Deep Space Journey - Dev Log #1

Dev Log #1

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https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deep-space-journey

I started LD48 fairly strong. The theme was actually something I felt I could work with which is nice for a change. I've been playing a lot of space related games lately so it ended up influencing what I came up with.

The first day or so of work was primarily just creating the UI, linking things up, and drafting the skeleton of the classes I would need. The main issue would be avoiding getting sucked into one particular feature without getting it playable with a win condition.

I had envisioned some event specific text, with portraits for NPCs, crew you could hire that would impact your journey, animations for traveling, space combat, and more. This would be something nice to do for continued development, but definitely would not have finished.

By the end of day two I had events somewhat working, I had to continue to tweak it to avoid possible loops or getting stuck with no options while also making it more than just a game on rails and no options. The last day I had to focus on some of the presentation and creating the content to fill the events. The events however were reworked towards the last few hours because I realized I'd never be able to manually create all of those events. So, they use event types with some randomization thrown in. Some of the choices become a gamble as you are likely to get more resources than you trade in, but not always.

Overall, I'm super pleased to have completed my entry. I may actually continue to work on this one as it's definitely a viable game with some more features and enhancements added.