We have a new crane from Khaleer. It re-uses texture from the previous crane in order for the game to run on potato computers (hopefully).

Mostrovska finished their internship, with a cool painting showing eco-pirates in need of ship repairs. Find more of their work at https://mostrovskaa.tumblr.com/

Fire event, illustration by Mostrovska.

Development updates

Giiba has been working on the shipbuilding UI.

We changed the shipbuilding system to be a 2D top-down view instead of side scroller. The new system seems to scale nicer to the different size classes. We’re still working on giving each icon an unique png/svg so that it’s easy to tell the equipment apart.

Pixelberk -who joined us last month- has been working on the solar foundry and scrapyard building so that they produce scrap metal, plates and ingots, but also an inventory system to hold these items before assembly in the hangar.

In the past few weeks, we’ve added new artists on the team who will be helping us until the summer.

Maritime festival event

Illustration for the Maritime Festival event, by Elsa Serka

A celebration of sailing ships and all things related to the sea, this event boost the morale of shipyard workers and you have the option to spend some cash to participate and get a booth (increases city approval, +1 yardie) or take the whole team on a day cruise on tallships (large morale boost).

Hello and welcome to another dev-log! This week we talk about gameplay, brainstorming, and demo scope

But first, we’ve got some new website, discord and store page for this project.

• Itch Io page: https://niwl-games.itch.io
• New website to read dev-logs: <redacted as we have a new one here>
• Discord server: https://discord.gg/huxRAE6Mju

Brainstorming the gameplay

We had a nice brainstorming session with Yann, Khaleer, Giiba and Honora, focusing on gameplay.

Khaleer Finished the first Crane. The final game will have up to three different models of cranes.

Honora integrated the scrapyard in game (with help from Giiba).

This is a first step to integrating art assets in game, but hold on, not so fast.

We wanted to add a quick mouseover effect (so you know which building is selected) and it took much more time than anticipated as soon as art assets were involved.

With the groundwork on characters and visual novel structure more defined, it was time for us to return on buildings, which -after ships- are the core of game.

Art news

In The Shipyard, most buildings have 3 upgrade levels. But in a break from most city builders and management games, more upgrades is not always better.

Electrolysis of hydrogen is a good example. It’s a way to store surplus energy from solar and wind with a low carbon footprint, but building it, and building upgrades does have a carbon and capital cost that has to be paid back. With a 40% efficiency, only the player can decide if it’s worth it.