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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsDeep Space Exploitation - An asteroid mining game
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Author Topic: Deep Space Exploitation - An asteroid mining game  (Read 8382 times)
JuhrJuhr
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« on: October 18, 2024, 06:58:55 AM »

Hello!
I've been working on this project for about a month now so it seemed like a good time to start making its existence known online.

UPDATE - 2025-02-02 - ALPHA v0.3
Have a go and leave some feedback over at Itch.

UPDATE - 2025-01-17 - ALPHA RELEASED!
There's now a alpha available, so please go check it out and leave some feedback over at Itch.




The game
Deep Space Exploitation is a small 2D space game where you mine asteroids in unsafe ways, attempt to survive working for an exploitative corporation, and hopefully retire comfortably. The initial idea is based on the classic Asteroids arcade game, only instead of blowing them up you mine them with Worms-like terrain destruction and simple physics.

There will be two parts to the game, the first is the main asteroid mining state where the player flies around and mines asteroids, and the second is the space station state where the player can walk around, buy/sell things, interact with characters, and generally further the story. These two states will alternate, with the player mining, and then returning to the station to sell what they've mined, and then repeat for the number of "days" I plan on having the game span.

What it looks like
Below is a gif of the player shooting at an asteroid to destroy its surface and dislodge a mineral, and then using a cargo tractor beam thing to vacuum up the mineral and a previously dislodged one. You can see here some of the asteroid destruction, simple physics, and UI. Artwork isn't final but probably gives a good hint at what the end result will be, since I'm pretty keen to do as much for this game by myself as possible.


Next is a bit more of a demonstration of the HUD. The game will be played entirely with keyboard or gamepad, no mouse, but I want every action or button press the player makes to make something in the HUD move. Here you can see the knob with 0, 1, 2 moving when the player switches between active devices, then a little loading animation and status updates. The other important thing here is the scanner. I intend to have the player use this to find where certain minerals are on the inside of asteroids, with them having to change things like frequency to detect different materials. You can also see the bullet the player fires wrapping around the world view here.


Progress
This will be my first commercial game, and I'm hoping to have it finished after 3 or 4 months of work total. This is pretty much the 1 month mark and so far I'm happy with the progress I've made but also have no idea how this is going to pan out over the next few months.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2025, 07:35:00 AM by JuhrJuhr » Logged

Itch
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« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2024, 08:01:49 AM »

I like the idea of hollowing out the asteroids and then flying in to recover the resources. The whole physics seems coherent to me. I also like the simplicity.
I'm looking forward to the part with the space station.
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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2024, 08:07:12 AM »

I like the idea of hollowing out the asteroids and then flying in to recover the resources. The whole physics seems coherent to me. I also like the simplicity.
I'm looking forward to the part with the space station.

Thanks!

Here's a horrendously early WIP shot of the space station, featuring a Jimmy McGill test portrait Smiley
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Itch
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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2024, 05:08:51 AM »

Hello!
I've been working away on Deep Space Exploitation for a while now, around 2 months. Progress has been pretty steady, but since this is my first real commercial game I think I'll only really know how well progress has been going at the end of it. I've been a little distracted by re-visiting my previous project as I'm in the process of bringing it to Steam.

Station UI
I've been working quite a bit on the UI of the terminals the player will interact with while wandering the space station between mining runs. These terminals will be where the player manages everything from their ship to their finances. Designing and creating these has been pretty fun since they're so restricted in the pixels I can use and controls (I'm aiming for all keyboard/gamepad, no mouse).


Mining Signals
I want the player to have to scan for signals coming from different resources to be able to find them within asteroids, so I put quite a bit of work into the scanner screen and how it picks up signals. I wasn't sure whether to go for a kind of sonar scanner, but right now I'm pretty happy with this design. Here you can see it working and the player using it to detect something inside an asteroid.


Particles
Also visible above are the particles I've added. Some are physically enabled but I've already seen how this can get quickly out of hand. Later on I'll have an optimisation pass and convert some of these effects to be non-physical.
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« Reply #4 on: November 29, 2024, 05:49:35 AM »

I like Mining! <3
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« Reply #5 on: November 30, 2024, 01:22:42 PM »

Love the look!
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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2024, 11:36:11 AM »

Hello!
Since the last update I've decided to scrap the Station State/Section of the game in favour of something much simpler and straightforward for me to develop.

Station State
The Station State would have had the player walking around a space station in a top down 2d grid based way (think Pokemon) in between mining jobs. My intention was to have this be a chance for the player to interact with some characters and further some plot points, take on side objectives for their next mining mission, and manage their ship/items/finances by walking to specific terminals for those things. I ultimately decided against this because I believe it to be too much work for something which isn't core to the game, which is flying around asteroids, blowing them up, picking up resources, and then selling them. The amount of art, animation, and writing it would have taken is just too much for the scope and time frame I want for this game.

Terminal State

What I've gone for instead is a Terminal State, where the player will be able to do everything I wanted them to do in the Station State, just from a single terminal UI. This is similar to how things work in games like Gunpoint and Papers Please, where there are two main states to the game, the "Playing" state (running around the buildings in Gunpoint, and manning your booth in Papers Please), and the "Management" state (your PDA in Gunpoint, and your wages allocation screen in Papers Please). This cuts down work a lot and lets me focus more of my attention on a smaller chunk of functionality, which is nice. It also means I won't be able to (or it'll just be very hard to) do some of the things I wanted to do, like have you meet characters who are in a similar position to you face to face, so you can have mundane chats about things. There's also less opportunity for inserting flavour.



Above is the progress I've made on the Terminal State. There's a lot of the important stuff in there, like ship/device/item management, and a start on the buying/selling and financial side of things. So far I'm happy with how it's turning out, I feel like I'm able to stick all the info and functionality in that I want to and still have everything feel cohesive.
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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #7 on: December 13, 2024, 01:25:43 PM »

Quick post showing bombs and explosions. This particular bombs needs a beam to activate it, the goal is to try to put the player in an awkward position when activating their explosives to increase the likelyhood of accidents. Smiley

This was quite a lucky (or unlucky) recording as it shows me getting hit by shrapnel while trying to get away.

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« Reply #8 on: December 14, 2024, 02:37:05 AM »

Very nice!
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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #9 on: December 14, 2024, 02:56:59 AM »

Very nice!

Thank you! Smiley
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Itch
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« Reply #10 on: December 21, 2024, 08:19:19 AM »

Lately I've been working towards a demo build, so I've been making lists of small things that need doing so that I can have a tiny complete slice of the game to give to people without me having to say "Ignore that, I'm working on it". A few of those things are:
- Item icons
- Cargo door animations on the player ship
- Easier to see resources
- A redesign of the deploy/extraction ship (so it doesn't look like something from thunderbirds)
- Gamepad support

I was expecting the gamepad support to take longer than it did, but I ended up with a really nice controls component that acts as a layer over any keyboard or gamepad input and will make remapping super easy in the future.

Here's probably the first proper fullscreen gif/screenshot I've done, so apologies for the size here (I'm not sure how best to shrink it down without messing up my lovely pixels).

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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2025, 02:15:41 AM »

Hello!
Since the last post I've been pushing to get the game into a state where there's enough for people to play and test while everything holds together and more or less makes sense. I'm now at that point and have a nice little chunk of gameplay showing the core loop in action, available for those who are interested to play!

DEMO AVAILABLE HERE!





The Demo
The demo contains the game's core loop, which is: Mining for resources -> Selling resources -> Buying new stuff -> And repeat. Around this there's a bit of ship and finance management that will be expanded on, but other aspects of the game, such as story progression, are not yet available.
As a bullet pointed list, here's what you can do in the demo v0.1:
- Get dropped off by the deployment ship
- Fly around looking for resources to mine, either visually or with your scanner
- Mine those resources with whatever tools you have available (guns or bombs, at the moment)
- Get picked up by the extraction ship when your time is up (there's a time bonus or fine, depending on whether you're early or late)
- Sell resources
- Buy items and ammunition for your tools
- Repair your ship
- Start a new mining run and repeat
- Get blown up, if you're not careful!
- Use Keyboard or Gamepad for controls

There's content in the demo for about 4 mining runs before you run out of new stuff to buy.

Feedback
Since I'm a solo dev, it's mostly just me playing and testing this, so the main reason for this demo is to get other eyes and hands on the game and hopefully get some feedback. To that end, please leave comments on the game's Itch page, or better yet, fill out this google form. I will happily credit anyone leaving feedback as a play tester in the game's final credits!

Progress

This project was originally planned to take 3 or 4 months to finish and release, and that window has now passed. It's probably going to take a couple more months at this point, but I've made my peace with that. I honestly think progress has been good throughout development, but there have been plenty of other things requiring my attention, and this being my first commercial game project there's a ton of first-time-round learning that's slowing things down today but will speed things up tomorrow.

Please play and enjoy the demo, and leave some feedback Smiley
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Itch
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« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2025, 08:34:33 AM »

Hey, haven't been around the forum for a while, but I come back and see this. It looks great. Love the whole design of it. Nice and retro Smiley

If you're ever looking for music or additional sound design (for any tricky sounds you can't find etc) then give me a shout. If you have 2 mins to spare, here's my latest reel...



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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2025, 07:42:22 AM »

Hello!
About 2 weeks ago I released the first public build for Deep Space Exploitation. I've been super happy with the feedback I've been getting, pretty much all of which is positive and pointing in the direction I'm already planning to take the game. This v0.3 update is here to solve some issues that were present in v0.1 and v0.2 that were quite annoying for testers, as well as introduce some level scripting mechanics and new asteroid generation.

Check it out at Itch.

Was "Demo", Now "Alpha"
I called the previous builds "Demos", which I think was a bit thoughtless of me since it made people think the state of the game was way more representative of what the finished product will be. So now I'll be calling these builds what they actually are, which is Alphas!

Changes in v0.3
- Added a tutorial to walk through the basics of flying, mining, and scanning. This is also the first test of simple level building and scripting.
- New asteroid generation. There are now more asteroid shapes, colour palettes, and textures. This is on display from day 2 onwards in the alpha, at which point the mining jobs are randomly generated. I'm thinking to do a little blog post about how I do the asteroid generation, maybe later when it's improved.
- Rework of inventory; There's no longer a grid based inventory, it's all lists now!
- Items will stack in the inventory, so you can now SELL ALL of something Smiley
- Can install tools directory from the inventory
- The state in the terminal is actually updated now, so you'll have warnings if your ship is damaged or any of your tools have low ammo counts
- If you have any warning states when trying to start a new job you'll be given a confirmation screen asking whether you're sure you want to start in your current state
- Picking up undetonated bullets can replenish your tools if they have available spaces for that type of ammo
- Bug fixes Smiley

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JuhrJuhr
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« Reply #14 on: February 03, 2025, 07:22:51 AM »

Hey!
Until now all the asteroids in my game have been very basic and bland looking, so recently I took the time to improve things somewhat.


The process is as follows:
1. I start out with a base shape texture for an asteroid, taken from a sprite sheet containing asteroid variations for a particular size. (This shape texture also provides the shape for the asteroid's physics)


2. Next I use that shape texture as a mask over a base texture that provides the actual "texture" for an asteroid. Currently I'm using some pre-generated random turbulence I made with Paint dot Net.


3. Now I choose a colour palette to use, and an overall "roughness" for the asteroid.
4. The masked texture is then quantized and recoloured based on the colours in the palette, and also dithered based on the desired roughness.


5. The texture is now ready to use in the game Smiley

Currently all shape textures are hand made before the game starts, and I'm only using a single base texture. I'll probably add more base textures to use, and maybe I'll look into randomly generated asteroid shapes later on, but for now this is all working quite nicely.

Thanks!
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« Reply #15 on: February 08, 2025, 09:56:50 AM »

Some recent work I've done on the art for the management state of the game. First time trying out some new pixel art techniques and I'm quite happy with the result, but any feedback people have is very welcome Smiley

(Names in the screenshot are placeholder haha)

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« Reply #16 on: February 08, 2025, 01:02:05 PM »

I'm particularly interested in the flight through the asteroid field shown above. I find it very coherent. The effect of the jet stream on the stones rounds things off. Smiley
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« Reply #17 on: February 11, 2025, 06:51:32 AM »

Honestly I need to download this on my windows machine - looks super fun already!
I dig the different levels of dithering to indicate a different roughness of the material - really works for that Smiley
Did you also want to use the roughness to indicate different materials as in relevant to gameplay?
Like a rougher asteroid in a reddish hue is high in iron or something like that - was just wondering if it's more cosmetic or actually gives you info on the asteroid.
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« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2025, 02:29:14 AM »

I'm particularly interested in the flight through the asteroid field shown above. I find it very coherent. The effect of the jet stream on the stones rounds things off. Smiley

Thanks! I originally had the asteroids being heavier and so wouldn't have been effected by the thrusters so much, but then I found the overall feel is more dynamic if they're lighter.

Honestly I need to download this on my windows machine - looks super fun already!
I dig the different levels of dithering to indicate a different roughness of the material - really works for that Smiley
Did you also want to use the roughness to indicate different materials as in relevant to gameplay?
Like a rougher asteroid in a reddish hue is high in iron or something like that - was just wondering if it's more cosmetic or actually gives you info on the asteroid.

These comments mean a lot now that the game is really taking shape as something playable Smiley
Yeah, I want to play around and see what kind of visual hints I can leave for the player with the roughness and maybe slightly tweaked colour palettes. Though I'm learning that sometimes what seems like a nice subtle hint to you can be completely invisible to player, which is completely understandable, after working on this so much I'd probably notice if a single pixel was out of place!
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« Reply #19 on: February 12, 2025, 02:31:31 AM »

Some more work on the HUD. This should be the last I work on the HUD for a while now until I add some slight changes for when the player upgrades different aspects of their ship (I'm planning to add lights to the little panels around the scanner when the player upgrades it, I'm thinking different coloured lights will light up depending on what the scanner is detecting).

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