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Working on the apparel the colonists will need to survive on the planet.

Am going to try and add these to the mod..... I believe these are where they bioraptors or other animals come out of when darkness falls.

Who else will be seen in the mod.......
Apart from the bioraptors there will be other species seen on the planet in this mod.

They are planned to be:

- Native human species to planet living beneath surface
- Alien Jackals
- Alien Vultures
- Sulfur Eels
- Mud Demons
- Trison Bulls

The Sulphur eels live in sulphur pools and the eels are edible.
It is planned that the lakes and rivers will be removed and replaced with sulphur pools....if possible.

The planet is littered with the bones of long dead huge animals ...and while these large animals are not in the mod their skeletons will be.

Checking the science.......

In Pitch Black the eclipse would take a long time as a large ringed planet in close proximity to the planet the colonists are on blocks the sunlight and plunges the smaller planet into pitch black. This event occurs every 22 years and the eclipse is long in duration as both planets are moving in the same orbital direction at roughly the same speed.

The longer the eclipse occurs the cooler the atmosphere would become. If the eclipse went for several weeks or several months the cooling of the atmosphere would result in ice age conditions. The bioraptors and other native species on the planet would survive the ice age like temperatures...the colonists would not.

Both sides of the planet are in darkness so no chance the atmosphere would be anything but growing colder.

Based on this, with the clothing Riddick and the others had in the movie, they could not have survived a few days to a week.

In this mod, the crashed ship has apparel for all weather conditions so they will have appropriate clothing for sub-zero temperatures.

Over the next day or so I am creating the suits that will be worn by the colonists.

No idea yet....... will let you know when I get to that stage.

I meant more like, do you think you are 25% complete towards being able to put out a "beta" of your mod, or something like that? I don't need a super exact number, I was just curious of how far along you think you are, compared to what you want to accomplish with this mod

I really have no idea.... have a lot of ideas on what to do with this mod and have no idea if they will be possible..... am working on the mod daily and sometimes the development goes quickly...other times it is really slow.

For example,each tile in the map has 3 light levels:Lit, Brightly lit, and Dark.

This light level is shown in the bottom left of the screen and is followed by  the level of brightness
shown as a percentage ...

In the picture below it indicates where the cursor currently is that the tile is reporting the tile is Lit with 90% brightness. I can fix this by using an eclipse however when I use an eclipse I lose the pitch black darkness.

I have worked out the changes required to fix this ...however when I change the xml files to show my new idea here there is no change seen and it still shows the old settings.

If I did not have issues like this in the development I would have a better idea on how to answer your question.

This is exciting. What % are you until a "semi-playable" build would be ready for release? I'm curious

No idea yet....... will let you know when I get to that stage.

I have enlarged the images for the last 2 pages........

To recreate events from the movie and other events a new Story Teller has been created specifically for this mod........

Fear the Darkness and those that lurk within it.......

When I play this mod the colonists crash and a fire breaks out...... now I can specify the home area where the fire is...but then the colonists will have the fire out in 30 seconds.

To make it more of a challenge, each of the  colonists needs to find their helmets and turn on the light. I do each colonist one at a time ans turn on their lights before going to the next colonist.

When all colonists, except for the ones who are badly injured,have their helmet lights on, then I get them to fight the fire.

This adds a randomness to how big the fire is by the time the colonists begin to fight it.
If you only have 2 colonists out of the 5 who are prepared to fight fires, you could be in trouble.

3 days ago I had a huge problem with the mod where it started throwing up errors every time I tried to load the mod.

I was unable to find where the problem was so I moved the mod to a temp work folder and slowly rebuilt it copy and pasting into a new mod folder.

Apparently the problem is somewhere in the def folder for buildings....... I had been working on replacing the lights and something must have gone haywire .

Anyhow , the picture below is where I am now ......which is where I was in the last picture 3 days ago.

My next step is to look at having the mod not so dark...... perhaps with just enough light where you can see things very faintly....... will test that.

I am also adding in environmental suits for the colonists .......  the problem with this planet is a loss of breathable air during the darkness because the plants are no longer producing oxygen.

I am going to try and add into my mod the need for the colonists to create their own air system.

Surface water is also contaminated so the colonists will need to dig for water soon after crashing on the planet. If the colonists drink contaminated water they will become very sick.

I am looking at making the bioraptors far bigger in size than they currently are.

Testing the new lighting system in the mod...this picture is prior to adding power cables to the lights.
Additional tweaking after some testing may have the light intensity increased while using the lights.

When you start the mod you have limited time in which to setup the power and lighting system.

The aim of the mod is that you then connect the first light to power and then each light after that connects to other lights via a light cable to get their power. Thus having a string of lights going across the map.

The lights running off one power source would be limited in number as more lights added will reach the maximum output of the power source

This should allow research to start to build more lights and energy sources to expand across the map.

My next step in the mod is to add the cables between the lights which would allow cables to be added in the directions UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT.

The disasters in this game continue.....

A ship part crashed nearby and more colonists arrived who helped eliminate the prisoners....that was the good news.

The disaster occurred minutes later as shown below when part of the ship wreckage fell directly on the forest clearing where my colonists were recovering ....... was able to pause the game as the ship crashes directly on the colonists

As Fridge flees east with the prisoners chasing him, drawing them away from the other 3 surviving colonists in bed, I clicked on the Combat tab which showed in detail what was happening in the fight.

Had not pressed the combat tab before so was surprised at what I saw.

In the picture below Kim is one of the prisoners

You can just create a sleeping spot instead of chopping wood and constructing a "real" bed when you want to save somebody in emergency.

That was exactly what I did..... with the rules I set for my games I always opt to building a bed first and only create a sleeping spot if time runs out and a colonist may die.

Anyway the sleeping spot was created , the injured colonists patched up but still in a serious condition in bed, and all colonists now sleeping.

Keep in mind I am trying to test a new addition to the mod and will test it when the colonists awake.

However, as my colonists sleep, another ship crashes nearby and a group of prisoners attack.

Only 2 of my 5 colonists are able to get out of bed, each with a revolver.

The prisoners come out of the darkness and my colonist Redfields is stabbed in the heart and dies. Fridge is stabbed in the torso and falls to the ground.

The prisoners wander away apparently not realising my other 3 colonists are recovering in bed.

Suddenly Fridge gets up and runs..... was he playing possum?
One of the prisoners spots Fridge and gives chase.

While testing the latest additions to the mod my colonists face dire trouble.

Ida was first down as seen in the last post......she has been bandaged but is unable to walk and is confined to the bed.

Ortega is in the remaining hospital bed and has two and a half hours before she dies.
Lilith is lying on the ground with  hours left to live.
Redfields is trying to save Ortega and Fridge is cutting a tree for wood for another bed.

The problem is that one of the girls on the team is about to die and there is nothing that can be done to save her.