StarLost

Well, I’m working on what the little characters will look like. I took some inspiration from an asset I found online, so I’ll probably change it later. For testing purposes, I’ll stick with this one for now.

Today I built the foundation for the mining system! Pressing X lets you mine an ore, which shakes while it’s being mined and then drops a resource.

Right now, it only works with one ore, but I still need to add the rest, along with a proper inventory and collection system. I’m also thinking about creating a dedicated mining area for it.

I redrew the sprites for the ores and the items dropped by miners because, after the errors I discovered (which I talked about in the previous devlog), I had to redraw them since I’d lost everything luckily, I had a screenshot! =)

Today I found out that PICO-8 uses sprite sheets 2 and 3 to store the map data. So, if you make a really huge map, it uses those sprite sheets to store the map data.

And guess what? I was making a completely unnecessarily huge map and didn’t know about this, and then I hit Ctrl+S. So all the sprites I had on those sheets disappeared =( The ores and other stuff too =(

Thankfully, I have screenshots of them, so I’ll redraw everything. But honestly, this is starting to get traumatic 😭

I tried making the game’s sounds in PICO-8, but they turned out really bad, so I gave up on it for now.

Hey! Today I drew the ores and some of the resources for the game! These ores can be mined (obviously 🫠), and the player will be able to use them to craft different things. One of those things is repairing the spaceship so you can finally leave the planet lol.

The ores I made so far are Copper, Iron, Aluminum, Titanium, and Nickel, along with some special resources like Crystals, Stardust, Alien Scrap, and Oxy Fruit (which will have an important purpose later 👀).

These resources will naturally spawn around the map, and I also want to add a rarity system to them, so some resources will be harder to find than others. You’ll be able to use them for crafting and, eventually, for repairing and upgrading your ship.

I’m really liking how it’s turning out so far! =)
I think my next devlog will be about collecting and mining these resources hehe.

So, today I drew the rocket and started working on the Stardust logic; it’s going to be something that spawns on the map, and you’ll need to collect it to use the tools. The globe-like object will generate a breathable area since it’s an alien planet (though it’s still green right now, heh). I’m not sure how I’ll decorate the world; I’m really struggling with creativity. My references are great, but PICO-8 has limitations regarding colors and sprite counts. Plus, I’m short on time after all, the Stardance jam is coming to an end 🥹. I hope I can manage to deliver something good.

I made animations for the player well, I think they turned out good. Later, I’m going to redraw the spaceship and the map.

I’m redesigning the player, and while working on the animations, I watched a lot of videos on pixel art and animation techniques. Honestly, I can’t even believe I managed to pull this off, haha. Well, I have YouTube to thank for it! =)

I’m drawing other sprites, they look pretty bad right now, but I’m still going to improve them.

I designed a ship, well the game will be about you are lost on an alien planet very similar to Earth, I introduce the mushrooms, they are a test hehe, I also like the movement.

I’m trying to draw the sprites, honestly, pixel art is really difficult and tedious, especially with such limited colors. I really hope I can manage to create something. Fortunately, the game code is in Lua, which is a very easy language.