Goals for BRS v0.4

In my original plan, v0.4 was going to be all about implementing ship systems. I'm pretty excited to get started on this, but it's going to have to wait until the next version. My goals for v0.3 were a bit overambitious, and I ended up cutting out enough to justify an additional version release just to make up the difference. The focus of v0.3 shifted at some point from prepping for ship systems to implementing some basic gameplay. I'm still happy with this decision, but it means that there's still more to do before I can move on.

The major thing that I decided to put off was the ship redesign. This didn't do anything to support the gameplay aspects that I was working on so when I realized that it was going to be more difficult than expected I just said "yeah fuck that". It is important, however, that I get the ship interior in order before moving on to systems, and the exterior is just fucking embarrassing. The big roadblock here is that I know fuck all about 3D modeling. I've done a few Blender tutorials, some of which make cameos in BRS (shout out to those sick coffee mugs in the city stations) but I have a lot of learning to do still. If I can get to the point where I'm spending 70% as much time making models that are only 70% as embarrassing, I'll consider that a reasonable success.

This will also be a good time to implement ship exterior customization. I want to make the ship designs modular so that players can really dial in the look of their ship. This will be totally optional and purely cosmetic, but I think it'll be fun and anything that makes the player feel more invested in their ship is a good thing. Customization options will be very limited to begin with, but I imagine a future where every province has its own color scheme and ship style, with certain parts only available at certain stations, so players who want to can put a good deal of effort into pimping their rides.

So ship redesign & customization will be the main goals of v0.4, but there's a bunch of other stuff that I'd like to include if I have time. This might be a good opportunity to redesign the planets & moons, maybe start dialing in a visual style for the game, you know, make it not look like complete shit, and I'd like to add at least a little bit of new gameplay on the off chance that some weirdo out there is just waiting for a good excuse to start a new game by the time I get through all this.

All that said, I really haven't done shit in the past month. I think I just needed a break after finally hitting the v0.3 milestone. Here's to next month?

NOICE

Black Road Sky Tutorial Series Complete

The tutorial series is finally complete, check it out here!

When I had the idea to, in lieu of an in-game tutorial, just record myself slamming some 40s while playing the game, I really didn't think that it would set me back by over a month, but here we are. I'm not mad about it, I had fun doing it and it was a nice inter-version development break.

Yr gonna be a star, kid.

With that out of the way, I can finally move on to the ship redesign that I've been wanting to tackle for well over a year now. I expect this to be a slow process since I know fuck all about 3D modeling, but I guess if I'm gonna make a video game then I've gotta figure it out eventually.

Eventually has arrived. Wish me luck.

Black Road Sky Tutorial Series Progress

The tutorial series is coming right along, and you can check it out here:

BRS v0.3 Tutorial Series Playlist on YouTube

As of this writing, the first 5 videos are up. The remaining 3 have been recorded and will be uploaded as I finish editing them. They're not great, because as it turns out, making videos is hard. But I've been having fun with it nonetheless so I don't regret the decision to go this route instead of implementing something in-game.

Your drunk uncle explains orbital mechanics.

I've also spent the last month reacquainting myself with the basics of blender. So once I finish these tutorials we'll be ready to get back to work on the game proper. It's been a nice break, working on Black Road Sky without doing any programming or even opening Unity, but the party's gotta end at some point. I mean, I guess it doesn't gotta but it's gonna. Soon. Until then.

Gearing Up For BRS v0.4 But Actually Brewing An Assload Of Ancient Fruit Wine

I've mostly spent the past couple of weeks playing Stardew Valley (again! It's so fucking good!) instead of working on Black Road Sky, letting myself take a little break after finally getting v0.3 out into the world. Apparently the game has been downloaded 3 whole times, which is 2 more than I'd expect considering that I haven't actually told anyone that it exists yet. I haven't told anyone about it because I haven't started on the tutorial series, in large part because making the trailer was more of a pain in the ass than expected and now I'm scared. But I'll get to it.

One thing that I have done is to finally migrate the project to the current version of Unity. When I started working on Black Road Sky back in the whimsical carefree days of 2018, the most current version was Unity 2017 and I haven't upgraded since, for fear that I would break everything if I tried. But since a major goal of v0.4 is to make the game look less like shit, I figured that the least I could do was give myself access to technology that's not half a decade old. It was sort of a fiddly process, but not nearly the nightmare that I thought it would be, and I've now got everything working & error free in a modern game engine, so that's cool.

The next month will be spent dialing in the ship design on paper and hopefully getting my ass in gear on making these tutorial videos. And playing Stardew Valley. Seriously. So. Fucking. Good.

Release Announcement: Black Road Sky (version 0.3)

Download Black Road Sky v0.3 here!

Not sure if you're ready to part with your hard earned zero dollars? Hype yourself off the fence with this release trailer!

There's no in-game tutorial, but the itch.io page includes a basic guide to getting started and I'm about to start working on a comprehensive video tutorial series. Stay tuned to the all new Potato Clock Games YouTube channel for updates.

BRS v0.3 Imminent Release & Tutorial Series Plans

Well, v0.3 is finally done, only two years late, and will be available to download by the end of the month. Still doing playtesting at the moment, for whatever it's worth. A one person testing team isn't nearly enough, especially when that one person already knows how to play the game. So I'm sure that plenty of bugs will sneak through, but I'm fine with that for now.

Moving the goalpost is the same thing as staying on track.

The bigger problem is that no one will know what the fuck to do or how to play this fairly complicated orbital mechanicsy game due to the complete lack of any sort of tutorial. Thing is, the game is in such an early state and there are so many big changes coming that it feels foolish to spend a bunch of time on an in-game tutorial system that I'll just have to redo any time I release a new update. So instead I've decided to create a video tutorial series where I'll basically just play the game and explain how to do shit. I have a feeling that shooting and editing videos will actually end up being even more time consuming than creating a new in-game tutorial with every version release, but fuck it, I'm doing it anyway. I think it'll be a fun break from actually working on the game before I dive back in for the next version.

Anywho, I have no idea how long it's going to take me to put the tutorial series together so I'm going to go ahead and release v0.3 in order to meet my arbitrary July release target that no one knows about and then release tutorial videos as I create them. Stay tuned!

Finish Line on the Horizon: BRS v0.3 Release Prep

 

I'm back in the flow and working steadily to knock off the dozens of remaining items on the release prep to-do list. In addition to a final round of bug squashing and play testing, I've added a handful of gameplay features that I felt were worth taking the time to implement.

Added NavBall Functionality

The player can now manually rotate the navball into any orientation, then easily reset it to its home position. This is a feature that is not needed very often, but it's super useful in certain circumstances, particularly in making correction burns on interplanetary transfers. I have some other Big Ideas for easing the pain of interplanetary travel, which is still at least as tedious as it is engaging, but this was one easy-to-implement feature toward that goal.

Ship Ownership

You now begin the game without a ship, and kick things off by buying one and taking on the debt which is the backbone of Black Road Sky's engaging storyline of paying off debt. I thought about starting the game, just for now, with a little block of text like "You just a bought a ship, you're in debt, have fun", but I think that letting the player spend the money might give them a more meaningful connection to the ship. Probably overthinking it. But also, it's just a hilariously boring way to start a video game. How you gonna start your space game, an engaging cinematic cutscene of flashy lasers cutting down alien spaceships? Nope, let's make everyone apply for a loan via a cumbersome text-based banking terminal.

Cumbersome text-based banking terminal. Admit it, you're hooked!

These kinds of features typically only take a few hours to implement, but considering that I only have an hour or two each day to work on the game, I'm trying to be very careful about what I'm choosing to invest time in. To this end, I've also decided to push a bunch of less critical things up to be dealt with in a future update, such as refining the keybinding system and diving down an optimization rabbithole. The game works great with keyboard & mouse and it runs fine on my mediocre 5 year old PC, so I'll save those tasks for later.

Bigger picture, I'm still in a sloggy part of development, but it feels better now that I can see a finish line. Still gunning for a release sometime in July!