Posted July 27, 2019 by Tom Rhodes
#devlog
Week 5 went a bit slower than I had hoped, mainly due to real life commitments, (got to keep the day job moving) though I have amassed quite a big changelog for the week, so let’s look through some of those.
The dialogue system in Lunar Pioneer has had some significant updates this week, including portraits, a portrait switching system, and improved event handling on user selections.
I have build this dialogue system myself, from scratch, without following tutorials. I know there’s a million dialogue systems out there, including a fantastic looking one by Friendly Cosmonaut — but, I have always thought there’s a lot more to be learnt by doing something yourself first.
I have probably made a bunch of mistakes with the system, but I’m happy with how it’s shaping up for now, and most importantly, I know it inside out.
I have finally put together all 3 of the tool animations (currently) in the game, that’s the shovel, hammer and vacuum. I’m sure these will be re-worked again and again during development, but for now, I’m really happy.
So far the Town area of the game only has access to a Shop, and a Builders house. Both were feeling a little drab and lifeless so I have added Fabian the cat to the shop, and Zaphod the tortoise into the Builders place. Both animals have emotions based on how you interact with them, and their owners will have something to say about it too!
I can’t really find too much talk around using the Timeline feature of Game Maker Studio 2 anywhere for anything other than its intended use. Stepping through the game 1 step at a time and giving commands to an object.
Since the timeline editor is so visual, I feel like it’s a great system for tracking other items also, personally I’m using it to:
I’m a big old noob in terms of Game Maker development skills, but I’ll write a tutorial soon about what I’m doing with the Timelines and how you can adapt them in the same way.
I’m going to start adding this section to each Devlog from now on, where I’ll cover the projects current state, and a more general overview of what I’ll be working on in the coming week.
I would describe Lunar Pioneer as pre-alpha currently, though at only 5 weeks in, with an inexperienced solo Game Maker developer, I’m beyond happy with the progress I’m making. Right now the game is playable but not exactly usable. The combat area is inaccessible, o2 meter does nothing after running out, the day ending before you go to bed does nothing etc.
Those are all the finer points though, I’ve been working on a robust farming system which is up and running, a combat system which is nice and the game has a full working economy. Essentially the big systems are in place, now I just need to tie them all together.
I’m hoping for an alpha demo of Lunar Pioneer to be ready by early September 2019, let’s see if I can stick to that.
Next week (week 6! wow) will be another slow one on the game development front, I have a few web projects I need to get under my belt, they’re quite enjoyable ones too (can’t share sadly) but needless to say, if I have an hour or two, I’ll be working on Lunar Pioneer. Hopefully I can still get a nice big changelog together.