Welcome to the 58th devlog for Cosmic Construct. As I mentioned last week, I was going to take some time to play all of the new games that came out recently. In this case Hytale, Arknights: Endfield, and the Aniimo CBT2 (which will be running for 2 weeks).
This devlog is going to be light on images, as I don't have anything visual to show off. Sorry for the wall of text.
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 didn't get any of this done this week as I've been pretty burnt out on it working on other things instead.
New Pawn AI
Planning a big update to the way Pawn AI is handled. I have the skeleton of it all done, and am starting to record and port in actions from the old AI and testing their movement to ensure they are performing the same tasks. This upgrade will introduce pawn personalities which will tweak pawn priorities. Pawns with either be social or anti-social, addiction motivated or adverse, among many small traits which will be unique. This will be true even for pawns with the same personality type, changing who and what they interact with. Altogether, it sort of recreates a "16 types" personality distribution, but not exactly.
Additionally, I have decided to move away from a "stress" and "comfort" system to a "self actualization score" system. This change will mean that pawns will not leave the settlement simply due to unhappiness. They can still leave, but will not do so because of stress. They will remain "unhappy" within the settlement, unless acted upon an outside source. A pawn's self actualization will simply be displayed as an icon next to the pawn in the pawn manager. There will be 8 of these levels, and as the level increases pawn actions will become more "automatic" and more complex. Going from fulfilling their own needs, to fulfilling the needs of others. For example, a pawn in the leisure state might bring food to a hungry working pawn while socializing.
The goal of this new AI system it to have the pawns feel more "life-like" and "interactive". Setting the game up for more "watchability". Part of this is to be able to sit and watch the screen, and pawns work, live, and interact. They are meant to have their own "lives" and "possessions". Though it will be a long time before I get to working on that. I have to finish making the gameplay first.
Side Projects
Set up an application that export laser cutting ready SVGs for wooden components. With this I designed some interlocking dungeon tile pieces.
The application of course displays these parts in 3 dimensions so I can test them out to see if they fit. Of course in real world 3mm particle stock has moisture, and poor tolerances you have to deal with, but the kerf is adjustable to get everything to fiction fit.
I joked on Bluesky about making a modern rendition / recreation of the notorious TTRPG game HYBRID. As HYBRID: Coherent Edition. I actually went through the process of laying that out trying to make sense of it with help from an army of LLMs. It is still unintelligible, but as least I can read it without random rants about hypothetically Iraqi WMDs and how they fit into the power scaling of the Marvel universe or whatever.
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I know for the last couple weeks I've said structure art, without actually working on it. I'll try to actually get some structure art finished this week.
- Structure Art