// Part 1 - Space Trading Gamejam Game

TLDR; I've started working on a space trading game for a gamejam inspired by Trade Wars 2002. This post covers the initial concept and prototyping of the planet menu systems.

> 2023-10-01

> I've started working on a little space trading game inspired by trade wars 2002 for a gamejam. I'll be using this space as a devlog, any feedback welcome.

> first thing I did was capture the main gameplay ideas that I wanted to include

> then I started to paper prototype the menus and options for the planet menu

> I've been putting together a small gui library for personal dev tools that I'm leveraging for the UI. It uses a grid splitting layout pattern, a widget tree, and callback enums for events

> that code builds the main menu

> next, I used ai art generation tools to make some placeholder background art, which may end up being the final art, not sure, just need something that plays the part and looks good enough to keep me motivated to finish.

> since they're ai generated I can't copyright any of those, feel free to use for your own projects

> it took me about an hour to iterate on prompts to get those. the spiral galaxy picture was color tweaked in Krita to get the feel I wanted

> next I worked out the planet population resource functions in excel and simulated the growth/loss over time

> once I worked out the equations, I built the population menu with simulated population outlook. You can click on the sliders to change job proportion and see and updated outlook

> here's an animation of the menu in action

> at this point I'm 1.5 days into the jam, which ends Nov 1st: jam website

> making some headway on the manufacturing menu now

> next I worked out the planet population resource functions in excel and simulated the growth/loss over time

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