Cosmic Construct News

[p]Welcome to the week 47 devlog for Cosmic Construct. I am now very late on this one, so the upcoming "week" will be just a few days to catch up, and that still won't have it back on track. I'll get there. The steam page looks like it hasn't been updated in two weeks despite the last post being 8-9 days ago.[/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]Just like last week, and the week before. I am getting much if not all of the structure art done. Which will be happening for quite a bit, before I'll get back to coding the game features. This is my fault for making a game that requires so many assets.

---[/p][p]Structure Art (Finish Observatory, then Courthouse, Guild Hall, Treasury)
[/p][p][/p][p]I did more work on the detail of the building, but I don't really like the whitespace (or I guess blackspace) areas. There is something about this I just can't translate in my head for some reason. No other building I've had this problem with. Anyway, its still not done. I need to finish animations for it.[/p][p]The Observatory will generate research and an end game material.[/p][p][/p][p]The Courthouse was probably my favorite of the buildings to work on this week. It is modelled after a particular real world Courthouse, not exactly but close enough people could probably recognize it if they lived in the area. The justice statue was fun, though the copper looks a little like vines, which I've heard from a couple people, but that's because you can only do so much with contours.[/p][p]The Courthouse is a pawn punishment and administration building.[/p][p][/p][p]The Guild Hall I believe is the game's largest wooden structure. The animations aren't quite finished yet, but it's mostly just cloth banners that need to be put on the outside.[/p][p]The Guild Hall will share half the player's skill levels with the pawns of the settlement.[/p][p][/p][p]The Treasury didn't get finished, as it still needs detail and interior animations. I like the stonework, and its the shape of the US Treasury building. I just like its pillars.[/p][p]The Treasury will store the currency so it doesn't take up storage space and displaya new UI feature that shows the settlement economy in real time.[/p][p]---[/p][p]Dungeon Tiles
[/p][p][/p][p]It's been a while since I've had unplanned work I've wanted to show off. Here I have been redrawing many of the titles from Dave's Mapper from a long list of various creators, to make them a little more standardized and add a grid to them. This should make them a little more useful for tabletop and printing. Making them all standardized.

I'll have this set of dungeon tiles available for free on itch, over the course of the next few months. Look out for that.[/p][p]---[/p][p]This upcoming week will be very short, so I am going to relegate this time to importing some of the finished art into the game and make the buildings placeable, and get their structure icons into the build menu.[/p][p]Import Buildings[/p]

[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]