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[VampireSquid]

Badass.  Very cool when the things starts coming at you after it's (head?) is gone.

[Pixel Noise]

These new creatures are creepy and fantastic

[Sheepolution]

Continued working on Apnid (Not sure if I'll stick with that name). Now he throws his eyes to where you stand and has a better walking animation.



I'm probably going to use it as a miniboss.

[Sheepolution]

The dungeon so far



I think it needs more obstacles. Things that stop you in your path.

But for now I'm going to put the dungeon aside (again) and start working on the space part again. There's still lots to be done like GUI, inventory, collectables, before I can finish the dungeon.

[Pixel Noise]

I think it needs something more too, but I can't really put my finger on what it is...helpful, I know. But, it looks like a great start - so like you said, take a break from it! Nail down that other stuff, then come back to it. Maybe some of those other things, once finished, will help you with the dungeon design.

[Sheepolution]

I'm working on quests and conversation functionality. Have the character say something else the second time you talk to them, and make their dialog change based on whether or not you have an item for his quest.

And this is all tedious and boring stuff to make, and can't show any visible progress yet. So instead let's toss around some ideas and concepts.

I have this file called idea list.txt, and whenever I think of something it goes in there. No matter how tiny, if I can some day make use of the idea, I add it. So let's go through that list.

• Drawing star constellations
• Forests
  • You can't land here because it's too crowded with trees
  • You can only see what's behind the trees if you're walking in the forest
• Planets that you can't land on yet because..
  • They're too hot/cold, you need to come back when that's not a problem for you
• Guy that jumps out of grass or bush and you need to chase. Or he is a bush/grass and the bush runs away
• Planets where you have to be stealth. Hide behind bushes/trees.
• Long cave where you fall in and you end up at the other side of the planet. Spikes on the sides so that you don't fall straight down but have to manouver through the hole.
• Boss that when you enter the boss room climbs out of the room/dungeon onto the planet and you have to fight it on the planet's surface.
• Boss that poops out smaller versions of himself.
• Freeze gun freezes water, you can pick up the water, a few second laters it melts. Freeze water, pick it up, put in something, it melts, you got water in the thing.
• Be able to buy planet and take care of it. Sort of mini-harvest moon.
• A snail that leaves a poison trail behind
• A comet crashes onto a planet (A big one, like Boooom!)
• Keep stats. How many times you've died. How many monster's you've killed. I'd say the more stats the better.
• You can customize your gun or backpack or something else by moving stuff on a plane around. Or maybe something else. Like you can prioritize certain components or you can set the order in which things happen.
• A super strong monster that you can randomly encounter in space. It's too strong to fight it so you have to fly away as fast as you can. Maybe it's a bounty hunter looking for you. Something like SA-X
• Things in space that give you a little speed boost when flying.
• Give different gravity to different planets. Based on size?
• Wormholes that you can use to quickly travel through the galaxy.
• Create a planet with a pipe that creates sheep.

Those are some of the ideas. Some are very cliche, others are kinda weird, and some I really like. There are a few more ideas I left out because of spoilers or because they're too silly.

Next I want to look at some art.
I have a file called doodlething.png, where I doodle new concepts. Let's take a look.


Sometimes I let my friends design some creatures. I like the one that I marked with a heart, definitely going to use that somehow. And one design was the inspiration of a new creature (marked with the arrow).


A tree that's actually a bird.


If I ever need a reason for the player to be taller, I can put him in these mecha legs.


Designing a new creature is fun, but I don't really know where to stop. I keep getting ideas on how to adapt the current idea.

Again, there's more. Just nothing really noteworthy.

So that's some of the ideas I have. But it'll be a while before I can use most of them. If you have an idea yourself I would always love to read/see them.

[VampireSquid]

Well if you are asking for ideas.. In the dungeon I would like to see more custom buildings.  You had the water mill on the surface for instance, if you had the odd thing like that down in the dungeon it would give the player something to explore for in addition to finding enemies and loot.  Now that I mention it, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more stuff in the dungeon.  It doesn't need to be crowded but the odd custom component provides yet another reason to explore.  

Just suggestions, I don't want to interfere too much with your creative process because I think you have things covered.

[Sheepolution]

Still working on the quest system. It's a real pain in the ass to make as I have to make it very flexible, organized but also easy to use, and I haven't figured out how to make it like that. So I put it on hold and started working on the inventory.

The inventory isn't easy either. I haven't really decided how many and what kind of items you can get in the game, but it's hard to make items without an inventory. It's a chicken and egg kind of thing.

I first thought of a radial inventory, but I don't that that's not gonna work out. After too many items the circles have the shrink, and I do believe that many item slots are needed.



So a rectangular inventory after all. I tried using boxes but that looks really ugly.



Instead I decided to use dots.



Only problem now is that I'm not sure if I have space to show to amount of the item's stack (x10).

[Pixel Noise]

Could you maybe have multiple radial menus, like Secret of Mana, switching between them for various item types? Obviously, if you want just one universal menu, that won't work. But if you're open to splitting the menus, then it could be worth exploring. If you can make it work, I really like the look of that in game.

[lobstersteve]

I'm so looking forward to this

[VampireSquid]

If you could somehow make the radial inventory work that would be great.  It looks fantastic and it is nice to not obscure everything.

[Sheepolution]

I wanted to boycot imgur and use another image uploader, but it looks like it went offline, great. So back to imgur. I'll fix the previous posts someday, maybe.



Today I started working on a new planet, maybe the one that you will first encounter. Now you might notice I'm working on a bunch of things at the same time. My idea is to work on all of these features at the same time and hoping they will eventually fit together. It's easier to develop things when they have a practical use.

I just drew a weird tree and house, and bam, alien planet? It might not look great, but in the future when creating more planets, I'll create bunch of random trees and houses and be like oh hey this kind of tree/house fits way better with these aliens. So that can all still be switched around.

The only problem I have is the inside of the houses. It's not easy to come up with "alien furniture". Chairs and tables simply make sense for us, why having something else. So I'm not sure what I'm going to fill the rooms up with yet.
Thanks for all the comments by the way, I really appreciate them! I realized it started to look like I was ignoring them, so let's reply to some:

This game looks... super cool !!

The dungeon environments are starting to come along really nicely as well. I think if you added little non-violent creatures (like those cool flies! were they moving procedurally?) you could liven it up a little. or even just more details along the floors and walls like more vines or long grass, with maybe some soft animation.

Thank you! Yes I agree the dungeons need more details. And I'm going to try to add floaty particles to make it look more lively.

Well if you are asking for ideas.. In the dungeon I would like to see more custom buildings.  You had the water mill on the surface for instance, if you had the odd thing like that down in the dungeon it would give the player something to explore for in addition to finding enemies and loot.  Now that I mention it, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more stuff in the dungeon.  It doesn't need to be crowded but the odd custom component provides yet another reason to explore.  

Just suggestions, I don't want to interfere too much with your creative process because I think you have things covered.

I really want to try to keep this dungeon organic, meaning no human (or alien :p) structures or anything. But I like the idea of making it more explorable.

Could you maybe have multiple radial menus, like Secret of Mana, switching between them for various item types? Obviously, if you want just one universal menu, that won't work. But if you're open to splitting the menus, then it could be worth exploring. If you can make it work, I really like the look of that in game.

If you could somehow make the radial inventory work that would be great.  It looks fantastic and it is nice to not obscure everything.

I gotta say that I also really like the radial menu, and I think I might have an idea on how to make it work. I just need to check how good it works when having actual items.

[VampireSquid]

I just noticed your planet has an atmosphere (where the clouds begin), very neat!

Your game reminds me of a low-pixel version of no-mans sky.  I realize the game is a bit controversial but I mean that as a true compliment.  It reminds me of the first trailer videos from no-mans sky you could say.  It has that balance of freedom/hugeness/discovery that draws you in and want to play it.

[Sheepolution]

Added some zooming in and out.

[Pixel Noise]

Great effect! Particularly when you take off in the ship - it really helps emphasize the depth/space of the....space.

[itsnemo]

I am a big fan of pixel games and this is absolutely lovely, I am loving the simplistic art style you are going for   Can't wait to try it out.

[q1]

What about a radial dot inventory that splits into two layers when the space gets too small?

[l0bster]

hey i'm back. is this still going?
it looks great. the zoom and new parallax effect add so much to the atmosphere

[alvarop]

can you believe this is dead