I have finally made the starting screen, complete with an options menu and added Audio: 

Guess which one took longer(it's the audio):

• 2 track for the background music
• many other tracks for sound effects
• a galaxy that spins in the back to look pretty
• fixed a few bugs

There is a discord: https://disco…

I have finally updated the game demo: https://fetss.itch.io/cosmicconveyor. It features:

• New level 5 with asteroid rings that destroys everything it touches
• Finally made the level select screen, it does look like crap anymore
• Added 2 new tiles: the heat drill and the solar panel
• Fix a few bugs that I w…

So the game is kinda boring at this point. So let's add some environmental hazards. Like an asteroid field.

Here's how the asteroid field will work:

• The path will be pre-defined from the start of the game. 
• Terrain generation will avoid the path.
• Asteroids will flow on the path randomly.
• Asteroids …

The game is complicated, Everybody knows that. So a tutorial is needed.

But not everything can be explained through text, or without doing it yourself. So I have dedicate 4 levels to introduce the main mechanics.

Then there is the manual. Where I put all the shit I can't fit in the dialogs or the tex…

Not all tile, factory is created equal. Each have their uses. 

I have split every tile into 4 categories:

• Conveyor: for every tile that move items from one place to another.
• Drill: for every tile that produces items from thin air.
• Factory: for every tile that produce items from other items.
• Energy:…

So every factory needs energy. How will we get energy? 

I'm not going to give it to you for free. Why would I give you free stuff when It can be turned into another challenge in the game.

There will be many ways to get energy like coal power plant, nuclear power plant, solar power plant,… 

T…

Since the game is set in space, You would think space would be the least of your problems. Not here.

Since the game is hexagonal, the bending the conveyor is necessary to change directions, there needs to be 2 types of bendy conveyor: 60 degrees and 120 degrees. And I'm lazy so I didn't make the 120…

This is half of the game, The conveyor. But its not actually a conveyor, its more like a pipe that move items(sorry for the clickbait).

Since the game is hexagonal, the conveyor must move in 6 directions. I can't draw for my life so the conveyor can move both ways. Aka items can be moved either way …

Now lets actually make the damn thing.(this is the hardest part)(This is made in unity btw)

First is the grid itself. A hexagonal grid. I will follow this tutorial: https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/hex-map/part-1/​

Note that since the game is pixelated and pixels can't acurately do Sqrt(3), …

Yes, There will be a plot.

You are an old TV that had been revived in the future to build and manage factories, named 27. Your job will be to build factories to mine asteroid to sell for money. You have been assigned to a supervisor, called Venea.

Your goal is to do your job, climb the corporate ladd…

To Be Clear, this is not about the actual cost of the game development or the game costs.

This is about the money system within the game itself. I wanted to make the game fun, and to do that, I have focused on the sandbox aspect of the game. So money is a problem. You cannot have an infinite sandbox…

WHY NOT?

Actually, there are a few reasons:

• It is much easier to code in a square tile grid. A hexagonal grid is much harder to implement.
• the brain is not used to hexagonal grid, it is harder to judge space and distance.
• pixel sprites does not respond well to being rotated 30 or 60 degrees.

So Why? Bec…

So recently I have been thinking about what's so great, so fun about factory builder games(think Shapzio or Mindustry). And I have come to the conclusion that the the main appeal is the sandbox nature of the game, the ability to optimize, compress your factory, make it bigger, fill the whole map, o…