Development recap.

When the theme was announced, the first thing I thought of, was some kinda spaceship captain, all alone, making his way through the galaxy, living free, but effectively isolated by distance.

The jam started at 9:00pm June 5th my timezone. I got started working around 5pm June 6th. The first thing I did was start modeling the spaceship, this is the first image I took of it, the overall design largely finished quickly, though I would later expand the space a little bit, and adjust the windows so that it was easier to see out of.

Next I started filling out the inside of the very same mesh. Thinking about what our characters life was like, and what he needed to survive, the first things that went in were a bed, and a bookshelf. At the time, I was playing with the idea of having the gameplay consist of menial survival chores, followed by going to sleep, as he spent days upon days in hyperspace traveling. I decided this would be boring, and that I didn't want to code a cooking minigame.

I made a new texture and applied it to the ship, and added lights.

I also whipped up some exterior textures, I wasn't really too focused on the exterior at this point, as I was pretty certain the players would never see it, but you can see the exterior rocket orange peaking through inside. this screenshot also shows some more gradual process on the bedroom area, and a second texture interior texture I used for all the furniture pieces.

a laptop for the desk shows a screenshot of blender, with a normal map open in the image viewer on the left, and a wireframe viewport view of the very same laptop on the very same desk in the very same scene. The laptop uses the same furniture texture, for the keyboard I tiled it a whole bunch to create the appearance of keys.

the kitchen, with windows out to space. I was really happy with how those windows came out, and kept telling myself I'd add a few more around the ship, but I never got around to it. It's very satisfying to me, to look out of them and see the stars, or the hyperspace particles blast by.

early work on the cockpit, copying the laptop keyboard and placing it semi-randomly.

a closeup of the laptop, showing itself.

A screengrab of the first video recording of hyperspace.

A look at the ship traveling from outside, this is a view you do not see in the game.

modeled the interior hyperdrive. Around this time is when I also expanded the ship a little, to actually fit it in there without having it inches from the fridge and bed.

wireframe screenshot in blender I edited to make blue, and used as a techy display diagram in the cockpit.

A shower, with a shower curtain. I never got around to adding a toilet, i considered it, but space was getting very cramped, and I had the thought, that perhaps the shower doubled as a toilet. Obviously, not in the traditional earth way toilets work, it would be like the toilet in the ISS, where its kinda, a tube, with a fan to suck things through, before jettisoning into the vacuum of space.

I guess that would have been a fun little thing to code in too, but game jams are short, and I had other things to work on.

a quick asteroid, that I would copy and paste everywhere.

cockpit work, displays and chair added.

I made and rendered this visualization of the solar system, and its particularly dense Oort Cloud. I placed this on a display in the cockpit later, I think it will largely be overlooked, but its a small detail that actually fits into the world and narrative, and I'm happy its there.

I added a visual for the sun, changed its color (in videos I can't upload here, you would see it was white light for awhile), and added spaceship controls to the display in the cockpit, covering up the Oort Cloud display detail. It's still visible in earlier parts of the game when you aren't flying. The spaceship flight code is crazy simple, its just rigidbody forces and torques. Actually, I made a tutorial on how to make a ship like this over a year ago.


a sensor array I modeled just to have something on the display panel. Originally, in the sensor mode, I had these cool post processing effects that made it clear that you were looking through some kind of sensor, not your own eyes. Unfortunately, I was unable to get unity to only apply them to the scanners camera. I probably could have gotten it working, but decided it wasn't worth the time.

Added the planet, and made a new texture for it.


started working on the scanning minigame. I hadn't coded anything like this in the past, so this was actually probably the hardest part of the game jam, I kept having issues with getting the sound to get high pitch when it gets closer, but resolved it after a couple hours.

Up to this point, I had been debating with myself whether or not I would have you go scan multiple planets, or if I would have a space combat section. I decided players would probably be happier if they got to blow something up, so I went with the combat section idea.

Of course, if you're fighting in space, you need to be fighting someone or something. I toyed with maybe, local aliens defending themselves, or some crazy space whale or something, but then you would totally be the bad guy, so I cooked up the idea of an asshole who has the same job as you, and tries to kill you because of capitalistic pressures. Also, its kinda like a dichotomy thing, because here you are, super isolated, and enjoying your time seeing beautiful sights, and then here's another guy, who is very similar to you, but perhaps the isolation has driven him into being a mad, bitter, angry person. It's like symbolically fighting who you're afraid of becoming. 

Anyways, I sculpted his head, and then his torso, and arms, and skipped the legs, because you'd never see them. Gave him a spacesuit, a quick dirty retopology and rigging, textures, and rendered him out. He's ugly as hell, and I know I can do better, but, its a gamejam, and this was june 9th. I had very little time to finish the game, and couldn't waste more scrapping him and making a new character.

I adjusted the lights, plopped in a chair, and some panels behind him, and made the screen look all cool-sci-fi-like.

Then I made a placeholder ship for him while I figured out the sequence switching from the scanner, to combat, and also while I coded the enemy spaceship AI

Because the placeholder was ugly and detracting from the overall established quality of the game up to this point, I gave him a real ship model. I figure, since he's a surveyor as well, he should have a similar ship to the player, and so I simply modified my first ship, making it a chunkier boi, so that players can hit it alright. I removed the interior from this one, of course for performance.

With the combat section done, the game was pretty much finished, but just needed some final touches.
Spaceship exploding effect
up to this point, the player actually couldn't die, so I added health, and player death.


I added a menu and settings, and the very last detail added, was a little arrow on the dashboard to point you towards the end of the asteroid field, and show you where the enemy ship was incase you got disoriented in either location.


This gamejam was a ton of fun, and I'm glad I got to participate.  I hope you enjoyed playing the game, and I hope you enjoyed this insight into the development process.