Saturday, October 22, 2011

Time Lapse

How do you have a day/night cycle in an asteroid belt?

After much brainstorming, I decided that the star that the belt orbits would be constantly in view.  This would be considered 'day'.  Every 10 minutes or so, a large planet would eclipse the sun and be considered the 'night' cycle.  If you look at older screenshots of mine, you'll notice that any area that isn't lit is dark black.  That is still the case for the night cycle.  During the day cycle, though, blocks are a little illuminated.  The following screenshots show the transition.



"Night" - All darks are black.
Notice that during the day, you can somewhat see the blocks around you.  This will make it a little easier to find the blocks that you need to craft things.

On top of getting this done, I've also got a page full of notes on the terraforming aspect of the game.  I can't wait to get to work on that part since I think it's going to be one of the more 'colorful' things to do.

For now, I'm going to consider the time cycle complete.  It takes about an hour to go from start to end.  In total, the player gets ~33 minutes of usable light.  14.5 minutes are spent in a transitionary stage between dark<->light.  ~10 minutes is spent in nighttime darkness.

Next on the list is biomes.  This code is actually done (I think).  I just need to double check on it.  After that, I need to add 1 more enemy and a loading/saving progress bar.  Finishing those two things will complete .04A.

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