Cosmic Construct News

[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]

[p]This is the week 41 devlog for Cosmic Construct. Each week I go over development goals established at the end of the previous week's post.[/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]I didn't get as much as I would like to have gotten done. I roped myself into doing a writing event, which ate up a bit of my time. It was a 24 hour writing sprint, where you write as much as you can for a story in 24 hours. After that, as a creative, you find yourself out of the creative juice for a little bit until you recover. I wasn't really in the mental state to do the art design for anything. I did get some work done however, so lets take a look at[/p][p]- Structure Art (which is still a development bottleneck)[/p][p]I did like a few lines for one frame of animation, we will say this was not done.[/p][p]- Start on the 6th biome.[/p][p][/p][p]I got the terrain and foliage layers for the biome done. Coming up with new interlocking shapes for the terrain is always difficult. Because of the way the pieces fit together (they are non-regular concave tessellating) I have to be careful with what shapes are where when they are interlocked with the procedural terrain generator. They also have to fit together with every other terrain shape to support terraformation.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I finished up two of the new resources, Soulstone and Astralite. The minable resources have a bunch of variations, so they have a lot of frames to draw.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I also did the item icons needed. I'm sure I'll need more icons for crafted recipes later. Here in the bottom row left to right are Purple Plant Fiber, Astralite, Soulstone, Ghost Peppers, Astralar, and Weird Log.[/p][p]I still need to do the interactable world objects for Weirdwood trees, Ghost Peppers, and Ghastgrass.[/p][p]- Work on the minigame mechanics[/p][p]I'm also having difficult getting the turns rolling over after dice are selected in the Sparkle minigame, and I'm trying to figure out why. Sometimes the NPC is selecting the player's dice on the player's turn. So, I have something going on with states that I need to fix. I also need to add a way for the player to bail from the game, a while also losing their bet. Also, I need the save file to resolve the gameplay state, so that if the game is closed in the middle of a minigame the player still loses their bet to prevent save scumming.[/p][p]- More achievement icons (If I have time)[/p][p]I did 2 more of these.[/p][p]---[/p][p]Over this next week I need to finish the biome I started, so that has priority.[/p][p]- Finish the biome.[/p][p]- Work on the minigame mechanics[/p][p]- Structure Art (if I have time)[/p][p]- More achievement icons (if I have time)[/p][p]Thank you for joining me this devlog.[/p]

[p]Welcome to the week 40 devlog for Cosmic Construct, where I review development goals set at the end of the previous week's devlog.[/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 (which is a development bottleneck)[/p][p]To be honest, I spent most of my time this week playing Path of Exile 2's update. hanging out with friends, upkeeping old projects, and writing chapters of a fiction novel.[/p][p]However, I did get some of the structure art done for two of the multipart buildings, and the Museum. At this point, making all of the buildings look consistent and have similar size that makes sense at the scale the game is drawn at is difficult. I'm managing this but the work is slow as the buildings get larger and the art more complex. Later buildings require about 4-9 times the amount of lineart than the smaller lower tier buildings do. I'll be dumping them a few at a time down sometime in the near future.[/p][p]- Finishing the achievement UI[/p][p][/p][p]The achievement UI is done. It took more time to get working than I would have liked, as I've had to make changes to the database to include new columns which need to be told which images need to be shown for complete and incomplete versions. The first bit was a test to see if it would display.[/p][p][/p][p]Then game the droll of applying all of the images to the database with their image id's. This kind of work sucks and takes hours to do and test to get right. The greyscale images are scuffed and look like crap. I need to fix them. Here you can see a bunch of farming images in color when they aren't supposed to be. I had to go back and fix those. Make sure that achievements are lighting up when they are supposed to. Takes alot of testing but it is done.[/p][p]- Work on the minigame mechanics[/p][p]Currently working on scoring and moving the dice to the center of the screen to be clicked on by the player. After which I'll be working on the opponent AI ranks to play the game out and create sufficient challenge. Then offer powerups to types of dice before they are rolled to make sure that Sparkle, is a unique game. I also have to get some voice lines and dialogue that will come up throughout the game based on how the player is doing. Should be pretty fun.[/p][p]- More achievement icons (If I have time)[/p][p]I did like a handful of these, not worth showing.[/p][p]---[/p][p]I really need to get more structure art done so I can have it all hashed out and work on the parts of development that are actually fun for me.[/p][p]- Structure Art (which is still a development bottleneck)[/p][p]- Start on the 6th biome.[/p][p]- Work on the minigame mechanics[/p][p]- More achievement icons (If I have time)[/p][p]Thank you for being here. I'll see you next week.[/p]

[p]This here is the week 39 devlog for my game Cosmic Construct. Each week we go over development goals set forth in the previous week's devlog.[/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]- Finishing the die rolling animations for Sparkle.[/p][p][/p][p]Yeah, this one took a while. My issue was getting the hand to look right while rolling the dice. Contrary to popular belief, I am not a good artist. I quite suck at anatomy, and even worse I'm dealing with anthropomorphic forest creatures. So a zoomed in representation of them rolling dice was a bit of a mental block caused by a lack of suspension of disbelief. I had no idea how to do this in a "cartoony" way, while still remaining visually interesting.[/p][p]After a few poor attempts, I think it's good enough now that I'm happy with, and I won't be changing it.[/p][p][/p][p]If you didn't watch the video I put up on bluesky, I wrote a rudimentary 'physics function" to simulate bounce from the walls of the container, play die sound effects, and rotate the dice. I think the result is convincing enough, and other than the dice occasionally overlapping its a pretty solid visual. I'm very happy with it.[/p][p]- More achievement icons, and achievement viewer UI.[/p][p]Because the icon resolution is 4 times higher than the in-game item icons, I have to redraw them in a higher resolution. Here is for not doing that from the beginning, but it's too late now. I've finished about 1/3rd of all of the achievement icons that are planned so far. I probably have about 300 or 400 more to go. I can't wait to have to deal with uploading them all to steam and deal with the steamworks API, oh boy.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]As you can see, there are alot of repeat assets in here which made them easier to do. I think I did a pretty good job of tracing the existing assets for the higher resolution. Now I'm going to have to make images for every other item in the game for the production achievements. That is going to be a real chore.[/p][p]My favorite achievements icons so far are still the piles of coins.[/p][p]- Structure art (If I have time)[/p][p]I did not do any structure art this week.

---[/p][p]This week I'll be returning to core assets, as I'm now at the "slog" part of achievement images.[/p][p]- Structure Art (which is a development bottleneck)[/p][p]- Finishing the achievement UI[/p][p]- Work on the minigame mechanics[/p][p]- More achievement icons (If I have time)[/p][p]Thank you for being here. I'll see you next week.[/p]

[p]Welcome to the week 38 devlog for Cosmic Construct. Each week I write a devlog covering work done since the previous devlog.[/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]\[] Achievement icons to be used in a new objectives submenu, and for steam achievements.[/p][p][/p][p]I've spent most of the development time for this week doing a combination of drawing the icons, and establishing how to best to arrange the icons to work on them more quickly later. Many of the icons I need to do are effectively the same image with various roman numerals over them, and a change in border color.[/p][p]So, I decided to take on some of the more artistic designs I wanted to make, like for the stacks of currency. Something which I can reuse throughout the game later. It's convenient to have these art assets where I want them. I also enjoyed making "chibi" versions of some of the game's menus.[/p][p][/p][p]I was getting a little freaked out when I realized I would have to do all of the icons twice, but of course I could just use a neutral threshold greyscale filter or shader to do all of this. Needless to say, it will not be a problem. Cutting the tileset out for steam can be done in python.[/p][p][/p][p]I have an animation timeline at the bottom for various sheets, and there will be I think 11-12 sheets in total by the end of development. Yet another art asset I need to complete before release, but this is my life now.[/p][p]\[] Dice rolling animations and UI display for the Sparkle minigame.[/p][p]I've been having some difficulty with making the dice rolling animation look as natural as I want it to. Something I can ascribe to being a skill issue. The hand will be rolling six dice off of a backboard from either side. Its the hand opening and release that I am having an issue with looking how I want. Definitely the most difficult animation I've made in a long time, if ever.[/p][p]\[] Structure art (If I have time)[/p][p]I didn't work on the structure art at all.[/p][p]---[/p][p]Things that will be worked on over the next week.[/p][p]- Finishing the die rolling animations for Sparkle.[/p][p]- More achievement icons, and achievement viewer UI.[/p][p]- Structure art (If I have time)[/p]