After the poll about how much I should post and devlog, I’ve decided to stick with the weekly(or twice a week) devlog posts summarizing the most important things done.
Some of these devlogs will be public, others will be exclusive for patrons, depending on the kind of info I put inside. (By the way, I’m starting the official game design doc for Quartz, and I’ll share that with level 3 patrons too.)

So this first week was super creative and fun. I have my mind full of different ideas to try and test, but everything takes time to prototype or research.

Let me just paste name a few here, in case you missed them before

1 - testing the idea of analyzing a rock which the player picks from the floor

2 - testing simple but fluffy clouds

3 - testing the automatic Level Of Detail(LOD) mesh adaptation

this will be quite important because the game world is so big and I want to keep performance really good even in older computers

4 - testing flying in the balloon

I’ve got to tell you, flying in an hot air balloon is awesome :D

Balloons will be used to travel from island to island and also a way to explore things from above (binoculars included :D)

5 - I’m also experimenting different topologies for the terrains in the islands.

In all the videos and gifs above, the terrain goes up and down a bit randomly. But I’m considering using a more “layered” approach.

It will probably fit better with the artistic style I’m looking for. Not decided on this one yet.

6 - Caves / mines

I didn’t want the game to be limited to gathering surface rocks. But I also don’t want to go the minecraft way of doing things. So I’ve began studying a way to have caves/mines inside the ground or mountains, where the player can enter and explore a different environment, potentially finding different rocks than on the surface.

This also brings the question about the camera view. I’m not decided if first-person or third-person view. Thirds sounds better, but in caves and in the balloon, first-person is way cooler. Would it be too odd to change inthe middle of the game? Or should the player be allowed to change at will?

Right now I’m going to dedicate more time to research and filling out the game design document. As we begin to detail more aspects of the gameplay, objects available, etc, it will become easier to start developing the first prototype.

First demo prototype

As soon as I begin working on something even barely playable, I’ll be doing periodic builds for my Patrons to play and test, if they want to.

Apart from that, I’m aiming to create a demo/official prototype of the game (with little features), to be available around April/May. With it, I hope to be able to gather more interest in the game and perhaps find sources of funding besides my own wallet. I have my hope up, otherwise I’ll have to do the art my self, and we all know it can’t end well :P

I’m super enthusiastic about this game, and I hope I’ll be able to translate all these ideas in my mind to an actual playable thing! :)

Thanks for reading!