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Shatterloop
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I've got some basic combat in place now. Here's a good seed to test things:
http://gtx0.com/projects/planes/?seed=1158871426
Attacking
To turn on attacking mode, press caps lock. Now when you press a direction, you're attacking in that direction. There are also other things you can do here. To turn off attacking mode so you can move around again, press caps lock again.
If you press control and then a direction, you can attack diagonally:
Attacking mode will show your current weapon and its properties below the map, and will also give you a list of weapons on the left. While in attacking mode, you can press a number that corresponds to a weapon to change over to it (ex -- pressing 3 swaps over to the Staff Knock weapon).
Each weapon works a bit differently:
Random stuff
http://gtx0.com/projects/planes/?seed=468176744
Xhin
Sky's the limit
So I have the townsfolk knowledge prototype working:
http://gtx0.com/projects/planes/?init=town_test
Here's a little mini-quest I did to find someone who knew about "Dooku":
Xhin
Sky's the limit
I did a *bunch* of stuff today.
Started out making a colors object so I could do something simple that needed to be done -- ended up creating a bunch of really cool effects instead.
So, some changes:
I've implemented water. Water generates a bit differently as you move around -- it's a kind of "shimmering" effect, and it's responsible for a lot of lag so I need to optimize it.
Cave generation is also a lot different -- it's more actually cave-like now and it's a lot easier to find cave holes.
There's also lava instead of water. Lava is similar to water, except it sometimes isn't where it appears to be, and sometimes is where it doesn't appear to be. This kind of effect is known as a "quantum effect" and it's at least mild with lava.
In the final game though, touching lava deals damage. Since lava sometimes isn't where you think it is, you have to be extra careful around it.
I removed Troves, replacing them with "Quantum Dimensions" -- these have an interesting cyclical terrain generation pattern and also everything flickers with the quantum effect including the ground you're standing on, resources, anything you build, etc.
I also removed Cities, replacing them with "Entropic Dimensions". These again have a different terrain generation pattern and they also have something kinda random instead of water.
Okay, the lag isn't related to water/quantum effects at all. I'll go ahead and fix it then.
Also something I didn't add above:
This was the original point of the colors object, but somehow that turned into making water and quantum effects.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Some nice changes here:
If you press ] , you can switch between energy discoveries and materials discoveries, and what you pick up will also change accordingly.
Inventory
The inventory is now categorized and you can switch between different categories. This also sometimes completely breaks the game and looks pretty awful overall. It needs work.
Fishing
If you press f and a direction and what's in that direction is water, you'll fish in the pond there. All you're getting right now is JSON data.
Ponds are either:
Dimensions generate a limited amount of fish, and individual pools will pull out a subset of those, with some weight attached to them (to determine how likely that fish is to appear).
Tomorrow I'll probably work on the actual basic fishing mechanic, which will work something like this:
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Fishing basically works 100% at this point, other than some random features I can't really add until I flesh out the resources system more.
Things that will happen later
Xhin
Sky's the limit
I also got torches working.
When you're in a cave, press t to cycle between different torch types. Currently their properties are:
Future updates
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Well I hit the first couple steps to being able to generate towns:
I can adjust all the variables seen here as well as gap thicknesses individually. I've also got a nice little framework now for constructing other things. Additionally, I've got a system in place where everything I'm generating like this can be removed all at once -- useful for offloading stuff when you get far enough away from towns.
Anyway, this update allows me to construct both the basic layout of towns (seen here with four thick walls with gaps in them) and houses (1-tile thick walls, one gap somewhere for a door) to fill them.
My next step is to build a function that will fill some space with some set of structures. For now that'll just fill towns with houses, but when I flesh this thing out you'll have more "districts" to fill and there will probably be stuff other than houses, and house construction might be different as well. This update also paves the way for dungeons -- these were planned but didn't want to promise anything unless I could arbitrarily create rooms easily which I apparently can.
So, I'll probably flesh towns out some more tomorrow. I seem to be delving into each part of the game a little bit rather than fleshing out whole features at once. It's probably better this way.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Town generation is basically working at this point.
Basically with one easy function I can generate a town (including walls and entrances) as well as fill the space inside it.
These house entrances also "work" -- in the sense that they move you either inside or outside the house and know what you're doing. When I tie this in with the rest of the framework it'll mean that houses get generated as you go inside and get offloaded when you exit. It'll also pave the way for multi-floor houses, and as an added bonus the house shape doesn't actually get stored anywhere, so if you have weird house shapes the system will just know and generate stuff inside accordingly.
There's kind of a lot of framework to set up here and a lot of work to be done in general in a lot of different directions. Since shop stuff is heavily heavily reliant on resources, I'll probably take a break and work on those a bit more, or maybe go back to combat. My IRL is probably going to go nuts soon in one way or another so there might not be many updates after tonight.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
House interiors now work:
All I'm doing with the interior of houses right now is rendering random floor tiles and staircases, but the framework is all there:
There's a lot of big under-the-hood updates here that are making all this possible, and have made it very very easy to render actual things and people inside houses, which I might do next (or switch over to resources).
Xhin
Sky's the limit
So, a TON of updates to the actual game today:
Shops
Shops now spawn inside houses when you enter them. You just go up to the @ and touch it and it'll pop open the shops menu:
You can either buy or sell stuff in specific categories. At the moment I have two shopkeepers:
You click "Buy" or "Sell" to move over to that tab. The amount of money you have changes automatically, and you get a bit of a message too. You'll also get an error message if you don't have enough money.
Prices work much the same way they did in the old alpha demo -- they're the same regardless of where you get the item -- silk larva are just *worth* 15 ajna, and that'll be true regardless of which shopkeeper you go to.
Shopkeepers can have a markup -- this guy has a 150% markup so it costs more to buy his wares than they're actually worth.
Materials Upgrade
I added a *bunch* of new materials and materials names. I also refined my notes quite a bit, the plants you can collect are:
Branches, Wood and Fruit/Nuts/Beans/Berries all come from the same kind of tree, and each dimension has a limited amount of trees, which you can see above. There are duplicates at the moment and I do need to do some more work there (like ensuring that every dimension has at least one source of branches and fiber).
While everything has some randomized name that actually sounds like the thing it's supposed to be, at the moment the only names I'm 100% happy with are the Trees and Fiber plants -- the leaves are chosen from real-world leaf names and the insects/larvae are lacking. I'll fix these issues at some point.
Crafting
I got a very very basic Crafting system set up. It looks absolutely horrible (like the rest of the interface really) and I don't have any failsafes set up yet. Despite this, it works good.
I've got it on the left for now. At some point all the interaction stuff is going on the right and also the keyboard will be rebound to wasd instead of the arrrow keys -- that'll be disorienting as hell. Anyway, you click on the recipe category.
The back button works like you'd expect it to. This menu shows you all the recipes in the category and the ingredients (and amounts) needed.
When you click "Craft" you'll be brought to a menu that lets you pick which ingredients to use in the crafting recipe. Clicking craft will then subtract the appropriate amount of each item and stick the new item in your inventory.
Conclusion
Obviously, there's still a lot of work to be done here, but it's good progress. For my next project I'm going to set up a test recipe to create torches from maybe branches and fish and then tie that into the torches system to try to get the properties aspect of the game working.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Some updates:
At this point in the project I have a good foundation for all aspects of the game. I'm going to start adding more depth, building towards my notes here (or whatever I simplify or alter them into).
Xhin
Sky's the limit
A bunch of updates here:
Overall, way way easier than the old system (and easier to see what you're actually doing too).
This system works with arc attacks as well -- here I have my mouse somewhere to the south and so there's a whole area surrounding me that my attack will hit. If I click, the attack will affect enemies 6, 7, and 1.
Similarly, this system works with ranged attacks -- in this case you get to see the range you can hit, which in this case is between 2-7 spaces away.
I've played with the system a lot, and it's quite easy to use and inuitive. It would be nice to have more feedback (like knowing when you're going to hit walls or knowing when you've hit an enemy), but overall it's a pretty good prototype.
I've started the process for thrown weapons. Haven't actually built anything out yet (there's a loooot of hooks involved in this, I haven't even figured out which ones are vital and which ones aren't yet).
I tried several different "mouse sensitivity" options and honestly, having it be 1:1 with the actual tile feels the best. I might be able to make it some kind of option though -- I could see players wanting to have more precision or more freedom.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Update
All throwing weapon techniques work, with the exception of shadow weapons:
Ground Effects and Techniques
"Effects" are things that happen automatically, while "Techniques" are things you perform as a separate weapon move.
Sticked enemy techniques
Miscellaneous techniques
Multiple effects
If you have multiple weapons on the ground or sticked in enemies, then your techniques will affect *all* instances of that weapon -- yanks will pull all sticked enemies towards you, draws will draw you to one enemy and then the next enemy, etc -- if you stick a whole cluster and move far away a good draw might pull you all the way there. Jerks seem to pull you somewhere in between the line that the two weapons draw, or the shape if you throw more than two.
Eventual goals
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Update
I took a break from combat to work on something else.
Biomes
I've added "biomes" to the game -- these are basically sub-dimensions with handcrafted terrain generation and color palettes. There's still some color variation and they're still infinite in size. They look so good I might rethink the way normal dimensions are generating.
Water Biome
Earth Biome
Fire Biome
Ice Biome
Wood Biome
Wind Biome
Plans
The plan here is to make entrances to these biomes appear alongside caves. Each dimension has one of these "elements" associated with it, which influences which of these entrances will appear.
In order to enter a Biome you have to collect something in caves (probably quartz and metal). The stuff you collect for this isn't dimension-specific, and it opens up that biome portal globally -- so you only ever need to craft one Wood Portal for example to access Wood Biome entrances from then on.
A lot of enemies in the game will be elemental, as will the combat system. I'm still working on the details of that. Biomes will exclusively spawn enemies of that element, while regular dimensions will have a mix along with "normal" enemies.
While you can still find Crystals in deep caves, you'll find a lot more in the biome associated with their element. Biomes will also render some different variations on basic resources as well -- like wood biomes will be heavy on plant products.
Unlike Caves or Towns, you'll be able to build bases in Biomes and connect them with your existing base.
Biomes are where Deep Castles will be. In order to enter a deep castle you have to collect stuff from the biome / go to places in the biome / craft something from biome resources. Haven't figured out what the progression system here is yet.
So your progression system now looks like this:
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Towns Update
There are now infinite towns and they're generating/offloading automatically.
The wall size / entrance size / house size / house margin also varies between towns. Town size also varies a lot. Not a huge update, but is a little bit of variety at least.
Provided you're in dimension 0 (towns are specific to it right now), you can press ` twice to go to the entrance of the town in whatever chunk of the world you're in. In-game there will be an item(s) and a spell(s) for this eventually.
Basically, every 500x500 chunk of the world has one town between 25-100 tiles in size. This town will generate somewhere within that chunk, except for a 10x10 space inside the chunk. To save space, the town doesn't actually generate until you get close to it. It'll also offload as you get further away from it.
This isn't the final draft for town placement, but it'll work good for now.
The last house inside a town (whatever is bottom-rightmost) will have a "Travel shop". This will show distances to adjacent towns and let you teleport to their entrances for a fee. This also isn't the final draft, but it'll work for now.
The distances are based on each tile being 1m. Interestingly, that puts the size of each dimension at 0.95 light-years, which is totally accidental.
There are a couple bugs that I need to fix (and I need to make towns work on other dimensions), but everything is surprisingly pretty solid otherwise.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
I've been working on Provinces:
Not a flawless reconstruction, but it's pretty close and I'm pretty pleased with the results.
Basically what you're looking at here is a set of province maps, which would individually look like this:
This map shows where towns, cities and nexuses are and the travel paths between them:
This hasn't actually been tied into town generation yet, that will be my next project.
Provinces also dictate various other things:
Xhin
Sky's the limit
As I pointed out in my Notes post, I've been working on a new generation algorithm to arrange houses better, build dungeons and more. Below is my first attempt at generating "hallways":
While there's still a lot of work and evidently some bugs, I'm pretty happy with how flexible the hallway system is already -- it basically just creates a stair-like pattern between two points with whatever amount of granularity you want.
I'm also quite happy with the generation algorithm in general -- I've implemented even spacing with as much variation as you want, which looks really good for houses and should be useful for dungeons. Meanwhile, it's flexible enough to make ruins or other things with it, perhaps even random structures if I generalize it enough. I don't think I'll have any problem coming up with unique things to find now.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
I've reached a major milestone with the "ruins" project -- basically I can now generate all the different types of ruins with a lot of variety all around:
Dungeons
Mines
Mazes (aka "Ruins")
Shrines
Miscellaneous structures
What's done and what isn't done
In addition to generating these, I've generalized the loading object so I can easily hook these back in when I know where I'm putting them. There's also a templating system, since they're all running on the same engine.
I need to do some more work with coloring them -- I can change colors of whatever pretty easily but this code is hardcoded at the moment.
I also haven't put anything in them yet -- each of the larger shapes should be a kind of "room" potentially (on dungeons the large shapes are all rooms). This ties a lot into the loot / NPC / combat systems. I also want to have a kind of progressive key/door system, if it's not too much work. (dungeons at least should be easy here)
Dungeons in particular should generate multiple floors in their own space. Same deal with mines probably. Nothing here has been done, but the hooks are there (it's what's happening with biomes).
Lastly, nothing is actually generating in the world yet. This ties too much into the Provinces system and how ruins/etc are distributed across a province.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
It's been a while since I've worked on this project. Going to start updating it more regularly.
Today's update is pretty big.
House Interiors
House interiors now generate walls and furniture along with shopkeepers.
Items Update / Furniture
Furniture containers work how you'd expect them to -- you can take items from them or even take all. I also did a massive items update so that each piece of furniture has almost all of the items it's supposed to have (detailed in my Notes post), as well as a bunch of work in actually generating what the names are (though I'm not done yet here -- it'll be more interesting in the final product).
Shops
I fleshed out all the Shop types as well -- at the moment everything but the Trapper and Butcher shops are working and tested, including composite shops like the Zoo.
Moving forward
There are quite a few bugs and some things that haven't been 100% fleshed out yet. Furniture placement is also quite random, and interior walls sometimes block off pathways. Shop selling and Fast Travel also appear to be broken. These are things I'm going to be fixing moving forward. My goal is to create a kind of "Thief v0" update -- where you can at the very least take items from houses and then sell them to various shops, though there's no consequences to anything and nothing's particularly hard.
After that, I'll aim more towards an actual thief v1 update -- lockpicking, NPC movement, and the caught system. After that I'll probably work pretty heavily on the Provinces/town generation systems to make towns more interesting / more accessible, unless I want to switch gears to something else for a while.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Shop selling and fast travel are fixed.
A bigger update though is that I got the lockpicking system in place:
It works similarly to the Hand Game I posted a while back, except with EN's improvements, a variable number of "fingers" and it looks different as well. I'll probably make a stand-alone version tomorrow and post it here for those of you who were interested in the earlier version.
I also worked pretty hard on my thief v1 notes and will probably post that in the other post.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Lockpicking hooks are lined up, and I got all of the special abilities implemented:
There are a few lingering issues and I need to tweak more complex locks a bit so a couple of those abilities aren't too OP. I also have the backbone of the standalone version built, so that will probably go up tomorrow as well. Most of the actual game's hooks for lockpicking are in place now too, so that might also happen tomorrow.
I'm going to try to use the standalone version to figure out which abilities are better than others, and work that into the game. You should really only have one ability per lockpick unless you're working with alloys, and I'd like to make the better abilities rarer. Lockpicks instead are more likely to have noise / use / precision differences. I should really build weapons like this too -- at the moment you're getting ones that are totally random.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Been a while since an actual update.
Raw resources and their potential extractables
Extraction Menus
The resources you can get depends on the raw material -- you won't always get, say, flowers every time you get brush. There are some that are universal though, such as scales for fish or meat for animal corpses.
Clicking "Extract" will extract the appropriate resource, however "Extract All" will extract that resource from *every* copy of that raw material you have in your inventory -- quite useful if you have a lot of stuff collected.
I'll probably add some icons when this system is more finalized -- I'm not sure if this is the final materials system or not.
My next project is either camping/cooking or scout/mount animals. Probably camping/cooking since it ties in directly to this update.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Updates
First of all, enemies can sometimes generate interesting patterns if you set their behavior right:
This is one of the more terrifying patterns -- they're random, then bolt away from the player at high speed, then you think they're safe, and then they do this.
I plan on making a kind of life simulator prototype sometime so you guys can explore enemy behavior in more depth and I can also test the engine better.
Fishing updates
I worked on the fishing engine a good bit, looking to roll out the features in my v1 notes.
Fishing for containers
This is a bit of a larger update to the fishing engine.
I added an option to the extraction menu -- containers get shown first. You can open each type one by one or open them all. Opening a container will remove it from your inventory, and then basically treat it like a piece of furniture that you're doing "Take All" to.
This update also paves the way for Wholesalers. I'd install them now but I think they're reliant on the Province system in some way.
Right now containers act like a random piece of house furniture. I'd eventually like to have a custom set of rules that they follow, as well as a different custom set for wholesaler bags. It'll still use the furniture system though, which appears to be quite useful.
Still to do
Kind of a lot. I've got a full page for updates to the fishing engine. I think I'll probably do Lures and Fishing Rods next. Or I might switch gears to some other system.
Despite how spread out the development is, Shatterloop is coming along very well -- I've got some kind of foothold with pretty much every system at this point.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Added a *bunch* of crafting recipes and made some improvements to the crafting engine, since it's required for fishing updates.
Main updates are:
Still to do
Really just UI/UX updates at this point:
All of this can wait until the game's polishing step, though I might set up the properties web before that.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
I don't know what my free time looks like anymore, but I'm going to try to spend some time with this project when I can.
Base Building Prototype
This update basically works the same as the original building feature, but has a better interface and a couple improvements:
Known Bugs
Planned updates to this version of the feature
Later stuff
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Shatterloop's development strategy right now is "do something prior to working on freelance projects". It seems to help with them, while also allowing me to slowly work on it.
Lockpicking update
I didn't quite get this feature to version 1, but it's pretty close.
Still to do
I have a checklist going here:
https://gtx0.com/read/shatterloop-notes
The main things left are:
Might work more on this in the next update, might switch gears to something else (making good progress on the fishing and combat engines too lately).
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Lockpicking Update 2
Systems work
I also did quite a bit of work into various systems that are necessary for this featureset. These systems however are also laying down the foundation for various upcoming updates:
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Several larger updates today.
Shop Services
Services are currently free -- that will change as this goes into beta, but it's better for testing atm.
Portals
Portals are pretty close to 100% from my notes.
Changing Portal Type switches between these four different menus.
Here's what the portals look like on the screen. They look similar to caves -- might change cave colors somewhat to fix that. They reflect whatever color you make the portals.
With the modify menu, you click the portal on the screen (with a whitelike hover effect) and the appropriate edit menu will pop up for it.
Interacting with portals
I changed the behavior of Tangle/Attractor pairs a bit:
You can still make effective two-way portals, you just have to have an attractor and tangle on both ends. I like the logistical challenges of this method better.
An interesting bug that came up while doing this is that any trigger whatsoever for stepping onto an attractor will make you spawn close to it, including the displacement from other portals.
You can therefore create constructions like this one where stepping into any entrance of it has the potential of spitting you back out anywhere else on its surface. You can also run into time sink problems if you place entrance/exit portals too close to each other in a pair -- it's possible to bounce back and forth between them many times before exiting (and you might not exit where you want). This kind of thing also introduces some logistical problems and some interesting mechanics to experiment with. I like that the time distortion works similarly to actual black holes as well.
Still to do
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Bit of a smaller update this time, but at least my updates are consistent.
I'm not sure what I want the time system to look like in the final version. Right now there's a 1s, 10s and 100s counter, which rolls over after 1000 turns. Somewhere around 1000 seems like the right length of turns for a "day", but I'm not sure how many counters I want or where they should roll over at. Making it Base-10 makes a certain amount of sense though.
I now have everything I need to actually create the "check if this is a valid base room" function, which will enable the rest of the base building updates. I'm pretty excited -- those are some of the most interesting updates and they really start to flesh the game out too.
I might switch gears at some point though. I'm looking at creating a checklist for caves so I can work on that set of updates at some point soon -- they're actually the easiest thing to program right now because of all the other systems I put into place recently. So if base building hits a major snag or gets to a good stopping place, I'll switch to that.
While I'm very close to finishing the thief system, the next set of updates is entirely reliant on generalizing mob behavior, and that really needs to turn into a finished system first so I don't shoot myself in the foot.
The other systems I'm working on also require a lot of work. I'll get to them eventually regardless, but I'm hoping that some of the other things I'm working on could make working on them easier. That definitely won't happen with Provinces, but I'm holding off on that because I want to spend a lot of time thinking about what gets generated in the world first and the progression of the game.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
March 14th update
Moving forward
I'm going to get at least some of the bugs / functional issues sorted out before I move forward, but when I do instead of finishing those up I'm instead going to work towards player health / enemy attacks. I could then theoretically shelve combat for the moment and work on some of the systems that require combat, such as food or potions (which I really want to work on!). Overall though combat doesn't seem to have a lot of hard work left in it now though, so I should be able to slam out those updates pretty soon as well.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Major Base Building Update
The entire Base Building foundation works. It's now incredibly easy to actually add base room functionality as well as scope out what bases do more generally.
It'll probably be a while before I hook everything into the save feature. While extremely useful (and obviously essential), it constrains development somewhat. I'll add it in when object names/data structures are more finalized.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
3/18 Update
A lot of updates here, and they're fairly spread out too.
Bases
Combat v0
Combat is now a full v0. There are a few minor things left in the original checklist, but every system is working in some capacity at this point.
Camping
Future Plans
Due to these changes (and the ones over the past few days) a lot of systems have opened up -- I can implement Armor, Jewelry, Potions, Food, Cooking, Stews, Summons, Fountains, Smelting, and Alloys. Plus there's a lot of work to do still on both the Combat and Base Building complexes. So I'm probably going to continue to be pretty scattered for a while. Will definitely be getting to Food and Potions pretty soon though -- I've been wanting to work on those systems for a while now. Will probably work on Crops a bit too for similar reasons. Might swing back to Caves or Pets just to round out all the systems that are in progress.
Overall, the game is finally moving towards what I actually want it to be, instead of just being a loose collection of disjointed systems and sprawling notes.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Update 3/23
I got quite a bit done towards the goal of Potions/Food, plus some other useful changes.
Item Dropping
Systems paved the way for
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Update 3/25
Got quite a bit done.
Buffs
I added a Buffs system, which ties into some of the functionality I had built earlier. Buffs expire after some amount of turns, and are visible on the "Buffs" screen with an appropriate format.
I didn't get to all of the v0 Buffs on my list, but I got a good number done -- should be enough to build out basic potions/food systems. Here's a list of the Buffs that are working (and tested)
The ones I missed either need additional functionality or are somewhat complicated to set up. Like the other Buffs in my list, I'll get to them eventually.
Moving Forward
At this point I do at least have a Buffs system and *some* buffs, so I should have everything I need to make Potions and Food, which should be my next projects.
I'll probably continue to flesh out other systems as well -- I have kind of a lot started at this point that needs bugfixing or heavy reworking.
Overall, the project is going very well. It's getting to a point where the biggest amount of work I have left is playing around with the datasets and organization rather than programming. Still have quite a few systems to set up still though.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Update 3/27
Potions are basically 100% working. There are a few minor issues and some integration stuff that needs to be done, but this is now a fully working system that also works within the context of the game.
Still to do
Xhin
Sky's the limit
4/10: Caves are at 100%
Caves are now at v1. There are a couple of areas left that I'd like to target at some point on a polish/balance angle, but all the major systems work.
I'm not sure how much I did in the last couple of updates, but it wasn't much compared to this update, so I'm going to just go ahead and stick all of the updates in this post:
Cave Menu
Equipment Upgrades
If you click "Expand" you get this menu. Different items you can equip are color-coded and let you pick them and see their properties more easily. Useful if you have an idea of what your items do but have forgotten their specific names.
If you click "Compare", you get this menu. Now you can see all the properties of all the items you can equip, and compare them accordingly. Very useful if you don't know what your items do yet.
There's a "Toggle Fullscreen" button that does exactly that -- blows the table up over your entire screen (though there's still a scrollbar if you need it). I plan on adding that control to every menu that might need it.
This color-coding of items extends into the inventory as well. The point is to make unique items stand out from each other in some way so you can remember them easier. This game has a loooooooooot of item management, so having features like this helps.
Next to Torches and Ropes (and also next to Ropes in your normal Equipment menu outside of Caves), you get this "Refuel" or "Repair" menu.
The basic way it works is it says what your durability is at (out of its max), and then lists all the items you can use to refuel/repair it, along with a parentheses indicating how much durability they add, and how many of them they have.
By clicking any of these color-coded links, one of the item is taken and the equipped item's durability improved accordingly.
However, this can be time-consuming, so if you're in a hurry, there's also an "Easy Refuel/Repair to Full" button which will loop through your items and refill your item's durability to full. This system is faster, but it isn't smart -- it doesn't know what items you'd rather spare, and it can also waste items needlessly. Which system you use is up to you.
Torches
Ropes
On the surface, when you interact with a cave hole, you get a menu that tells you you need a valid rope equipped in order to go down. It'll say other stuff too eventually. At any rate, you have to manually click "Enter Cave".
When you're in caves, interacting with cave holes will let you automatically go down a level and lose a rope durability accordingly.
Ropes have a 50% chance of having one of seven special abilities -- these abilities will appear as buttons. With the exception of the "Up" button, when you click the button you'll then have to click a direction in the game to use the torch in. With the exception of the Up rope, the range you can place it can vary from rope to rope as well. Below is a list of each rope type and what it does:
Each of these special moves uses a rope durability.
Bombs
Right now there are three bomb types. I'm going to work on a more robust bomb system later, but this will do for now.
Ignore the menu here since I formatted it into a table instead.
The explosion will leave behind a tile that's definitely going to contrast with the solid color, but it might not resemble the other floor tiles in the cave.
Fixtures and Gashroom Bombs
At level 6+, you'll start seeing fixtures that look like this (or like an O with a cyan color). These are rare at first but become more common as you get deeper.
Neither of those functions work yet, but the menu will at least pop up.
One of the resource types you'll run across in caves are Gashrooms. These can be crafted into Gashroom Bombs.
Terrain Differences & Hazards
Still to do
This was a huge update, but there's still a few minor things left to do:
Next Project
At this point I have a lot of projects open. I'm not sure what I'll be working on next, but it'll probably be one of those. At some point though I definitely need to work on Provinces -- that's the last thing to do that's holding back other systems from being built properly, so that'll probably happen pretty soon.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
4/15 Update
I've been working on creating some kind of early alpha game from the systems I have set up already. Each time I play a game I make a big list of bugs and UX issues and fix them before my next playthrough. So I've made kind of a lot of progress over the last few days.
Here's what my last playthrough was like -- the menus definitely feel more responsive and user-friendly. I also had a nice little base established -- was a pain to make until I realized fishing line made out of frogtail fiber was worth 85TA.
It's definitely an interesting game to play through -- everything is different every time you play a different seed. I think the tech aether and potions systems seem to be the best working prototype of that principle -- I'm going to try to model the other systems around them somehow so they feel less random.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
4-30 Update (Provinces)
The provinces framework is 100% complete. In addition to turning the chart I made a long time ago into a functioning province, it's also generalized enough that I can load ruins, outposts, mines, etc in as well at will.
Framework updates
The biggest part of this update are the framework updates.
Next steps
This opens up kind of a lot. I'm probably going to be working in one of the following areas next:
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/10 Update
Big update here.
Caves
Cave holes now only naturally appear in one region of the province. They appear as the circular gradients around the edge of these polygon-looking things. I recolored them to more closely match the "ruins" where they spawn. The actual shapes used differ depending on the seed.
There's exactly one region in the province that has these structures with their associated cave holes, so this makes finding them an important progression step, which will require visiting civilization. I'm doing things this way because Shatterloop has a lot of optional mechanics and I want to make sure there are in-roads to all of them.
Elemental Dungeons
Also on the ruins system, six elemental dungeons will spawn across the province.
Your "finder" manaflute song will allow you to find them -- just specify a direction and you'll warp to the closest one in that direction. This will be more important when I don't have the quick-travel map.
The outside uses the ruins system but is quite small -- however you'll see these color-coded paragraph symbols. Using your "activator" manaflute song near them will transport you into an elemental dungeon, which you can see in the far right image.
Elemental dungeons are long and twisty, and also somewhat buggy if you go too far atm (this needs to be fixed). They also don't have much in them. They do however have a music symbol which gives you the appropriate manaflute song. This is the end goal of ruins.
I'm going to flesh ruins out at some point, but this version (sans the bug) is pretty much what they'll look like in the early alpha 2.
Towns
Moving Forward
State of the Project
In addition to the above points, this update opens up Quests. I'm not sure how I'm going to approach that project yet but all the NPC hooks are in place now so it should be reasonably easy to program.
NPCs should be the last step I need for finishing the Theft system as well.
Shatterloop is starting to feel a lot more like an actual game. The world feels a lot more alive and interesting than it once did.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/13 Update
NPCs
NPCs are at 100%. There are several mechanics at play and everything seems to be working correctly.
I don't have much stuff hooked into NPCs right now -- just enough for the early alpha and also the shops thing because that'll make early alpha playthroughs easier.
Pricing
Other types of updates
State of the project
Still have what seems like endless work left, but am getting a lot closer to having a full alpha. My alpha will look something like this:
Moving towards beta involves fleshing out those optional systems and working on balancing / cross-pollinating / polishing the overall game.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Early Alpha 2
The game is developed enough now to be in its second early alpha form. I haven't tested a full playthrough yet, but it should be possible to play the game all the way up until you craft the Shatterlens.
Crafting v1
Recipes now split their generated properties by the materials in it. This is also reflected in a preview ahead of time.
Here you can see that depending on the branch you select you'll get different properties in the torch you craft. This is true for the cloth as well.
While there's still some things to iron out, this is how the crafting system is supposed to work so crafting is now a v1.
Maps v0
I have a very very basic mapping system in place now. This will at least show you areas you've visited before and their location relative to where you are. It obviously needs more work / more features, but this is a good start.
Dungeon Hint song
When you craft the manaflute, you gain a "Dungeon hint" song which tells you the direction that the song is in, its distance, and it even "points" to it with the system above. This action costs aether, so you can't just continuously use it. It should be helpful in the early alpha though. Once I flesh dungeons out more this functionality will be one of the functions of Quantum Mushroom items.
Miscellaneous updates
Moving forward
My next steps are testing the early alpha 2 all the way through and fixing bugs as well as UX issues as I run across them.
After that I'm probably going to push for a full alpha, which will look something like this:
That'll tighten the base game up a LOT.
I might also switch gears and start working on the game systems again. Really need to take a trip back to combat and all the systems tangled in with it.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/21 Update
Zoom Map v0
This was an interesting tool I made because I was tired of compiling together screenshots. It basically generates a large section of the world (200x200 tiles) in a small area without borders, painting an interesting viewpoint of how the world/town/ruin generation looks.
The above image is one of the overworlds, with an inactive dungeon generating in it.
The bottom level of caves -- note all the lava and underground rivers.
Fire and Water planes.
Wind and ice planes.
A basic dungeon layout and a crazier layout
Me messing around with some of the other possibilities with the ruin generator.
World generation changes
Caves now look like this. The passageways/dense maze-like areas are now a lot more consistent -- the old generator was neat but made parts of the world unplayable. This one seems to encourage more exploration and make your Jump Over grappling rope type not nearly as essential, which is a good thing.
In the image above, the pinkish-white areas are floors while the gray areas are solids.
I altered the water dimension generator too -- you can see that in the zoom map image, but this is more of what it looks like on a smaller scale.
Void Seas have different spawns and are designed to be as nerve-wracking and terrifying as possible.
The Void Sea also goes around Caves and every plane as well, not just the Overworld. The only exception to this is the Entropic Plane, which is limitless.
Miscellaneous Changes
Notes
Next steps
I'm going to try to deal with the large list of bugs and ux issues before doing another playthrough (including stuff noticed while the game was an early alpha 1). I want to make anything I put on that list be completely fresh.
After that I'm going to try to get the last third of the game in place and then slowly head towards a full alpha release.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/24 Update
Got through another big pile of bugfixes and UX updates. All bugs that I know about should be fixed now.
Portals Updates
Terrain
Zoom Map
I fleshed this feature out. It's very usable like this -- will be a useful debugging tool and the generated maps might make their way into the game in some capacity (scout animals seem like a particularly good place to use them).
Miscellaneous Updates
Next steps
I still have some UX updates left, and a maps v0 checklist. But I think I'm caught up enough to play another round of the early alpha 2.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/27 Update
UX Fixes
Entropic Plane v1
This plane is now at 100%. The whole thing is basically a big puzzle which should be fairly intuitive to figure out and slowly learn (other than finding your first voidcore -- I need a fix for that).
I removed the fade-in solids mechanic -- way way too annoying when you're trying to play this system.
It's a lot of fun, and will be even moreso as I polish it a bit more.
Post-entropic plane
Moving forward
I've got my checklists in place for the quantum plane v1 as well as the strange loop structure that's affected by it and ties into the late game.
I've also worked on the late game a bit more -- made the chimera song way way cooler and also removed one of the unnecessary mechanics. That'll probably be my next project after all this, which should get me to early alpha 3 status.
After that I'll probably work on fleshing out dungeons or mana planes so I can work towards a full alpha release. I do however have some civilization improvements I'm also concurrently working on the notes for -- that might happen first. It would be really cool to have the improved civilizations in the alpha.
State of the Project
Shatterloop is getting to be quite fun. There's a lot of learnable mechanics that combine together with all the procedural generation in interesting ways.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/29 Update
V1 of the quantum plane is at 100%. Probably not UX-friendly until I move buffs to the stats menu.
Strange Loops are in the world and working. The generation is really cool and changes over time.
Shattering works -- this basically turns the entire screen gray (with the exception of solids which are pitch black) and opens the chimera menu (which currently does nothing)
This is what the chimera menu will look like, or something similar.
Entropic Plane Updates
Added energy bombs. These take 90% of your solid light and blow up a big chunk of solids. They'll probably end up influencing the behavior of cave bombs as well.
Red time tethers beam out in all four directions, making them extremely valubale and worth finding or creating the right terrain for (which is rare)
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/30 Update
This is a major update, although it doesn't look like it.
The chimera menu is at 100%, and you can use it to go to any province in the game (there's something like 10^17 of them). These "addresses" have to be between 2 and 8 characters in length. Here I'm using it to go to transdimensional montana. The map title will usefully update.
Alternate dimensions are different in several ways:
Conclusion
This was a pretty big update given how much it expands the game world at this stage of the game. It's also what I thought would be the hardest part of the early alpha 3, so it's a good sign that it didn't take much to put in place.
I'm going to continue working towards the early alpha 3.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/31 Update
Event Horizons / Singularities
Event Horizon gameplay is at 100%. I haven't quite figured out what the symbols for "items" will actually be yet -- they're currently letters rather than chimera symbols, but I might end up using something else altogether.
I tested this feature out a lot and made a lot of UX updates and algorithm changes. It's a lot more usable and the mechanics are better as well.
Singularities work and look pretty cool as well. The naked singularity in the middle doesn't actually do anything yet. It also occasionally doesn't appear -- I'll need to look into that.
Towns Update
Towns look significantly better. This isn't everything I wanted to do with them, but it's most of it -- I finally found a good spacing algorithm, and the door placement is somewhat more natural as well. They also look way way better. Interior furniture colors are also designed to be better aethetically.
I set all of these colors up towards several goals other than just aethestics:
Next steps
I'm undecided on whether I want to set up what I can of the aleph naught next or focus on dungeons. Getting dungeons to 100% will allow me to push the aleph naught to 100% when I work on it. The aleph naught is a smaller project though, and also rounds out the early alpha 3.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/1 Update
The framework for the aleph naught is at 100%. None of these buttons works correctly yet but everything's routed correctly.
Additionally, you can legitimately get the Soul's Pivot now via the last mechanic, so the game is technically in early alpha 3. I won't finalize that until this system is actually done however.
Next steps
After that I'll probably do some more playthroughs/fixes and then try to get the game to full alpha. The only big things left there are mana planes and dungeons (and I guess magic, but I'm doing that at the end).
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/10 Update
Water Improvements
Town improvements
Thanks to this set of updates (and the one right below it), Town generation is at v1 now. This and the last update are basically everything I wanted to do with the overall town layout.
Town structures
Plane shrines and bubbles are purely aesthetic and serve to make towns more memorable / easier to navigate.
Aleph Naught progress
Ourobori
Misc changes
Moving forward
I have a few things left to do with the Aleph Naught, and I'll be at Early Alpha 3. After that I'll start working towards early alpha 4, which involves fleshing out the core locations like mana planes, dungeons, etc.
Might take another break from that and finish up towns -- that'll involve making shops/furniture match the items in the game, making sure each type of shop appears at least once per province, and fleshing out the various services shops offer. Also theft. That will at least kill a bunch of my main checklist and complete the overall Civilization project.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Early Alpha 3 Reached!
The game has officially reached Early Alpha 3 now. This means you can play the entire game from start to finish. At least in theory -- there may be bugs. I'm going to finish up the last round of UX and bug issues before I try to do that.
More detailed updates below:
Aleph Naught v1
Precious Metals Change
Precious metals are now part of the actual metal vein. Their colors change a bit over time, which makes them more noticeable. This change makes them a bit rarer and thus helps balance the game, while also making cave-based scout animals more useful whenever I get to them.
Bugfixes / Issues Fixes
Notes Changes
State of the Project
While I'm going to swing back around to the base coloring/bases/crops system soon, my main project right now is clearing up loose ends -- I'd like to get towns to v1, finish up the bugfixing and UX issues, and do some of the miscellaneous and game progression rerouting changes.
That should enable me to test the game from start to finish again. It's a bit longer than the last time I tested it since it's now in early alpha 3, and towns look and function a lot better as well. Some of the rerouting changes will make it easier to play through since the planes stuff is a bit of a grind right now. If I get to it, I'll fix the Quantum Plane as well, since the v1 version is an annoying slog.
Notes-wise, I'm actually pretty close to getting both Quests and Outposts/etc done, which is a big accomplishment since they were the last two items of my notes left where I really didn't know what I was doing yet. With those notes in place the entire game will be pretty locked in. They both tie somewhat fundamentally into the game world's economy, so I'm making a lore post for that.
Overall, I'm on the home stretch with the project as a whole. There's still a good bit of work left, but all of my notes are solid and all of the various frameworks are done. Plus you can play the game start to finish now, which is neat. I'm still on target to be in alpha by the end of the year.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
8/15 Update
I've been in the process of clearing up loose ends and miscellaneous changes.
Aleph Conduits
This is the big update of today.
Aleph Conduits are structures that only appear in nexuses. They have several functions, all of which currently work:
Tetrad / Element / Strange Loop changes
This set of changes tightens down the game a LOT lore-wise -- it also improves some minor mechanics and makes things look a bit more alien, which is always a plus.
Misc stuff
Notes changes
Conclusion
Overall, today was a pretty productive day.
I'm going to continue rolling out the miscellaneous changes and fixing bugs as I aim towards a point where I can test the early alpha 3.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
8/20 Update
Base Coloring System stuff
Miscellaneous changes
Unsorted miscellaneous
Notes changes
The end result here is something similar to other areas I've applied the recursive-seeding strategy to -- procedurally generated content that's actually interesting to explore and interact with, which is one of the goals of the game.
State of the project
I'm working on both the base coloring system and some random miscellaneous updates I've been wanting to get to. These are coming along pretty well, but the bugs are starting to stack up, and I also have some older bugs I need to get to. Whenever I finish these two features I'll probably do a round of bugfixing and then I'll try to do some playtests of the early alpha 3 since I haven't done playtesting since several major updates ago. I'm particularly interested in what it'll feel like to explore the new town/town systems.
Everything in the game is coming along nicely -- I have notes now for 90% of the game's features, the lore and story are starting to really come together, and the gameplay is tightening down into something a lot funner than it once was. I should still be on target for entering alpha at the end of this year.
My next set of projects looks to be pretty exciting to work on -- the crops system, or fishing v1, or the armor/food stuff, or the big economy/quests complex if I get to it in time. These are all things that I've wanted to build since day 1 but didn't quite know how they worked or I just didn't have the foundation to support them.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
9/2 Update
Today was a productive day.
Materials changes
Caves Ruin Upgrade
I made several upgrades to caves ruins since they're no longer a required part of the game:
Resources upgrade
This update makes the procedurally generated terrain more useful, especially areas that are harder to move around in. This in turn also helps balance the game more.
Still to do
I have a few miscellaneous things left on my misc checklist, and a big pile of bugs in several places. I'm going to aim for finishing up the misc section and starting with the bugs tomorrow.
After all that, I'll probably get back to the base coloring system and other loose ends before my next major push, which is for the v1 version of bases.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
9/12 Update
Been working heavily on Bases v1. I'm about a third of the way through it and know the overall plan moving forward, other than a couple new notes that I'm working on to simplify or rebalance things.
Menu Changes
Bases
Game progression Change
Research
Fixtures changes
Labs
Portals Changes
Misc update
Notes updates
State of the Project
I'm pretty deep into the Bases v1 project, which I'm going to work on until completion. It's a pretty big update, but it heavily improves large amounts of the game.
Since it hooks into some other systems, by the end of this project I'll have a working procedurally-generated recipes system (ties into fishing and archery), a v0 of the Jewelry feature, and the Backpacks system.
Whenever I'm done with this project I'm going to work on the agriculture v1 project, as that's my actual goal here (it just made sense to finish bases up while I'm here). Will probably deal with some more bugfixes / misc changes / loose ends between those two projects, as they're stacking up.
After Agriculture, I'm eyeing the alternate provinces / melange planes update.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
9/25 Update
Jewelry v0
I have a v0 version of the jewelry system in place -- jewelry doesn't actually do anything yet but can be crafted, is named appropriatealy, and all the hooks are there.
Pylons
The Pylons system is at 100%.
More Bases stuff
Loose Ends / Bugfixes
I've been working lately on clearing out my giant list of bugs and some older checklists. Will probably do more of that today before maybe hitting some other loose ends. The base building project is in a good place and can wait.
State of the Project
I'm going to continue to work on loose ends / bugfixes for now to try to pare those lists down. Long-term I'm still aiming on finishing Bases and getting into Agriculture and then moving onto Alternate Provinces / Melange Planes.
The game should still be on target for reaching alpha by the end of the year. The only thing I'm really worried about complicating that is whatever the quests/guilds/outposts system is, since I'm still working on the details with that. Dungeons and Combat are potentially large projects, but my notes there are solid at least.
I've done some more work with the story, which is actually a lot more developed than I expected for this kind of game -- there should be 3-4 characters now in addition to the main one, and the main character's story is a whole lot more developed than "amnesia, lol" now -- you have actual motivations and stuff. There's some potentially interesting post-game content that hooks into that if I get to it. I'm still trying to avoid doing major work here until the rest of the game is done, but so much of the game is solid at this point it probably doesn't matter.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
11/19 Update
Trade Routes
Organizational work
Most of my work lately has been organizational. I came up with several major updates that heavily improve the game and tighten its systems together. I've been working through all the changes to my unprogrammed Notes that these entail:
The overall result of all of this is that large sections of my "done" or "unfinished" notes need to be reviewed and maybe rewritten. This has had wide-reaching implications like the mana planes scrapping update. Various systems are being rewritten or thrown out completely.
Completed notes
I've completed three new sets of notes:
State of the Project
The new features are all spun so tight around each other now that an early alpha 4 / early alpha distinction no longer makes sense. So instead the next major update will be a feature-complete game (though not necessarily a full alpha -- could still require some integration work).
My main project right now is fixing my notes -- this push will probably get 90% of them up to a full Notes Done status, due to large amounts of integration and simplification and some foundational updates I've made recently.
Programming-wise, I'm going to continue to focus on loose ends and smaller projects. The fifth update of the Bases update is probably going to have to be postponed until after the resources updates which I'll probably get to actually programming soon.
Overall, the project as a whole is in a lot better shape than it used to be -- the complex satellite features are all getting integrated back into the main core gameplay loops without losing anything. The game is starting to turn into more of a solid game concept rather than a loose collection of systems.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
3/17 Update
Programming
Organizational
State of the project
I still have more organizational work to do, but my work today gets rid of a big chunk of it. Development should be a lot saner moving forward.
Will probably start focusing on programming again -- miscellaneous updates and whatever's in the general checklist post.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/1 Update (Melange Update)
Towns v1 Stuff
Melange Cabinets
Provinces outside of the home one spawn 3 random types of furniture which contain a very random selection of items. This should give alternate provinces more flavor, and potentially make them a lot more profitable with theft mechanics.
Melange Planes
Provinces outside of the home one have 6 types of "melange planes" associated with them, represented by these specially-colored "Melange Holes". Melange Holes can be found anywhere entropic holes or quantum holes would spawn, although probably over the long run only 1-2 melange planes will be accessible that way, and the rest will be discoverable through naturally generated mana cracks.
Melange planes have truly random terrain generation, the algorithm of which was based on generalizing all the planes biome codes together and finding patterns and variations. Some of them look pretty neat, and have hazards like randomly-colored lava. I'll probably need to tweak some of the settings over time.
Melange planes don't have a void sea, and can themselves contain melange holes, which allow you to go to other melange planes.
Melange Planes have truly random item assortments, based on the same functionality as Melange Cabinets. They can therefore be very interesting ways to gain resources.
Misc
State of the Project
Nothing really new to report here, just working through the sanity checklist and general checklists.
The melange update paves the way for the myriads/lattices update, which are less useful than they once were but are still required to some extent.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/5 Update
Melange Plane Update
Notes Update
I did a lot of work here.
State of the project
I have a pretty solid foundation now for the terrain/materials/crafting system, including a lot of advanced materials and things I didn't consider at the time like dungeon materials. I'm probably going to dive into that project sometime soon. Should probably round out the terrain configurations post first.
Going to continue to work on loose ends as well.
Not much more I can do with my notes at this point -- need to revisit combat at some point (maybe simplify some things -- I have an idea for how to make battles way saner to track) and flesh bombs out. The only real project left here is civilization v2, but even that is mostly conceptualized now.
Continuing to integrate systems together and simplify (or scrap) things that don't fit into the new core game.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/11 Update
Void Update
Turning the game into essentially a sphere took a heck of a lot of work to get working right. There are still potentially some minor issues with it, but given that it happens in the void sea, they're probably irrelevant.
Terrain Confgurations
I fleshed out the terrain configurations for Caves resources and Fishing in both the surface and Caves. This didn't take long, but it's pretty mentally-intensive work, which is why I've been procrastinating it. I'm going to try to go ahead and knock out the other two updates of it tomorrow just to get that annoying project out of the way.
Notes Updates
Story
I did a LOT of work on the game's story and the lore surrounding it over the weekend. Finally got my ideas on paper and started to really flesh them out. There are six characters (including you), they're a pretty even mix of genders and moralities, and they all have some very complex motivations for their actions. There's a lot of misinformation, betrayal and plot twists throughout -- I really like the way everything came together.
Still a work in progress obviously, but it's coming along good.
State of the Project
Still working through the sanity updates and trying to roll out the Materials update, as that ties into a heck of a lot of the new core game. Doing work on the story when I think about it -- might even build out some dialogue parts of it soon.
No idea when this project will be done -- I'll have a better idea when the sanity checklist is done and I start in on the projects that run on it. I've been doing a lot of simplification and integration as I go though, which is changing things a lot, so it's still hard to tell.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/21 Update
This is a long slow project. Will have a few more updates that are like this. I'll be working on the materials v3 and/or quantum planes v2 updates soon though -- those updates will be more tangible.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/27 Update
Only a day of work in this one (been gone all weekend and part of the week), but want to clear up my checklists.
State of the project
I'm working towards the Materials v3 update. This is a major update that heavily affects core gameplay, and with the terrain configurations system done, I have everything I need for it. Will probably have it done on the next update.
After that I'll probably hit Quantum Planes v2 as well, which runs on the same framework and all those functions currently work.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
5/29 Update
Both of these updates went up a lot quicker than expected. I guess that's what happens when you spend 4 updates building framework.
Materials v3
Terrain configurations are actually integrated into the resources system. The resource you get depends on the terrain around it, what's on screen, etc. A limited palette of resource variations are built when the province generates, and all of this information is searchable easily through upcoming information systems.
The actual resource you get is shown on the surface menu, as well as the terrain configuration that spawned it.
This is the main update I was building towards. It expands the number of resources in a dimension a lot and makes exploration more worthwhile. There are a few issues with the current implementation and some UX work that needs to be done (plus the help system) -- those improvements will happen in a later update.
Quantum Planes v2
The Quantum Plane is now a new nonlinear puzzle -- essentially you interact with void pivots (the triangles here), then interact with another one that flips and turns yellow. This checks a section between them, and anything in that section that matches one of the quantum planes definitions (based on the terrain configurations system) turns into Exotic Matter .
Exotic Matter can be collected and used to buy upgrades that improve the overall puzzle -- making the initial circle bigger, making the section between the two pivots bigger, etc. The overall goal is to bring the chromodynamo close enough to interact with it. Interacting with it any other way is difficult because its location changes every time the world does.
There are some issues and UX issues here as well, that will also be improved in a future update. Additionally, I can't reasonably test the core mechanic (the spawning of exotic matter based on definitions) until the terrain configurations help system is working, which is probably my next update.
The overall goal of this update was to make the quantum plane more engaging -- the old version of it was annoying and only really had one way to solve it.
Miscellaneous Updates
State of the project
The project's in good shape. These were both major updates that took a lot less time than expected.
I still need to do some UX fixing on both of these projects, and I still have some more work to do on the overall terrain configurations systems as well (especially the help project).
Additionally, I need to get Caves on the Materials v3 system and implement the Rocks v2 system to finish up that overall update. Some combination of all of the above will probably form the basis of the next update.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/1 Update
Tachyon Plasma
I added a new material to alternate provinces of a certain element. These are homogeneous materials that will tie into the crafting system (and give a reason to explore provinces of a certain element) but probably won't have a purpose beyond that.
Like a lot of stuff in this game, it's hard to express how neat these look without taking some kind of video, which I might start doing for updates. All three of the screenshots above are the same thing -- the colors change over time. The actual algorithm used here is a generalized version of the way strange loops look, different in every province, so there's a lot of variety throughout.
When you interact with a tachyon plasma chunk, you'll pick up some or most of the entire thing, depending on the dimension's "volatility". With lower volatility, you'll be able to get more of that material per block. Tachyon plasma is pretty rare, though their rarity and size varies from dimension to dimension.
Tachyon plasma ties into the lore -- strange loops and aleph conduits are constructed from them, which is why they look similar.
Dungeons revamp
I've started the process of revamping dungeons. With this update they're using the dungeon generator almost to its full potential. They're all pretty different from each other; the above screenshots are maps (not to scale) of interesting variations I've found.
Dungeon backgrounds have a shimmering effect that changes colors and contrast level over time. I'm probably going to generalize the algorithm here like I did with strange loop effects -- this will make even the backgrounds of dungeons unique.
I still have some work to do here, but it's pretty light work. I'm not doing the full dungeon revamp right now, I'm just trying to get it working good enough to be able to start generating dungeon-specific materials, which is the last advanced material I have no notes for.
Notes
State of the project
I have a lot of open projects again. They're all part of the central goal of having more materials and materials types available, however. I'm pretty close to generating every single advanced material, which is a pretty big milestone.
The next update will definitely have more dungeon updates.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/5 Update
This update expands dungeons quite a bit.
;)
Dungeons have three new things to interact with:
Salts
;)
When you pick up the icon, its location in the dungeon determines what you get:
These three can be used to upgrade your "movement powers" -- the above image shows where you go when you interact with the background. The direction you've interacted is the red dot, and the arrows point to where you go.
The actual cost for any particular power is dungeon-specific, so some dungeons may be easier than others to get certain powers. Powers also don't migrate between dungeons -- getting a 30 spin in one dungeon doesn't translate to another dungeon.
Movement requires picking one of your powers (from a menu) and then interacting with the background. When using "propel" or "spin" you stop just before anything that isn't a room or hallway, so you can get some crazy speeds up without missing anything or splinching into walls.
Doors
;)
When you interact with a door, it makes the room take on random colored tiles. It'll do way more whenever that update is done -- the point here was to get the framework up.
The shapes can sometimes be pretty weird, so doors only pick tiles that are connected in some way to the door -- floating tiles won't get anything put in them.
Runestones
;)
;)
Miscellaneous
;)
State of the Project
Dungeons are in pretty good shape -- all the framework is there, and they're a lot easier (and funner) to move around now. I'm probably going to finish them off completely by the next update, other than combat stuff, which I can't get to yet.
Developing dungeons all the way through definitely wasn't planned, but it's going pretty well and I have no idea what kind of materials will actually be in there until I build the systems out, so it's probably necessary.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/9 Update
Dungeon Updates
Rerouting
Food Update
I went ahead and knocked this feature out.
The UI here is definitely a first draft -- I have some ideas for upgrading it but I'm trying to hit bigger updates right now.
Notes
I fleshed out my notes on dungeons a lot -- there's a lot of new mechanics, some things have been simplified, and all of the puzzles and mechanics are very nonlinear. There's probably 2-3 updates worth of features in there.
The goal of this project was getting the game to have unique dungeon materials without just adding more collect-a-thon mechanics. So there are a lot of different systems in play to make dungeon materials more interesting to get, get them to have more uses, or transform one material type into another. There's a total of 22 dungeon materials, many of which have "key" and "scrap" forms.
State of the project
As of the dungeons notes update, all advanced materials have notes. This was the last hurdle before the procedurally-generated crafting system, which is the last update in the sanity checklist.
Still working away on miscellaneous projects -- dungeons, the materials system, and terrain configurations are all their own separate projects, plus there's still a good bit of work to do to get the rest of the advanced materials in place. I'm making good progress though.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/12 Update
A big dungeons update.
Keys/Doors
Dungeon Fixtures
Instead of spawning randomly colored tiles, dungeon doors now actually spawn fixtures and items. These things are assigned to the door and known about beforehand (this will be important later). Here's a list of (almost) everything that can spawn from a door:
These are all the same as the caves/base/shop versions of these fixtures, and all have a 10% chance of appearing.
Fountains
Magic Fountains
There's a 25% chance that a fountain will be a magic fountain instead. Magic Fountains change colors as you move around like crystals do but otherwise look the same.
Magic Fountains let you pour one of your own potions into them -- they then become a fountain of that potion, with 3 uses. They don't get duration upgrades or anything; it's your straight potion in there. This is a great way to duplicate powerful potions that you've made.
Miscellaneous Fixtures
Powers Improvements
Notes changes
Dungeons are going to be single-use (based on the runestone). Essentially each dungeon in the world has dungeon generation patterns attached to it, and spawns several runestones. When you interact with a runestone you get an instance of that dungeon.
Different runestones at that dungeon will produce different positioning of rooms/hallways, but the generation properties will be identical. You also get to retain your ruin powers between instances.
There can only be one dungeon active at a time -- while you can exit dungeons if you need to, you can't activate any other runestones without making it so you permanently can't go back to the previous dungeon you were in.
Dungeons may also have a limited number of times you can die in them before you permanently lose access to them. Not sure if I'm keeping this or not.
This was done for technical reasons, but it should give dungeons way more of a roguelike feel as well. It's also pretty explainable by the lore, so that's a plus.
State of the project
I'm still working heavily on dungeons -- I have somewhere between 2-3 updates left to finish them (so 6-9 days, IRL willing). Dungeons are pretty light work but there's a large quantity of it.
After that I'll probably hit the other materials systems and try to finish off the advanced materials update entirely.
After I go through the sanity checklist, there really isn't much left -- like yeah sure there are still 6 big projects of 2-4 updates apiece before I hit integration tasks, but that's only a couple months of work. The project is finally coming to a close on the systems front. After that it's a lot of integration tasks and things like magic or lore that I can't get to until the rest of the game is finalized. But the amount of actual work is very low at that stage.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/16 Update
Yet another big dungeons update.
The Artifact
Sinkcores / Elemental Sinkcores
Manacores
Adding more fixtures to Doors
You get this menu when you interact with a Door. It will now tell you what will spawn when you unlock it.
For the cost of some random amount of mana keys, you can make a Door spit out any fixture you want. The costs range between 1-5 (the ones in this dungeon are just randomly very steep).
You can also make a Door spit out whatever material you want when it's unlocked, including sinkcores and elemental sinkcores. Each of these always costs 1 mana key, except for elemental sinkcores, which require 1 sink key apiece.
Scraps / Searching
Misc
Conclusion
The point of this part of the project was making it so that you have more options to get dungeon materials -- these dungeons are supposed to play very non-linearly, regardless of what your actual goal is.
State of the project
Still have 1-2 more dungeon updates left, as predicted. Probably going to just go ahead and knock them out -- still very light work.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/19 Update
This is a gigantic update, but it finishes off the Dungeons feature entirely.
Overworld runestones
Dungeon Room Hazards
Dungeon rooms of a certain size (>300 tiles) now generate big hazards:
Dungeon Acid
Dungeon rooms can occasionally spawn Acid. Acid is the green tile there. Acid spreads over time (once every 5 turns), eating everything in its path except boulders. It can't spread outside of the room, but it can spread down passageways you've made with boulders.
Acid also hurts a lot -- dealing 5 damage per interaction, which is almost twice as bad as lava.
Acid will literally eat things in the room -- not just hazards, but items (like firecores) and fixtures too.
Acid will spread until it's unable to, and then won't spread anymore. You can therefore use boulders to block it off and "kill" it, and then move them out of the way without worrying about the acid spreading more.
Boulders
So for example if you touch a boulder to your north by pressing (up), pressing (up) will push the boulder north, pressing (down) will pull it south, and pressing (left) will make you go to the west of the boulder. From here, pressing (right) will push the boulder east, (left) will pull it west, and (up) and (down) will reorient you above it or below it respectively.
It's a bit complicated to explain, but very intuitive to play with. Reorientation ignores every obstacle, making it feel very seamless. Would like to get the house furniture/NPC/fixture pushpull system on the same framework.
Furniture
Dungeon Enter/Exit
Generation update + Variety
Single-use dungeons
I originally made this change for technical reasons, but I like the general Roguelike sense of it, and I also like that it led to the above feature -- while you can't replay a dungeon, you can play one that's similar.
Rune Doors
Miscellaneous Updates
You effectively have a separate spawn point for the dungeon, which makes more UX sense.
Conclusion
This was a big update, but I finally got Dungeons up to 100%. There are enough layout differences and mechanics here to make dungeon exploring really interesting, as they're a bunch of puzzles that can be solved in various ways.
Along the way I accumulated a big pile of bugs and issues which I'll get to in a future update -- nothing game-breaking at least. Whenever I get through the essential ones there, I'd like to make a video showcasing me exploring some of the game's dungeons -- it's hard to capture how neat they are to play through with just text and screenshots.
My next project is probably going to be the melange planes update -- that one will be the last major project in the advanced materials update, which I'd like to go ahead and knock out.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/23 Update
Got a bit burned out by the scale of the last update, so this one's smaller.
Game rerouting
A lot of miscellaneous game rerouting:
Mana Crack Improvements
I decided to keep Mana Cracks -- they're an alternative way of accessing melange planes, and they're free.
I did however make them look better.
Melange Materials
Other materials added
State of the Project
Next update I'll probably have fully working melange planes. I got the checklist done on them and it doesn't look like they'd be hard to do, so they'll probably be bundled with other updates.
After that I'm going to finish off the other hooks to the terrain configurations update and bring the advanced materials project to a close. That'll give me everything I need for the procedurally-generated crafting system, which is the last item on the sanity checklist. It'll also give me everything I need for the Farming system, which is probably my next project.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/29 Update
Took longer than expected, but finished off the melange planes materials update.
Conjuncts Fixture
Conjuncts naturally spawn in melange planes once you've activated the appropriate mana crack. Interacting with them gives you this menu.
Abilities
Upgrades
Resonating and Fusions
The overall goal of this puzzle is to match the frequency amounts within the resonate range -- so for example here you need 6 of the fire plane's light yellow color and 10 of the wood plane's light gray color. There are a variety of ways to reach this objective, including by spending Aether with the building system. Finding useful sections of terrain and threading is another way to do it, as is moving conjuncts around to "paint" the ground in their floor color of choice.
Whenever you reach that, click "Use" under resonate, and if there's a match, the entire range of the resonate effect will be voided out. Somewhere in that circle the little # symbol will spawn -- this gives you a "fusion" item. There are 10 fusion items, they're homogeneous materials, and they depend on the elements that are used in the frequency recipe to create them.
I have no idea how difficult or easy this puzzle is, or how hard it is to find any particular fusion. It will probably require more testing to balance it properly.
Misc
State of the project
The melange planes update was the last project in the advanced materials update. There are 6 more small configuration-based things to do, and then that giant project will finally be done, so that's definitely my next update, maybe with other small updates bundled in with it.
After that I'm going to do the farming project, because I've wanted to do that system for a long time and it has no prerequisites other than the advanced materials update. After that I'll deal with the procedurally-generated crafting system and the remainder of loose ends needed to finish off the sanity update.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
7/10 Update
Graphics Improvements
I overhauled the graphics a bit. It's taking some time to get used to it, but it definitely looks better:
Caves Materials Integration
Finishing off the Advanced Materials Update
There's nothing to see here except pure data, but I got all the configurations for overworld fishing, caves fishing, spectral fish, overworld nests and caves nests programmed in. Whenever I get to the Fishing or Combat projects I'll hook into this object -- the data is already generated correctly.
I went ahead and made the names of caves variants sort of match what's in my lore notes -- they're basically fish or animals that are metallic/robotic in nature.
State of the Project
With the advanced materials project out of the way, I have all the prerequisites I need for both the procedurally-generated crafting system and the farming system. While the new crafting system is the last remaining item on the sanity checklist, I'd rather go ahead and do the farming system since I've been wanting to do it for over a year now. The next update will probably start up on that project.
This update took a while to get to -- the next update should be back on the every 3-4 days schedule.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
7/14 Update
More base Fixtures
None of these fixtures do anything yet.
Embryos
All three of these count as Embryos, and all three are required for use in the upcoming farming system. Spawn and Eggs will eventually also be able to be placed into an Incubator to create Scout or Mount animals respectively.
Farming Tab: Prospect
Farming Tab: Fixtures
In the fixtures subtab, you get to place down fixtures corresponding to the modules you unlocked in the Farming Lab:
Making farming fixtures tetrad-specific is pretty important since it lets you see what you're actually farming - the terrain is very different between different tetrads.
Minor Updates / Notes
State of the Project
The Farming update is around half done; the next update should finish it off. I did notice though that I need a Base Inventory to do the Infrastructure part of the update, so I'll probably circle back around to the Bases project.
I'm thinking also that I'll probably hit the Bases and Fishing projects more generally before I finish off the sanity update -- the procedurally-generated crafting system is the only thing left and I can route around it pretty well. It's probably saner to build it after I have a big list of everything that needs it; might help simplify things.
The Combat and Scout/Mount animal projects are also on the table, but the first one is very long and the second one integrates into literally everything including probably the rest of the sanity update. I guess it's wait and see on those projects. I also have the civilization v2 project, but I'm still figuring out the notes for it.
On the whole, the project is in great shape. I'm probably only a couple months away from finishing off the last six big systems - after that it's smaller stuff and a lot of integration and UX work.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
7/19 Update
This is a pretty big update.
More Embryos
These are items used in the farming update, but I forgot about them the last time around.
Base Fixtures
Actual Farming
Interacting with farming fixtures has a big table which has several things associated with it:
Clicking "Set" on the specialty row will let you pick a specialty -- that will be an embryo corresponding to the type of farming fixture you're interacting with:
On the specialty menu, the number in the ( ) tells you how many turns that particular item takes to farm - lower is better.
When you have a specialty, the speed section will show both the tile modifier and the item speed, and calculate them together to get an overall farm speed. Here I've picked Pencilsmelt, which take 87 turns to farm, and the tile is an 0.4x modifier, so the overall farm speed is 34 turns. Pretty fast!
Specialties have to match the terrain configurations for that tile -- so prospecting is important to figure out where you can actually place farms. Some items are going to be way harder to find good tiles/farm speeds, however the upcoming Genetics system will make those farms better over time.
Clicking "Change" on the input row will get you here. Inputs vary a bit between different farming fixtures:
Organizational Updates
Notes Updates
Outside of existing projects, any notes moving forwards are going to be like this -- lots of smaller integration and UX tasks, nothing huge.
State of the project
This update finishes off the Farming update, outside of minor things which have been moved to the Loose Ends project. It also officially marks the end of the Sanity update, which took 5 months to deprecate.
The project's in great shape. I'm making headway on major systems at a very fast pace.
The current plan is to finish off all the big projects and then start in on loose ends, integration tasks, and UX stuff. I have no idea how long the integration phase will last, but I only have a couple months left on big projects which is pretty exciting.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
7/25 Update
This update does around half of the Fishing project -- the basic system works and the module/upgrading system works, but some of the features of the new fishing system aren't in place yet. There is however a lot of framework built for those updates.
Rerouting
New Fishing Menu
Fishing Modules/Upgrades Menu
The Upgrade button leads here. I realized while making this post that this transitional menu is unnecessary; it'll be removed in the next update.
In any case, from here you can add modules or upgrades.
Fishing Modules
From this menu you get a bunch of fishing modules, along with unlock buttons. Some modules can require other modules to first be unlocked (for example, Snares require you to unlock the Crates module first).
Right now, modules don't cost anything to unlock. When I create the procedurally-generated crafting system, they'll require some random combination of materials from that.
Fishing Upgrades
This menu lets you upgrade various stats, setting them to higher (or lower) values.
When a stat reaches its maximum value, it gets this "Maxed" text and can't be upgraded further. Same deal with minimum values and "Minned" (I know that isn't a word, but it should be).
What different stats do:
Upgrades currently don't cost anything, but like modules, they'll be on the procedurally-generated crafting system in a future update.
Working Modules
Tile Depletion
Since the fish you can catch are on the terrain configurations system, this can make catching rare types of fish more than once pretty challenging. It should help drive players into the Luring system, Farming, or experimenting with Fish-based Magic.
Notes Updates
State of the Project
I'm a bit late to this update because of IRL. I expect that to continue.
This update gets the Fishing project about half done -- the next update should finish it off.
I've been looking over my other notes, and I only have 1-2 updates left in the Bases project, so I'll be getting to that next. Followed by Combat and Pets. The Civilization project still doesn't have a full set of notes -- it'll probably go about like dungeons did where I build out what I have and re-evaluate it mid-project.
These big projects are going fast. I could theoretically be done with them and into smaller tasks / integration work by the fall. It might also make some kind of sense to put out some kind of stable alpha once the big projects are done, just to gather interest in the game early. Really depends on what my timeline looks like at that point -- might just make more sense to finish the game.
IRL looks like I'm going to be pretty slammed in a couple weeks - no idea what that will do to the project.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
8/13 Update
Not much to report this time either, but IRL is clearing up a bit and I'm getting back into the groove of things.
Graphics Overahul
I did another major graphics overhaul:
This update makes the terrain look pretty gorgeous across the board.
Town Graphics Update
Terrain Configuration improvements
Misc
Notes Changes
State of the Project
Still busy IRL but it isn't a confusing set of open projects like it had been, so I'll probably get back into the groove of things here.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
12/27/21 Update
Been a long long time since an update -- IRL's been nuts but I should be locked into my current schedule for the next five years (or at least until march when my first job contract runs out).
Fishing Updates
Lure Fishing
More alien graphics
Altars
A useful way of getting rid of junk loot -- starshards tie in heavily to the upcoming magic system. Magical ingredients are also farmable through several mechanisms and unlike jewelry/wands/scrolls (also farmable somewhat), they don't themselves require starshards at any point.
Shatterloop videos
I made a couple live-game videos a few months back:
This one is just me exploring random dimensions and sometimes swapping tetrads -- pay attention to the symbols at the top, as they say which dimension and which tetrad I'm in. Some of them look pretty neat and the variety in terrain and palettes is definitely one of the better features of shatterloop.
This one is me robbing several houses with the theft mechanics, lockpicking mechanics, furniture moving, and my attempts to not get caught in the act by shopkeepers or NPCs (I fail a couple times). One of the funner set of features for sure, particularly with how much the actual items interact with the rest of the game.
I used Alestance's music for both of these videos since he was signed on to make music for the game, however he's no longer interested so I'm probably going to source it elsewhere (there's a couple of potentials on newgrounds).
External Aid
I've been spending the last couple of months working on a couple different game projects that heavily use shatterloop's codebase, one of which will probably launch soon. I've been using the other one to test out some of shatterloop's upcoming features and work out the kinks of them, and along the way have come up with solutions to some of shatterloop's deeper problems:
I'll probably implement the saving feature soon -- it'll be incredibly useful for testing.
State of the Project
I've been very busy IRL and have also been working with smaller projects, but I'd definitely like to get back into the groove of things here. Aside from the saving feature, will probably try to finish up the fishing feature as well next update since it's over halfway done. I have no idea what any of my ETAs will be however since I've got a full-time job with a decent commute now. Hopefully IRL is at least stable moving forwards though and I can spend more time with this project without having to take long months-long breaks again.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
1/17/21 Update
Cave Fish
Spectral Fish
Debug Improvements
These are really only useful for me in that they help speed up development.
Full-feature Saving
Shatterloop now has full-feature saving that requires no further work on my part. Save files are stored in text documents which are downloaded and uploaded to the user's computer and save basically everything about the current state of the game. This allows full offline play, save state sharing, and doesn't run into the memory limits of other javascript storage mechanisms.
In addition to this being obviously useful for the end-user, this will accelerate development quite a bit as I can save game state in beween code uploads while developing features.
Infrastructure
Bugfixes
Just miscellaneous stuff I forgot to document on my last update.
Misc UX
Notes changes
I have yet another draft for the civilizations v2 project, hopefully a lot simpler but still fits into the standards of nonlinear and interesting. It's hard to tell what this project will actually look like until I start trying to program it.
State of the Project
Still trying to get into the groove of things here. I'm prioritizing work, which is taking up a huge chunk of my time and its preparation is also taking up a huge chunk of free time, however I'm trying to spend more of what's left on this project since it's pretty close to completion.
There are still 3 fishing updates left -- it's hard to predict how long any of them will take.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
1/26/2022 Update (Finished Fishing v1)
This is a pretty large update.
Crates
Snares
Crate Extract Changes
Melange Crates
Locksmith
Fishing Stats
All fishing Stats are now working correctly:
In the future, these stats will all be upgradeable with items that can be looted, maybe bought, or crafted via the procedurally-generated crafting system. Since all of the above of that depends heavily on the game seed, this means different worlds can play out very differently from one another as far as fishing goes.
Game Progression Rerouting
This update makes the game completeable to the end again. At least in theory -- there's a lot of bugs at the moment.
Province Travel Update
Because of how the engine works, making dimensions up to 10,000 times the size they used to be doesn't actually affect as much as you'd think. This therefore adds some depth to the game world without costing any overhead. I have some other updates planned that will also help make alternate dimensions have more depth and variety.
Misc
Conclusion
This update finishes off another major project. I have some time freed up from IRL unexpectedly so I'm going to just jump in and try to finish the next major project, which is Bases.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
1/29/22 (Storage Update)
Inventory Limits
Backpacks
Backpacks are the item that upgrades your carrying capacity -- each backpack is specialized to one of the many item categories and upgrade it a certain amount.
Base Storage
The base storage solution has three fixtures, "Store", "Retrieve" and "Special Storage". Here's what they look like in the fixtures menu and in the world.
Local Storage
Special Storage
Retrieve Fixture
Overall, this feature gives you a pretty powerful storage solution that heavily simplifies all the inventory management/organization most survival games have to contend with, while still allowing some challenge in how to actually store items.
Pylons Update
Pylons make Atomizer costs of all types go down when on screen and will probably be used for Farming automation chains as well, so this change makes them a lot easier to access.
State of the Project
This wraps up basically all of my remaining checklist items for the Bases v1 project. However I've added some new notes and ideas since then, including a large building improvements update so the project as a whole is not complete yet.
My goal is to get to those updates and finish up the Bases project in its entirety before I have to go back to work on Wednesday. In addition to the Building upgrade, there's a metals update and a few miscellaneous items so it should be feasible. That will mean I can then work on the Combat or Pets projects moving forwards, which will probably take a while honestly.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
2/2/22 Update
Base Node
Metals Update
Metals Renaming
There are 6 regular metals and 6 precious metals. These have taken on unique names to add some flavor to the game:
Fuel Refinery v1
Industry Lab
Civilization v2: Early Framework
I have some early framework done for the Civilization v2 project. The algorithm is pretty complicated but basically each province has several guilds that are vying for control. They own individual houses and towns in ways that either make them loyal (like if the specialties match) or not. Part of the algorithm calculates town influence based on the influence from adjoining towns and provinces along trade routes. It's all pretty emergent.
The long-term goal of this is a system where making small changes (like changing the loyalty of one house) can have dramatic cascading effects on the balance of power and the economy of the province. I do basically have the framework for that process now, but the actual systems that allow you to make changes, experience consequences or view anything here whatsoever don't exist yet.
This will be a longer project, as it ties into this but also into quests. There are also some parts of it I can't do until after the other major updates are done, but this looks likely to be my next major project.
State of the Project
I have a 1-2 update project to heavily improve the UX of Base Building and round out its featurelist. After that there's a couple miscellaneous tasks and then my entire Bases v1 project will be completed (other than anything I can't do until late-game for whatever reason).
After that it looks like I'm going to start fleshing out the Civilization v2 stuff. Like the Industry update, there are things I can't do until the end of the game's development but I should be able to get the Guilds systems and Quests systems in place when I'm "done". I might need more time to think about it however -- I don't even have a full set of notes for Civilization v2 systems, I've just been brainstorming and experimenting with systems. Maybe it'll make more sense as I work on it more.
Beyond Bases (which are about done) and the Civilization v2 major project, there are 3 major updates remaining, then everything else is either a bunch of smaller UX updates or a bunch of smaller projects that I can't do until the end of the game's development. Getting these major projects done will therefore be a pretty huge milestone in the game's development. I'm probably on track to finish them in the next few months, which is exciting.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
4/2/22 Update
This is a pretty large update, mostly because I haven't made an update post in a while.
Base Building v1
This is pretty much working. Rather than explaining every little feature or what went into this endeavor, here instead is a youtube video that summarizes everything:
Misc updates related to the above
Pets Framework
The second part of this update. I'm not done with the Bases project yet, but decided to start working on the Pets update nonetheless.
Domestication Package
Pets Fixtures
Pets Menu
Pet Summoning
Pet Locator
Misc
State of the Project
I probably have one or maybe two updates left to the Bases project, and probably around 3-4 to the Pets project. I'll continue working on these and maybe the Civilization project here and there (as well as the rapidly growing Loose Ends project), but I'm going to hold off on the Combat and Procgen Recipes projects until after I finish Bases and Pets since it'll probably be pretty time-consuming.
Work has slowed a good bit since I have a full-time job and also other obligations, but I've been hitting at least an hour of work per workday, and 4+ per day on weekends where I'm home, so the project will be done eventually.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
4/14/22 Update
This update gets Mount Animals in place, including upgrading them. The actual values for everything is probably going to take some work -- animals are starving way too quick, particularly when upgraded.
Mount animals come in one of three types, which has a terrain specialty (floor, solid, water) and terrain it can jump over or is bad against:
Gallopers
Swimmers
Climbers
The three should be fairly balanced -- gallopers are definitely way more useful in terrain that is largely floor tiles, which happens a good bit. Swimmers are more balanced on different types of terrain, while Climbers can navigate solids with ease. Which one you use as your main will probably come down to player preference rather than balance issues.
Riding
Hunger and Feeding
Pets are definitely getting hungry way too quick, and you get way too much feed from items and it then restores too much. I need to rebalance everything here.
Aether Lenses
This fixture has been in the game forever (down in caves, magic shops, as a base fixture) but now it finally does something -- lets you upgrade Pets.
Miscellaneous Updates
State of the Project
The next Pets update will include a lot of miscellaneous stuff and also the framework for the Combat update so Mount animals are fully integrated into the game (since they're extracted/incubated from animals, which are currently turned off). After that I'll work on scout animals. So the Pets project as a whole has 1-2 updates left in it.
My next update I'm going to work on the miscellaneous tasks / combat framework update. If it's a short update I might do some of the remaining Bases v1 tasks, do Scout animals, or work on Combat some more. Or just release a short update.
With Pets 1-2 updates away from completion and Bases also 1-2 updates away from completion, Civilization v2 Notes going very well and the Combat project getting started next update, the major projects of shatterloop are getting close to completion. After that I have the roughly 42 posts worth of loose ends to work through as well as some late-game stuff like magic or the potions update that I can't get to until the other systems are done. Overall the project as a whole is going very well and is getting close to another major milestone.
I'm unemployed again at the moment so I've been able to dedicate large amounts of time here again at a pretty accelerated pace, however this isn't going to be permanent. I'm hoping I can get a lot of work done before I have to start working on a career again, however.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/9 Update: Pets Miscellaneous
Have been absurdly busy IRL and also hit a rough patch with this project, so this is a pretty small update for being almost two months from the last one.
Integration
Fish stuff
Storage
Organizational
State of the Project
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Scouts & Maps
Scouts
This update adds Scout Animals as well as Maps and Treasure Maps, which work similarly. Additionally, this update finishes off the Pets project completely.
Here's a video that sums up this update and shows how it works. There is also some pretty detailed information about the items involved in the video description:
Scout Animals
Scout animals help you explore better - they essentially create maps of the surrounding terrain and go outside of what you're able to see directly on screen. As they're Fish, they have to be summoned in water and are better at identifying water than other types of terrain.
Basic scout animals can only see water (as a dark blue) and any resources that are in or adjacent to water which appear red, with everything else appearing as a dull grey. However, there is some variety among them:
Scout Types
There are three types of Scout Animal, Local Scouts, Deep Scouts and Journey scouts:
Local Scouts
As you can see, there's a lot of variety so in order to get the best scouts you have to do a lot of fishing and domestication to get good combinatons.
Deep Scouts
Just a reminder, this is what a regular scout looks like (more or less).
Deep Scouts give you something a lot more zoomed out -- in this case the scaling is 4x that of normal.
Here the tooltip to see a position's coordinate is very important so you can navigate the world.
The actual zooming amount can be upgraded or downgraded as much as you want at an aether lens.
Journey Scouts
Journey scouts have a much bigger range but have a very narrow band that they can actually see in it. Additionally, they scan in some direction starting from where they are, instead of all around them.
Journey scouts are a fantastic way of finding far-flung resources - they're more accurate than deep scouts and more cost-effective than upgrading a local scout. However their narrow band of visibility means you need to send them out multiple times to make good use of them, which gets expensive with food use pretty quickly.
Maps
Maps essentially run on the same system as Scouts, except they're items and are of random rectangles in the world rather than things local to where you are.
Cartographer
Maps
Treasure Maps
Treasure maps function similarly to maps, except they show you a white/red X tile where some treasure is buried.
Additionally, you can't warp there via the map itself -- you have to walk there or use some kind of technology or magic to get there.
However if you get to the actual tile that's marked, and click "Dig" on the map menu, you'll unearth a crystal, turn the tile into void, and turn the treasure map back into a regular map. You see this at the end of the video above.
This can be a pretty neat way of getting crystals, which are rare and valuable. Treasure maps are pretty rare though -- they're only found as loot.
State of the Project
With the completion of this project, the Pets update is done. Moving forward, I'd like to finish off whatever is left of the Bases project (including the dyeing project). That'll be another 1-2 updates from now. While I'm doing this I'm going to be reorganizing my Combat notes -- that'll be the next big project.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
6/25/2022 Update
This update is mostly under the hood. I've been working on the new Combat engine and have decided to just completely rebuild large sections of it.
Crafting System Rebuild
I also decided to completely rebuild the crafting system - there's a particular feature the Combat engine needs it for and it was way too difficult to add it to the old crafting system, so I remade it. Along the way, I improved a bunch of stuff and added some features that were lacking in the old version.
Minor changes
Graphics Overhaul (WIP)
I'm making changes to the graphics again -- the new style resembles the original style in its blockiness except is way cleaner and has a lot of bloom which actually fits in with the lore pretty well.
This is still a work in progress -- there's a lot of tradeoff between visual style and performance but I've been improving things as I go. Various things also look pretty ugly over time so I'll revert them as I go (like the highlights on water).
Other changes
State of the Project
I'm working on the Combat update. I have everything planned out on it, but it's a long complex project and will take a while to complete.
With the remaining big projects crystallizing the way they are, and things like the lore, story and magic systems being more fleshed out, the game is moving rapidly to its third and penultimate phase of development. It'll be exciting to finally put these big projects behind me and start working on integrating them together with each other and the story and lore. The game will start to actually look a lot better as well -- right now it's just a big collection of menus without context or help.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Weapons Update
This update gets the new version of weapons into the game. While Combat itself isn't working yet, weapons can be crafted and all weapon animations and effects are working.
Weapon Crafting
Both Hand Weapons and Offhand Weapons can be crafted. The recipe is the same except the amount of materials is less for offhand weapons. Nothing requires intermediate materials, in fact nothing whatsoever in shatterloop will require intermediate materials -- you'll always be able to use raw materials, which should simplify the crafting in the game a lot. I find the intermediates mechanic pretty annoying in other survival crafting games.
The fiber/hide/wool/bark used determines the type of weapon created and its damage, while the rocks/bones/scales determines its range and effect range. Range basically determines where you can send the weapon (or how big your radius is in the case of swords), whereas effect range is the range of the weapon's secondary effects. The actual definitions vary a bit depending on the type of weapon.
Entity Rendering Engine
As part of this update, I created a brand new entity rendering engine. The new version is significantly faster, allows for very smooth animations, and also has both these and "chunkier" animations built in. The overall goal is to make Combat more of a real-time system, so it's important that all interactions are super fast and as smooth as possible.
The above video shows some of the tests I programmed in it.
Weapons + Weapon Animations
I built out all Hand Weapons (with the exception of the Clawarm, which I can't do yet) in this new entity rendering engine. They all have intuitive controls (which are a carryover from the old combat system, though I completely rebuilt the code) and also solid animations for visual feedback. The hammer and trident weapons make use of a "particles" system which is a part of the underlying rendering engine now and will be useful elsewhere.
The weapons showcased here are:
everything in its path.
Weapons are actually triggering hits and effect hits at the speed of the animation, there just isn't an actual combat system yet -- but they'll be able to fit into it pretty easily when it arrives. Additionally, everything seen here is highly customizable. I like the idea of the speeds, colors and animation symbols being settable by the player via various mechanics (speed would be an upgrade since it influences gameplay, while the rest is cosmetic). Additionally, there's a lot of untapped potential for new weapons and weapon effects, which I'll explore at some point in the Combat project or later.
Organizational
I did a lot of organizational work on the project as a whole. The forum has been heavily cleaned up and a lot of it is much better indexed organized. This is an ongoing project and will continue until development ends.
As part of the mass simplification of the crafting systems, the PGCS is going to no longer have intermediate products. This will make it way way easier to program, which I'll probably be doing right after I finish Combat.
State of the Project
This update finishes up a major subproject in the Combat update. Next I'm going to be working on Archery and possibly the Industry subproject (which is a lot more involved than it was originally). Followed by combat entities and fleshing out combat as a whole. The overall Combat update is still going to take a while to finish, but it's going very well.
While working on this update and organizing things, I noticed that a systems-complete early game was beginning to emerge. I've called this "Early Alpha 4" and will be pushing for it after the Combat update. It's basically a combination of the Combat, Fishing, Farming, Industry, Base Building, Scouts, Dyeing, Camping, Food, Caves, PGCS and Dungeons systems which have been improved a bit in my notes and now integrate with each other very well. I'll probably be working on this right after Combat -- it ties the systems I've been building over the last year together and turns Shatterloop into more of an actual game.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
7/22/22 Update (Archery Fixtures)
This is a large update that gets the foundation of the Archery system in place, as well as several fixtures associated with it, and some general changes that happened during this process.
Archery Crafting
Archery in Shatterloop uses an item type called a "Quiver" that can have arrows added to it.
Catalyst Station
Catalyst Generalization/Specialization
Overall this adds more utility to the catalyst system -- with enough base fuel you can run a catalyst through this system a bunch of times until you get the properties you want. This might be more effective than sourcing potion ingredients that have the specific properties you want.
It also ties into the next system:
Catalyst Station: Cloning Potion Ingredients
This feature adds more utility to catalysts -- you can turn relatively worthless potion ingredients into catalysts to try to clone useful potion ingredients. You'll also be able to find catalysts as loot.
Imbuing Station
Scrapper
Fletcher
Junk Update
There's an upcoming Junk update that adds a lot more junk to the game, and integrates junk items more into the Scrapper and also increases the overall utility of the Scrapper. I didn't get to it in this update, but it'll be done before Early Alpha 4.
Miscellaneous Updates
State of the Project
This finishes off the foundation of Archery (and improves some things in the process). I'm holding off on actual archery animations and effects until entities get added, which is two combat updates away.
My next project is Industry, which I've held off on for several years. It does however tie in heavily to weapons and quivers, and will be useful in other ways as well. It's probably going to be a large update, and may even be split into several updates.
After that I have some miscellaneous integration tasks for what I've done so far, and then it's onto the second half of the combat update (actual entities that you fight).
The combat project is very long. I'll probably still be working on it a month from now. The good news though is that with the PGCS simplification, it's one of two remaining big projects -- after it and the civilization update (which will also take a while), game development will be reduced to a series of smaller projects that just expand upon and integrate the existing systems together.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Industry Update
This update gets Industry systems in place for every item type relevant to the Combat update. This project had been delayed for several years, so it's nice to finally get it in place.
The Lab here (accessible via the main base research area) unlocks both the Industry Lab and the Tools Industry Lab.
Industry Lab
The Industry Lab contains the Boiler (burn things to produce fuel), Fuel Refinery (make better things to burn) and Forge (turn metal ores into metals and precious metal ores into precious metals).
It also now contains unlocks for the Smithy, Anvil and Blast Furnace, all three of which are now also in place. Each of these fixtures has to be unlocked individually, with the Smithy being the most useless on its own.
Tools Industry Lab
In order to actually use the Smithy, Anvil or Blast Furnace, you have to have unlocked the industry use of a specific item type -- in the Tools Industry Lab you can unlock these individually. This will then unlock their use in all Industry fixtures that you've unlocked.
Smithy
Here you can see that with the Smithy, you can pick any of the item specialties that you've unlocked. This menu is identical on the Anvil and Blast Furnace, and in fact is a widget so if I add more industry fixtures it'll be easy to expand it for all item types.
The point of the Smithy is to turn items into metal equivalents. This preserves all their properties but because they're metal, they can now be upgraded on an Anvil or combined together at a Blast Furnace.
Each item costs 10 of a certain elemental metal (based on the item) in order to turn it metallic. The item will then become that metal's element (which is currently not relevant).
Anvil
The Anvil allows you to upgrade an item's properties by feeding it precious metals of the appropriate type. You're not actually feeding it here, this just shows you how many you need for the next menu and if you don't have enough the button won't appear.
Here's a screen that shows you all the upgradeable properties and lets you actually upgrade them by whatever the amount indicated is. Some values will max out after a while -- ranges max out at 10 since that's the size of your viewport so higher numbers probably don't make sense.
All uses of the Anvil cost 5 of the precious metal seen at the top here. when you have less than 5 you'll automatically go back to the previous menu.
Different item types have different properties that you get to target on the Anvil.
Blast Furnace
With the Blast Furnace, you're actually picking two items -- the Main Item (which is the item that'll have its properties changed) and the Absorbed Item, which changes the Main Item's properties and is consumed in the process.
So here you get to do exactly that -- the two items and a button to go to the next menu will appear at the absolute bottom of this menu, as the size of it might be fairly large and it's hard to tell what you're doing.
By default, the new set of properties is an average of the two items. This means that the blast furnace is always improving the main item at least somewhat, though we can do better.
By using the appropriate catalyst if you have it (a Damage catalyst in this case), you can set the value to anything within the range of the two items -- anywhere from 9 to 16.
I picked 16 as it's the obvious choice.
Once forged, the absorbed item is destroyed, as are all catalysts used (the damage catalyst in this case), and the properties have been applied to the main item.
Making Catalysts
In the last update I created the Catalyst Station fixture. With this update, all tool industry unlocks will also unlock the appropriate set of catalysts for it.
If you've forgotten, the Catalyst Station will create catalysts out of Potion Ingredients, though the actual catalysts that are potentially assigned to each individual potion ingredient vary by whatever it is.
Blast Furnace: Quivers and Torches
These work identically to weapons, but are worth mentioning because the properties used are different.
Item Editor
First of all, I added a "Metals" debugging tool. This gives you 100 of each type of metal and 100 of each type of precious metal. This won't be in the final game but it's particularly useful for testing out Industry systems.
You can also pick an item in your inventory here, and do an Item Editor on it:
This will then let you change all properties of the item. Again won't be in the final game (outside of the soul's pivot maybe) but is highly useful for debugging.
Loose Ends Note
This project gets Industry in place for all item types relevant to Combat (weapons, quivers), as well as torches which are straightforward. However in the future it'll also be used on Cyborgs, Lockpicks and Bomb Arms. I haven't gotten to those yet as they're more involved, and there are also a few features missing in industry as a whole, so there'll be another Industry update at some point before Early Alpha 4.
Additionally, it's worth noting that all the fixtures seen recently are the first draft. They definitely look fairly complicated and so aren't necessarily accessible to new players, so their appearance and functionality will probably change in the future.
My development process over the past few years has focused exclusively on getting features into place rather than making them user-friendly. It doesn't make sense to put time into that until the state of the features is finalized so these updates are going to look fairly ugly and/or overcomplicated for a while yet. They'll probably start making more sense in the next state of development, which I'm not far from now. And they'll start to become extremely polished in the last phase of development.
State of the Project
This is a project I've wanted to do for a very long time. I like the idea of an item system where random loot can be upgraded or loot items can eat other loot items to make something even better. Or put crafted items into either system.
With Industry out of the way, I have a bunch of minor integration tasks and then I'm going to start on the second half of Combat which is actual entities that you fight. This is where the weapons and quivers I've created are going to start making more sense and this long combat project turns into actual game mechanics.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Combat Engine Update
This update gets mobs in place, renders and integrates their health, and ties this engine in with everything else in the last few updates to create a unified combat engine.
It's best to watch it in action before I get to the finer details of this update:
Weapons Loot / Integration
Overall this update allows me to really fine-tune shops, furniture, crates and anything else where loot appears. I can also make things appear in a granular random way -- like maybe a special melange crate will exclusively contain tridents, which would encourage players to get the right snare infrastructure in place to fish up those consistently if they're looking for tridents.
Furniture/Shops Integration
I didn't add any new furniture to take advantage of the new types because there's going to be a much larger furniture update in the future so I'll get to it then.
Shops Integration
Health bars
Weapon Item Integration
Misc programming stuff related to weapon item integration
Mobs
Mob Debugging
Full Combat Integration
State of the Project
This update finally puts together all the random unconnected pieces I've been building over the last month. Weapons can be crafted, upgraded or combined together through Industry, and then can be used on mobs. Granted mobs themselves are not hooked into the game yet.
In my next update, I'm going to get all hand weapons to 100% as well as integrate in basic offhand weapons and archery. If I get to it I'll also be doing special weapon effects like knockback and miasma, but that update's going to be kind of messy so it might be the update after the next one.
After those two things, weapons will be at 100% and it'll be time to focus on mob movement, combat flow and hooking them into the actual game.
Overall the combat project is going very well and is probably ~6-7 out from being completed. It's difficult to estimate how much work I have left or when the updates will fall, but I'm definitely getting closer to the end now.
Xhin
Sky's the limit
Limited Caves Update
I got a bit burned out on the Combat project so I've been working towards Early Alpha 4 instead -- a large collection of loose ends that improve or simplify existing systems and wind them around each other more tightly.
My current project here is improving Caves, and in this particular update I've made them more limited and intuitive.
Cave Hole Changes
Cave Holes are more common and can either turn into Activated Cave Holes (which let you enter Caves) or Starshards or absolutely nothing depending on the terrain around them.
Cave Floors
Each cave hole goes into a distinct cave network, with a certain amount of floors, between 1-10, with 1-floor systems being pretty common and the rest split evenly. The number of floors is indicated by both the color and a number (and the number might be removed at some point). The above image shows what a range of them look like -- they go from yellow (1 floor) to green (10 floors) along the yellow-orange-red-purple-blue-green route.
Limited Caves
Each Cave system starts off in the exact middle of the first floor, which is pretty small (60x60 tiles, iirc). Within this space you'll find entrances to other branches and resources. The area around it is impassable and is a bit like a combination of chimera and void edge rendering -- it makes sense in the lore because Caves happen within the fourth tetrad.
As you go deeper into the cave, each floor will become a bit bigger, culminating in floor 10 which is 462x462. These numbers and their scaling are likely change depending on the dimension you're in, producing variously larger or smaller caves.
The above is what the actual in-cave cave holes look like -- there will always be enough to go to the next floor up until whatever the depth limit of the cave is. They're surrounded by floor tiles so they're always easily accessible, other than the terrain around the periphery which might require more work to get past.
Cave Generation
Each cave hole is its own unique cave, unlike the last version where there was a continuous "cave region" that all caves went into. Cave generation varies a lot -- there's a new algorithm that makes different caves feel very different from one another.
Each cave will have different low-level generation, however the "style" of the cave generation (seen in the above image) and its grayscale color palette will be the same for all cave holes in an area. "Areas" are usually obvious in the overworld because the overworld generation style changes as well as the water color. This "area" thing will also control other stuff as I get deeper into the Caves Update path.
Dungeon Integration
Dungeon Runestones now appear in Caves rather than in the overworld. They will only appear in cave systems that contain them, and only at a specific floor (and ideally a specific branch, when I get there). Activated Cave Holes with a runestone on them (seen in one of the above images) indicate that there are dungeon runestones in there, but doesn't indicate where.
There can be more than one runestone in a cave system. The cave system determines the overall generation "style" of the dungeons, whereas the individual runestone is the specific seed of it.
Exiting a dungeon will go where you'd think it would -- back to the cave runestone you activated to enter the dungeon.
Overworld dungeons have been removed.
This change fits in way better with both game progression and the lore -- both dungeons and caves are in the fourth tetrad and they're heavily tied together in both the story and the game progression.
State of the Project
It's been almost three months since my last update, and during that time I moved 3000 miles across the country and have been working to get a job. So in all possibility, the next update will also be a ways out, but I plan to work on Shatterloop more often when I get the opportunity.
There are still some Cave updates to do, so I'll probably go in that direction, as well as aiming for Early Alpha 4 in general. I'm not sure when I'll get back to Combat, but it's technically part of EA4 so it won't be forever.
Xhin
Sky's the limit