34th week devlog for Cosmic Construct. Sorry that this one is a little late. I really need to get the schedule back on track. This should be a week 35 post, these posts are more than a week behind. I think I'm going to do two short weeks just to get them lined back up.
So sorry for remainder of this month. I'll get it back where it needs to be with some short posts.
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.
As usual, I will be covering the goals set in the previous posts, and discussing ongoing work for and about the game.
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Finish the new biome.
There was a bunch of art needed for this one. 135 frames total, which is more than any other biome I think. Discounting the farmable resources. I've made a new tree type, which isn't just a repurposed general tree, and these took a while to figure out, because they are just trunks. I wanted the tops to be "cut off" at the top, but didn't know how that would turn out once everything was put together.
Visually, 4 varieties of mushrooms were added which each have 5 variations. This biome functions as a sort of "mooshroom" biome, for Cosmic Construct. Food and wood is plentiful. It's a biome that exists purely as a boon to the player. A place that the player can seek out get out of shortages through simple passive grinding. It's the AFK chop, biome so to speak.
It's important to show this, as its hard to describe, and see. Many of these just looks like copies of the same drawing over and over, and in a way they are. Squigglevision animation requires small changes between frames to look convincing. It quadruples the amount of work compared to just putting flat static images in an environment. I could probably get away with using a distortion shader, but I feel that the squigglevision animation is more "genuine". You can feel the hand drawn aspect of things. I don't want people to look at the game and think it is lazy.
Anyhow, here is the finished biome which I have named the Akyulands. I didn't even talk about the grass, which is yet another thing I needed to draw. The shapes are simple, but they have a very distinct appearance. To think I have another 4-5 biomes to make before I feel comfortable saying that I'm comfortable with the amount of exploration content.
Do some new structure art.
Didn't get to doing this, the biome took alot of work to complete, due to 6 new interactable objects being added.
Continue work on the first minigame.
There are two minigames I've been considering and working on them concurrently. One is a pretty normal dice game. Most people will be familiar with it. I want to have a betting component, and luck modification to make a combination of skill and luck based. This will be the first minigame, called "Sparkle". The second minigame I am working on is far more complex, and I'm not sure if I can even pull it off given alot of factors. It's something difficult to do in gamemaker, but figuring it out as a puzzle has been fun. I am happy to say I got it working, and has to do with optical character recognition. I'm not going to describe it further, because I want it to be a surprise.
Make improvements to Pawn AI, to allow the game to be played further in.
Discussing Pawn AI is pretty dry. The details of the state machine, and small adjustments made to it are just boring to detail. Its like showing code of, nobody really cares. All you need to know is that the pawns are being integrated into the buildings that are already in place. The garrisoning, works and the pawns are processing resources from the garrisoned buildings. I have some of the businesses set in an "open for business" and "closed for business" state. So if a pawn responsible for say a Tailoring building, if they are sleeping; that function will be disabled until they wake.
Another thing I am working on is pawn retirement. When a pawn leaves the settlement, they can later return. There is not an age mechanic, so they pawns never "die". But they can leave due to unhappiness or stress. I would like the pawns to still visit as tourists, or ask to return to the settlement if it has improved.
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This week will be very short to get the devlogs back on track. I'm tired of them not being correct.
- Do structure art.
Yep that's it. My level of success will be determined on how many new buildings I add.
See you next "week".