Beware of Walls

So today I spent a good deal of time working on some basic pathfinding. Nothing terribly complex and I'm certainly going to have to go back and tweak it later on but at least for the time being when you select a unit you can click somewhere on the map for them to go and not worry about having to guide them through every doorway. Here's an example of what it does off Wikipedia.

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Venting to Space

So as I work on many of the essential features of the game one big aspect is getting a hull breach to appropriately "flood" the ship. What this means is a somewhat realistic vacuum sucks out the air in an area. I don't want it to be instantaneous, as I feel it'll be more fun trying to scramble to get vital people out of a room that's been breached before they're sucked out or to close doors to stop the vacuum from spreading. Below I've included gifs of what the "vacuum" breach looked like initially, not very appealing from a gameplay/realism perspective and the new and improved although unfinished vacuum breach.

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Hopes for the Future

Working on the game a little later than normal today. I'm planning on working on having crew enter a "floating" animation whenever they're exposed to a vacuum or space. I've also been tweaking the death animation a bit too.

I'm really hoping that once I get the foundation of the game worked out I can start to transition from having mere 2D sprites to incorporating some better 3D models. I played around with Blender once ages ago, and just downloaded it again. I can't promise I have a ton of free time to experiment with 3D modeling, and I'd honestly rather devote my efforts to tackling substantive game issues at this point. The point of bringing this up? I know the graphics right now aren't amazing so please keep that in mind as I work on the programming and gameplay aspect first and then I'll be moving forward to tackle graphics.

Now on Indiedb.com

I just wanted to post quickly and let everyone know they can also follow the development of Vacuum over on Indiedb.com. While I'm going to do my best to keep content updated across both platforms I currently feel a little more comfortable using Blogger. Expect me to use Indiedb as a tentative source to release content and software updates once I can get some playable prototypes out.

How I Keep Track of Everything

Developing a game is a lot of work. On several forums people have discussed how they go about managing the daunting task of creating a game by one person. Below I've included a small image of my game design schedule. I list the general feature I'd like to implement, then I have an asterisk system for the difficulty of the feature. The more asterisks the more difficult (I've intentionally only shown the easy tasks, I want you to keep reading!). Lastly is the portion that shows if I've finished the task or not. This is last part is hugely beneficial, as it staves off depression of having a massive list of tasks to accomplish. It's like a to-do list where I can check off challenges. As I stated previously, I try to accomplish one thing a day, usually that means one item off this list.

Nothing particularly special today. I've been working on making the floors look better than just bland grey. Something that's actually proving quite difficult, as I don't want it to become too repetitive and rough on the eyes.

I'm also working on changing the sprite animations so that when a crew-member dies their sprite reflects as much. Now some games have the sprite corpse stay around forever and this places a heavier burden on older machines. Some games simply have the image vanish which isn't very realistic. I'm hoping a happy middle ground is to have the image stay in the "dead sprite animation" for about a dozen seconds.

Space Chickens

I'm a law student by day. In my spare time I've been working on Vacuum off-and-on for about two months now although it's been a percolating thought for over a year. Last night, at around 3am, as a break from my work for poverty law I decided I needed to create a food source in Vacuum. Being an avid Dungeon Keeper and Rust fan I figured chickens would be an excellent source of nourishment.

I give to you the space chicken. Imagine these guys running around and nesting in the nooks of your space station. Nests bustling with wires and scraps of wrappers instead of straws and leaves.

As far as the game development goes I have one rough goal I strive for. I try to add one thing to the game every day. Somedays, like today, it's relatively small and simple. This new chicken sprite (soon to be an animation) and mouse scrolling.

First Post!

So my goal is to try and document the creation of my first full-fledged game Vacuum. I've drawn inspiration from dozens of games, notably Startopia, FTL, Black & White, RimWorld and even the Battlestar Galatica series. Vacuum is my attempt to create a realistic spacestation crew-management and combat simulator.

Some key aspects that I believe will set Vacuum apart include:

• Creating a vacuum that sucks crew members into space when the hull is breached.
• Crew experience - The longer your crew have been with you the better they are at what they do whether that's shooting, fixing things, or just making people happy.
• Escape pods - When your ship is too badly damaged run for the escape pods. It'll allow you to save some of your crew for your next station.
• RTS style ship interior fighting.
• Physiological effects of space combat. Battle depression as your crew becomes frantic from too many deaths. Fight disease as you rescue refugees who infect your crew. Has your station run out of food? Issue the cannibalism order and watch your crew carefully as they become distrustful and delusional. 

Here's an early test photo of the crew interacting with one another.