Game by Terry Dyer


## Description
In SpacePanic, you are an astronaught stranded on a small planet with broken equipment. To get back home, you'll need to repair your lander's engine, but be careful! The other modules, an oxygen drill and an equipment repair station, have also broken down. Traverse the planet and mine ores to gather the resources you need. *Just don't get too greedy...*

## About
The game was made in Unreal Engine for a practice game jam, but remains to this day one of the best projects I have ever made. It also has a [PICO-8](https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php) port in development

## Play
>[Click here to play the original game!](https://itsterrytheberry.itch.io/space-panic)

### Or

> Download this early version of the PICO-8 cartridge!
> 
> ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1016463705401200705/1419856387386904718/SpacePanic.p8.png?ex=68d347ce&is=68d1f64e&hm=b7e80596d205ca4e1ff958ac364f3496db4f359017fd885fa6a313d5f9a73d1d& "Right click this image and choose 'Save As...' to download the game")
> 
> To download & play:
> 
> 1. Right click and save the image above to your device
> 2. Load the image into PICO-8 (If you do not own PICO-8, you can load it into the free educational version [here!](https://www.pico-8-edu.com/))

A simple space game for the UF practice jam 2023.

SpacePanic

TerryTheBerry

So today I made ores only start the explosion countdown if the lander's engine module is 50% repaired or more (with, as of now, a 100% chance to occur). I also made said ore spawn a geyser at its position, just like the original game does.

Quite a bit done today!
- Timer now resets on death
- Ores mined will now start the timer if it has not yet begun (temporary)
- The lander can no longer be opened from the southern hemisphere
- The planet's atmosphere will now slowly fill with hot fumes as the planet explodes
- Ores and other objects will not spawn within 10 units from the poles
- New "geyser" object (pictured, nonfunctional)

Today I got some more work done on the timer!
It now ticks down every second, has an outline, blinks red below 30 seconds, puts a leading 0 before 1 digit seconds, and made it kill the player when it reaches 0
I also made the death screen stop the drill sound if it was still playing

No progress on the music track today. But I did revisit the planet shading. It’s a little more accurate now, though still not perfect. Additionally, the flip side of the planet now has the right side shaded as well. I also began work on the timer displayed on the HUD

So today I took what I had in 1BITDRAGON and remade in it Logic Pro. Its coming along much nicer, but its still really rough. It will be a while until I have something worthy to present here.

So tonight I started to re-compose a song "Flight Of Fire" from Space Panic, as I never quite liked how it came out. It worked in game but something just feels missing.

One of the best parts about the game is how it creates a feeling of being calm in a high-stress situation. The track does not do that at all, so I wanted to remake it, and then make the PICO-8 version afterwards.
I've only started a little bit, but I think I want to make the song in Logic Pro instead of 1BITDRAGON

Today I basically just made some slight tweaks to the planet shading, and then disabled it. Its a bit nicer now, but its more or less the same

Quite a bit got done today!
- Strafing over the equator now works just fine
  - This is actually because I have changed how the southern hemisphere works, where the direction no longer needs to be updated when crossing it at all
- Wrote a very basic (and largely broken) shader to draw the dark side of the planet. Not... entirely sure what its doing, but its doing something kinda-right ish

So I made some critical changes to the coordinates system today. Specifically, the lower hemisphere was rotated (not all too important, but it is now consistent with a map I made, for reference) And it is also __no longer possible to get stuck out of bounds when crossing the equator.__ *Strafing* over the equator still results in the player facing the wrong way on the other side, and thus sort of bouncing around the equator instead of crossing it, but at least you don't clip out of bounds.

So today I got a few things done:
- Reduced token count of the movement system from 80 tokens to 32 tokens (48 saved!)
- the lander is no longer directly on the north pole, but slightly in front of where the player starts
- Swapped X and O buttons in gameplay: X-drill, O-Open lander / map

Today I did two things: I fixed the issue with the win screen offsetting the main menu when it goes away, and there is now a toggle in the pause menu to change the control mode.

So now all thats left in terms of the past few day's issues is just getting the drill sprite to visually better represent movement direction

Today I made the old movement system work again when "mousemode" is false, which means I now have a value that determines the input mode! I still need an in-game toggle though

So today I finished off the multi-directional movement. I haven't optimized it token-wise, nor added a toggle yet, but its at least in the game

So today I made a rough "code sketch" if you will, on how to get diagonal movement working. I basically am just checking every combo of the D-pad buttons, not great (especially token wise) but it may have to stay. Only forwards is working right this moment

Good stuff today!
- The title on the main menu is now perfectly centered
- The game now supports MouseX input for turning, and WASD for movement (including strafing)
Current issues:
- Strafing over the equator causes the player to be lost out of bounds
- Laser drill hand animation no longer works as intended

A couple changes today: The "total points earned" statistic has been removed due to it overflowing often (PICO-8 max number is 32767) and I also added a selection icon to the main menu (ignore the weird title alignment, I'll fix that soon)

So today I finally got the planet's rendering to work on multiple radius values! Here we see a radius of 50. I also fixed an issue where different radius values caused objects to be offset in certain directions (looking head on at the lander would cause it to render on the left side of the screen instead of the center, for example)

So what have we learned? well the exact moment it finally was working, I realized I could have just... slowed the player movement. but whatever. Now I have to put up with number overflow (objects on the other side of the hemisphere sometimes render up close :/ so that needs to be fixed)

So tonight I took another shot at getting the rendering to work for multiple planet radius values. Well, I got somewhere... not sure where but somewhere. Looks like things are "bouncing" into view? really weird. I'm just kinda throwing "20" and "radius" and seeing where it goes

Yall are never gonna guess what I did today. It will shock you. You've got 1 guess, and then check the spoiler. I guarantee you will not see this one coming.

Thats right! I ||added green stars!||

||-# and saved some tokens||

So tonight I made some slight improvements to the victory theme, and I also made it play on the win screen (while *also* saving a few tokens!)

So tonight I made the 8-bit version of the victory theme! I may change it up a bit still but I quite like it!

Ya'll aren't gonna believe it, but its true.
In the past 2 minutes, I have saved one (1) token. I did this by doing exactly what I said I would do yesterday. I'm a true miracle worker, I know. Incredible (I was busy w/ homework today)

So today I didn’t get all that much done, but I managed to shave off maybe 20 tokens or so? Hardly anything, but the more tokens I shave off, the more I have for later

Lots of visual enhancements today!
- The planet graphic on the Main Menu now has a black shadow
- Saved even more tokens
- Improved menu navigation
- "ABOUT" and "STATISTICS" titles are now (roughly) centered
- Fixed color palette issue on the Main Menu
- Stars now twinkle a random choice of yellow or blue
- Finished the game over track, which now plays in game (8-bit, original included for comparison)
- Improvements to the game over screen

So tonight I started work on porting over the game-over theme, but it's not finished just yet

Today I figured out why particles weren't rendering (I was stupid and didn't properly create the particles table lmao)
So we now have twinkling stars on the main menu. These should be the same star objects used later in game as well, but that comes much later

So tonight I tried to get particles working. IDK why or what broke, as it was working just fine earlier, but right now it is completely impossible to get any particles rendering at all. Genuinely forcing them into the scene and calling draw on them isn't showing up. I'll have to work more on it tomorrow

So today I got a couple of things done, mostly aesthetic but some functional stuff
- The planet on the main menu has been made more detailed
- There is now a statistic for how many of each mineral the player has gathered
- The planet and ores now generate at the start of each game, rather than only once when the cartridge boots up
- Shaved off a few tokens here and there

So today I got the ore generation working completely! In the image you can see an ore that has 1 diamond and 2 iron, and another ore with 1 gold and 2 iron.

I also fixed a few bugs and decided to touch-up the main menu a little bit, + a new sprite for the planet to slap on (ignore the weird lines on the text, I'll fix that later)

Okay, so random minerals in ore deposits is *almost* working!
Per hemisphere of the planet, there are 7 ores, with 3 minerals:
A total of 10 iron, 10 gold, and 1 diamond.

For whatever reason, we are instead getting 11 iron, 6 gold, and 2 diamond. As we all know, 11 + 6 + 2 is not 21, it is 19, so there are 2 nil minerals

So today I made the ores capable of holding 3 minerals inside them instead of just 1, and they also render the minerals within. They do not generate the minerals properly just yet

Today, I made the ore color filter cover over those additional 2 colors, visually undoing what I did yesterday. This just means I can now adjust those other 2 colors as well. I've got a lot of work ahead of me tonight, so just knocking some of this out of the way

Today I just modified the ore texture to allow it to support 3 ore colors instead of just one. This will come in handy when I make each ore blob hold 3 ores instead of 1, which does actually have a big impact on the gameplay

I was tired as crap today. All I did tonight was just put together this little How To Play text on the about screen

So today I just put in a quick fix such that the win screen now works the same as the game over screen

So today I made some small improvements to menus, and used that to make the game over menu take you back to the main menu on an X press. The game over menu no longer stops the cartridge from running

Tonight I quickly made some basic softlock prevention. When the drill is broken, previously you could fix other modules and run out of ore, without fixing the drill repair module. If this happened, you couldn't get more ore because the drill is broken, so you would just not be able to do anything. Now, the game stops you from adding ore into the other modules while the drill is broken

Got a lot done today!
- Updated the diamond item sprite
- Compressed the sprite sheet a bit and saved some code tokens
- Added "about" and "statistics" pages
- statistics, such as *high score* and *ores mined* are now recorded and saved
- Oxygen no longer depletes on the main menu
- Menus now have a designated number of buttons (menus with 2 buttons will not allow you to navigate to button index 3)

So today I added a (nonfunctional) statistics button to the main menu, and made the start button begin the game. I also added a "waste prevention" mechanic, the drill repair module cannot be used when it is ready unless the drill was broken. Previously, you could just fill it up and use it, without any repairs even happening.

Fun Fact: the game (.p8 file attached, if you want to try it) is now around 1/4 of the maximum size I can make it, in tokens. I could do more to compress it, but I wont focus on that unless it becomes an issue.

The game now has a main menu, with a non-functional start button

The drill will now have a higher and higher chance to break with each ore you mine, capping out at 100% with 12 ores mined (may change still)

Today I got the drill to break when the player attempts to mine an ore with 2 or more iron and 3 or more gold in their bag. I will make this a little more random tomorrow

A couple of things today:
- The broken drill functionality has been implemented (although the drill will not break just yet)
- The "ready!" graphics for the modules has been improved, and has a new checkmark icon
- Score now shows in the repairs menu
- Score is now gained for using modules, repairing modules, and mining ores

Today I finished up the colors on the item selector. Green means its ready to be placed in, red means you don't have any of that item, and yellow means you have some of that item left over, but the selected module does not need more of it (yellow means full)

I was oddly productive today, so no time to do game dev stuff really. Just quickly whipped up this improved display for which item you are going to deposit. The idea behind the new green highlight is that, if you want to deposit gold (for example) then you would be already looking at the line for gold that says how much you need. Before the highlight, you would have to look at the selector hint above that display, and double check that you are using the item you want to.

so today I just made a very basic win screen, and also did some rebalancing in the ores. The engine now needs 25 gold and iron instead of 15, there is now 40 gold and iron on the planet instead of 30, and there are now only 4 diamonds instead of 6

I got a LOT done today!
- Mining is now functional, and has a new sound & animation
- New generic rock formations to act as landmarks for the player
- Several HUD changes
- The lander can now be interacted with
  - The modules within the lander can now be repaired. Unlike the original game, you can choose what resource to put in where. The oxygen drill is currently the only functional module.

A lot of good progress today!
- The sky is now darker
- the laser drill is now animated while walking
- Added new "ore" and "lander" object types
- Ore blobs now store a mineral in them that determines the color shown
- The lander now appears at the north pole (temporary sprite)
- Objects now render with the object's origin point at the bottom of the sprite, rather than the center
- Objects can now have a render scale (for example, the lander is upscaled 3 times)

So today I made this new ore sprite! I also textured the planet's surface a bit to make the ore easier to see. Later on I'll add more details to the planet texture and even see if I can get a dark side of the planet going

So today I got the start of some game mechanics going! The oxygen bar is now implemented, drains over time and will kill the player when it empties. I have a very make-shift game over screen right now, but it gets the point across. I also added the new "bag" in the top right, although it doesn't do anything yet because the player cannot mine ores

ITS ALIVE!!!!!
So its technically not working *properly*, as it only works on a planet radius of 20 and what not, but those things can be solved. At the very least, you can see the objects around you now. I'll touch it up a lot later, but for now it's time to move on to the gameplay!

Well, that is certainly not correct, but I'm getting somewhere! Desmos has proven pretty handy for visualizing the problem here. (not doing the thing written on the image yet, that should come later to save performance)

I also shaved off a few tokens

Today I tried my best to get a formula for moving items left and right on screen, but I couldn't get it working. Looks like I'll have to do the math on my own. Fortunately, I did fix up the distance rendering somewhat, so you can see how the item is larger the closer I am, and also stops rendering past a certain point.

So today I fixed a major issue that caused items to be in a location different than where they actually appeared to be, and this means my distance function is now working. I applied it to an item you see in the gif and you can see that its actually scaling opposite of how it should be. My next focus is to get it to scale correctly. After that is when I will get the items to move left and right with the camera rotation

Couple of things today:
- some changes to debug tools, pressing O will now play a sound effect instead of reseting player position.
- "items" now use cartesian coordinates, and are spawned in by converting from polar to cartesian
- Ore generation ("items" for right now) are spread out across the hemisphere depending on the planet radius, instead of having a fixed radius
- Objects are now rendered on screen, although incorrectly

So tonight I made some fixes to how ores (just "items" right now) are spawned into the world, with the code running twice, once for each hemisphere. Ores now store what hemisphere they are on and the debug menu will swap between displaying them based on the player's hemisphere. Finally, I also just made sure to render the objects from the center of the map.

So I was gonna crash out about how we have been making maps for hundreds of years, yet somehow the map of Earth as two hemispheres does not have a name. Thankfully I lost my energy for that. Anyhow, after realizing for the second time that I had made a colossal mistake in how I am mapping out the planet, I have decided to simply split the game world into two hemispheres and simply loop between those two, with the border as the equator.

"true" is the north hemisphere

The map of earth shown is how the game currently is projecting the planet now, except you need to rotate the right circle 180 degrees

Edit: on top of swapping between hemispheres, I also made the map correctly scale with different radiuses (before the hemisphere changes, so the radius might be inaccurate now) and also made looping over what is now the equator much more precise

So today I just tried more to get the stretching working, and I just haven't found it yet. It kinda looks like I may need to swap back to polar coordinates

Tonight I just got the player's movement to warp as they travel in a line that is not straight from the north pole (albeit incorrectly)

So 2 things today. There is now an orange line showing where the player is facing on the debug map, and the player will now loop back to the other side of the map if they cross the border (note that the outer ring is all one point, the south pole.)

A couple thing today

I'm actually abandoning the polar coordinates for cartesian coordinates. I realized my movement system actually was entirely incorrect, and also that the projection of the planet I was going for was much easier if I used cartesian anyhow, so cartesian it is. I still need to account for warping, but that's for later.

Second thing is this very temporary and pitiful sprite for the laser drill

Awesome news! The guy in the answer thread I was reading not only omitted essential parts of the formula, but he also was flat out wrong (when it comes to sphere projection, anyhow. As for cartesian coordinates, he was just regular wrong)

So I'm back to being stuck. Looks like I might actually have to do the *math* myself. And I'm not looking forwards to it.

sooooo polar coordinates kinda suck at transformations. The fact that any possible existing formulas for "shifting/transforming" a polar graph are drowned out in google by "How to convert polar to ___" certainly does not help. I did this instead, as a temporary test. The red dot is the player, and the yellow dots are a bunch of objects placed semi-randomly around the north pole. The player starts at the north pole, and as they walk around, the objects change their position instead of the player (this is what I did for the original space panic, but I don't want to do that with this one, the player should be the one moving)

Its also worth mentioning I'm uncertain if the dots are even moving properly, although I can be pretty certain they probably are.

**SPACE PANIC! DEMAKE**

Okay this was the thing I was talking about yesterday. Here is the original "The Thread" theme, and the p8 one is the one for the demake (its incomplete, gets cut off at the end for some reason, and got messed up by wav->mp3 conversion)

Additionally, you may notice the gif of the map looks a little odd. Thats because the game calculates the player position using *polar coordinates*, such that the map is attempting to project a 3d sphere onto a flat surface. In the gif, I am holding "walk forwards" and "turn left" to walk in a circle, but it appears deformed. This is to be expected because of how a sphere projection stretches the further out from the north pole you go.

I am now planning to make the game in 2d first as a top down map, centering the camera on the player dot, and that way I can move around the game world and see what is happening without figuring out how to do the 3D illusion.

By the end of my work here, the PICO-8 version of the game should have a 3D spherical environment you can walk all the way around, just like in the original Space Panic! game I made.

Today I made a pipe model as a decor object!

So today was some finishing touches on the game, update hopefully comes tomorrow! I fixed some bugs regarding the drill and added a credits/statistics page to the main menu!

Very basic work today, as I didn't have much time. I made a sound effect for the lava spouts (its literally a sink lol) and also made a fun bob animation on the inventory list for when you pick up items. Finally, I made a bunch of different icons for the game on different platforms, including Mac, Windows, IOS (pictured) and appleTV (because I can and my dad wants me to make a game for it idk)

So today I did some minor balancing and made a post process effect for when your oxygen falls low. I made the vignette a sickly purple to kinda illustrate the player is suffocating. I love how relaxing this game is but all of the deaths are incredibly gruesome.

Planet go boom boom 🪐💥 (sorry for awful quality, blame discord)

Today's changes:
- Fixed a weird snapping issue when jumping on steep slopes.
- One point is rewarded for each ore deposited into a module
- Working options menu with "show crosshair" and "invert Y-Axis" options
- Ores now crack as you mine them
- Lander modules now have a little right mouse button icon to teach players how to interact with them
- Vastly improved the drill breaking mechanics. The game now ensures the player can repair the drill before breaking it (previously, it checked if they had the resources to do it, or if they had broken more than 3 ores, which may not have had the resources they need. Now, the game checks what resources are in the player inventory *and* exist as items on the ground)

So today I decided that I *am* going to release an update for Space Panic. I feel that the concept has far too much potential just for the game to be a boring loop. So I did a whole lot of polishing since I actually have the time, and I gotta say, just the one extra day allowed for some huge improvements
- Added a crosshair (I have design choices against having a crosshair in this game, but I'm thinking about it being an option)
- Carrying capacity increased 4 > 6
- Added a score counter at the top of the screen
 - Dying now saves your score (no 500 point bonus for escaping though)
- Vastly improved drill breaking mechanics (previously it was a punishment for the player, now it's inevitable but only occurs after an ore is broken, rather that randomly while the laser is being fired)
- Increased and improved player movement
- Balanced slowdown mechanic from low oxygen
- Some bug fixes

@Michael I think you are the one who's "hosting" the game jam right? I've heard you like the shorter 48 hour ones, but I think it might be worth reconsidering this, seeing how much it can make a difference. obviously its not my place to say anything though, and I'm planning on participating regardless.

Congrats to everyone else on their game jam projects! If I had a way to run them I'd love to try them.

So today I finished up Space Panic! for the UF game jam. Here is a video on YouTube that has a compilation of the game's full development https://youtu.be/ZXBwWkWJXEs

Game is done :D or at least the "game" part! I still need to add the main menu and a death/win screen, and all that stuff. Also glad I executed the "impaired" theme in a way that isn't "your drunk"

Lots of stuff today! its all in the video. One of the biggest things though is the theme for the game, "The Thread" which is probably one of the best tracks I've made so far (also the longest, at ~5 minutes)

Got a new planet model, laser drill model, animated the hand, made an oxygen bar, added lava and randomly spawning ore deposits

SpacePanic

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