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.

Harvest Booze Update #9: Shitventory

I've been a lazy piece of shit for the past couple of weeks, but 0.0.2 is officially complete. You can now actually collect stone, logs and plant fiber from the rocks, trees and grass. The game keeps track of what you have in a simple inventory system, which you can't interact with yet except by gazing upon its glory:

Also note the dude-sized logs. Just toss those in the backpack, no prob.

So, moving on. The big ticket items for 0.0.3 are:

• Inventory system that you can actually interact with
• Crafting system & the first few crafting recipes (basic tools)
• Getting all those tools working in the game
• Maybe a save system

And, you know, whatever little things I stumble on along the way. The save system might end up becoming a version update all on it's own, I'm not really sure how big of a job that's going to be, but it seems like it's probably going to be a huge pain in the ass. Kind of needs to happen sooner than later, though.

But all of that sounds hard so I'm probably just going to play Rogue System for a couple of weeks, see ya.

Introducing Dog Catcher Jones of the Sequel

I teased it a while back, but I cannot in good conscience keep you in suspense any longer, dear fans. Yes, Dog Catcher Jones of the Sequel is in development.

Fear not, I'm still serious about working on Harvest Booze, but in the midst of final exams last semester I just needed something really, really stupid to work on. So this is it.

If you haven't played the first game, Dog Catcher Jones of the Future, do yourself a solid & check it out at potatoclockgames.com. It was the first video game I ever made, so yeah, it's pretty good.

This new installment in the series plays like an idle clicker game, with a couple of grueling twists; if you idle, you lose, and you have to play for 24 hours straight in order to win. No pausing, no saving. Just you, the terminal, and the fate of the universe resting on your shoulders for a miserable 24 hours.

Good luck, Jones.

I really don't have a schedule in mind for release, just depends on how much I feel like working on this over Harvest Booze. A month, maybe? A decade? You'll be the first to know.

Harvest Booze Update #8: Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good

With the semester having wound down last week, I've finally been able to put some quality time into developing the first real gameplay elements of this thing. We have:

Rock kickin'!

Grass yankin'!

And my personal favorite,

Tree punchin'!

The trunk is drawn separately from the branches & even the bark patterns, and I was having a hell of a time one night figuring out how to make everything move together. I went to bed & had weird dreams about triangles & woke up like, oh yeah, trigonometry is a thing. Brains are fucking nuts.

Anyway, as is probably evident, this was a really fun update. Most of the blowy uppy effects are thanks to GameMaker's built in particle system, which I probably went too far with, but whatever, if it makes me giggle then it stays, consarn it. I want the early game resource gathering to be sort of tedious to really encourage players to put some time into building automated systems in the mid & late game, but with some decent sound effects along with these visuals, I hope breaking shit is satisfying enough to temper the tedium. You'll be able to craft basic tools within the first few minutes of gameplay, so you won't be stuck kicking rocks for too long, but tools will be able to break so you'll always have the option of man vs. wild hand-to-nature combat.

I'm working on a very basic inventory system right now, that's the last official task for v0.0.2, then onto crafting & more in 0.0.3; I think the first crafting recipes will be for the tools which already have a use in the current game: ax for bustin' trees, pick for bustin' rocks, and scythe for bustin' grass.

More Tree Fails

I've got the falling trees working now (baaaaaasically...), but showing off things actually working just seems so boring after this:

A little bit of cleaning up to do, real update coming in hot tomorrow, probably.