Cosmic Construct News

This is the week 26 devlog for Cosmic Construct, meaning we are now at the 6 month mark.

As I had mentioned last week, I had some other non-coding work that needed to be done for the game, and that is just about finished.

If you want to follow development progress, you can do so in the following ways.

• My bluesky account where I post frequent updates.
  
• I also have a Cosmic Construct community discord server.
  
• Don't forget to Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow the steam page.
  

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Dialogue Art



I decided at the beginning of the week that I would get the social interactions working before the demo was released. That way the game would be a little more lively, and better reflect how I intend the pawns to react in the released game. Pawns are meant to communicate with each other in the same way that they communicate with the player. With audible conversations nearby at low volume.

Social Interactions



Once the art was finished. I was able to work on getting the placeholder coversation text done. When communicating with pawns, they will either complain if they have a complaint, or will talk with a random coversation subject relative to their personality. Personalities will effect the kind of leisure tasks they will take part in. Some will prefer games, reading, physical activities, as well as more or less leisure.

Social needs are covered by these interactions. Pawns with low social will seek out interaction between themselves and others. Pawns can also have traits which prevent them from communicating with others, or the player.

Energy and Food

I previously got the food integrated, and the player could eat; restoring hunger. I found some bugs with the way energy was implemented, and wasn't working for some activities, and was decreasing too quickly for others. This took longer to get working than I expected, but the player now loses energy while working and needs to eat to recover it.

Recording

I've been recording and recording different aspects of gameplay to create two trailers, one for each of two events Cosmic Construct is taking part in, both of which will be up on the Steam page to showcase the game. I have a hard deadline for the completion of those trailers, which is the 23rd of May. 3 days from now.

Gameplay Testing and Prep for the Upcoming Demo

I am going through multiple cycles of gameplay testing preparing for the new demo that will be changing the entire game progression relative to the current demo which uses the old hand-holdy progression system. The game is being changed more to a "move at your own pace, choose your own goals kind of game" with a level restriction apparatus which gates player progress behind completing a number of arbitrary goals.

I'll need feedback on this new demo when it becomes available. Feel free to take part in that at on June 3rd.

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We are now back to a regular schedule of planned development content.

- Finish two separate 2 minute gameplay trailers. (priority task)

- Add new structure icons and complete gameplay balance.

- Art for new structures.

- New pawn interactions and voice dialogue for existing complaint types.

Sorry week's devlog was short on images. I thought I would have more with all of the recording.

Welcome to the week 25 devlog for the development of Cosmic Construct. In these devlogs I go over development goals set at the end of the post from the previous week. However, this week did not have anything set, so it will be more freeform than these usually are. This will go for next weeks as well, before returning to normal.

If you would like to follow development of the game, there are a few ways you can do that.

• My bluesky account where I post frequent updates.
  
• I also have a Cosmic Construct community discord server.
  
• Don't forget to Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam.
  
• Follow the steam page if you want more of these weekly devlogs
  

With that out of the way, I normally have a planned work section. Since there is no planned work, we are just going go over what was done in not particular order.

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Pawn Interactions

Code for Pawn Interactions is underway. Pawn Interactions are going to mostly replace the system of pawn report logs, and switch over to an "animal crossing like" conversational system to get feedback from pawns. I don't entirely know what this will look like after it is finished, but there will be chat cut-ins when interacting with a pawn. It should bring more life and character to the game, and provide a means to get a higher resolution art of each of the pawns. Which will make the tailoring more visually interesting.

Pawn AI Improvements



Since all of the new crops were added, they were not recognized by the pawns doing the general gathering job. General Gathering still remains as less useful than intended, due to how the jobs are broken down. I neglected to add a general farming job, which is unfortunate. I'll be reorganizing the job lists so that they make more logical sense in the early game. Instead of having the player select between specific harvestables objects like berries, wheat, or linseed.



The search function was very, very poor computationally. I was using true diagonal distance, to find the nearest grid square. Then even worse, checking all 10,201 squares diagonal distances each time a pawn changed a state. This was fine when I wasn't checking over a list of possible objects to find. The second I needed to check the entire list of harvestable objects, it became O(n^3) complexity and ran the game down to 40 FPS.

I rewrote all of the grid search functions to check manhattan distance in a spiral. This is good because pawns, when harvesting a crop, are likely surrounded by many other similar crops. So it will terminate on an adjacent square almost immediately. Also, nowhere in that check is a square root ever used. This might not be a joke, but it could in some cases be more than 100,000 times more computational efficient than what I was doing before. That is how bad the search algo was.

I did everything I could to stress the game out, and could still do double that and run above 60 FPS. The screenshot above is the worst framerate dip I could find.

Game Balance

About half of the buildings still don't have build costs because none of the game testing has gotten to that point of gameplay. However, this is going to change in the upcoming weeks as I start building the mid game. I figured I would go ahead and do the math necessary for all of those buildings, and see what level of commitment a player needs to craft those items. I'm trying to keep from timegating the player from having access to the resources they need to make progress. Which is why the Market was added as a structure. The idea is that once a colony is established, the player can just buy most of the common resources instead of having the harvest them.

New BGM Tracks

4 New BGM tracks were added to the game. Cosmic Construct has two music playlists, common and rare. All 4 of the new songs are in the common rotation, which makes them just as likely to show up. In total 16 minutes of BGM audio, which brings the grand total to 1 hour and 40 minutes. I still don't think this is enough, but I probably will not add any more BGM audio until after the game is released.

Recording For Trailers



I have committed to two gameplay trailers for a couple of events that are going to happen in June. Once those trailers are finished, I'll be going on a small marketing run presenting the game to some interested people. The final pre-release trailer will be for Steam Next Fest. I don't know which next fest Cosmic Construct will be participating in. However, I have hard numerical requirements and goals that need to be meet before I consider sending the game out streamers.

Game Testing

Much of my time this week has been spent doing game testing and tweaking what I see. Removing annoyances, and shifting direction way from mechanics that cause those annoyances. This is part of the reason I am lessening the Logging mechanic, in favor of a more interactive means of communicating with pawns.

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As like last week, I will be doing work that I do not have planned.

I will be preparing a new steam demo, and do not know yet what is required to have it ready to play.

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.

• 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.
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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.

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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.



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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

Hello, and welcome to the Cosmic Construct Devlog, the 23rd week of development has just ended. Every week we cover development goals set at the end of the previous weekly devlog. This week has been largely productive.

If you want to follow development more closely, you can join us at:

• My bluesky account that posts daily progress updates for the game
  
• The Cosmic Construct community discord server.
  
• Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam. Every wishlist helps me, and costs nothing.
  
• Follow the steam page to get more updates about the game. (It's also a good metric.)
  

Now for this week's progress

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Finish new structures. Storehouse and Vertical Farm at least. (more if I have time).



All of the new structures are in the game, plus an additional I managed to squeeze in there.

In the above we have the Brewery that I didn't show off last week, because I didn't have the steam animated. It will, again, be used to brew alcoholic beverages and solvents.

The Town Hall, which will have a governing operation, which is complicated to explain, but when I work on the job programming I'll expand on that.

Then we have the Warehouse, which is drawn in a way to attach to itself to expand a single building out horizontally to look like one large building. Once I have the decor for this rank in, then it will like more "rural town".



You can see how the storage structures fit together here. The unplanned structure is the one with the orange stripe; the Depot. It has a corrugated roof which I just realize I haven't shaded. As a bonus, the green grass in this screenshot is actually a mimic.



Finally, we have the vertical farm, which connects to it's neighbors in a similar way, forming large contiguous structures. This screenshot shows a bunch of Garlic and Onion, but when I have all of the plants done it will be procedural. The intent is to show random plants, much like the Market.

2 new crops. There are 8 left.



At the top we have Arugula and the bottom Black Beans. As with the rest of the plants there is a wild and domesticated version. I still need to make all of the dishes these plants turn into. The food diversity of the settlement will be part of the calculation for tourism attraction.

Preparations for trailer editing.

Nothing I can show here as it will spoil the trailer. Some shots will require all of the crops be done. The trailer has a hard deadline of May 2025 Week 2. The trailer will be public in June, along with a new demo build. That build will expand the demo content substantially, bringing the player up to a point just before they can upgrade cloaks.

Reworking of an existing feature, which I will explain next week. (priority task)



Alright so. This is a big one.

I am preparing for "combat features" which require a change to the way that the game implements engagements with targets. Before this change the player had to click on an enemy to target them. They would fully stop, and then fire at a creature walking away. This is easy to program behavior for the pawns. It's fine for "enemies" that don't fight back, but not for what I have planned.

The new combat movement is fully functional. The player fires while moving, and is able to "manually circle strafe" enemies. You can hold down the mouse and aim wherever you want with no checks for range. It's just better in every measurable way.

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There was no unplanned content this week except for the Depot art. I decided not to separate it.

This upcoming week the following is planned.

- 6 more crops. Yep gonna just do the rest of them.

- Energy and food consumption for the player and pawns.

- HP DoT for certain environments, as well as "death". (I'll clarify that later.)

- (If I have time, I'll do some of the new building UI elements.)

I really want to get some programming done, I've been doing art for too long. Anyhow, that is all for this week.

Welcome to the 22nd week of development updates for Cosmic Construct.

The last week has been a little rough for me, so I didn't get as much done as I expected to. I also have a few other commitments that I needed to attend to. Regardless there is plenty of new stuff to show off.

As usual, I gotta plug the socials.

• Follow the bluesky account so that you can get daily updates on game progress.
  
• Join the Cosmic Construct community discord server. I'd love to see some more people around there.
  
• Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam. This one is important.
  
• Follow the steam page so that you can get notifications for these devlogs in the future.
  

Every week we go over development goals that were set at the end of the previous week.

Here are those goals.

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The structure art for Brewery, Town Hall, Warehouse, and Vertical Farm (priority task)



I didn't get all 4 of the buildings done. Only the Brewery and Town Hall. The Warehouse is easy to draw, but the Vertical Farm isn't.

The Brewery will be used to produce Beer and Grain Spirits, which will be used for both leisure, and as a solvent. The Town Hall will perform a management function for the settlement. Pawns have a relevant profession for this task.

A new biome. (Yes, another one. :P)



This took up the bulk of development time. There are 8 destroyed truck variants for the new Deadwood Tree. As well as new grass type "Urineweed". Which is a in joke from a development community I am apart of. This item will produce Nitrates which function as both a type of fertilizer for high tier plants, as well as a nitrate source for gunpowder; Saltpeter. I still don't know to what extent gunpowder will be used for gameplay. I'll be working on something special, and related; soon.



2 new plants (I'm trying to do at least 2 a week.)



The two planned crops for this week are Corn and Barley.

Corn is going to be mostly for the creation of Grain Spirits using the Brewery. Of course, you will be able to make and include it in a variety of foods once I go and draw all of the icons for them. Food items are very easy to add to the game, as they are simple recipe exchanges.

Barley Grain will also be used by the Brewery to produce Beer, which will be consumed at the Guild Hall to restore leisure, or by Expeditioners to increase their production. Barley Grain will also make staple meals that restore hunger substantially, but damage leisure.

Integrate the new items into the database.

Not much to show here. I've gone ahead and added all of the new items in. Adding items to the database can take time depending on what type they are. Some have tags that I need to test to confirm are working correctly. Like those that are plantable, or that can be consumed by pawns.

(If all of this is finished, I will move onto more plants.)

I did not finish the above entirely, so I did not do additional work on plants.

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Biome Blending - Omnilands Biome



I added an additional biome to the roster. This is the Omnilands. It doesn't contain anything new, but it does contain most of everything.

I needed a new biome to test the game's biome blending functions which I have been working on in the background since I implemented the second biome. If you look at the terrain tiles, you can see that they are fit together in an interlocking pattern. For example, there are triangle shapes in the space of the shattered ground. Each of the terrain tiles are actually dovetailed shapes. I draw them in a way they can interlock.

The Omnilands is a proof of concept for any biome blending combination. This is 25% of each of the 4 existing biomes. However, I can blend any percentage of any number of biomes. (90% Shatterlands, 10% Grotlands) or (12% Shaterlands, 23% Lunlands, 65% Hinderlands). Any combination can be done at the map generation and update steps. I want to find a way to use this other than for just exploration.



Now that the "4 base colors" are done, I can work on two color schemes with purple, orange, cyan, magenta, and white.

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For the upcoming week, I'll be working on something nifty.

- Finish new structures. Storehouse and Vertical Farm at least. (more if I have time).

- 2 new crops. There are 8 left.

- Preparations for trailer editing.

- Reworking of an existing feature, which I will explain next week. (priority task)

That's about it for this devlog. See you all next week. (or sooner on bluesky and discord)