I know I said the 10th, but I am one day late on this one. Better than seven. Anyway, welcome to the 37th week devlog entry for Cosmic Construct. It's been rather productive. Although, I doubt this entry is going to make it look that way. When I make a list of objectives for the week, it is what I plan to do. However, plans change at the whim of my creative spirit. So, prepare to see some dice I guess.
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.
Each week we cover the development goals set during the prior week. Let's take a look at those.
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4 new structures. (one of which is a multipart structure, which I will explain later)
I did so "some" work on the structure art, basically amounting to an outline of the buildings I am going to draw. Realistically, this is nothing so I'm going to say this one was a wash. The structure I am working on is the City Hall building, which fits into together with multiple parts. To get credit for building the structure, you have to build at least 3 parts of the structure. You can build any 3 parts, but the building will make more visual sense if built and assembled together. You could build 3 center sections or 3 west wing sections if you wanted to. I'm going to keep it open ended for creativity.
Improvements to Pawn AI to include structure garrisoning.
As I always mention, the pawn state machine is very complicated. It's now borderlining an economic simulation. I'm almost at the point where all of the current buildings can be occupied by pawns and produce resources as they are supposed to. I'm still considering doing a "refactor" of the professions themselves. I currently have "General Gathering" handling harvesting tasks, when it would make more sense to have a dedicated farmer. I'll see how I feel about it when all of the buildings are in.
A bulk of the AI work is going to come after the art is done, when I start working on the more complex game features, like economy, taxation, tourism, and all that jazz.
Work on art for the first minigame; Sparkle.
Now that the framework of the minigame is done, I can start working on the art assets for Sparkle. Since this is a dice game, I need to at the very least make dice. I could have gone the cheap route of making a single image with a text number over it, or the slightly more effort route of 6 unique images. Nah, how about a full 15 degree step die rolling animation.
This should cover enough orientations to make it look like an animated die roll. At least at Cosmic Construct's squigglevision frame rate. I am proud to let you all know that I intend to have these dice more or less rolled from the hand of the player at the table. So I need to animate a hand opening and a cloak sleeve as well. Then color it appropriately based on the player at the table. Should look real slick when finished.
Some for the achievement icons to be used in a new objectives submenu, and for steam achievements.
I didn't do a single one of these. ;--; I have more than 500 to draw. (It isn't as bad as it sounds.)
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For the upcoming week, here is what I plan to get done.
- Achievement icons to be used in a new objectives submenu, and for steam achievements.
- Dice rolling animations and UI display for the Sparkle minigame.
- Structure art (If I have time)
Really, I need to get all of the art assets done. Kinda starting to regret making such an art heavy game, but what can you do.
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯