Lots of New Features

As promised, there's been a lot happening with Vacuum. I've decided to list what I've knocked out in the past day below. *Full fledged hunger system. -Individual crew members now get hungry. When there hunger hits a certain threshold, but before it hits zero and they start to lose health, they'll go in search of food on your ship. I still have to program this to have pathfinding, as they'll run into walls right now, but the basic logic is there and adding pathfinding is as simple as a quick tweak of my movement code for combat. *Unlock parts of the station. Anyone familiar with Startopia will remember the ability to unlock additional "sections" of the space station. I'm implementing something similar with Vacuum. When you have enough money, or some other resource, haven't decided yet, you can unlock additional spaces on your station. *Zoning - Ever play SimCity? I'm implementing a similar zoning system into Vacuum. Select the type of structure you'd like to build and your engineers will begin to build that zoned structure inside your space station. I'm really excited for this, as it'll allow for dynamic space stations. Zone a small area for a hangar and you'll be limited to the number of ships that can come in (and the size of space pirate boarding parties). *Hangar energy fields - Since anything exposed to the vacuum of space in the game will be sucked out into space I needed to come up with some way to make hangars that allow ships to come into and out of the space station. I decided on energy fields that let objects pass through them but don't lose atmosphere. This serves a dual purpose by allowing engineers to apply smaller versions of these energy fields if a hole gets blasted into the hull of the station and people are being sucked out. I hope this slew of updates and work makes up for my lack of updates over the past few weeks. Until next time!

My Apologies

I know I've really fallen off on the updates. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten bout Vacuum. Law school exams have been kicking my butt the past week plus. After this coming Wednesday I'll be able to focus a TON more time into the game. I'm hoping to have a nice little gif video to upload tonight of the progress so far!

Newest Update

Law school exams have been slowing down the development but this weekend I was able to make some more substantial progress. I've been adding emoticons to the crew whenever something happens. So now when a a few marines die in a firefight the crew becomes depressed and scared and you can see this in real time with emoticons above their heads. I've also been working on making sections of the space station unlock-able.

I'm Hungry

Today was an early day for me. I've implemented a basic food system into the game. There is now a VERY basic menu that allows you to place space chickens. This will eventually be developed into more of a zoning approach where chickens will be raised before being able to be consumed. Think of it has a type of space farming onboard your space station. However, for now the chickens do serve a purpose. If one of your crew is injured they can simply walk up to a chicken and eat it. This destroys the chicken but restores your crew members to their full health. This is especially nice because your crew can gain increased health which can be replenished to whatever it's maximum is by consuming chickens. I plan on introducing another method for restoring health as well, one that takes less effort than the chicken farming but it'll only be able to replenish crew health to its original status.

Floating through Sapce

This weekend I took a mini vacation, I didn't completely neglect the game though. Here's something you DON'T want to have happen while you're playing. This is the commander, floating in space. A game ending event for sure.

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Blood and Walls

So, as you can see, things are moving along. The past two days have seen me make the walls thinner. I thought they were simply too large and they were also causing some pathfinding issues with the units. I'm not promising the thinner walls are permanent, but given that its one less serious sprite I have to worry about I'm pretty happy with it. I was really unhappy with the previous walls. I've also implemented a blood pooling when a unit dies. The blood isn't particularly amazing but it does pool together if it touches.

Let there be Light

So yesterday I worked on some basic lighting for the game. Nothing too fancy. However, I did want the lighting to change when an "event" occurs. This could be anything from being boarded by pirates, to the plague breaking out, to an explosion causing crew to vent to space. I've included a quick image of just one of these alarm or klaxon lights going off. (No sound yet)

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