Well, well, well… long time no see!
It’s been a hot minute since we last caught up, but no need to fear – I’ve not gone anywhere – just a mere change of posting schedule. We can go into that later though, for now let’s just get straight into the meat and potatoes.
A Long Overdue Paint-job
The first cool new thing on our agenda is a complete overhaul of the graphical user interface (finally!) which you will find in the below image. Do note however, it is still very much a work in progress, and is nowhere near complete. The overall look will most certainly change many times throughout development – but the general theme and aesthetic will persist (Industrial, mechanic, decayed, grimy, etc).
Quite the refreshing change from the old boring grey, wouldn’t you say?
Whilst not yet complete, nor final, I think this revamp really does bring the scene together far more than what we’ve been staring at all those prior months. I’m personally quite happy with the art direction I’ve managed to land on too, and feel like it’s rather fitting to the setting of the game. You may notice that the buttons, sliders, and text fields are still placeholders – with the panels themselves being the only noticeable change – but rest assured, I plan on adding custom sprites for all the interactive elements too, eventually.
I will be posting regular updates as I continue to work on the UI, so stay tuned for more as time goes on. In the meantime though, let’s check out some of the other cool new things.
Nice Tats, Bro!
That’s right, tattoos are now officially in the game! Whilst I do still have to iron out some kinks here and there, for the most part, the masking overlay system is fully functional. This means that both tattoos and skin details now act as proper overlays for each individual limb that they apply to, allowing for huge amounts of customisation and variety for both players and NPCs.
Funnily enough, the tattoo designs you see above were actually my own designs from around 10 years ago – back when I wanted to become a tattoo artist. They’re taken straight out of my old portfolio, and I definitely wouldn’t have thought that, all these years later, this is what they’d end up being used for lol.
The next new addition I’ve been working on adding is eyelid variation. This new category actually replaces the previous head shape category, as I’ve come to realise that having different head shapes is actually perhaps not such a good idea. Why, you ask? Well, imagine there are 10 different types of heads, and now think about how these 10 heads would have to work with every combination of facial features, face paints, headgear, glasses, facial wear, and so on. Yeah… it’d be a nightmare lol.
If this were a 3D game? Piece of cake. For a 2D game though? Absolute disaster.
Imagine having to draw 10 different variations for every single piece of gear in the game, and not only the work that would put on my plate, but also for every single modder who wants to add their own helmet, glasses, bandana, gas mask, or whatever. Not ideal in the slightest.
What is ideal, though, is that around the same time I had this realisation, I also realised I hadn’t yet allowed for proper representation of Asian ethnicities. For a game that places character identity and individuality as core selling points, this just couldn’t fly.
So, I went ahead and made the switch – and here we are. In the image below, you can see the current progress on the two eyelid variants (standard and monolid), though the new version still needs a bit more refinement. I want to approach this thoughtfully and make sure it reads as genuine representation, rather than slipping into exaggeration or unintended stereotypes, so I’ll be taking the time to get these details right.
So that’s where we are at. It’s around this point that I’d usually give some kind of estimate on how long certain things may take to finish but, if the previous year has taught me anything, I am terrible at time estimation lol.
What I can say is that character creation REALLY is nearing completion now, so let’s not jinx anything and just leave it at that.
New Year, New Plan of Attack
The last order of business for this month’s dev log is to explain my recent change of schedule – as I’ll now be posting monthly logs rather than fortnightly. The reason for this is twofold.
First off, having now spent a full year working on this game, I can’t help but feel like all I really have is a glorified character creation system (lol). And yes, I know, it is considerably more in-depth than a regular 2D character system, perhaps even excessively so, but the point still stands – 12+ months and still no gameplay to show for it. Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s not to sit here and wallow in self-pity, but rather to segway into my main goal of 2026 – which is to make a shit-ton more progress than last year. Plain and simple. This year I’m kicking things into sixth gear, and part of that is trimming all the excess tasks and re-routing that time solely into development.
Secondly, I actually went back and read through many of my old logs recently and, whilst I do like the sound of my own voice, I feel that many of last year’s logs somewhat bordered on word-vomit. That’s not to say that these logs don’t necessitate high word-counts, since they definitely do, but rather that many of the logs could have easily been combined rather than separate. Monthly logs not only solve this issue, but also better synergise with game development since, realistically, some weeks are just more interesting than others. Therefore, if I allow for four weeks of progress between each log, then that will provide the highest odds of actually having something interesting to talk about – meaning less verbal padding overall.
So that’s what the whole schedule change is about.
A Worthy Shout-Out
One final thing I’d like to do in this log, is to give an honourable mention to some all-time classic sci-fi literature.
These stories were all written by different authors, and published at different times throughout the 20th century, but many of them had significant cultural impact in the world of science fiction – as well as on my own creative writing. Indeed, many of Stellar Wasteland’s quests and storylines, of which I am currently working on, will take some inspiration or another from these classic stories. For this reason, I feel like it is absolutely worth mentioning them here, not only to give credit to the authors, but also to share these works with you – as you might enjoy them just as much as I have.
Left to Right: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream – Harlan Ellison, The Lottery – Shirley Jackson, The Final Answer – Isaac Asimov, The Screwfly Solution – Raccoona Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.), The Fly – George Langelaan, Harrison Bergeron – Kurt Vonnegut, Scanners Live in Vain – Cordwainer Smith (Paul Linebarger), There Will Come Soft Rains – Ray Bradbury, Bloodchild – Octavia Butler, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas – Ursula K. Le Guin, The Veldt – Ray Bradbury, The Girl Who Was Plugged In – James Tiptree Jr., Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes, The Autopsy – Michael Shea, Second Variety – Philip K. Dick.
The selection above includes some of my personal favourites, many of which resonate with the themes of Stellar Wasteland (or the other way around, technically). I would highly recommend you check out some, if not all, of these stories – as most are easily available online and are roughly a half-hour to an hour’s read.
It’s also worth mentioning, that whilst ‘The Lottery’ isn’t really Sci-Fi by any definition of the word, I still think it deserves a place amongst this list. Seriously though, do yourself a favour and read some of those stories – just don’t expect any happy endings.
There we have it, the first entry of 2026.
I think I’ve gone on for long enough though, so I’ll save you the last minutes rambles this time ’round.
I bid you farewell, and I’ll see you in the next log.
Don’t miss me too much!
