chainsmokingspacepenguin

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Gliding in a space game??

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Campfire with crabs in space

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have to learn an animation program under a week for some awesome films so working on shapes and consistency!

[chainsmokingspacepenguin]

hmm, interesting idea. I'm not sure what it can be used for yet either, but I'll keep it in mind!

WEEK 25 OF BANGING POTS AND PANS

Been thinking about game mechanics. Specifically, tools, you know, for the player.

I'm not sure how many of these will make it through the cutting room, but these are what I have in mind for the game:

Spaceglider

You have a spaceglider that allows you to fly and travel between places. It's a glider, so oxygen is not included, but thankfully there's some oxygen in the nebulae.

The spaceglider has some limitations...

It's prone to breaking. Unlike Outer Wilds and Subnautica, you can't repair it on the spot. However, unlike Subnautica, you're given one immediately every time you start, and it's also possible to find other space/aircraft lying around.

It's shiny and loud. For planets with predatory wildlife, you want to avoid attracting their attention when landing

Glowsticks

You have a flashlight with your suit, but glowsticks are a thing too. Useful situations:

Tossing this works for some predators

Allows you to explore dark caves even when electricity (i.e. your flashlight) doesn't work

Jetpack

Jetpacks allow you to go up vertically; however, they tend to overheat. The jetpack can be taken off and thrown too.

Implications:

Allows for moving up (though it's limited)

Emits light

Overheating hurts you

Throwing it at hot objects causes it to explode

Throwing it while overheating causes it to explode

Grapple Hook

Launches a grappling hook. This in conjunction with the jetpack gives you the most verticality in terms of movement.

Implications:

Has a collider. Can be used to block or catch things

Is thin enough that it can survive the white hole, allowing you to double the length of your grapple

Camera/Translator

Used to take pictures. Objects that are obviously important can be used to start conversations with characters in the game. One of the goals is to take pictures of Beforei text, which adds to the translation bank. The camera also acts as a translator. Using the bank of Beforei, it can recommend translations.

Implications: idk

Signalscope

Used to find signals. Certain objects emit signals, including other Bells (live or dead), most Beforei artifacts (e.g. white hole machines).

This is probably the only tool I'm stealing from Outer Wilds wholesale, because I can't think of any modifications. Even for the jetpack, I was able to make it so it overheats.

[chainsmokingspacepenguin]

Just curious, can anyone guess what the arrows mean?

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Adding a camera to the game, so you can share photos with other travelers in the solar system!

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I like being able to create my own issues

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I've got planetary gravity now, but it's a bit wonky.

It's also surprisingly fun to just jetpack and fling yourself around them.

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Working on a cel shader. Really like how the shadow bands WRAP around the light source.

It makes sense, but it feels ALIVE

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Glowstick

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Jetpack

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Render Test

I'm too indecisive, so I made a render test in all 3 major engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot).

These are done using the same material/light colors (i.e. I copy-pasted the RGB values), but with the in-engine's default light intensities. I didn't bother color grading them to get them to line up perfectly, since I'm curious what each engine tends to.

What are your thoughts on each version? And which render do you think is done with each engine?

[chainsmokingspacepenguin]

Week 44 and meeting another dev

I met another software engineer who quit his job to become a full-time indie as well. He started a year earlier than I did and is working on a game inspired by A Short Hike, but you play as a rad fucking witch skateboarder.

We shared the number of premises went through (he's on major revision 4, I'm on major revision 12). He thought two of mines had lots of potential, but I have already abandoned them.

We talked for hours. I'm glad I'm not the only one writing and tossing out stories and mechanics like mad.

[chainsmokingspacepenguin]

Week 43 of being a bird's eye

I got a puzzle. I'm back in Renpy now, working on writing it out into a scene. In my opinion, it is incredibly hard to come up with fun ideas at a high level "planning" perspective, but it's a lot easier when writing scenes "organically" (writing a scene and see where it takes me).

At the same time, the "organic" approach is messy and things often don't play nice with each other. What's most likely going to happen is I need to alternate between the two approaches.

Flip.

Flop.

Hopefully I'll have something exciting and cohesive in the end...

[chainsmokingspacepenguin]

Week 42 of stealing from graves

I can't help it, but I am introducing something called Phantom Matter. It's basically Ghost Matter, BUT IT MOVES!

They're affected by the planets' magnetospheres, and so they move along the magnetosphere's field lines. Sometimes though, they act up because of the solar wind.

I'm thinking of a level where the majority of the cavern is filled with the Phantom Matter, but you need to make or find a bubble of safety. It will basically be the inverse of the Interloper!

The issue is figuring out how to make/find that bubble of safety. There needs to be some other substance that also gets excited by the solar wind and dissipates the phantom matter.

Currently, I'm imagining a fungus with spores that dispels Phantom Matter, but they don't grow anywhere near where Phantom Matter exists. So they need to do something that you can observe and that something should make sense in "aha! they dispel phantom matter".

I'm stuck on figuring out what that something is... If anyone has ideas, that would be great ;-;

The diagram below is the structure for how the player gets insight:

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Week 41 of searching for better waters

Last week I submitted another rough draft of the demake of the game to a critique group I'm in. The reception has been surprisingly positive! I'm really hoping I can scrounge something together for the public by the end of this year, but I can't make any promises :x

This month, with the Unity engine shenanigans, most of my time has been spent looking at alternative engines, in particular Godot. It'll still depend on whether the engine works well with me, but I'm leaning towards moving on to it if there are no dealbreaker differences.

Technically, Unity's original price changes (they've seen reverted it, somewhat) wouldn't have affected me. Hitting $1M+ revenue is a pipe dream for a solo dev, not to mention that I'm intending on selling the game instead of making it F2P. But it's the constant chain of Unity's decisions ever since their IPO and the idea that they can try it again in the future adds a sense of instability not worth dealing with.

Thank the heavens though that most of my progress so far has still been in writing the story, and that means most of the work has been in the demake, built on Renpy.

I had some features in Unity for this game. The image is a snip of one of the most awesome feelings ever. It's the first time I got to see my toon shader outside of a blank test scene, and seeing it in it's own window! Alive, it's own thing! is one of the greatest feeling ever in game dev.

We'll see what happens. I'll keep working on the demake. Also, I'm spending some time joining the Jump Ship Jam. Let me know if anyone else is doing this!

[chainsmokingspacepenguin]

week 36

Last week I submitted a rough draft of the demake of the game to a critique group I'm in. I've been taking a breather this past week, but I'm thinking of finding people to test and give feedback on the demake as I finish more of it.

It's built in the Renpy engine and acts as a visual novel for exploring the solar system of the game.

I think the first version of the demake I would be okay with strangers as testers should be finished by November.