It’s pretty much been business as usual for me the last few days. The lunar base mission is getting to a really nice place, and I’ll be able to start populating it with enemies and loot very soon.

Kyren kindly implemented a quick update to our lighting engine that provides far greater control of how a light flickers. Previously the controls were a little vague and it was often difficult to get the precise results desired. It was difficult to get lights doing anything other than dimming and brightening in an largely unpredictable fashion.

Now we have the capacity to make lights pulse, strobe, or flicker erratically as we wish. As a side effect of this update, you may notice in the nightly that any lights that previously flickered currently are not doing so, but I’ll be quickly zipping through them to make them work as intended again in my downtime.

I put a quick video test together with a variation of the spotlights that flickers erratically. I do not advise watching this video if you are sensitive to strobing light effects as I have purposefully used a lot of them in one space simply to demonstrate.

Good night!

As we’ve been working on the progression of the early game, one awkward point that kept coming up is the Matter Manipulator. You’re given this all-purpose future tool, but then immediately replace it with stone age pickaxes because of their superior digging ability. So, for the past few days, I’ve been prototyping a system of upgrades for the Matter Manipulator that should keep it useful throughout the course of the game and give players something more futuristic than hand tools. This is all WIP, obviously, but so far it seems to make more sense both aesthetically and mechanically. Here’s a quick look at the current range of upgrades we’re testing:

Players will be able to upgrade the area, digging power, and other numerical aspects of the Matter Manipulator as well as enabling new harvesting options such as liquid collection. Hopefully, this should make it a satisfying tool in your character’s arsenal and even offer a bit of customization to suit your play style.

Here’s a little something I’ve been working on… The Novakid will be needing their own armor sets.

Click it to enlarge!

Time to go back to my Devcave. K Bye!