Fossil Sweeper - minesweeper meets palaeontology (was Bonesweeper)

Another month, another devlog! Over the past month, I've mostly been focused on Dig phase environment background work, making snowy mountains look like snowy mountains, sandy deserts look like sandy deserts, and beaches look like beaches, but this video gives focus to the effort and thought that the game's composer Peter Silk put into the soundtrack.

Some of the new Dig backgrounds are visible in the video, but to highlight the impact changes are having, here's a comparison with a screenshot from June. Look at those distant hills ^_^

Very late mid-month Fossil Sweeper progress update video. Still got a ways to go, but dig site environments are feeling like they're coming together.

Working on updating grass has been fun. I was surprised at just how far I could push my original texture by copying it a few times. I need to come up with some optimisation strategies in order to make full use of these, but I've got some ideas that I'm looking forward to playing with.

Running very late with last month's video - other projects and dumb admin stuff sucked up a whole ton of my time, but I managed to make a start on chat integration

housatic I haven't been very loud about it so far, but I'm getting close to a point where I need to start thinking about marketing

Very late again this month, but slowly getting on top of things! Coordinate labels and more chat integration stuff this time

Another very late one! Still haven't found my cadence - still going to try to get the next one out before the end of December so that I can say I got on top of things before the end of the year >_<

More chat integration work, this time iterating on Assembly phase chat integration to find something that's readable and fits with gameplay

One last update video before the year is out! I've been doing more chat integration work, this time focusing on the Map phase, and I also found time to address a couple of minor cosmetic bugs that I'm glad to not be seeing every day anymore \o/

Finally have the January video out! This time I cover recessing Dig sites for increased readability, a new auto-flag setting that I think will be an important accessibility setting, and adding a couple more chat integration features

Another month, another progress update video! This past month, I've mostly been doing QOL stuff like making it harder to accidentally misclick when your cursor is near the edge of a tile, but this video is a bumper one that looks back on development across 2024.

SkyshipDev Yeah! There are some really fun synergies there - it was a natural progression for me when trying to think about what would a Minesweeper style game would look like if I made it.

Explosions are boring, death as a consequence is boring, unexploded ordinances are boring unless the legacy and impact of them is explored, etc.. At its core, Minesweeper is about searching for clues that reveal the location of things. You're searching for buried treasure, and the most exciting buried treasure is dinosaurs \o/

Nearly on time with this month's mid-month update video! This time, looking at some camera transition stuff, and a bunch of misc work in the Map phase

Refactoring was the flavour of the month. I reworked travel lines, presentation of Dig site icons, saving/loading Dig site data, and a few other bits and pieces

Another month, another progress update video, this one looking at the decisions I've had to make while working on updating the Map phase's globe assets

More map phase work this month. I wrote a little Blender addon to streamline shape key workflows a bit, and I've finally updated Dig site markers to orbit outside the globe when a location is out of view \o/

MikeCL Thanks