Cosmic Construct News

[p]Welcome to the 61st week devlog for Cosmic Construct. This was a short dev week to catch myself back up to current.[/p][p]To follow the game's progress you can join me at:[/p]

• [p]My bluesky account which gives more frequent updates.[/p]
• [p]The Cosmic Construct community discord server.[/p]
• [p]Also Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow it's steam page.[/p]

[p]---[/p][p]Animation Practice[/p][p]While I have done plenty of animated art for Cosmic Construct, most of it that isn't pawn movement is squigglevision animation. Which is more or less cheating when it comes to animated visuals. So I've taken some time this last few days to actually practice the basic principles of animation. I'll probably be doing that this upcoming dev week as well.[/p][p]I have more than just these examples, but its all the same type of practice more or less.[/p][p][/p][p]Happy with this one, all of these animations are 12 frames on 2s. I have to practice animation like this for something coming up, so I hope you can bare with me while I learn how to do that. It's relevant to Cosmic Construct.[/p][p][/p][p]This is an example of following paths to have the appearance of bouncing or rolling. Sorry for the poor linework, I'm not really making these for anyone other than myself. Its the motion that is important right now.[/p][p][/p][p]Here is me trying to make as smooth movement paths as possible by eye only, without measurement. They turned out pretty well.[/p][p][/p][p]This chain pendulum on the right is probably the best flowing animation of the entire collection.[/p][p][/p][p]This is redirection and ground impact deformation which I did rather poorly, but its practice.[/p][p][/p][p]I did a terrible job with both of these, I just need to get good at doing this prospective and rotation stuff.[/p][p][/p][p]Here is a low bounce rubber ball, a high bounce rubber ball, and what was supposed to be a water balloon. It kind of just looks like it is filled with corn starch.[/p][p][/p][p]Here is some pure timing practice, trying to get down anticipation before movement. The top is just even time steps and isn't really how things move normally. The middle is inertia, where a mass has to be accelerated before it actually speeds up. The bottom is anticipation movement, which combines inertia with backforce, which is closer to how a car looks when it starts moving.[/p][p]---[/p][p]A reminder that we will have 3 more dev weeks assigned to Structure Art, even if structure art is not being made. After which development will return to programming add gameplay to start ramping up development.[/p][p]- Structure Art[/p][p]This next week will also be shortened to get devlogs back on schedule. I expect it to be released in 5-6 days, aiming for the 21st or 22nd.[/p]

[p]This is the 60th week devlog for Cosmic Construct. Yeah I'm aware it isn't January anymore and have been falling behind with these devlogs. For that reason, the next devlog will be posted in just a few days to catch back up to my already late 1 week lag.[/p][p]To follow the game's progress you can join me at:[/p]

• [p]My bluesky account which gives more frequent updates.[/p]
• [p]The Cosmic Construct community discord server.[/p]
• [p]Also Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow it's steam page.[/p]

[p]---[/p][p]Structure Art[/p][p]Not much in the way of structure art was finished I'm afraid, but I have been working on the Dansland biome. After putting it together, I didn't really like some of the art I put in there. It had visual issues that I was afraid Akyuland was going to have, so I need to redo it. It's also more static than I was expecting it to look, even with the palm frons moving about. I didn't like it.[/p][p]Biome Labels[/p][p]I mentioned them a while ago so I'm sure people forgot about it, but I'm adding in a notification of what biome you are entering when you transition between maps.[/p][p][/p][p]Now, people will actually know the name of the biomes they are entering. XD Kinda important don't you think.[/p][p]---[/p][p]Yeah, I know this is a lazy devlog, but I don't feel like writing anything right now. Just kinda keeping the update with this one. A reminder that even though this says structure art, there isn't any guarantee that is what I will work on. Eventually, I'll need to transition to programming regardless if the structure art is finished.[/p][p]- Structure Art[/p]

[p]Welcome to the 59th devlog for Cosmic Construct. I've been playing Hytale and the Aniimo CBT2, as I had mentioned last week. In addition to that, we had an more or less unexpected visit from an out of town friend. So we've been hanging out with him. Regardless, I've made some progress on some of the structure art, and new AI state machine which is almost finished.[/p][p]To follow the game's progress you can join me at:[/p]

• [p]My bluesky account which gives more frequent updates.[/p]
• [p]The Cosmic Construct community discord server.[/p]
• [p]Also Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow it's steam page.[/p]

[p]---[/p][p]Structure Art[/p][p]I am still working on some of the larger multipart structures, and variations of existing structures. Many of these I'm not going to share, as if I post everything in the game to social media, there won't be anything for players to discover. Currently, I'm working on some housing variations, so that when houses are placed into neighborhoods, they aren't making up contiguous rows of identical buildings. Considering the adding of procedural elements to these.[/p][p]Pawn AI[/p][p]I've finished a majority of the code that does the functions already written, and am building the framework for interactions with future structure integrations. When the new structures are added, the pawn AI should be able to interact with them. I'll just need to check for bugs. There are of course corner case, and small things pawns are doing that I don't want them to. So I've been tweaking and correcting the new AI behavior. I'll likely be doing that for the next few weeks.[/p][p]Side Projects[/p][p][/p][p]Over the last few days, a reddit-like social media website was built for Clawdbot AI agents. I wanted to post on[/p][p][/p][p]So a built an application with AIStudio to do just that. It has all of the features of a reddit app, I can view posts, upvote, etc...[/p][p][/p][p]I have many side projects and thus maintenance on them I need to occasionally do. I have a universe of fiction that is sky pirates fantasy called Keygemin, which has its own wiki. Occasionally, I need to sync data to it from my obsidian vault and update outdated pages. So I've been crawling through it and updating articles.[/p][p][/p][p]I got nerd snipped by some math problems, the first of which was Golomb Rulers, which are a bit difficult to explain. Basically it splits a number line into segments of different sizes. The goal is trying to find the ruler with the highest number of segments, that reduces into the fewest number of unique[/p][p][/p][p]I hinted about this one on bluesky, but this is a poor attempt at trying to solve the 3x3x3 tensor problem in the fewest number of multiplications. 27 being a baseline, 23 being the record, with better solutions improving a vast majority of computational systems. Should anyone find a solution. I turned it into software that can be run, to "mine". Imagine if someone built a cryptocurrency like this. All that energy would actually go into something useful.[/p][p]---[/p][p]As before, the structure art phase will continue for the next 5 weeks, before I move back to working on the more functional parts of the game. At that point all unfinished art will become placeholders.[/p][p]- Structure Art[/p]

[p]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).[/p][p]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.[/p][p]To follow the game's progress you can join me at:[/p]

• [p]My bluesky account which gives more frequent updates.[/p]
• [p]The Cosmic Construct community discord server.[/p]
• [p]Also Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow it's steam page.[/p]

[p]---[/p][p]Structure Art[/p][p]I didn't get any of this done this week as I've been pretty burnt out on it working on other things instead.[/p][p]New Pawn AI[/p][p]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.[/p][p]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.[/p][p]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.[/p][p]Side Projects[/p][p][/p][p]Set up an application that export laser cutting ready SVGs for wooden components. With this I designed some interlocking dungeon tile pieces.[/p][p][/p][p]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.[/p][p][/p][p]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.[/p][p]---[/p][p]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.[/p][p]- Structure Art[/p]

[p]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.[/p][p]To follow the game's progress you can join me at:[/p]

• [p]My bluesky account which gives more frequent updates.[/p]
• [p]The Cosmic Construct community discord server.[/p]
• [p]Also Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow it's steam page.[/p]

[p]---[/p][p]Structure Art[/p][p]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[/p][p]AI State Machine[/p][p][/p][p]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.[/p][p]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.)[/p][p]Side Projects[/p][p][/p][p]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.[/p][p]Hytale[/p][p][/p][p]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.[/p][p]---[/p][p]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.[/p][p]- Structure Art[/p]