Edit: This game is now released, check it out here - https://numeron.itch.io/mercury-salvage

Hello all! My name is Numeron, and this will be my 14th 7DRL entry - MERCURY SALVAGE

I'll try to keep this thread up to date with my progress at the end of each day, but for now the idea is thus:

You are a salvage operator that can spawn in asteroids and derelicts, which must be cleaned of monstrous infection and scavenged for cash, but how are there so many out here? There's something else lurking in the deep...

End of day 1!

I have a decent looking main menu screen (though probably need some weathering/damage on the spaceship):

And I have an ok-ish looking dock area and computer that the player can use to spawn in ships, dispose of salvage, etc. I realized too late that I have far fewer sci-fi tiles than I do fantasy so I spent too long today on pixel work and not enough on programming... Also the UI is a mess from the garbage left over from previous 7drls. I can't let myself get bogged down with polish work this early though, or I may fall behind making an actual.. you know... game.

The shop pops open a window with menu options which currently do nothing. Tomorrow I hope to fix that and start spawning in empty-boxes as spaceship stand-ins. Proc gen can come later in the week, but would be good to get salvageable junk items, and maybe wall destruction in too.

End of day 2!

Today I implemented spawning and despawning ships (which are currently just floor-only platforms) and simple air pipes for the player out in the field. I also worked a lot on the computer, the code for which is turning into a huge mess. Working on the bones of past 7drls is good and bad all at once, because while I have a lot of stuff I don't really need to do, I can be quite constrained by other things. I plan to add more shop stuff later in the week, so hopefully it doesn't slow me down further. At least it wasn't too hard to link in enemy death, and item tracking to the current ship stats though, so that the computer can keep track of you progress. It was also quite easy adding a stage to the friendly AI state machine to run to the door once they're on the dock to be rescued.

Glad to hear you are using an existing code base. You seemed much further along than me. Good luck.

End of day 3!

I kinda got the feeling that I didn't have a consistent color scheme for the Mercury Salvage company, like I tend to do for factions in games I make, so I ended up wasting a bunch of time recoloring a lot of stuff green and yellow to suit a more overall gray/cyan scheme. I also got a start on the in-game HUD, which still needs plenty of work and I'm still not happy with... overall I don't feel like I accomplished a lot today. Best thing would be the oxygen pipes which now retract sensibly when backing into them, and also allow for detaching so your oxygen tank takes over -

Tomorrow I really need to close all this stuff off, because I need to start on proc gen spaceships - that random generation work being something that I know takes a lot of time, and that I traditionally loathe...

End of day 4!

FINALLY have the hud in a form that I'm happy with, and also got pretty much all the game structure done, including win/death conditions and screens, some story stuff, and a final boss fight including some super special scripted attacks, like this AOE that gets larger every turn:

I also got a bunch of scifi tiles ready, thanks to a new purchase on the itch store - there are so many fantasy tiles it's crazy, but sci-fi is severely under represented.

Anyway, tomorrow will be derelict spaceship building, with maybe some content (enemies, items). It's hump day and I'm kind of nervous about time, but at least the remaining tasks are elastic, so I can work more or less on them depending on how I go. I have the week off work so there's plenty of time every day to focus on just this ;)

End of day 5!

I have basic ship layouts working, with a head, body and tail sections (denoted by the markers on the left). The body below is just BSP Node rooms, but I have some other stuff half made that should be complete mid-tomorrow. Most importantly, there is logic for door placement and windows.

It should be reasonably quick from here to start stuffing rooms with features and stuff so they don't look empty (an unfortunately requirement of non-ascii layouts), and then move onto items and enemies. For that I can at least partially rely on existing stuff from previous years but it's always best to keep it fresh and add more in.... I feel like I'm falling behind the deadline though, so I really need to pick up the pace. I guess there's always the final night all-nighter as a last resort...

End of day 6!

I have all the proc gen complete, except for a bit of extra work to randomly scatter damage, gibs and bones about. Here is the above scout ship with rooms full of neato stuff:

Here is how one looks from the ground -

It's not just these small scout ships either, I have 5 types including transport, science, other salvage ships, and a super secret final type you'll have to play to find out ;) Each type is larger than the previous. Tomorrow will be adding in enemies and balancing things.

Ha, this makes me want to quit my own effort :). Brilliant work.

End of day 7 - Sort of.

It's 1am, and I'm finally playing the game - but it needs much more polish and balance work. I actually started the challenge at midday on Saturday which gives me another 11 hours and I'm going to push that through. Next post will be a victory lap though, I know it :)

End of day 7 - For real!

Welcome employee 22195, you are on time for your shift!

Your job today is to clear derelict space crafts, so they can be stripped for metal later...

Payments are made for eliminating threats, rescuing survivors, collecting scrap, and retrieving the black box at the rear of each craft. Stay safe!

Check it out - https://numeron.itch.io/mercury-salvage

End of a weekend of rest! Time for a little post challenge introspection.

To start with, I've released a post-challenge update version to fix one low impact UI bug, and one relatively high impact crash in the AI. Overall a pretty good outcome for stability to have just one known crash after 3-4 days of release :D

For atmosphere and style I think I nailed it - It's been a while since I've done this much pixel work, and I created loads of new terrain types for the sci-fi theme which I haven't done since 2017! There was a point where the gray on gray color scheme everything started looking "muddy" and confusing, especially once I started adding more ground stuff. Navigating rooms started being a bit difficult so I spent a few hours darkening non-passable terrain so at-a-glance the user can see where they can walk without having to visually identify each feature. For example, I went from this to this -

The effect is subtle (note, the walls, boxes and shelves), but makes faster play much easier.

On the downside, I don't think I did survivors very well. The game already has a bit of back-tracking due to the pipes and exploding pods, having to ferry survivors around is another annoyance on top. I had an idea after the submission period to add a keybinding to "send-home" so at least you can send them off and not have to worry. Alternatively they could be hardier to make keeping them on a better option, but they're kinda stupid around explosions...

Even though the pipes contributed to backtracking, it wasn't as bad - I liked them. They introduce hard decisions about completing exploration, it means not all ships can be completed unless you're willing to pay the price in health. I know some players won't like this, but knowing when to call it is an extremely roguelike skill.

As far as longer term improvements in my approach, I learned a lot from watching streams last year (and look forward to doing so again this year), and I was able to implement some simple straight forward improvements to fix troubles they were having...

First off, I found people having issues with difficulty - this is no surprise for a traditional roguelike in modern times, and with my games in particular (I'm pretty good at roguelikes myself so can't really match difficulty to my own skill). So, I supplied normal and easy new game versions, however no-one I saw play would ever take the easy game, even if they were dying over and over on normal - I think likely some form of gamer pride. This year's fix for this was to rebrand easy to normal, and normal to hard - pride issues fixed! The game is probably still too hard overall but at least people should take the easier route this year.

Next was keybindings - last year, despite having "Help" as a menu item, forcibly showing them the help screen on first game load, adding a message to "Press F1 for help", some people still ended up mashing the keyboard in confusion. This year, I repeat the "Press F1 for help" message every time an unbound key is pressed, there's no way to escape assistance now! In addition to that, keybindings are tricky in general. Some users obviously have less traditional RL experience and couldn't handle the numpad, insisting on WASD. I can't imagine how anyone would be comfortable with those wonky keys for diagonal movements, but each to their own - This year users get to change movement bindings right out of the gate (last year I made them available in a post-challenge update).

And I guess that's kind it!

I haven't seen my game on stream yet, but it's loaded up with Tiger J, hopefully to be run through on Wednesday 5.30 EST ;) See you there!