Welcome, this is my first devlog on Space Survival Prototype.

I will cover everything about this prototype including challenges, development, and going forward.

What is Space Survival Prototype?

Space Survival Prototype is intended to be a sci-fi survival sandbox game with an emphasis on survival. Like Starbound- but without the encompassing story and with a grimdark, unforgiving type of survival. I've been wanting to make this game for quite some time now, even so when I never knew how to code,  and if I'm being honest, I would not know how to code without this dream of mine. This game is ultimately what I've always wanted from a game, I've wanted it so badly I took the better part of a year learning how to program, changing to a STEM career in engineering to better understand the world around me. While I will refer to this game as Space Survival Prototype, the name for this game is still up for debate, so if you have any suggestions please let me know.

For Survival Prototype, I've always known I've wanted a space element, however, I never knew exactly what I wanted. First I tried a 2D side-scroller style like Terraria or Starbound. Here a screenshot of an early prototype:

This was alright, but this is not what I wanted. What I was really after was procedural generation, so here are some of my first attempts:

As you can see, there was progress :3, however I gave up shortly after these attempts. I think the reason was because I wanted an easier route to make my game as I felt like adding anything was super tedious as I was fairly incompetent with procedural generation, so I decided to try a top-down style of game, like Starve.io.

Here are some screenshots of my top down attempts:

Top down prototype 1

Top down prototype 2

While these attempts made me learn a substantial amount. These prototypes were eventually scrapped because well, they were complete shit. I mean, I wanted my game to be a real sandbox survival, but I felt limited by the way I had set up my code. I had rushed everything, set up trash mechanics, and I came into a lot of issues with optimization, which obviously had its consequences.

For my next prototype, I decided to bite the bullet and brute force my way into making a 2D side scroller as that's what I truly wanted. I learned how to procedurally generate chunks, create basic lighting, and much more. Here is a few screenshots of this prototype:

The issue with this prototype was that everything felt empty. I was adding new items, blocks and tools that had no purpose or use. The mining felt terrible, and everything was super rushed. 

Since nothing felt fun, I decided to start over and start building my game with intention.

And that brings us to the current prototype. With this prototype, I focused on solely making the game with intention, without adding useless items or empty mechanics.

Here are some screenshots of my progress so far:

Rendering and de-loading tiles

Info panel

Different planet implementation 

Visual changes

Crafting

More visual changes

Walls

Lighting

And that brings us to the current state of the prototype.

Currently, I have added systems for individual solar systems, planets, biome and structure generation, as well as a ton of other stuff I will leave for separate, more technical Devlogs if anyone is interested on how I implemented these systems.