Potato Clock Games Fall Sabbatical

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ SEE YA.

xoxo
Potato Clock Games

Black Road Sky #4: Electrical System (First Pass) Complete

Here's a huge and probably incomprehensible GIF showing the current startup procedure, followed by a death-defying orbital maneuver and a quick shutdown:

I feel like things are coming together pretty well. I had to sketch out half-ass versions of a few other systems, as you can see above, just to get the electrical system running & tested, and in the process I was able to generalize a lot of the code base; adding new systems (as well as their UI panels) should be quite a bit easier from here on out.

Next up is the temperature management system. I'm not sure how deep I'll dig in on this first pass, but the plan is for the system to eventually consist of a number of freon (or something)-fed cooling loops with deployable radiators. I need to do some research on current and experimental industrial cooling technologies first, though, to get an idea of what's going to make sense here. Pretty much everything in the ship will produce heat, and overheating damage will eventually be a thing, so temperature management will be an important system that I'd like to get sketched out sooner than later.

I want the pressure dynamics in the pipes to make sense, and I don't really know anything about pressure dynamics, so this update may take a while as I dig into some research. But I'm hoping to have something to show & to be able to move on within a few weeks.

Black Road Sky #3: Electrical System Update

The electrical system is pretty much complete & working. I had initially planned on only sketching out the basics of the system, but I ended up diving pretty deep, so this first pass has brought it much closer to 100% complete than I'd expected. Here's a look at the cockpit panel as things stand (all graphics are temporary, of course):

Now I'm moving all the orbital map & navigation stuff into a rough version of a proper navigation system and the thrust & engine mode stuff into an engines system, as well as sketching out the fusion reactor system. This will allow me to test the electrical system's ability to provide & cut off power to other systems, and by the time all of that is done, we'll have a ship that can actually be powered up & shut down via glorious manual button jabbing.

I should have all of that complete by next weekend, hopefully sooner, but, you know. Until then!

Black Road Sky #2: Electrical System in Progress

The ship's electrical system is coming along; I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted it to look like from a gameplay perspective, but now that it's come down to brass tacks, actually simulating circuits in a believable way, things aren't quite so simple. Still, though, I think it's looking pretty good.

For a quick bird's eye view: the ship has multiple power sources (two different types of batteries and a fusion reactor, though this may change) which can be tied, at the player's discretion, to any of a number of power buses. Each system in the ship is hardwired to a particular bus; the power sources give electricity to any tied bus; systems on that bus request power from it as needed, and the bus distributes the power. This system is very much influenced by the power distribution system in Rogue System.

Everything in the ship, down to the backlights on the cockpit buttons, can only get power by requesting it from the bus that their system is wired to. So if more power is requested than is available, systems begin to fail. As you start to push the limit you'll first see minor effects such as flickering lights before whole system failures and, eventually, cascading blackouts as interdependent systems drop out.

That's the plan, anyway. I've got the programming architecture worked out, but I'm still in the process of implementing it. I'm also laying a lot of groundwork, like basic UI stuff, which will hopefully make future systems easier to get in place, so I'm pretty happy just taking my time with this.

I expect it to be another 2 weeks before I'm ready to move on from the electrical system first pass, but I'll check in next week with an update.

Until then, it's back to the black. See y'all soon.

Black Road Sky #1 : v0.0.1 is Complete

The orbital mechanics simulation and the basic physics engine for the game is all finally in place and working. Still not much to look at, but you can sort of do stuff. Here's a quick trip back home from the moon:

Anyway, this means that I can finally start working on the ship's systems, which should be fun. I'm going to start by sketching out the 3 remaining 'big' systems: Power Management, Temperature Management, and Tank Management, probably in that order. This will be a very general first pass, just to get the groundwork laid for the ship.

And after that, I'm not sure. I have some ideas about where to take this gameplay-wise, but I think I'll just play it by ear for now.

Introducing Black Road Sky

So, I haven't abandoned any of my works-in-progress, I just haven't, like, worked or progressed on them. I have, however & of course, started a couple of new ones.

The one I'm most excited about at the moment is a super-space-nerds-only fly-by-instruments space sim called, for now, Black Road Sky. It doesn't really look like it, but I've been working on this for a couple of months now.

KSP stole the navball from me, not the other way around.

Yeah, not much to look at. There was (and still is) a lot of math & physics to figure out and, like, I'm not that smart. But I've got the basic orbital simulation mostly worked out and things are starting to come together. It's been a bit of a struggle trying to get this one off the ground, and there's still like a 50% chance that I will fail miserably before there's any actual game to speak of in place, but if I can power through the math, I don't know, I think this one could be something sort of special.

I do plan to get back to Harvest Booze eventually, but I think I need to reevaluate some things with that project; it was just getting too big in my head.

My plan is to have the Black Road Sky physics engine more or less ironed out in a week or two. If I can't make that happen, then I'll probably have to admit that I've bitten off more than I can chew.

Family First: Quantum Leap and Samsara

After the wildly successful release of Harvest Booze, I found myself drowning in a heady cocktail of fame, drugs, and obscene wealth. I was a crack-addled Scrooge McDuck and the fans just couldn't get enough ... yet a man has only so much to give. Less than a year after release, I could feel myself breaking down, my spirit caged and my body in shambles; I had lost my way. I had lost the way. I gazed down to my hands; whose hands were these?

I began a rigorous program of self-rehabilitation, which involved getting drunk and watching Quantum Leap starring Scott Bakula, until finally I found myself deposited into a parallel universe in which I had abandoned development of Harvest Booze long before it could inflict its wretched torment upon me. I booted my old development computer, sweat cold on my brow, and raced through the labyrinthine file hierarchy to find it, that incubating darkness, harbinger of the fall. I hovered my cursor over the folder, my finger over the delete key. I looked into its eyes; my monster, my folly ... my child.

I knew I must, yet I could not. And I wept. For I was home.