I’m currently working on implementing spacecraft upgrades, a task that takes a bit longer than my targeted release cycle of one month. However, I do need to keep working on graphics. One location a month is the goal, which will get me to all major locations having their dedicated background graphic that I need for the steam demo in march next year I currently aim for. If I leave them all until last, I’ll be running into a motivation problem, because graphics are not exactly my forte. I’d also run into a creativity problem, because shoving out one of these a month is already pushing my capabilities of visual creativity. I just don’t have that much of it to go around, and a couple of weeks to recharge between each is essential to the process of not making them all look too similar.

But if I’m already doing one of them a month, I might as well go ahead and release them as I make them. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get some feedback on them! Wouldn’t that be a thing… In any case, this means that I should be able to release at least an update with a new graphic every month, even if none of the other developments are release-ready yet.

Plus I said I was going to add an article to the Codex with each release to start conveying a bit of lore around the game. This months article is about the Big Bust, the economic catastrophe in the early 21hundreds that basically breaks the world, so I can remake it into something that suits the game and saves me from having to delve too deep into real-world geopolitics and culture. This is very important, as it effectively hides how little I know about this stuff.

The article might have ended up a bit too long, consisting of 3 sections. I’m sure if I ever get the opportunity to take this thing commercial, I’ll have to go through all those entries and start weeding out non-essential stuff, but for now it is what it is.

The emperors palace

But you’re probably more interested in the new graphic rather than the article. So here it is:

As always, you’ll have to right-click and open in new tab to see it in full resolution. I don’t want to complain too much about a service I’m getting to use for free, but really Itch, it wouldn’t be that hard to slap a lightbox into these posts. You already have it from the title page, after all!

Be that as it may, this is Huanggong, the massively overengineered shipyard the Huangshan Union intends to conquer the solar system from. It is an investment into the future - a rather too big one, many are saying. But the Huangshan Union has a destiny, one of the most effective driving forces behind human endeavour, and one of the most dangerous and volatile things any large collective of human beings could possibly acquire. And so they built Huanggong in the unshakable faith that they will not come, but go boldly, and lay claim to what has not been claimed before. And to what might have been claimed already too, for good measure.

It is not the largest station currently in the game by dimensions, nor by population, but its central zero-g section is the largest pressurized single structure outside earths atmosphere - Not even on the moon have they built such huge monoliths. Of course, they never did so predominantly because they think it’s a bad idea…

You will find plenty of work here, as well as excellent services for spacecraft, but the accommodations might leave the more extravagant wishes unfulfilled. This is not a hotel, nor a colony like Argosy, nor a diplomatic hotspot like Empyrean Core. This is an industrial complex, mostly filled with workers on rotation complaining about the smell in the dorms because personal quarters are a luxury reserved for management.