Hello again!

Nothing terribly new to share, but I promised to give an update every month, so here I am. Development is, as always, slow. In order to add the player's buildings (i.e., the shelter and the ship), I've needed to completely rework the enemies' navigation and targeting. Finishing that up shouldn't take longer than a day, but it's such a drag that I keep putting it off...

In other, happier news, I've decided to make some fun menu animations! In Balloon in a Wasteland, vendors in pickup trucks would drive by to sell you weapons and upgrades for your shelter, as well as traps and turrets. Even though this game is based on that one's gameplay, I was initially going to remove this idea, instead opting to make a sort of crafting workbench; select something to make, it takes your materials, and you have to wait for in-game time to pass for it to be ready. It's not a bad idea, but I realized I probably shouldn't change things about BiaW's formula if they were fun to handle in that game. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, yeah?

Speaking of clichés with incorrect country grammar: introducing the gun vendor! All the vendors in the game (I'm thinking there will be 3) will have unique sprites, animation, and personalities. This fella is named Colt. He's a good old-fashioned space cowboy, and talks with a country accent. He runs a ranch a few miles away from your crash site. He can't take you there, because his truck is just way too full of guns, but, hey, he could sell you some! His name is a play on the type of horse, for the country aspect, but also on the kind of gun, due to his function in-game - it's a double pun and I'm very proud. Also, his pickup truck is a reference to BiaW, but all the other vendors will have unique vehicles. It was always kind of odd that they all drove the same truck...

Anyway, the other vendors are still works-in-progress, but I can tell you the character concepts. The second vendor, who sells you shelters and shelter upgrades, isn't a person at all, but rather a roaming outpost fabricator that I'm tentatively calling "CF-388 'HOMEMAKER'." It speaks robotically and really doesn't see why you'd ever want to leave Mars, as that goes against its entire directive, but it's happy to help you with your shelter anyway. The third vendor is a nomadic, quiet, and perhaps cowardly scrapper that will probably be named "Telios," who will sell you traps and turrets. He uses them to hide in fear from the aliens in the Martian wastes, but you'll use them to... well, there's not much you can do with traps other than wait for things to walk into them, so I guess you'll be hiding too!

I'm not going to make any characters other than these, and interactions will be limited so as to not interrupt gameplay - this is a small, thirty-minute-playthrough kind of game, not a sprawling story. Still, I thought it would be fun to play around with characterization and animation so I can add it to future projects. Please let me know if you have any recommendations or ideas! I'd be happy to implement whatever I can. I've probably said this before, but 0.7 will definitely release before the end of the year. Honestly, maybe sooner than that! The only things I have left to do are the AI rework, the healing and repair stations, the vendor menus, and their animations, and their code, and the entire campaign and schedule system, and, uhh... yeah, let's just stick with "before 2023." Fingers crossed!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!