[Devlog] April 2025 - Week 4
Alright, I've finished up with the 24th week of development, so its time for the 24th week devlog.
You can always follow development more frequently in other locations.
Each week I cover development goals for the game set at the end of the prior week's post. Then review if those goals were hit.
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6 more crops. Yep gonna just do the rest of them.
Behold! All 6 of the crops I planned to do this week got finished. In the top row we have Soy, Cabbage, and Hops. In the bottom, Potato, Rice, and Squash. Soy produces Edamame which I might also have turn into Soy Sauce or something. Cabbage, probably needs a pepper of some kind to go along with it later (I can't believe I didn't do a pepper now.) Hops will be used by the Brewery for beer production. Potatoes and Rice are just staple food items. I think I can turn Squash into an event thing on certain dates or
Energy and food consumption for the player and pawns.
Food of all kinds can now be consumed. Both player an pawns have a maximum of 100 energy. On the above screenshot, it is the cheese shaped bar. When the energy bar is fully depleted, the players movement speed will be halved, and will start to loose health over time. This will be the same for pawns, but will also damage their stress.
Food restores and amount of energy equal to 10 times its tier. This means higher quality food is generally "less efficient" for restoring energy, but can be eaten more quickly. Additionally, the food diversity of the settlement will be used in the calculation that determines the number of tourists who visit attracted by food.
HP DoT for certain environments, as well as "death". (I'll clarify that later.)
I didn't finish this entirely, and its in a way I can't easily show visually. The intent is to have some environment object damage the player by simply being around them. This will occur in a couple of biomes, but most recently the Grotlands. There will be a miasma which damages the player continuously will within. This also means the Grotlands willn't have its own roaming settlers.
The difficulty comes from trying to find the objects that damage the player within the players area. The sounds they create, etc... Normally in gamemaker, finding a nearby object is an easy thing to do. Usually with distance_to_object(obj), which would give the closest instance of the object you want to find. The objects on the map of Cosmic Construct are not objects, but is an arrangement of strips of sprites called from three 2d arrays. Finding an object requires checking each cell in range, calling one of these arrays, finding if its value matches one of the damage objects, and determining its distance. The damaging miasma is every easy on the step event; if currentbiome = "Grotlands" {hp -= 0.005}.
This is just one of many of the things I've done before I am able to fully implement damaging objects properly.
As for "death", I've decided that permanent stakes for death is very poor in a game intended to have a cozy atmosphere. At the same time, I do want to give the player an activity which earn rewards for doing "combat" of some kind. I think teleporting the player back to the totem or house, and putting a "death stone" into their inventory, is a sufficient penalty.
(If I have time, I'll do some of the new building UI elements.)
I did not get around to this.
---
Cursors
I was tired of seeing the windows cursor in game, and decided to fully replace it with a custom cursor. Clickable objects change the cursor shape, and some cursors are informational. If you hold control while in the inventory it will inform you that you can trash items, and in a menu that has a confirmation, it will show a checkmark. Things like that.
---
This upcoming week is going to be very different to other weeks, as I don't really know what can get done.
This is because I have two separate trailer videos for Cosmic Construct that need recording and features implemented to show off what the game can currently, and will soon be able to do.
I can't create a list of todo items, because I don't know what needs to be made during this process.
Basically, the entire next week devlog will contain unplanned content, which should be interesting.
The week after will return to normal, where I will be working on buildings and starting to implement gameplay features. I would like to have a minigame finished sometime soon.
That is all for this week. o7
You can always follow development more frequently in other locations.
- My bluesky account posts daily progress for Cosmic Construct.
- You can join the Cosmic Construct community discord server.
- Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam!
- Follow the steam page where I post these weekly devlogs.
Each week I cover development goals for the game set at the end of the prior week's post. Then review if those goals were hit.
---
6 more crops. Yep gonna just do the rest of them.
Behold! All 6 of the crops I planned to do this week got finished. In the top row we have Soy, Cabbage, and Hops. In the bottom, Potato, Rice, and Squash. Soy produces Edamame which I might also have turn into Soy Sauce or something. Cabbage, probably needs a pepper of some kind to go along with it later (I can't believe I didn't do a pepper now.) Hops will be used by the Brewery for beer production. Potatoes and Rice are just staple food items. I think I can turn Squash into an event thing on certain dates or
Energy and food consumption for the player and pawns.
Food of all kinds can now be consumed. Both player an pawns have a maximum of 100 energy. On the above screenshot, it is the cheese shaped bar. When the energy bar is fully depleted, the players movement speed will be halved, and will start to loose health over time. This will be the same for pawns, but will also damage their stress.
Food restores and amount of energy equal to 10 times its tier. This means higher quality food is generally "less efficient" for restoring energy, but can be eaten more quickly. Additionally, the food diversity of the settlement will be used in the calculation that determines the number of tourists who visit attracted by food.
HP DoT for certain environments, as well as "death". (I'll clarify that later.)
I didn't finish this entirely, and its in a way I can't easily show visually. The intent is to have some environment object damage the player by simply being around them. This will occur in a couple of biomes, but most recently the Grotlands. There will be a miasma which damages the player continuously will within. This also means the Grotlands willn't have its own roaming settlers.
The difficulty comes from trying to find the objects that damage the player within the players area. The sounds they create, etc... Normally in gamemaker, finding a nearby object is an easy thing to do. Usually with distance_to_object(obj), which would give the closest instance of the object you want to find. The objects on the map of Cosmic Construct are not objects, but is an arrangement of strips of sprites called from three 2d arrays. Finding an object requires checking each cell in range, calling one of these arrays, finding if its value matches one of the damage objects, and determining its distance. The damaging miasma is every easy on the step event; if currentbiome = "Grotlands" {hp -= 0.005}.
This is just one of many of the things I've done before I am able to fully implement damaging objects properly.
As for "death", I've decided that permanent stakes for death is very poor in a game intended to have a cozy atmosphere. At the same time, I do want to give the player an activity which earn rewards for doing "combat" of some kind. I think teleporting the player back to the totem or house, and putting a "death stone" into their inventory, is a sufficient penalty.
(If I have time, I'll do some of the new building UI elements.)
I did not get around to this.
---
Cursors
I was tired of seeing the windows cursor in game, and decided to fully replace it with a custom cursor. Clickable objects change the cursor shape, and some cursors are informational. If you hold control while in the inventory it will inform you that you can trash items, and in a menu that has a confirmation, it will show a checkmark. Things like that.
---
This upcoming week is going to be very different to other weeks, as I don't really know what can get done.
This is because I have two separate trailer videos for Cosmic Construct that need recording and features implemented to show off what the game can currently, and will soon be able to do.
I can't create a list of todo items, because I don't know what needs to be made during this process.
Basically, the entire next week devlog will contain unplanned content, which should be interesting.
The week after will return to normal, where I will be working on buildings and starting to implement gameplay features. I would like to have a minigame finished sometime soon.
That is all for this week. o7