#windbetweenflowers

Wow, I am honestly touched, I’m so happy that I was able to inspire you to re-pick up one of your own projects! Thank you for sharing, that seriously makes my day! (Thank you also for the very kind words regarding the UI and overall theming!!)

So, Gamemaker definitely has the capacity for programs (as opposed to games). A notable one for me would be Pixel FX Creator, which IIRC was done completely inside Gamemaker 2. That being said, from what I understand, Gamemaker’s access to PC files is quite limited due to its sandboxed nature. There are ways to get around this, but these are quite limited and clunky to use. Furthermore, if you want to do data processing, the data structures within Gamemaker are quite limited - the lack of multi column sort and complete lack of merging functions come to mind - means you will have to write them yourself which can take time!

Because you are after a dashboard and (I presume) data and file manipulation as well, I would very much suggest a language that has good data processing capabilities and access to command line (MS-DOS) functions. I have had good success doing a lot of file manipulation (at my work) using programming languages with this capability, and my thoughts immediately turn to either Python or R depending on your needs. Python is VERY flexible, although R does data crunching better. Gamemaker’s strength is that it can do UI and compiled programs very very easily - however if your project is for your own personal use and does not need distributing, I would definitely recommend Python or R at a first glance - have a read up on their basic functionality and see if that’s a good fit.

AWWWW you guys!! you’ve got me feeling all warm and fuzzy, thank you so much!! these are all super sweet.

@mywitfailsme hell yeah homie

Hey there, thank you!! You know, you’re absolutely right about colours - I come from a vision science background and I’m actually really ashamed I didn’t think of that myself. Doh! I feel like currently, people who are colourblind would have a pretty hard time with the interface, because all the light reds/blues/greens are the same luminance. So any sort of colour blindness of those colours is going to make things difficult.

Thank you for the colour suggestions - because I am converting all of my assets to white and then shading them in game with the relevant colours through a colour generating function, it should be super easy to have a switch in the options that makes that function output the colours you suggested rather than the ones I am currently using.

Wow, thank you very very much for the kind words!! My goal for this blog was to give people an insight into the day-to-day life of my game development, as opposed to just promoting a finished product. I’m glad you’ve found it interesting!

In terms of your question, there have been a lot of things that have inspired me - I’ve always loved RPGs and science, and one day it clicked that I could combine the two into something pretty unique! I think like a lot of gamedevs, you have an idea of this dream game, a game that you’ve always wanted to play that would scratch this amazing itch, but sadly doesn’t exist.

For me, that game was a sci-fi rpg where you could get lost in the universe, collecting and crafting many many items, building up your characters exactly how you wanted them, and getting more powerful as you progress forward. The other aspect was having a really comfy home base that you could take with you on your adventures, which also be upgraded and used. Some games that KIND OF get there, but not quite, are things like Infinite Space, Drox Operative, SPAZ, Rebel Galaxy, Strange Journey, Etrian Odyssey, etc, but none of them quite do exactly what I want!

The other part of your question, what do I like most about the game, is an interesting one! I haven’t really thought about which aspect I like most, but I can tell you I daydream a lot about the setting - what sorts of structures have been built and abandoned, races that have existed, the AI factions that have come about by various means, and the robots that make them up. I keep thinking about events that could have happened during the period that your character was in stasis and how they have shaped the current universe. And I also think how the main character must feel, being the last living thing in such a hostile, alien universe. I personally find it to be a super interesting setting, and I really can’t wait to start writing more lore and designing more enemies!!