Malady is in Neon's ship while Neon has a cargo full of algae. Neon is saying something: "Are you heading to Svarog? There's a researcher there who often needs algae. It spends more time sourcing algae than researching. If you sell it algae, it will bother me less. I am tired of algae."

Neon and Malady are talking again, this time in Malady's ship. Her cargo consists of two kiddy pools of liquid oxygen. She is saying "Liquid oxygen is worth so much! Why doesn't everyone buy it?"

Gotta push myself to get something done today.

Non player peddlers have their own inventories and hint at strategies and trade routes. Some strategies will be good, and others... not so much.

#peddlersbetweenpulsars #indiedev #gamedev

A beetle looks at a one of many boxes with fish eggs and a fish design. Text reads Aquatic Eggs - 50% chance of agitation daily. Stable for 5 days. Living eggs suspended in fluid. Must be agitated daily for air, or they will die.

Figured out wording. If items want turbulence from your ship, they have a chance of agitation. If they don't, they'll have a chance of breaking. The way things worked out the optimal way to transport fish eggs is to fly as fast and recklessly as possible.

#peddlersbetweenpulsars #indiedev

A beetle looking at a container with powder and water. Text reads: Crystal Mixture - 2% chance of breaking daily. Break this to mix it and start growing crystals. Needs heat and high turbulence to fully dissolve.

A beetle looking at a cloudy container. Text reads: Supersaturated Solution - 30% chance of breaking daily. 15 days until ready. A fragile, growing crystal. Keep it safe to grow high quality crystals.

A beetle looking at a container with a blue crystal. Text reads: Copper Sulfate Crystal - A common crystal. Used for heat packs and decoration.

Making ship turbulence more fun by adding items that WANT to be tossed around. Crystal growing will require high turbulence to create a supersaturated solution, then low turbulence to grow nice crystals.

Still figuring out clear wording.

#peddlersbetweenpulsars #screenshotsaturday #indiegame

Tiny little update on the chat - when someone's typing, their icon will also be animated.

The chat was a spur of the moment addition with lazy code b/c I wasn't sure it would work out design-wise. It worked, so all these little changes are also refactoring time.

#indiegame #peddlersbetweenpulsars

A picture of Peddlers between Pulsars running on a steam deck.

Ay, Peddlers is pretty okay on the steam deck!
The default controls are a pretty wonky, but it serves its purpose in that I can wave it at people irl and let them try it.

#indiegame #peddlersbetweenpulsars

A screenshot of a game. A gas being talks to a moth-spider. The moth is standing next to some metals, saying "But none of us actually know what to do with the metals. So they're all for sale." In the background, a snail is buying silver alliums, a bird sells a fat pineapple, and a mushroom ball is selling a bucket.

The gas being is now looking at the bird-spider's copper. It says "1 remaining. Costs 30 monies (est. value: 40 monies) A slab of slightly oxidized copper." The mushroom ball, and bird are absent in this screenshot.

NPCs will now sometimes set up small shops themselves. Their hours are inconsistent, their inventory is limited, but they tend to be good deals.

#indiedev #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #peddlersbetweenpulsars

A a ring shaped room. The walls look like dark PCB chunks, and the floor is made up of irregular rectangular/triangular metal panels. It is generally dimly lit, except for a few glowing edges.

Another ship interior - Neon's this time.

I'm aiming to submit a demo that's nice enough for steam sometime in December, with Neon/Malady as the playable characters. So their ships and layouts were cleaned up the earliest.

#gamedev #indiedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Neon, a gas being is next to its ship, on its home planet. Another gas being named Xenon is carrying eight boxes of sand and talking to Neon, saying "About time! I've got the job of of a lifetime for you."

I was roughing things out and checking some functionality, but I don't think I can write a more accurate first impression for Neon's friend.

#indiegame #peddlersbetweenpulsars

The Mobile Suns haven't done anything because I was trying to make their options fit without becoming a menu.

I still want more visual cues that aren't color reliant. But they fit and toggle, so with proper text, they'll be good enough for now.

#gamedev #indiedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

A map with two colliding galaxies. A route to a debug area is charted out, going through a starburst region that is roughly drawn.

The debug region. The route estimate is 26-38 days and costs 186 to 266 monies.

Another region of space that the player is in. The route estimate is much cheaper and faster, taking 4-7 days and costing 20-35 monies.

Most of the travel code was written before #peddlersbetweenpulsars had pulsars, so it needed updating.
- Routes FINALLY have supply/fuel fees calculated. Not charged yet.
- Players fly through the galactic collision when traveling. That's shown and expensive now.
#screenshotsaturday #indiegamedev

After implementing a "jump to location" command, the cutscene system is ~97% where of where I want it to be.

Also, new character select where everyone fits, but has placeholder text.
#indiedev #gamedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

A shop with too many things and boring metal tiles.

The same shop but with a wiggly yellow floor and bubbly walls.

Two mollusks talk in a mix of curvy walls and cliff face. One is saying "Malady, you live here. You don't need to pay for a hotel room or parking."

Finally got so tired of staring at the only interior tileset I had, so I made another one (old one is the grey one in the first picture.)

Got a little more motivated to put down the building interiors after that.

#peddlersbetweenpulsars #indiedev #gamedev

A screenshot of a space map, with very blobby, solidly colored nebula. No planet is selected, so more of the background is visible.

Another screenshot of a space map, with darker, dithered nebula. A planet is selected. A smaller image shows a reddish nebula in the background, matching up with the redder area it is located in.

Updating all the little planet photos cause they haven't been updated since the game was in HTML. I generally don't like autotiles, but they work for making roughs (and coordinating which colors are in planet backgrounds).

#indiedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars #gamedev

Idling cars in a domed city is stupid. So it's absolutely something the rich beings on this planet do.

#peddlersbetweenpulsars

Malady reads a book on a table. The on top of the box reads "Current goal: Explore nearby planets and make money." The text box below has 3 options - Save, Save and return to menu, and Don't save.

Got saving/loading working, along with some text that states current story goals.

30% of the time was spent on saving/loading. The other 70% was spent on allowing choices in npc/object dialogue.
#screenshotsaturday #peddlersbetweenpulsars #solodev

Text from a console reading: ``` "raw_metal_aluminum": [ "min_days=4, max_days=7, raw_profit=40.0, est_profit=[40.00, 40.00], mfg -> dead_raw, ", "min_days=4, max_days=7, raw_profit=40.0, est_profit=[40.00, 40.00], raw -> dead_raw, ", "min_days=4, max_days=7, raw_profit=105.0, est_profit=[105.00, 105.00], mfg -> dead_raw, from substrate_contam_al" ], "hard_fruits": [ "min_days=4, max_days=7, raw_profit=40.0, est_profit=[27.93, 32.58], dead_raw -> mfg, ", "min_days=4, max_days=7, raw_profit=40.0, est_profit=[27.93, 32.58], dead_raw -> raw, ", "min_days=3, max_days=4, raw_profit=60.0, est_profit=[48.87, 51.44], dead_raw -> tourism, " ] ```

#screenshotsaturday bit boring visually this time. Wrote a script that roughly estimates the profit per item per route. Already found a few misconfigs.

Now to add configs for the other 9 shops and ~40 items, plop down planets, add fuel costs, tweak travel formulas...
#peddlersbetweenpulsars

Rough and full of placeholders, but quick sequential chats + chats in cutscenes work. Only Neon/Exos chat here. Everyone else is waiting for them cause they're late.

I probably should've limited my cutscene complexity, but this is fun.

#gamedev #indiedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Inside a boxy brown and blue interior, Exos (a beetle) tells an astronaut "Yes, I have 3 beds! They all work, so why throw them away?"

Inside a dark, rusty blueish purple interior, a gas being (Neon) asks "Ah, do you need light? Er... I don't know if my ship has lights." This ship is the only one without a window as well.

The next ship has a glowy blue, textured carpet with dark blue walls. Gitrah, the lichen, says "Ow ow, be careful where you step! I'm connected to the floor right now."

The last ship has a significant portion underwater, with only the cargo area being on a small patch of shoreline. Malady, a snail-thing, talks to Aerin, saying "Oops, I wasn't expecting anyone to visit. Isn't this too wet for you?"

Still rough and the furniture is a mess again, but all the ships have their own map. The peddlers can visit each other now.

Malady's ship is flooded, as it should be. She's a sea dwelling species who's been sleeping on a dry, absorbent cloth bed till now.

#indiegamedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Old layout - Persephone is selected. It's not clear where the player is, and zoomed in images of the planets are always visible, leading to a lot of screen usage.

New layout. Only the selected planet has a larger image shown in the bottom left instead of on the map. The player's current position, ship, and route are also shown. The styles of the labels have changed as well.

I'm just adding the ability to reroute mid-journey. But that relies on so much info that isn't shown yet. Well... I SHOULD update the local maps to match the galaxies map anyways, let's do that too.

(old, new layouts)
#solodev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

A screenshot of Neon, a gas being, looking at dingy posters with images of items and WANT written on them in red.

Neon is talking to a snail, who says "Welcome. We have items to sell on the floor." There are items on the floor on roughly drawn rugs. On the wall, there are displays with the "Sell" label on them. One particularly large item, liquid oxygen, is bigger than the display.

Figuring out buy/sell images.

Communication is imperfect between species. Shops'll try to label items players can sell, or items they are buying/are needed. But Svarogi don't quite get it, and just throw up pictures of what they WANT.

#indiegamedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Other devs have debug rooms.

I have a debug chunk of space, near a debug pulsar, with a debug room and debug shop on a debug planet.

#solodev #indiegamedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

A yellow and red amorphous ring-thing with blob in the center, drawn twice. One image has uses two styles, and is labeled "crayon+acryllic, paint over yellow" and "crayon + watercolor, avoid yellow" accordingly. The other is done in only watercolor, and is labeled "FINE Lava Lamp it is" The same character is shown in a pixelart as well.

Took six tries, four which I'm not going to bother uploading cause they were a mess. But settled on a stylized upscaling of Neon that works.

#watercolor #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Peddlers Between Pulsars by tararntula Available for Windows, Linux

Updated the demo for my little space merchant rpg on itch this week. Mainly minor changes:

- Linux version
- Some nicer graphics
- The audio should be less harsh
- Some writing changes
- Group chat menu added

tararntula.itch.io/peddlers-bet...
#indiegamedev #solodev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Week 8 audio work for #peddlersbetweenpulsars. Mainly keeping track for me at this point. I still want to work on audio more weeks than not this year.

Reexported one of my existing songs now that I know what more of the knobs do, and noticing what made all my tunes irritating in-game.

They're all part of a group chat now! Poor gas doesn't understand seeds, but it's trying.

The chat screen could use endless polishing, but handling groups and nice scrolling was priority. Maybe in a week or two, an updated demo will be up.

#screenshotsaturday #indiegamedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

The spiders have bikes now.
#peddlersbetweenpulsars

Week 7 audio practice/working on what's probably the song for this area. Making this nicer is probably going to be my week 8 as well.

Yes, I've been working on songs for my game's areas while doing little audio challenges haha.

#peddlersbetweenpulsars #solodev #indiegamedev

A pile of blobs that is the rough shapes for the upcoming images.

The pile of blobs has been cleaned up with lots of dithering, so it vaguely looks like two clouds of galaxies colliding.

The blobs are now blue, with a map interface overlaid as a mock UI design. The menu reads "Pulsar: Kasper, Lich, Back" and the description is lorem ipsum.

The blue blobs are now mocked as a title screen with the words "Peddlers between Pulsars". 5 little aliens sit on the bottom in a desperate attempt to make it look less serious.

"Is that your new start screen?!"
"No, it's the 'world map'"
"...Should it be your start screen?"
"You're right"

Progress screenshots for #screenshotsaturday. There's a few days worth of cleanup/polish to do, but I'm happy enough to start working on the menus now. #indiedev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Entitled Puff: Did you feel that horrible shaking? Our Walker tripped on a crater again. Entitled Puff: We should flatten those craters. It would be safer for everyone. map: crater_settlement npc: stargazer appearance_conditions: none

Wasn't planning on doing #screenshotsaturday this week, but some of the NPC dialogue/configurations got arranged in such a screenshottable, ominous way.

#solodev #peddlersbetweenpulsars

Only took a week to redo half the dialogue/_ready functions! Some parts still need refactoring, but ships do show up if their owner is anywhere on the planet.

Can't visit other ships yet, but it's nice to see who you've managed to bump into the moment you land.

#peddlersbetweenpulsars #indiedev