Started work on more of the utility items for Mercury Fallen. This week so far I finished up the power generator as well as a custom animated shader for cool throbbing power material. The shader uses a mask texture as well as using the internal _Time variable instead of using a script to animate the UV offsets.

The new utility room floor has also been added. I had originally planned on having a dedicated power room, but instead am now having power, water and oxygen generation machines all put in to the same room. I didn’t see much benefit to separating those in to separate room types.

I still have to get power/water and oxygen systems actually generating said resources as well as being used by existing machines, but one step at a time.

So far I’m pretty excited about the look and feel of the game and the progress that I’m making. As a solo developer the development takes time, but it’s a lot of fun to work on.

I’ve been working on a lot of various things for the game and making some great progress with a lot of the core elements. Recently I start implementing the profession system.

Professions

Each colonist can have a designated profession. This controls what actions they can perform other than their core needs such as eating and sleeping.

A colonist will have a starting level in each profession and as they perform work related to a profession they will gain experience. Each level of a profession will improve work speed as well as certain profession specific attributes.

Engineer

Right now the engineer just builds and deconstructs objects assigned by the player. I’m still debating on whether to have a durability to some objects that can be restored/repaired by the engineer.

Miner

This one is fairly obvious, but the miner will mine out dirt/stone/ore designated by the player.

Cook

The cook handles taking raw food from the fridge and cooking it at the cooking station. They will then take crafted meals to the eating table so that colonists, ideally, won’t starve to death.

Botanist

The botanist handles the planting and harvesting of crops to produce raw food as well as materials that can be refined.

Scientist

The main role of the scientist, right now, is to handle research projects. Research projects will unlock additional rooms, object and upgrades.

Doctor

The doctor ensures the health of the colonists. The doctor will also handle cloning and corpse “removal”.

Comm Officer

While the core of the game is under ground, I plan to have the planet surface explore-able by using the the communications room to manage expeditions to points of interest on the planetary map. The comm officer will be responsible for scanning the planet surface for new points of interest.

As the game is still in early development there may be changes or additions to the professions as they stand right now. What are your thoughts on the professions?