Alright, let’s try and get these updates coming weekly from now on, because it’s been a bit hectic around Orangepixel HQ and I might have skipped some updates here and there!  Luckily, we’re now back on track, and this week is a sweeeeet update!

Much of my time was put into the whole mining code I started creating a few weeks ago. I had these deployable-devices which could do mining, but it wasn’t fully fleshed out gameplay wise. And now it is! Mining now replaces the searching and hunting for resources completely. Not just resources, but the game also had various items placed, which aren’t needed anymore, because you can just craft them from your mined resources!

You still have to find mining-hotspots on the planet, but these can be anywhere on and IN the planet, and will often spawn a nice amount of resources for you to work with when crafting usable items. Combined with the teleportation and spaceship-inner area’s, it gives the player much more to do!

I managed to work down a huge list of “this can be done better” items, and added changes, tweaks and bug fixes all over the code. Because that can sometimes be a boring thing to do all week.. I also HAD to add a Sandworm, because, what Orangepixel game could be without such a lovely creature!?

Full changes list:

• added: Sandworms
• disable a stick-switch if there’s a “poweroff trigger” happening
• slurpers should “grab” insects
• add switches that require Deuterium to operate (fairly common, because we’ll add deuterium mining)
• make rocks, pods, etc, throwable
• add “need power” message to lever-switch
• split up the intro background into layers for a parallax effect
• Add snow and rain
• add light to fieldgenerators
• sleep only at ship – sit/rest at campfire/pilars
• optimized some code, was rendering background art far off-screen (possibly cause of weird frame-drops?)
• save “analyzing” info so next game you don’t have to go through it all over again
• craft campfire should be shown sooner (or maybe when night time falls)
• add “coal mining” device
• add more animation to PDB
• no need to generator “containers” in the level. We’ll build them ourselves
• Added “tech” to the background art, as layer. Mostly rendered near tech things like switches or doors
• dont show “craft fishingrod” until we are near fish
• inventory “item-count” in lower-bottom corner is too big (numbers>9)
• add animation for operating devices
• add proper animation for pulling switches
• dropping “Campfire” works different from dropping “deployable”
• player breath in cold weather doesn’t show
• teleporters don’t always find eachother
• don’t spawn Sandworms in “Start screen”
• Dry-Trees don’t have their top-rendered
• door doesn’t trigger “what is this?” dialog – if there’s no power (always trigger it!)
• “place fieldgenerator” shouldn’t show up if we already placed it
• chopping trees – causes crash
• don’t place Slurpers within 4-5 tiles above spikes
• devices done with mining, don’t shut-down – but keep mining
• more control over scaring insects with fire (they should respond better to fire)
• weird artifacts rendering growth on empty “tiles”
• weird “fire” being started in mid-air (near crashedship + oil)
• opening inventory while analyzing printer, holding deuterium, and then opening inventory after analyzing and grabbing something else, deuterium vanished!
• fishing now shows “move to wakeup” interface on top of everything
• flower-plant creatures have white stripes
• crash when too much stuff put into inventry
• deployables don’t show the correct “time to mine”
• Flower/special-effects don’t check indoor status
• power-switch doesn’t check where “solids” are when setting it’s flipping status
• when teleporting and PDB is out, he won’t come with you