Dev Blog Entry 1

All ideas, mechanics, characters and story described herein is subject to change or removal.

    This will officially be the first dev log entry for my current project Uagi-Saba. At this point it has been in development for roughly 570 days and it is far enough along that I’m ready to start posting dev logs on it’s progress. For those of you who don’t know about Uagi already, it is a creature care/breeding simulator inspired by the Creatures games created in the mid nineties. Carve out an underground base in a place forgotten by time called Sanctuary, harvest resources and raise/breed creatures called Mystics all with their own genes. All adults are created using a skeletal based animation system in Spine. Each body part and creature stat has it’s own gene and can be passed on to offspring through breeding.

    Uagi-Saba is a solo project being programmed in Game Maker 1.4. I use Photoshop for all artwork and sprites, Spine for skeletal animations and Audacity for sound effects. It was greenlit by my Twitch community a few months back before they removed Greenlight on Steam. I plan to release on steam within the year and a demo version should be available within the next couple of weeks.

This first Dev Log Entry will cover some of the basics of Uagi, I have some catching up to do.

Follow it’s development live on   Twitch

Economy

    When the player starts they have a few cleared rooms in Sanctuary which can be cleaned out. To raise healthy creatures one must first build a strong economy. Clear junk piles for scrap, harvest stone deposits and go through book piles to help increase you starting resources. After empty rooms are cleaned modules can then be built on build nodes or the player can also choose to renovate an empty room into a variety of special rooms that all have their own functions.

 

 

 

Work Force

    Along with breeding Mystics the player must build “Dwellings” to attract the locals, I call these Inhabitants or Inhabs. After a dwelling is built happiness increasing modules must be built first to increase the room’s happiness. After a short time an inhabitant will move in. An inhab can then be converted into an Engineer or a Lore Keeper, if the player chooses no conversion at all a normal inhab will slowly generate essence. Engineers will speed up the charge times of rooms and it will take less time to clear junk and book piles. Lore Keepers increase the chance of finding artifacts at dig sites and also generate lore, the main resource used for purchasing upgrades. Inhabs will eat and drink themselves but the player must have enough water and mushrooms, if not inhabs will become unhappy and leave sanctuary.

 

Mystics

    Mystics are the bread and butter of Uagi, they are magical creatures raised from egg all with their own body part and stat genes. The player must feed them, give them water and interact with them to keep them company.  Every Mystic has it’s own skeleton , each bone a different body part. Each bone has many different versions so each mystic will be completely unique from the last. I will continue to add new body parts even through final release. Body part genes use a alphabetical system to determine which ones become dominant or recessive.

    Each Mystic also has a variety of stats each with their own gene, there are even genes that determine skin pigment. So one player might have a mystic with a light blue tint that lives for only 40 minutes and another player might have a reddish tinted mystic that lives three hours. Natural selection also comes into play here, one Mystic may eat a lot and have a high health decrease and one Mystic might eat very little and have low decreases for all of it’s negative stats. Mystics with bad stats will die out before they can even reach maturity and mate and some will reach adulthood and mate many times passing on their positive genes.