Hi all, Josh here! This weeks update looks at some of the development work done so far on Space Botanist.

Movement controls:

With Space Botanist we've set out with the goal of having our controls be as accessible as possible, allowing the player to seamless switch between different input systems as they play.

Currently we have four ways to play our game:

• Mouse & keyboard
• Mouse only
• Keyboard only
• Gamepad

Each of these controller types will be remappable giving the player the final say on how they play.

Time of Day:

Similar to most games of this genre we have a simple day and night cycle.

Day/Night Cycle

• Days in the game are divided into three phases: morning, afternoon and night.
  • The lighting changes over the course of the day.
  • Shops are closed at night.
  • Different trading/requests are available depending on the time of day.
  • Some plants look different at night.
• A full in-game day/night cycle takes 10 real world minutes.
  • Morning: 4 Minutes
  • Afternoon: 3 Minutes
  • Night: 3 Minutes
• At the end of the night phase:
• There’s a brief “end of day screen” with stats for that day.
• The in-game date changes.
• The game saves.

Hypersleep Pods

• Hypersleep pods are for... well sleeping.
• There are hypersleep pods in every dome.
• The player doesn’t need to sleep to replenish their energy.
• But they can use the hypersleep pods to time skip, by either:
  • Napping: To skip to a different phase of the current day.
  • Sleeping: To skip to a different day.

Planting:

What would Space Botanist be without the ability to sow the seeds of alien plants?

Just look at this beautiful red placeholder sphere *cough cough* plant!

This is why I don't work on the art side of things!

To see some actual plant models make sure to check out our last post.

And if you want to see how the models are designed and made, look at our next post here!