I already have an idea! How cool is that? :D

Day 1

I had an idea since the beggining, something unusual but I will not complain about it, and also motivation, which is even more unusual.

With that, soon I had ready this beauty.

Random circles and a smiley thing, that's where the future is!

I'm trying to make a game about survival, gathering resources, upgrading your ship, that kind of stuff, For now the planets are just white circles, but the final aspect will be randomly generated, and probably will have some kind of indicator about the resources you can find on them.

For now, you can scan the planets to see a list of resources...

And use the extractor to gather them

BEAUTIFUL.

Tomorrow, I'll try to fix a few bugs with the extraction, refactor the planet spawning code so they don't overlap, and start working on uses for the resources. Onwards!

I regret nothing.

Day 2

Sadly, today has been very unproductive since familiar issues have kept me far from my computer all day.

But there was progress: I was able to work a bit on the resource spawning algorithm, now the resources have a rarity value that affects how much and when are they spawned. Also empty planets will generate new resources with time.

I also fixed the planet spawner, so they don't overlap anymore and the placement is a bit more clever...

And I broke everything a few times when doing so (warning, flashing lights)

Day 3

I solved a bug!

Yeah, it isn't that much. Everybody solves bugs everyday. But this bug was VERY annoying and was destroying my motivation, so I for one I'm pretty happy about it being destroyed, although I have the feeling I'll have to refactor my code hard to prevent it to come back for Christmas.

I also did some good stuff:

-A ship. You can use the ship to scan the planets and see the list of resources on them, and probably to fight against evil ships or...something, but if you want to extract the resources from the planet, you'll have to get your little boy out of the ship. What leads us to...

-Oxygen (and fuel) meters: For every five seconds outside the ship you lose a 5% oxygen. If you run out of oxygen, you die. Realism!
If you don't like to die, you can buy (well, you can't now, but you will be able to buy them once I add shops) oxygen tanks that will give you a boost. Also when you're on the ship you'll recover oxygen, but a very low rate.

Fuel works similarly: when you move the ship, you lose fuel, if you run out of fuel, the ship can't move (although you can still use the scanner and the rest of systems), and you can use tanks to refuel. And to buy tanks you need...

-Money: That's simple. You extract resources, you sell them and you win credits. With that credits you can buy rare resources, new machines and systems, and a space cat. Capitalism, ho!

Tomorrow I'll add more resources, I'll start working on the planet sprite generator (come to me, Texture Packer!) and, if there's time, I'll start working on shops and more systems for the ship. The goal of the game will be repair it so you can come back home.

Things are looking good for now and that's a big yay!

Day 4

Today's been a day of a lot of work, although with moderate results.

Respawn system for the planets: If a planet is empty, it gets new resources after a minute or two, so you can't exploit a single planet to get all the resources,

Damaged Systems: The core of the plot. Your ship will star the game with 8-to-10 destroyed systems that you will have to repair via components and shops. Every component will give you new abilities: faster scanning, mining, weapons... Also once you have repaired them all, you can go back home!

New look for the planets: Obviously the white circles didn't look good, so this is the new look!

I want them to have more random features, but the first tries didn't look good. I'll keep trying.

Tomorrow, more systems, and more life for the universe! Ships, meteors, stars, stuff!

Days 5 & 6

I did nothing! Merry Christmas!

Day 7

I did meteors (they spawn randomly, and if you crash into them they take away a chunk of your shields. And if your shields go away your ship goes kaboom), fixed yet-another-stupid bug with planets, and suddenly I got fever and now my head hurts and so does my life.

That's it for today. If tomorrow I'm still alive, I want to try and add more stuff and refactor the planets (AGAIN) so the universe feels less empty. Emptiness is bad.

Day 8

Well, almost. For now you only can sell things, but you can't buy anything, as I haven't quite decided how the components will work. But hey, you can change your minerals into credits! That's something, I guess.

I'm still a bit sick so can't work as fast as I'd like, but I'm optimistic. I REALLY need to start working on more details for the space, but that is boring, and making the shop was fun.

There's yet stuff to do, though. I have to finish the buy system, and track some annoying bugs. That will be work for tomorrow!

Days 9 & 10

I did the last stuff of the year! Let's recap:

Shop: It finally works! Now you can sell AND buy stuff. It's an awesome shop

You can sell your minerals to get credits, but to buy subsystems you'll need both credits and minerals. The credit price is fixed, but the minerals requested change on each session.

Subsystems: Lots of things that make you ship look cooler! You can double the extraction speed, move faster, detect enemy spaceships... They're expensive, but they're worth it. Also you can't win the game unless you have them all.

Lasers: YES! Everything's better with lasers.

You can use them to destroy other ships before they destroy you, and to break meteors. When a meteor breaks apart it spawns free resources, so go kapow with them!

Look how shiny they are. And they blink. Sometimes. Stupid bugs.

On a unrelated note, I keep pressing Escape instead of Space to close the shop menu and closing the game. Yep, I'm stupid.

Days 11 && 12

I tried to fix bugs and I failed.

For some reason the lasers aren't working properly, so the meteors do weird stuff when you try to destroy them: sometimes they spawn a thousand resources, sometimes they just disappear, sometimes they crash the game. Yay.

On the bright side, I finally added enemies!

They spawn randomly and try to steal your valuable resources. And that's a bad thing.
You can destroy them to recover your resources and win new components for your ship. That's a good thing.

But the lasers are buggy and stupid and they don't work. That's an annoying thing. Back to work!

Feature freeze

So, as you can see, I stopped the log. The reason? I was getting stressed because of it.

Making a daily devlog was a BAD idea, because after a whole day of solving bugs I felt bad because I had nothing interesting to write in the log. No awesome screenshots, just "Hey, the thing didn't do the thing but now it does!".

So I dropped the log and coded. And the result is that the game is practically done! Yay!

I've entered oficially on feature freeze. I'll spend the next days solving the few bugs left, making screens (Title, tutorial...) and then it'll be done!

After that I want to return working on my main game (still a secret until the base is ready!), but trying LibGDX was fun. Perhaps I'll return to it someday.

It's done!

Well, sort of.

I'm not going to lie: the game is finished, but I don't feel like it's complete.

However, since I've worked on quite bad conditions (damn you, holidays!), on a language I didn't know, and with my computer randomly dying a few times, I'm quite happy I've managed to do something at all.

Perhaps I'll return to this game someday, although for now I want to focus on my other game, as I really want to finish it this year.

While I'm not very satisfied with this one, it gave to me motivation to progam again, and that's something I realy value. Also, learning how to use Java was very fun, even if I have some complains about it.

You can download the game here or see the source code here. The game has a small guide but the gameplay is really basic: move with WASD, press CTRL to fire lasers, press ENTER to go in and out of your ship, when you're out of your ship you can press 2 to put extractors on planets, extract minerals and go to the shop to sell them or buy new components for your ship, buy the spacial interpreter to open the spacegate, find the spacegate to win.

Also, watch out for your o2 and fuel meters. You can buy more tanks on the shop. Press T to use them.