July 2022

The second devlog in this games development. from now on the devlogs will feature mostly mechanics that have been finished or in development along with ideas for mechanics.

Map layout

over the course of the development of Astrophobia I have been slowly working on getting the layout of the map up and running, at least in a suitable state for early access testing.  The image below shows the current game map without lighting or environment, this is where the rover will be navigating around this maze like cave system.
more info on what will be in the map in the later sections..

Rover movement

The movement of the rover is pretty straight forward, there are going to be buttons inside of the ship that move the rover around the map shown in the section above.
the player will need to use a mixture of the camera and map to avoid crashing into walls or any other objects that may be present in a extraterrestrial moon. 
the below video demonstrates how the player will be able to control the rover (please do note that the camera in front of the player wont be there at launch nor will the place holder table)

Improved camera system

The camera system has been greatly improved upon since the last dev log. instead of using the built in noise generator I have used gimp to create a more realistic monitor static effect over top of the screen. along with this the environment has been tweaked to make the cave system appear a lot darker than it did before.
The camera now also takes roughly 2 seconds between pressing the button to the image appearing to increase tension and suspense, leaving the player wondering what horrors will be awaiting them once the image appears in front of them.
The image below demonstrates just how effective this new camera system is

Artifact photography system

The artifact photography system is going to be a key part of the gameplay. taking inspiration from iron lung, these "artifacts" are going to be set coords on the map that the player is tasked with taking photos of.
The base system of this has been set up within the past month, how it works is that whenever a photo is taken the rover does a raycast check to see if the object in front of it is an artifact, if it is then the artifact code is executed.
This will allow for quick implantation of artifacts and their models without needing to code each one individually 

Mysterious Shrubs

Mysterious Shrubs are present in the world of Astrophobia and fill the caves of this dead moon, they are being referred to as "mysterious shrubs" as they appear to be nothing like shrubs of which we have on earth... scientists first assumed that they were simple rocks or stalactites with weird shapes, but later investigation showed that they were in fact organisms. they are one of the many mysteries of this weird universe

Bug fixes

The bugs that have been patched mainly relate to the movement system, in particular the rover buttons. they originally weren't designed the best and had a lot of bugs involving how it handled player interaction, some of these bugs included the rover constantly moving even when the player stopped holding down the buttons, the buttons getting stuck in the downward position, etc.
Fixing the above bugs created a pretty funny and quickly fixable bug as a result, the bug was that when the player was to finish holding down one of the rover buttons it would constantly fly up into the sky

Deadlines and extra info

I would just like to the ending of this devlog to saying that the project has no dead lines in terms of release dates of testing phases, or even full release. the only deadlines currently in play are for the devlogs themselves with one coming out roughly once a month in order to show that progress is being made and at what rate so that you guys can have your own estimates to how things are going.

I would also like to say that if you are wanting to leave suggestions on this project you can either do that in the comments of the devlogs themselves or if you'd also like to receive updates on the project you should join the discord. I would also have a higher chance of seeing suggestions made in the discord.

if you'd like to see certain things in the next devlog done more such as what I did for the mysterious shrub info then let me know that stuff as well.

V = I