This will be the first devlog of 2026, week 57! Thank you for being here, although there isn't much in the way of tangible progress this week, I did a lot of planning out that will save me time in the long term. Improving the quality of the gameplay experience overall. I'll talk about exactly what that is this week.
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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Structure Art
I finally made some progress on the Bazaar procedural generation, and I think that will be done soon so I can show off what that looks like. I didn't start any new art for structures, but biome parts for Dansland were added instead. With Dansland, also thinking about adding the biome labels in at the
AI State Machine
This is a screenshot of the clunky old stat machine. Each of the pawn_state_x() scripts are large swaths of checks which have redundancy which needs to be cleaned up. Really, this is a poor way to do this checking amounting to a list of if then statements. I knew that this would need to be replaced with a priority queueing system at some point. The added complexity of the pawn moods and personalities requires this, and was always a part of the development outline.
I just didn't know what I would be doing to set this apart from other games in the same genre, like Rimworld. The current plan is to have a priority queueing system based on the 8 levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, instead of letting them be individually assigned by the player. The player will still control professions and tasks, but the individual actions performed to carry out those tasks will be chosen by the pawns. The way this is carried out will be based on pawn personality. For example, a glutenous pawn will prioritize food over work, stopping work for even small amounts of energy loss; or occupy their inventory with food items instead of work items. (All pawns have their own inventory by the way, I've just never made it viewable.)
Side Projects
I work on a litany of things that aren't video games, including tabletop roleplaying games, wargames, board games, trading card games, and in this case CYOA image sets (which are basically games). Every couple of years I put out a new one, and had a great idea for a refreshed CYOA set for my world of Keygemin. This won't be done for a while, but when it is I'll make sure it goes up on my socials so you can play it.
Hytale
A couple of weeks ago, I let you all know I would be taking some time this week for the Hytale early access launch. I have to say I like the game. I'm still enjoying it, and will probably be playing a bit longer until I get inevitably burnt out on it. Consider this a form of market research... I'll also be playing every new gacha game that comes out, for example Arknights Endfield, and Seven Deadly Sins Origins. I do this to all of them and it is just part of who I am. So you're gonna have to deal with it.
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As with the previous month or two, I'm still working on Structure Art, and interleaving it with other stuff to prevent getting burned out on it. Structure Art will be worked on for the next 7 weeks, then I will move on to other parts of the game regardless if that is finished or not, replacing unfinished art with placeholders.
- Structure Art