Welcome to the 66th week devlog post for Cosmic Construct. I originally planned for this to be a shorter dev week to catch back up, but I neglected to remember to do that. Anyhow, here with updates as usual.
To follow the game's progress you can join me at:
My bluesky account which gives more frequent updates.
Also Wishlist Cosmic Construct on Steam and follow it's steam page.
---Pawn AIThe updated pawn AI is almost complete. I've been refining some UI elements that need to change for pawn status indicators and communication bubbles. These bubbles will appear whenever a pawn takes an action, and also when a pawn interacts with one of their peers. These bubbles come in hundreds of varieties and is very similar to the interactions between Sims in the series with the same name.The maslow inspired "actualization" level will be determined by a score, which will dictate the priority of various actions the pawns will take. This will be shown as a numerical score, I think between 1 and 80. I'm not sure about the algo I'm going to use for that just yet.Side ProjectsI took some time to refine an old concept for a game development document, and practice designing user interface. Concepts like these are good for improving skills. Even though I might never personally have the means to develop a game like this or lead a design team, work I do might benefit one some other team looking to develop similar games.Occasionally, people in the industry contact me for concepts and consultation on their projects (and pay me for it). So I'm usually obligated to take time to talk to their team and draw up concepts. The lineart here comes from bases and references, and I'd say it really isn't my art. The UI design here is 100% me, and that was the focus of the concept. Putting the wolf on the rock was a great idea. The shadow on the rock looks like his even though it was part of the image already.Opening the menu would have a background blur. With various sub menus for character stats, inventory and the like. If you were wondering about the purple bar under the experience. It's actually and idea I had for a "sub exp bar", which represents 10% of the exp. When at higher levels when it takes the player longer to gain experience, instead of not being able to see that gain. They can get a little extra dopamine from seeing the "higher resolution" bar still increase.Some part of that was working on a skill tree generator, reminiscent of something like the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X, or the passive skill tree from Path of Exile. What you are looking at here is the raw export of python code generating a random tree. It largely exports the nodal tree as is. A game could then import the positional information directly, or overlay graphic elements over the image via editor. It's chaotic, but I think the aesthetic is rather nice.
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Still finishing up the Pawn AI, and I "should" have a video of how it work soon.
- Pawn AI