PCG 2024 Shareholders Report

[A figure in the shape of Bradley Potato is waiting. Has been waiting- minutes or weeks or centuries; muttering heartbeat, invisible breath, radiant awareness. A striped full-body bathing suit clings to the flesh, and a knit octopus mask hides the face. Sitting at the back of a raised obsidian altar, engulfed in a metallic throne of gleaming blades, half hidden in menacing chiaroscuro.]

[The kneeling throng of billionaires are careful to keep their eyes lowered to the imposing figure, their oozing sweat saturating the air as pulsating blue-flamed braziers, more organ than stone, cast nightmarish suggestions of forgotten trauma among the reverent faithful.]

[In a back corner, an odd man-shape in a rubber rooster mask and a sloppy 'Occupy Mars' t-shit fiddles with a tangle of sparking wires and fleshy circuitry labeled 'Trump Resurrection Crucible' in gold-embossed comic sans against a glowing plate of lapis lazuli. Startled, as if suddenly noticing the crowd, it makes a final adjustment and scurries to a podium and microphone at the front of the altar.]

ROOSTER: We accumulate in this darkness, the wretched honored, sycophant scum bums & trash juicers all, to celebrate in the orgasmic pain of our filth. Bless this mess, my Lord Pope CEO...

[Trembling in ecstatic fear, Rooster looks to the octopus-masked figure, who raises a skeletal hand in casual benediction.]

ROOSTER: Amen.

SHAREHOLDERS: AMEN.

[The sound echoes as if clinging to the walls, a liquid thing that lingers and recedes, finally, despite itself.]

ROOSTER: I will endeavor to be as brief as I am unworthy. The money is bangarang and the sacrament of shame is palpable. A shame not easily buried, though our shovels be the finest, black soil most desperate for airways, a dirt passionate to suffocate in slime and worm and sand. But in the glow of Potato we are baptised forever.

OCTOPUS: [stands]

SHAREHOLERS: [stand]

OCTOPUS: [sits]

SHAREHOLDERS: [kneel]

ROOSTER: Forever & ever, Amen.

[The blue flames extinguish themselves and darkness hangs for a terrible moment, pregnant with a mischievous sickness, before the fluorescent lights click on, and the high school gymnasium is bathed in embarrassing clarity. The gathered faithful scatter in silent panic, acolyte cockroaches awoken from fever dream, crevices of deep gloom wailing their siren call.]

[Rooster returns to its corner, finding a mop and a bucket, and begins to clean up, as per the agreement with the high school janitor, as octopus mask, Lord Pope CEO, old timey swimmer in the shape of Bradley Potato, watches in ticking silence.]

Big City Trucking

As ever, progress this month was slower than expected (I choose to blame cheery optimism rather than a crippling lack of self-awareness), but I am stoked with how the city stations turned out. I'm giving up on my arbitrary "v5 before '25" deadline, but I shouldn't be TOO far off.

City Stations Complete!

The new city stations are considerably larger than the old ones, measuring 10 km across and presenting a whole new docking vibe. My goal was to make city arrivals feel a bit like pulling off a highway exit after a long roadtrip. NPC ship traffic will eventually drive this point home (scheduled for the eventual 'province updates'), but I'm really happy with how it feels for now.

New City Model

Approaching the Canada City arrivals gate

Navigating Canada City

I really underestimated how much modeling work there was to do here, and I'll admit that I phoned some of it in. The city interior is kind of a mess and I'm still working through some lighting & optimization issues, but I'm calling it good enough for now; it's a huge improvement over the old city stations and I think it was time well spent.

A Nicer Looking Solis System

I'm now getting to work on finishing the planetary makeovers that I started on in the last update. The major problem was that the planet generator that I implemented (c/o Sebastian Lague) doesn't support craters. Sebastian did end up revising his generator to do just that, but rather than trying to integrate that into my existing code I just said 'fuck it' and decided to model the cratered bodies by hand in Blender.

It's going well so far! I think? I only have 4 cratered bodies to make, including the Ceres-inspired dwarf planet that I'll be adding this month, tentatively named Svartalheim. Get it, DWARF planet? Anyway, Mirchick is almost done, check it out:

Mirchick model WIP

Mirchick Shader WIP

Coming Up Next

I feel like I've written the same damn thing under this heading for the past half a year, but at least the station exteriors are finally done. Anyway, the roadmap hasn't changed: finish these planets & moons, redo the station interiors, fix a bunch of bugs, release this bad boy.

Like I said, I'm not going to stress about finishing v5 this year. I can feel myself easing into a burnout phase but I've got a bunch of time off from work in December & January. The trick will be finding the right balance between getting shit done & chilling the fuck out. I'll do my best! See you on the other side.

The Great Space Station Redesign Continues

The new station exteriors are coming along nicely, and I'm having a surprisingly good time working on them. Graphics have always been a headache for me, as you probably know because I bitch about it all the time, but it's pretty exciting seeing things come together as I slowly dial in a visual style for Black Road Sky.

Improving Upon The Cube

The small space stations, which I am now calling 'depot class', are complete. These are replacing the cube stations such as Laika Orbital. Nothing against the cube (I still like it, and some version of it will probably return eventually), but I think this brings more visual interest and feels a bit more believable as a space station. I gave it a modular design, so I can add more shit later: cargo drop off, external refueling dock, who knows. I had a lot of fun making it, and maybe I'm deceiving myself here, but I like to think that it shows.

Laika Orbital

Outpost Class Stations

The medium sized stations (e.g. Gagarin), now called 'outpost class', are also complete! While the new depots are significantly smaller than the old cubes, these outposts are pretty comparable in size to the old designs. But I think they look a hell of a lot cooler.

Gagarin Station

Looking sick as hell from the dark side

The hangar is smaller than before, and the terminals for refueling and managing contracts will be closer to the hangar exit, reducing the tedious running back & forth. Eventually there will be more to do in the stations, but for now access will be limited to this dock & commercial services area. Here's a little map of how I imagine these stations to eventually flesh out:

Outpost Map

Coming Up Next

I was really hoping to have the city stations done by now, but I've just barely started on them. These are going to be massive, and provide a different docking challenge than the other stations. Now that I'm in the groove, I'm confident that they should be ready in about a week.

After that, it's finally back to working on the visuals for the planets & moons. Some of them are starting to look pretty stale in comparison to the new space stations, and I'm looking forward to giving them a bit of a make over. The next step after that will be the new station interiors (which will be fairly limited for now), then it's on to bug fixing and polishing for a version release!

The Great Space Station Redesign

I'm changing gears and getting back to work on graphics, which isn't my favorite thing in the world but it's going well (if slowly) and providing a refreshing change from input & UI work.

Input System Refinements Complete

The final push was more work than expected, but I think everything's working now. There are still a few things I'd like to add, but those can wait for a post full release update some time in the year 3003. The UI is nothing to write home about, but considering how bad I am at UI, I think it's more than passable.

A New Space Station in the Works

With the updated input system finished, it's time to move on to graphics. This update is turning out to be pretty slim in terms of new features and gameplay, and to make up for that I want to put a little extra effort into making the game look better. So, deep breath, I'm finally doing it: I'm redesigning the space stations.

I've been putting this off for a few reasons: first, I'm going to have to do it again eventually with the province updates. Second, it's always a huge pain changing anything that's been in the game for so long, forcing me to revisit old code and untangle my own spaghetti. And finally, because I hate fucking with graphics. But who knows how many years away those province updates are, and this is some pretty low-hanging fruit in terms of making the game look better, so I decided to take the plunge.

And you know what? I don't hate it this time! I'm starting with redesigning the exterior of the small platform stations and I'm actually pretty happy with how it's going.

This is a work in progress. There's still a lot of work to do, visually and otherwise. You can't actually dock with it yet, but I made the landing platform significantly smaller, requiring a much more precise landing and hopefully providing a little bit of a challenge.

Landing Platform Size Comparison

Coming Up Next

Once I finish this station, I'll be redoing the exterior design of the other two station sizes as well. I don't expect to get through more than that this month. I want to redesign the interiors as well, but before that I'll probably revisit the planet generator and get the rest of the planets and moons up to par. That'll all be a lot of work, but I want to be able to focus on gameplay & simulation in the next few updates so getting all of this out of the way will free me up to do that without the game looking like shit in the meantime.

Chugga Chugga CHOO CHOO All A-Fucking-Board

For the first time in what feels like for god damn ever, development is rolling along at a reasonable pace. I lost a good couple of weeks to my job, which is always busy this time of year, but I didn't let it derail me & things are chugging along like a proper train analogy.

Ship Customization System Complete

You can change the color of shit. It's done. On the one hand, I'm frustrated at how lackluster it turned out; the final product is in no way indicative of (or justified by) the amount to time that went into it. You win this one, sunk cost fallacy. That said, it feels good to be moving on, and I think I learned some things about myself as a developer and how to recognize when I'm digging myself into a hole. And, negativity aside, it IS kind of fun to play with.

Optimus Prime

Black Gold

Planet Express

Input System Refinements Nearly Complete

This was one of the major goals for this update and it's been going pretty smoothly. Except that both of my flight sticks are busted, so I couldn't test it all as thoroughly as I'd like to, and I wasted a couple of days opening them up and putting them back together like, "yup, still busted." I can't really justify spending money on a new one right now, so whatever. I was still able to test with a throttle, rudder pedals, and X-Box 360 controller, so good enough, I think.

Anyway, the UI has been revamped to provide the room for growth that the coming updates will require. A slider for deadzone adjustments and a full/split toggle is now available for every bound axis. These were sort of already in the code, I mostly just had to expose them via UI. There's still a little more work to do here but nothing major.

A fun little side effect: as I was adding a few missed controls to the system (most notably the run button), I remembered that I had added a secret flashlight to the game some time ago. I needed it to debug some lighting issues or something, but never got around to including an in-game button for turning it on & off. Well, now there is one!

Spooky!

More Cuts >:D

Adding to list of shit for future me to handle, I've decided not to worry about the pilot reputation system for this update. It will definitely be a thing eventually, but it won't be a major gameplay factor until I flesh out the provinces. For now it was just going to be a number that you can make go up, it wasn't going to add much, and I'd rather get back to focusing on the simulation side of things as soon as possible.

Coming Up Next

Once I wrap up the input system refinements, it's on to graphics work. Space station lighting needs a rework, and I'm kind of thinking about redoing the space stations altogether. I'd also like to get some work done on the planet generator and start revamping some of the old planets & moons. And that'll round out the last of the major planned features for this update! Still a ways to go, but a version release is starting to feel within reach.

Slowing Down to Speed Up: BRS Development Back in the Groove

I'm finally back to making progress and, more importantly, not hating it! Unsolicited life pro-tip: allow yourself to take breaks. Sometimes you have to slow down in order to speed up (that's an orbital mechanics joke).

Scaling Back on Interior Customization

I've refactored the interior design system for color customization only. The model swapping system had some bugs to work out, and complicated the UI; these are both fixable issues, but I just kind of want to move on. I'm trying to get better at recognizing non-critical work that can be saved for future me, and I think this qualifies.

I also reworked the interior design UI a bit while I was at it. It's still ugly and I'd like to give it another pass before release, but it's good enough for now if I don't get around to messing with it again.

SPACE TRUCK

While the current Chonky Boi ship is certainly an improvement over the previous design, I'm still not super happy with it. Since I've decided to mostly hold off on the exterior customization system, I wanted to rework the model a bit for the next update. I made a bunch of little changes, then unexpectedly spent way too much time making this campy new cockpit, obviously inspired by classic American semi trucks:

10-4, good buddy

A bit too on-the-nose, perhaps, and I think it comes off as more goofy than cool, but I actually had fun making it. I feel like my modeling skillz are slowly improving; or, at least, I'm becoming more patient with the process. Anyway, "more goofy than cool" kind of sums up my whole vibe, so I'm sticking with it for now.

Exterior Customization

Work on customizable exterior colors is coming along quickly. I was able to reuse a lot of the work I did for the interior, both in terms of the UI and the actual functionality. It's clearly not quite finished yet, but here's a quick video to show where it's at:

So the code is written and the UI is in place, I just need a little more time to finish hooking them together and to get it all working with the save system. I should be able to wrap this customization nonsense up early next week.

Coming Up Next

With the ship customization boondoggle out of the way, I'll be moving on to input system refinements. I don't think this should take more than a week or so, but I haven't even looked at that code in like 3 years, so ... who knows. After that it's on to another round of graphical improvements; I have a ton of things that I want to do, but I'll be paring the list down to just a few things that I can finish in a reasonable amount of time. What are those things? I don't know! Tune in next month and we'll find out together.

Boring Update - TL;DR I'm getting Back To Work

Spending some time away from development has allowed me to reevaluate what I'm trying to get out this update, and to get some perspective on why I've been having so much trouble getting my ass into gear. No need to go into too much detail, I don't think, but here's where I'm at:

I really don't care about ship customization. I want it to be a feature eventually, but it's not mission critical, and it's just not something that I personally care about as a player. I got it into my head that if it was going to happen at all then it needed to happen now, but it can totally wait. So I'm reducing the scope pretty dramatically; I'm keeping the ability to change interior colors, but not models, and it should be easy enough to do the same for the exterior. That's good enough for now.

I still need to spend some time reworking the input system, and that actually does need to happen now, before I start adding more cockpit controls. This will probably be boring work, but it shouldn't take too long.

I'm still going to do some work on planet/moon redesigns, but only until it gets boring or frustrating. I don't need to do it all at once.

And I've got some bugs to fix, but when don't I?

That's it, that's the next version. Just a minor update before finally moving on to ship systems. I'm still pretty busy this month, so I don't expect to get a ton done, but I'm feeling good & ready to get back in the groove.

The Major Provinces of Solis

Bhumi-Tyran Republic

Now overwhelmingly agnostic, The Republic was formed as a partnership between the major theocratic superpowers of post-Exodus Tyra to form a single, united government for the planet. Once considered a technophobic relic, the natural beauty and plentiful resources of Tyra, not to mention the nostalgic allure of the homeworld of all known civilization, has helped The Republic to grow into a successful economic power as well as a bohemian haven for artists and naturalists. Ruled by a democratically elected 100-person senate, The Bhumi-Tyran Republic has brought the first lasting age of peace and prosperity to the planet.

The Sangha

The Sangha is a loose and far-flung collective of monks and lay Buddhists without a capital city or homeworld, but with presence and influence in every planetary system of Solis. Renowned as scholars and teachers, this collective oversees the largest universities in Solis as well as the Zazen City Nature Preserve, the largest off-Tyra collection of natural flora and fauna. The Sangha enjoys a deep respect, particularly among ship captains, for their at-cost emergency refueling missions coordinated by a monastery of Zen monks known affectionately as ‘Rat Boys’. Although technically an anarchy, the community of The Sangha tends to leave matters of politics and trade to a handful of recognized Lamas, high monks of a lineage of reincarnated leaders and holy people.

Church of the Outer Gods

In the exploration rush of the Exodus Era, tragedy and discovery often came hand-in-hand. The stranded survivors of the wreck of the capital ship Soyuz Tereshkova were the first to discover the Elder Tombs of Zaoth, and spent three generations studying the ruins in secret, cut off from the rest of Solis. The community descended from these shipwrecked explorers came to call themselves the Church of the Outer Gods. Obsessed with the mysteries of their de-facto homeworld, they are openly ambivalent about reintegration into society at large. The smallest of the major provinces, The Church is ruled by a secretive council of scientist priests and is largely uninterested in politics or commerce. While rarely participating in Solis-wide affairs, The Church has openly and enthusiastically shared their discoveries of prehistoric ruins and technologies, bolstering a new era of exploration and innovation.

Kingdom of Midgard

The only remaining monarchy in Solis, The Kingdom is ruled with strict and subtle efficiency by QuEEN, a massive central AI, housed in the near-Solis orbiting Yggdrasil City. While Yggdrasil is the official governing capital of Midgard, only a handful of scientists actually live here at any given time with the sole purpose of attending to QuEEN. The majority of Midgard's population is scattered about the dwarf planets of the asteroid belts, giving them unparalleled mining access to the materials that the rest of the system depends on. Highly respected as scientists and engineers, The Kingdom is perhaps most beloved for their skilled artisans; their handcrafted beer, wine and liquor is served in nearly every station bar in Solis.

The People's United Free States of Solis

The Free States are formed by a loosely connected alliance between the many small, independent colonies and cities of Solis. Any governing body is eligible for inclusion, and nearly everyone not associated with one of the four major provinces falls somewhere under the umbrella of the UFS. Individual states are free to govern themselves; The Free States only asserts itself as a governing entity when necessary for the protection of the rights and interests of these smaller provinces. Political decisions are made by consensus among member representatives, each chosen by their own state. The Free States represent the largest and most diverse collection of cooperating humans in the history of the species.

Potato Clock Games Spring Sabbatical

TL;DR: I'm taking a month or 2 off from Black Road Sky to get my shit together.

I don't want this to come off as too dramatic or anything, but I do want to be transparent about the development of Black Road Sky. I'm just kind of sick of it right now, and have been for a while. I think that's a normal thing to feel from time to time with a project like this. I've been working on this thing on & off since 2017 (see the historic first devlog post here) with no real incentive, financial or otherwise, aside from like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if I made this game? So regardless of any surrounding circumstances, I want to be fair to myself with a 'breaks are allowed' approach.

Aside from generally needing a break, I just need the time right now for other things in my life. Spring is a busy time for us beekeepers, and it's important to me that I respect these living things in my care. I also need to catch up on things around the house; I've been renovating my kitchen since 2020 and I'm starting to feel like I'm taking advantage of my wife's patience. I need to start exercising, read some books, touch some grass. I won't go on, but you get it, my overwhelming to-do list has reached critical mass and I just need to make some space in my life to get back to baseline. Cutting back on BRS development is just one of a handful of temporary adjustments I'm making in my life (also going cold turkey on Tetris, wish me luck) and I'm hopeful that I'll come out the other side with a more healthy, focused mindset than I've had for, I don't know, maybe like a year now.

I plan to keep up with the tradition of 9th-of-the-month-devlogs, but the next couple will be a little different; maybe lore dumps or something, I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that this is a temporary, purposeful break, and regular development will continue soon. And honestly, I think it will be better for the game in the long run. o7

Interior Customization Screenshots

The interior decorating system is complete! Except for the shitty looking UI which I'll deal with later. I've started on the exterior customization system, but more on that another day.

Screenshots

Customization options are fairly limited for now, but you can still achieve a wide variety of aesthetics. Eventually, each province will have it's own set of wall, floor and ceiling styles available only at their city stations, but for now there's just a small set of standard options.

Here are a few examples:

so fresh and so clean clean

Klingon Vibes

Industrial Flavor

Just go nuts, kid

This will all be totally optional, of course, and I know lots of people won't care about it, but I think it goes a long way toward making the ship feel like your own. I'm looking forward to seeing what players do with it!

Coming Up Next

I was hoping to have the exterior customization system done by now, but like, it's not even close. So that's what I'll be focusing on in the next month. SEE YA.

Interior Decorating System Nearly Complete

I finally got my ass into gear this month and I'm happy to say that the interior decorating system is very nearly complete! I ended up needing to rebuild the entire ship interior from scratch multiple times, but I finally landed on a system/architecture that I'm happy with. I wanted to get it right because the same system will eventually be used for space station interiors.

The customization system can be accessed from the Body Shop terminals on the 2nd level of City stations. The UI, while functional, is deeply embarrassing.

Y'all, I ... am NOT GOOD at this

This is hopefully just a placeholder. I'm planning on giving it a proper beauty pass before release, but you never know, maybe I'll get lazy. Anyway, from here you can change the style and color of the whole ship or of individual areas, so you can have multiple vibes per ship. Business in the cockpit, party in the midship. It's pretty fun to play with!

Bonus Trippy Nonsense

I'm not ready to share final result screenshots quite yet, but here are a couple of short, trippy videos that I made while testing various aspects of the interior customization system. Just for fun:

Coming Up Next

I've only got 2 or 3 days worth of work left on getting the interior customization system feature complete, but then there's a bunch of loose ends like integrating it into the save/load system which will take a bit longer. After that we'll be moving on to exterior customization! I should be able to reuse some elements of the interior system and hopefully learn from my mistakes so if all goes well it should come together fairly quickly.

Notable words used in that last sentence: 'should', 'hopefully', 'if all goes well', then we've got another 'should', and a 'fairly' for good measure. Believing in yourself is for fools.

Potato Clock Games 2023 Powerhour

New year, new powerhour!

Visit the Potato Clock Games Low Effort Debauchery Generator to check it out. This dumb thing takes a YouTube playlist and plays a random minute of each video for a somewhat underwhelming but hassle-free powerhour experience.

Cheers!

A Slow Start to BRS v5

A slow start is still a start, but it has not been a particularly productive month. This is due primarily to a bunch of IRL drama (mostly resolved now) but, if I'm honest, also because I've been coping with said drama by obsessively trying to 100% horror-farming masterpiece Gleaner Heights. I've been a fan of the genre since Harvest Moon on SNES and I've always wanted to make my own weirdo farming game. Maybe someday. Anyway.

So I didn't get started on v5 in earnest until pretty late into January, but despite that I've made decent progress and, more importantly, I'm back in the groove of working on BRS nearly every day with my burnout meter comfortably in the green.

Pregame

My time has been spent almost exclusively on my 'pregame' checklist, getting set up for the work ahead of me and fixing little things from the last version.

I've been using VS Code as my IDE but ever since I upgraded my PC like a year ago it's been absolute ass. I spent a bunch of time trying to get it to work, and I guess I succeeded, but for some reason that caused compile times to jump up to like a full minute for every little code change. So I dove into Unity assembly references, which hurt my brain, but it brought compile times back down to like 10-30 seconds. Which was cool, but it somehow introduced a bunch of new annoying behavior to VS Code so I finally said 'fuck it' and made the switch VS Community which is working fine except compile times are back up. I am losing my god damn mind a little bit with this so I'm just moving on and dealing with it for now.

I also added a teleport tool for testing & debugging. I can't believe it took me this long. A lot of my testing time is spent just traveling between planets & stations, and now I can teleport immediately to any station I want. The logic for this was fairly easy to code, but I got got bogged down for a day or 2 wrestling with the UI. It's partly because I'm not good at UI, but I think Unity deserves some blame here, too. Implementing clickable text links apparently requires a CS PhD, so with my lowly bachelor's I had to improvise a bit. Still took longer than it should, but well worth it for the time it will save me later on. It's a little buggy, fine for internal use, but I might clean it up eventually and integrate it into free flight mode, so you can start the game anywhere you want.

Interior Decorating

I've got a nice start on the interior customization system. The architecture is mostly in place, I've coded the main tools that I'm expecting to need, and I'm working on solving the technical challenges of changing object models & materials at runtime. Nothing is actually hooked up in-game yet, but the groundwork his being laid.

Rogue System Reboot Madness

There are currently 2 projects underway to reboot / remake Rogue System. Please spend a few minutes now & then radiating positive vibes in their directions.

One dude apparently has Michael's blessing & possession of the IP. There's some info at the end of this video about it and he's got a website up as well.

Another dev is making good progress on a similar project, here's their YouTube channel. They've taken a pretty hard turn away from a strict RS-like (no plans for orbital mechanics) but maybe they'll have a change of heart. It's been a fun project to follow so far, at any rate.

If either of you are reading this, godspeed & good luck! Now get back to work!

Coming Up Next

Once I get all the technical bits & pieces in place I'll diving into the nightmare of putting together a UI for ship customization. Customization will happen at Body Shop terminals which you may have noticed hanging out on the 2nd floor of city stations. The UI will be a whole lot different than the other terminals; rather than relying entirely on keyboard commands, I'll be experimenting with a UI that players can interact with using this new fangled 'mouse' contraption. Get off my lawn. Until next time!

Getting Started on BRS v5

I've taken a bit of a break from Black Road Sky to deal with the holidays and other various IRL drama, but I'm getting myself back into the groove this week and looking forward development in 2024. My goal for the year is to finish v5 and get a decent start on v6, which will finally focus on ship systems.

The Plan For Version 5

Ship customization system. This will be purely cosmetic, but I think that the ability to customize both the interior & exterior of your ship will be a cool feature. It's also something that I don't really know how to do, so I'd like to clear the hurdle sooner than later. Customization options will initially be limited, but will be expanded significantly when I get around to fleshing out the 5 provinces in like a couple hundred years.

Input System Refinements. The input system for control bindings needs some love, and it will need room to grow once I start adding more cockpit controls, so it's something I need to tackle now. I'll probably regret saying it, but I don't think this should take too long. The system itself is working pretty well as far as I can tell, but there's UI work to do and some basic features (deadzones and whatnot) that need to be implemented.

Graphics. I plan to spend some time with every update from now on working on making the game look better. This time around I'd like to redesign all of the planets and moons that I didn't get to in the last update (so, most of them) with the new procedural planet generator. Except for the gas giant, probably, which I think will require its own shader. The current planet generator can't handle craters, so adding that feature will be the main technical challenge.

Gameplay. The main new feature here will be a basic pilot reputation system. Reputation will be per-province, basically you'll gain points for timely deliveries and accurate landings and, eventuality, lose points for violating station protocols and whatnot. Reputation will eventually unlock things like new mission types and customization options, but for now it will probably just be something to grind. That's gameplay, technically!

But I Don't Want Any Of That Shit, I Want More Buttons To Push

Me too, dude. We're getting there.

In the coming month I have some cleanup/pregame work to do, then hopefully on to figuring out the architecture and UI for ship customization. o7