Pirates, CLUNKs, Late Payments and Cat-astrophes

Well, it's that time of the quarter again!

That wonderful time when I get to sit around waiting for our incredibly communicative friends at Basic Fun! to tell us what's happening with the previous quarter's payments.

And by incredibly communicative, I mean...

Absolutely nothing.

We're now 16 days past the end of the quarter, and so far, our oh-so-chatty friends in accounting have said ZIP.

Not a word.

Par for the course, unfortunately.

The Quarterly Waiting Game

One of the less enjoyable parts of developing for specialized platforms is dealing with the business side of things.

And in this particular case, that means waiting to find out when we're actually going to get paid.

I don't particularly enjoy having to chase a company for basic payment information, especially one the size of Basic Fun!, but here we are again.

They've got another two weeks before I start getting considerably less patient.

After that?

Well, I've got an email script.

And that script is perfectly capable of sending a follow-up email every 15 minutes until somebody decides to provide an update.

Is that how I want to communicate with a business partner?

Absolutely not.

Is it ridiculous that I even feel the need to have something like that?

Yep.

But unfortunately, past experiences haven't exactly inspired confidence in their communication practices.

I'd much rather spend my time developing games than chasing accounting departments.

Anyway, enough of that particular headache.

Let's talk about something considerably more interesting.

Gunpowder & Gold Is Underway

Development has officially begun on Gunpowder & Gold: Tides of Fortune.

We're getting some of the foundational systems in place, working out how everything connects, and starting to establish the overall presentation of the game.

And right now, the biggest challenge isn't actually the code.

It's the artwork. 

More specifically, figuring out exactly how I want this game to look.

There are two major visual components I'm working through:

• The harbor and city views, where players will conduct their trading and manage their ships.
• The overhead travel map, where ships will sail between ports and encounter whatever the world decides to throw at them.

Both need to feel like they belong in the same game.

And both need to look good without turning into an enormous art production project.

Because I've been down that road before.

About ten times, actually.

Harbors, Weather and a Little Atmosphere

For the harbor views, I've been experimenting with a combination of 3D water and 2D artwork.

Right now, I've got a pretty nice water shader running, with a 2D city image layered over the scene.

On top of that, there's a weather and environmental system that helps bring everything to life.

Day and night cycles.

Lighting changes.

Torches coming to life after dark.

Storms.

Wind.

Fog.

All the little atmospheric touches that can make a harbor feel like an actual place instead of just a static background.

And honestly?

It looks okay.

Not bad.

Not great.

Just... okay.

I'm not completely sold on it yet.

There's something about the overall presentation that still isn't quite matching what I have in my head.

And if there's one thing I've learned about myself over the years, it's that I have a very hard time committing to a visual direction until it actually feels right.

So there's more experimentation ahead.

And Then There's the World Map

The overhead travel map is presenting its own challenges.

Aren't those lovely trees? Obviously placeholder, but.. it's got a long ways to go.

I had a dynamically generated world using 3D terrain. Then I ditched it. Didn't like it. Surprised? Not me. I want more of a fantasy overhead map, maybe a cartographic style, I'm not sure yet.

Technically, it works.

The world generates.

Ships can sail around it using point-and-click navigation.

Most of the time, they even stay in the water.

Most of the time.

There have been a few entertaining cases where ships apparently decided that sailing over dry land was a perfectly reasonable shortcut.

I'm fairly certain that's not how ships are supposed to work.

But aside from those little issues, the underlying navigation is functioning.

The problem?

I don't like how it looks.

The 3D terrain approach just wasn't giving me the style I want for this game.

So I'm revisiting the entire visual approach to the travel map.

I'm leaning toward something more stylized, something that feels like a proper game map rather than a miniature realistic terrain simulation.

Exactly how that's going to work is still being figured out.

But I'd rather solve that now than build half the game around a visual style I already know I don't like.

This Isn't Going to Be a Quick Project

One thing I'm very aware of is that Gunpowder & Gold is going to take time.

A lot of time.

Even with AI helping with development, this isn't something I'm going to throw together in a couple of weekends and push out the door.

The game itself is relatively straightforward in concept.

Buy goods.

Sell goods.

Travel between ports.

Upgrade ships.

Fight pirates.

Maybe become a pirate yourself.

Build an empire.

Easy, right?

Except behind all of that is a fairly complicated economic simulation.

Different markets.

Different goods.

Supply and demand.

Pricing.

Trade routes.

Regional conditions.

Reputation.

And all the other systems needed to make the world behave in a way that feels believable and interesting.

There's a tremendous amount of design work involved before even getting into the artwork and content.

And I want to do it properly.

Which means this is going to be a long-term project.

So naturally...

I started another one.

Introducing S.C.R.A.P.: Fortune on the Frontier

I've mentioned before that there are a few older games I've always wanted to revisit.

One of those is M.U.L.E.

For anyone who never played it, M.U.L.E. was a classic economic strategy game developed by Ozark Softscape and published by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1983. The game centered on planetary colonization, resource management, production, trading, and economic competition between players.

It was simple enough to understand, but had an amazing amount of strategy hidden underneath.

And I absolutely loved it.

Between M.U.L.E. and The Bard's Tale series, I spent an absolutely ridiculous number of hours playing games as a kid.

So I've always wanted to make something inspired by M.U.L.E., bringing that style of economic strategy into a modern game.

And now I'm finally going to give it a shot.

The working title?

S.C.R.A.P. — Self-Contained Resource Acquisition Platform

With the subtitle:

Fortune on the Frontier.

And of course, we can't have a M.U.L.E.-inspired game without our own little robotic labor units.

Enter the...

C.L.U.N.K. — Colony Labor Utility & Navigation Kit.

That's tentative, by the way.

Both the name and the acronym may still evolve.

But I like it.

It's got personality.

And let's face it, a bunch of clunky little robots wandering around a colony doing all the actual work sounds about right.

Too Many Acronyms?

Probably.

But it's my game, and I'll abbreviate things if I want to.

The basic idea is to capture some of what made M.U.L.E. so much fun while expanding on the concept with modern systems and presentation.

Resource acquisition.

Colony development.

Economic competition.

Trading.

And those wonderful moments when you realize the resource you desperately need is controlled by somebody who knows exactly how desperate you are.

I've already started implementing the foundation for S.C.R.A.P., and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

It should be a considerably more manageable project than Gunpowder & Gold.

At least that's what I'm telling myself.

We'll see how long that lasts.

Back When Monitors Were Amber

Thinking about M.U.L.E. and The Bard's Tale has also brought back a lot of memories of my early gaming days.

I remember when I upgraded from a green monochrome monitor to an amber one.

That was a big deal!

Amber!

Such luxury.

And I played The Bard's Tale so much that I actually managed to burn the game's interface outline into the monitor.

Literally.

Permanent reminders of just how many hours I spent wandering around dungeons, getting lost, and trying not to get my party killed.

Those were the days.

Of course, now I have a giant OLED monitor and spend time worrying about burn-in again.

Funny how technology comes full circle.

Meanwhile, I'm Still Sick

Unfortunately, all this development planning and experimentation has been happening while I'm still feeling pretty miserable.

Whatever I've managed to catch has been hanging around longer than I'd like.

Which means the office renovation is still progressing at something slightly slower than a crawl.

There has been some progress, though.

The new filing cabinets are finally assembled!

That's freed up a little more room, and things are slowly starting to come together.

Slowly.

There are still boxes everywhere.

Including the hallway.

Which brings me to last night's excitement.

A Cat-astrophic Collapse

Apparently, one of our cats decided that the collection of boxes sitting in the hallway needed some rearranging.

And by rearranging, I mean...

Cat-astrophic structural failure.

Boxes came down.

Stuff went everywhere.

And I got to spend part of my mroning cleaning up the aftermath.

Because that's exactly what you want to be doing when you're already sick and miserable.

To make things even better, my arachnid robot got broken in the process.

Grrrr.

I'm not particularly thrilled about that one. They busted a couple of his legs and broke at least one servo.

But I suppose when you have cats and piles of boxes, eventually physics is going to get involved.

And physics usually wins.

Just Another Normal Week

So let's see where we stand.

Basic Fun! is once again demonstrating its remarkable ability to say absolutely nothing about quarterly payments.

Gunpowder & Gold is underway, although I'm still fighting with the visual direction.

The harbor is looking promising.

The world map is getting reconsidered.

Ships occasionally think they're cars.

S.C.R.A.P.: Fortune on the Frontier has entered development.

My C.L.U.N.K.s are waiting to get to work.

I've been reminiscing about M.U.L.E., The Bard's Tale, and amber monitors.

I'm still sick.

The office is still full of boxes.

And a cat managed to take out part of the hallway and my arachnid robot.

So, pretty much business as usual around SquigglyFrog Studios.

Hopefully I'll start feeling better soon, finish getting the office organized, and make some real progress on these projects.

In the meantime, I've got pirate economies to design, colonies to establish, and little robotic labor units to send wandering across alien terrain.

And apparently an accounting department to hear from.

Back to work!

Or maybe another nap.

We'll see which one wins.