Cosmic Construct News

[p]This is the week 46th devlog, unfashionably late as usual. As a reminder, these upcoming weeks will be focusing entirely on art assets, so they are list eventful that some of the past devlogs.[/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 (Residence, Observatory, Restaurant, and Bazaar)[/p][p][/p][p]I enjoyed working on this one, as I just like drawing houses. Its appearance is a direct upgrade to the Bungalow, and has a the blue and white color scheme as many of the late stage buildings. I'm getting to the point where I might need to make variations of this and other housing structures, as it might look a little dystopian with rows of tens of these around the city.[/p][p][/p][p]I didn't finish the Observatory, as I'm still a little iffy on the animation and planning out the structure. This is the last of the progress I posted to bluesky. I'm not happy with what I was doing with it. We'll see if I end up going with this.[/p][p][/p][p]The restaurant was pretty relaxing to work on, and more complicated than it initially appears. It has a bunch of layers in my art file. Because I was going above an below various parts. The spanish, cajun / irish fusion think I got going on here is funny in my opinion. A note about the "conscript" I have for the signage. It doesn't really mean anything, but is intended to looks like something meaningful. Keeping it all stylistically consistent and looking like the same language is a challenge.

I might eventually need to make variations of this building too. I already foresee this structure being abused in the midgame as a revenue stream.[/p][p][/p][p]Looks simple, but it isn't. It is the frame for a procedural generated building that will have many of the same visual components of the Market.[/p][p][/p][p]Here is a reminder of what the Market looks like.[/p][p]
The same component parts will be used to procedurally generate the Bazaar, but it larger more consistent rows. It will produce more income than the Market (per unit area). However, I'll do something to incentivize the use of the Market stalls in favor of the Bazaar. Maybe an additional resource, or improved mood or settlement value.[/p][p][/p][p]The Bazaar will have awnings over the wood, and will be multi colored like the Market awnings, but have more patterns (and cleaner appearance).[/p][p]---[/p][p]Just like the prior couple weeks, the only type of work I have planned is structure art.

- Structure Art (Finish Observatory, then Courthouse, Guild Hall, Treasury)[/p]

[p]Welcome to the 45th week devlog for Cosmic Construct. I am as usual falling behind on posting these, which is a combination of not charging a phone, generally being a procrastinator, and not working on Cosmic Construct because I had an idea. These things happen, and being only one person, sometimes I'm just not in the mental state to work on one project multiple days consecutively.[/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]As is usually with these devlog posts I review develop goals set during the prior devlog, for which there is only one.

---

Structure Art[/p][p][/p][p]The City Hall is finished. I think it didn't make it clear enough last time, but the player can use any combination of the 3 build parts for each building they wish. They don't have to use one of each part, but can be two of the same part.[/p][p][/p][p]Or even three of the same part. I will down the road, before and after the game's release, be adding stylized decor parts that fit the theme and colors of many of the game's buildings. Benches, light posts, mock structures, passive generating buildings, interactables. Stuff [/p][p][/p][p]I completed the Bungalow as well. These small structures are much easier to knock out, as they are smaller line arts with simple animations over small areas. [/p][p][/p][p]Here is that ever growing list of pending imports that will be added to the game's texture atlas. I expect another 20 images to get added to this before the next devlog post. We will see.[/p][p]UI Prototyping[/p][p][/p][p]I spent and still am spending quite a bit of time prototyping a UI, for a side project. I want to see if this proof of concept is worth pursuing, as its something that compared to Cosmic Construct (as least for me) is easy to make. It would be nice to have something that I can put out for free that people can play, that I can expand upon slowly over time, and still remain meaningful. Part of the difficulty is setting it up to be modular to make that easy to do.

The only downside is a heavy initial sink of design parts. However the game itself already has a design document completed, and its kind of a refresh on an old project of mine. Anyhow, you'll be able to look forward to that in the future on itch.io[/p][p]---[/p][p]As with the last couple devlogs, I'm concentrating (at least when it comes to Cosmic Construct), solely on artwork for structures. Once artwork for the structures is done, I can return to making mechanics advancements.[/p][p]- Structure Art (Residence, Observatory, Restaurant, and Bazaar)[/p]

[p]Here be the 44th week devlog for Cosmic Construct. I know I originally said this would get posted on the 4th, but it seemed a little too soon to post one following up. So I'll delay the schedule a couple days. I'll try to post the every six-ish days or so until I am back on schedule. As usual, I will go over development goals set last week. There was only one.[/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][/p][p]Here is all of the structure art that I have to import. The Abattoir was finished a while ago, but isn't yet in the game. As you can see, doing the Casino alone is as much art as at least 3 of the smaller buildings. This is made worse by the fact that it is a much larger size building, per unit. Its more like 9 times the work.[/p][p][/p][p]Here is the static structure, just like with the City Hall last week. It can be rearranged.[/p][p][/p][p]It is done in a semi intelligent way, so that the banisters on the east wing, will overlap when placed on the west, giving it the illusion of 3D depth.[/p][p][/p][p]The fully animated building is something to behold. It turned out really well I think. Though, I do need to finish the City Hall and the Museum.[/p][p]---[/p][p]This upcoming week will be the same as last. Structure art is a huge development bottleneck, so it needs to get hashed out as completely as I can now.[/p][p]- Structure Art[/p][p]See you all next week.[/p]

[p]Welcome back to the 43rd week devlog for Cosmic Construct. This one is going to be a quick post, followed by a very short week post to get, again, back on track with the devlog schedule. Posting on the 4th, 11th, 18th, 25th, and 31st of October. Meaning there will be another devlog in 3 days.[/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]Each week we cover development goals established during the prior devlog.

---[/p][p]Structure Art (priority task)[/p][p][/p][p]Some of the structure art is architecturally and mechanically complex. I wanted to tackle some of these larger structures so that I don't lament doing them in the future. Instead I can lament doing them now. :P[/p][p]For real though, I've enjoyed doing the art for these, but it is taking much longer than I thought it would. As with most things for this project.[/p][p][/p][p]This is the City Hall, which is a functional "upgrade" to the Town Hall which gives additional enforcement permissions to selected pawns, and is part of managing he settlement's average stress. It is composed of multiple parts that fit together.[/p][p][/p][p]This is one of the segments of the casino building, which is missing a whole lot of detail. There needs to be movement going on inside of the building through the windows, an in universe banner advertisement, a fountain, and stage lights. None of those things are done.[/p][p][/p][p]Here is a half complete segment I still need to animate the interior for. The gold still needs accent highlights and various other detail touch ups.[/p][p][/p][p]The interior isn't done for the city hall either, nor are details in the outside stonework. However it is complete enough for me to show you how it all fits together. Multipart structures can be assembled in any way. Which complicates the design of these structures. I want them to function as environment objects the city can be built around. With thematic decor blocks I can add. Perhaps with matching building variants and styles. That can be for much later.[/p][p][/p][p]Achievement Icons[/p][p]I've redone all of the greyscale icons again.[/p][p]---[/p][p]This next "week" will only be 3 days, and I will be trying to finish up this group of structure arts.[/p][p]- Structure Art[/p][p]That is all, sorry for the update delays.[/p]

[p]Welcome to the week 42 devlog for Cosmic Construct. Each week we review development goals set up at the end of the prior week. I think it might be time to admit that I am really bad at keeping schedules, or really good at procrastination. As this post is almost 9 days behind the date where it should be. I'll have to get myself, yet again, back on the correct posting date.[/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]With that out of the way...

---[/p][p]Finish the biome.
[/p][p][/p][p]This was probably the hardest to create biome so far, at least to make everything look thematically appropriate. Drawing a bunch of objects too match isn't too bad, but it is the complexity of them. The weirdwood trees for example had to have entirely redrawn trunks which too much longer than I expected. I had a design in mind, and that initial attempt I scrapped.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The ghastgrass is the most complex grass texture, as it has a smoke animation. In fact, I have to render it's image frames differently compared to every other object in the game, so its smoke animations don't line up. I actually don't think I have that entirely solved, but it looks good enough for now. The ghastgrass was more difficult to animate than any of the crops, as it has 5 variations with 4 frames each and a smoke effect. It's one of the only "real animations", I've had to make for natural blocks. I think it turned out fine.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Here are all of the assets I've made over the last couple weeks, and I have to say I'm not very impressed. It was a surprising amount of work for so few images.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]However, the end result turned out to be just lovely. I really like this biome, and not only because it matches the color scheme of my profile picture. The rendering here is also unique, as I've actually turned the sepia shader off for most of the objects where to increase their natural vibrancy and make this biome look a little more magical. [/p][p]The ground turned out a muddy grey color, but there isn't much I can do about that. I turned the shader off on that as well and couldn't see anything. I had also done that for the foliage layer, so it looked the same as the mature ghastgrass. I found that even despite having a huge smoke effect coming off of them, I could differentiate the harvestable plant from the passive scenery.[/p][p]Another unique thing about these biome objects is that the Ghost Pepper, Ghastgrass, and Soulstone all make funny ghost noises when you harvest them. Finding the right audio for this also took a bit of time.[/p][p]Work on the minigame mechanics[/p][p]I did not do any work on the minigame mechanics.[/p][p]Structure Art (if I have time)[/p][p]No structure icons were done.[/p][p]More achievement icons (if I have time)[/p][p]No achievement icons were done.[/p][p]---[/p][p]For this upcoming week which I am going to cut short, I am only going to work on structure art and icons.[/p][p]- Structure Art (priority task)[/p][p]- Achievement Icons[/p][p]That is all. I'll see you again sooner rather than later.[/p]