Space Exploration Prototype June 22, 2021
June 22, 2021
Ship resources, new ship layout, background future-proofing, development debug visual feedback.
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This was a pretty successful sprint. I implemented the basics for the game resources, including starting values and the ability to drain them over time. The resources don't have any interaction yet other than decreasing.
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The previous layout for the ship felt too big. It was very open, with a lot of space between rooms. It favored having more characters to handle all the stations, which would lead to a lot of micromanaging. This wasn't the right direction for me, so I reduced the size while keeping the same room themes. This resulted in a layout that feels a little like a cramped space ship, but also allows four characters to feel like enough.
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The background future-proofing I worked on was primarily reducing the number of variables I was using, streamlining code, and commenting everything in all of my scripts. This also included separating "work stations" from "idle stations" so the characters have specific places they can go to for idle targets, empty functions and events that will be used later, and generally organizing as much as I could. It will help me to keep things clean and organized as I continue working.
The visual feedback that is shown in the video and the screenshot are either for my easy reference while working, or placeholders for actual feedback assets. The characters show me which state they are in (idle, moving, working), if they're selected, and their destination when selected. The stations now show me when they have been "claimed" by a character and which character the object has been told is claiming it. It has been very helpful for ensuring everything is working as intended (and for pointing out when it isn't).
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Next steps will be to have work stations interact with the ship resources and generally expand on how the resources are tracked so they can update appropriately when they are consumed and refilled. I will also get the work stations to track progress on the current task and possibly implement some feedback for it.