Dev Log #4.8 - Art updates

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.

Concept: Elisa Cherdot 3D: Khaleer

Code

While this has been going on in the art department, Rie and Giiba made progress on underlying systems, including the ability to name your ship anything from “Boaty McBoatFace” to “USS Enterprise” and send it on expeditions. Giiba is looking into expanding GraphEdit so we can visualize mutiple-choice branched quest/expedition content as a node tree that even the least technical members of the team can understand and give feedback on.

Rie made a similar system called Dialog Tree, which you can test on Github.

In the next dev-log, we’ll likely talk about expeditions. A core feature we’ve been working on for a long time, we’re closer than ever to the point where designers can make 10-30 expeditions and populate the sea of Hirwazh with fun adventures and tough choices for the players.

Note: We’re onboarding new team members and doing some technical work that is sometimes tricky to describe in a blog post, but rest assured, we’re coming back with a lot of cool art in February.

Thanks again to the Patreon Yardies supporters, and anyone who shares our work on socials. It would be much harder if we didn’t already see such seeds of a wonderful community. <3

• Shipyard Devlog
• Art
• Buildings