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coastwide.systems
James | CWS 🇨🇦
@coastwide.systems
1.7K followers 2.5K following 680 posts
Game development studio building games for Linux (and other OS's too) using the bevy engine and Rust language.

#linux #rustlang #bevy #bevyengine

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev

https://coastwidesystems.com/

https://discord.gg/Rg8MBJAvu4
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coastwide.systems
Here's a look at an old variant of the shopping UI, don't have a good screenshot of it but this is pretty close to what it used to look like (old shopping has been crashing to desktop so can't get a good screenshot without rolling the code back *really* far)
November 12, 2025 at 11:20 PM
coastwide.systems
Alright, think this is far enough along to show a little more publicly: the new (still WIP) shopping UI for Heat Retreat (complete rework of the old system). Big improvement in my opinion, just don't mind the horrible yellow/black placeholder textures 😆

#gamedev #indiedev #bevy #pixelart
A screenshot of the new work-in-progress shopping interface for Heat Retreat. On the left is a rear view of the pickup truck vehicle type with goods to sell arrayed in the truck bed. On the right half is the shop with goods to purchase arrayed around the shop environment. The shop itself is a simple pixel representation of a table, shopkeeper & brick wall background. In the center of the window is a dialog popup showing the trade interaction: "Fresh Food $12", "You currently have: 10.0 kg", "How much do you want to trade?" and a slider bar to select the quantity, with "cancel" and "buy" buttons underneath. Most item textures are using a placeholder yellow/black square, but fresh and canned food have proper textures closer to final art in place.
November 12, 2025 at 11:18 PM
coastwide.systems
After getting the scroll bar working, I've now got button (keyboard only at the moment) menu nav working! The code is horrific, but works 😅

One step closer to getting full gamepad (and Steam Deck) support working properly 🎉

#indiegamedev #bevy
October 15, 2025 at 6:10 PM
coastwide.systems
Finally got scrolling working! That was... painful. But it's one necessary step closer to getting button (ie, gamepad) menu navigation working properly. Here we have mouse scroll wheel, click & drag, click on the track plus drag, and WASD to navigate!

#indiegamedev #bevy
October 14, 2025 at 8:54 PM
coastwide.systems
Been stuck on getting menu navigation working for Heat Retreat but took a break to chip away at my art backlog - so got something new to show for #screenshotsaturday

And this particular state also has working menu navigation so WASD keys will let you cycle tabs/buttons!

#indiegamedev #bevy
October 11, 2025 at 4:23 PM
coastwide.systems
It's a thing of beauty when automation works; Steam just released a new version of the Linux SDK runtime & my auto updater successfully detected the release, updated & rebuilt my Rust compiler images then pushed them out to my repository! 100% hands off 🥳

quay.io/repository/c...
A screenshot showing the Coast Wide Systems quay.io repo with all the images fully updated by the automated updater.
September 30, 2025 at 10:18 PM
coastwide.systems
Haven't been active on socials with kids sick, back to school madness & birthday parties, but progress is being made on Heat Retreat! A little late for #screenshotsaturday but here's a some of the new updates to the travel scene (in 21:9 this time, doing some ultra wide testing)

#indiegamedev #bevy
The blue hatchback travelling in overcast conditions on a rural road through a deciduous forest, with distant mountains. The UI HUD is the (not final art) dashboard representation for the hatchback showing speed, fuel, outside temperature, date & time, approximate food remaining and distance to next landmark using the various themed widgets. The red pickup truck travelling a very rough dirt road through a desert at night with a crescent moon above. The pickup dashboard is used for the UI HUD showing a stylized representation of game information. The station wagon travelling a gravel road through an evergreen forest with large mountains in the background (recognizable from past screenshots). The station wagon dashboard is used for a stylized representation of the in game information.
September 14, 2025 at 8:36 PM
coastwide.systems
Not too much new visual stuff to show for #screenshotsaturday since I've had my DevOps hat on for the last few days, but here's a work-in-progress shot of the hatchback dashboard

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev #pixelart #indiegame
Heat Retreat's travel scene, using the coast highway background and featuring the blue hatchback vehicle option and its dashboard. As a work in progress it's lacking any detail, but has the "widgets" placed and bespoke speedometer & fuel gauge working A screenshot showing my work on the hatchback dashboard using Aseprite, with a real world reference image to the right
August 23, 2025 at 7:33 PM
coastwide.systems
Milestone last night: first build successfully pushed to Steam! Took some figuring out since I'm doing this 100% from #linux with no automagical packaging or GUI's. Still got some work to do though, my asset packing needs a complete overhaul 😅

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's Steam Library view with the "Install" dialog in context, showcasing that the build is present & functional
August 22, 2025 at 7:19 PM
coastwide.systems
Haven't been on social media much, juggling too many things so took a brief hiatus. But had a big win today, finally got the station wagon speedometer (and fuel gauge) working! Had to dust off my geometry & trigonometry to do it too 😂

#indiedev #gamedev #solodev #bevy #pixelart
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's travel scene, showing the station wagon on a coastal highway on a hot, sunny day with a few clouds. The lower 1/3 is the new UI being featured, with a stylized wood panel dashboard in line with the vehicle's real world counterparts. The speedometer is showing a speed of 50km/h, odometer 121.4km, fuel around 3/4 of a tank and there are a variety of "widgets" arrayed including a generic digital thermometer showing 23.9 C, a 90's calculator watch reading July 15, 2025 9:34 am, an old smartphone taped up informing there are 78.6km remaining to the next landmark, and an ubiquitous yellow milk crate giving an estimation of how much fresh/canned food is remaining. There's notable empty space to the right reserved for future, player obtainable upgrades.
August 19, 2025 at 4:48 AM
coastwide.systems
First pass at getting the travel state "food meter" in! Simple low/med/high visual for fresh & canned food ("high" fresh & "medium" canned here); for more detail players will need to pull over & check supplies.

Visuals need tweaking, but so far so good I says

#indiegamedev #solodev #pixelart #bevy
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's travel game state, showing the 1950's red pickup truck travelling down a coastal highway on a mixed cloud & sun day. The UI consists of a stylized dashboard in the style of the truck, with widgets displaying additional info: a digital thermometer taped on for temperature (showing 28.1 C), 90's calculator watch (July 15, 2025 14:05), an old smartphone taped up showing distance to next landmark (12.0 km), and the dashboard's speedometer, odometer and fuel gauge showing their respective information (50km/h, 188.0km travelled and slightly over half a tank of gas left). The new additions are the open glovebox (empty for future additions) and ubiquitous yellow milk crate containing a variety of fruits, vegetables, meat and canned goods representing the quantity of fresh and canned (ie non perishable) food the player has remaining.
August 6, 2025 at 2:37 AM
coastwide.systems
Wow, woke up to a lot of new followers today! Hello everyone! ❤️

Didn't get too much done on Heat Retreat this weekend but here's a couple more shots of day/night (which is simulated based on lat/lon/date!)

And join me on Discord for more discord.gg/Rg8MBJAvu4

#indiegamedev #solodev #bevy
August 5, 2025 at 5:52 PM
coastwide.systems
Been a hectic day/week & feeling like I haven't made enough progress on Heat Retreat, so took a moment today to look at some before/after screenshots

Still got tons to do, but I've accomplished quite a lot these last couple weeks even if it doesn't feel like it

#indiegamedev #solodev
August 1, 2025 at 11:33 PM
coastwide.systems
Dashboard is coming along 😀

Just got the "phone" widget in (cell towers are down, so phones have limited use), showing the distance to the next landmark (GPS is ok still)

Plus that classy 90's watch to display date/time 😏

More to come, but it's slow going...

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev #bevy
July 30, 2025 at 10:21 PM
coastwide.systems
Several late nights & a complete re-work of the travel UI code (long story), but I finally got image rotations working! Still got lots to do, artwork is nowhere near complete but it's nice to see *something* working 😆

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev #pixelart #bevy
July 26, 2025 at 7:00 AM
coastwide.systems
and here's an earlier WIP video 😆
July 18, 2025 at 10:50 PM
coastwide.systems
This ended up being incredibly aggravating, and there's room for improvement, but got lightning effects in now 🎉

I've also added a settings menu option to disable the white "flash" effect for accessibility (parallax can be disabled too)

#indiegamedev #solodev #bevy
July 18, 2025 at 10:49 PM
coastwide.systems
Alright, I put the cloud transitions on the backburner for now & am getting to work on the rest of the weather implementation: next up was precipitation particle effects! Needs polish, but pretty happy with the results so far 😀

#indiegamedev #solodev #bevy
July 17, 2025 at 9:33 PM
coastwide.systems
Well you've prompted me to add a social media cheat sheet to my game design doc so I can keep track of everything, solo dev'ing has my brain feeling like runny eggs most of the time 😆
A screen shot of my "Game Design Document" in AnyType, showing the addition of a social media "cheat sheet" for Bluesky where I keep track of tags & (eventually) other important notes for game related social media posting. Listed is the title "Bluesky" followed by the header "Tags" and a list of toggleable dropdown items including #feedbackwanted, #gamedev, #indiedev, #solodev, #bevy, #rustlang, and #pixelart. The feedbackwanted dropdown includes a quick summary reading "Inlcude the word 'game' in the post to automatically get add to 'Game Dev Feedback' followed by a link to the feed.
July 17, 2025 at 4:47 PM
coastwide.systems
Hmm, I need some opinions on these cloud transitions... I've tried a few things like "sliding" in the next texture but it looked pretty bad IMO (note: the rapid fire change are for testing, weather in the game won't be quite so spastic) 🤔

#indiedev #gamedev #solodev
July 17, 2025 at 6:47 AM
coastwide.systems
With day/night fixed (mostly), I've been working at dynamic weather! Too buggy for a video right now, but the weather simulation is working* and loading in the correct new cloud textures!

#gamedev #solodev #indiedev #pixelart #bevy
A screenshot of Heat Retreat's travel system, with new cloud textures being loaded in by the just implemented dynamic weather system. The current weather is "Cloudy" with puffy white clouds, the sun high in the sky at noon-ish, and horizon cloudline transitioning to ocean and beachfront. In the foreground is the game's red 50's pickup truck travelling to the left on a highway in good condition with a dark grassy foreground. The UI is still the simplistic dev HUD showing date (12:48 pm July 15, 2025), Temperature (26.3 C), Food quantity (10.9kg), Fuel (1.7L), Weather (Cloudy), Distance travelled (442.9km), and distance remaining to the next landmark (97.1km)
July 16, 2025 at 11:30 PM
coastwide.systems
Turned out one of my bugs with the phases was a missing moon texture, so thought I'd fix up some of the details while I was at it
A screenshot showing the Heat Retreat night sequence with an updated moon texture overhanging the beach at night with the red 50's pickup truck on the highway, the simplistic dev UI showing it's 11:36 PM July 15, 2025, temperature is 15.1 degrees Celsius, with 7.0kg of food remaining, 15.3 litres of fuel, an inactive "party health" of 0, 326.4 km travelled and 2703.1 km remaining (not the "real" game map distances)
July 16, 2025 at 4:13 AM
coastwide.systems
This was painful to edit (videos are not my strong suit) but here's a sped up look at a day/night cycle test for Heat Retreat (moon cycles are still buggy, it's a WIP). Goal is to have realistic sunrise/set and moon cycles/phases (almost working!!)

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev
July 16, 2025 at 2:21 AM
coastwide.systems
Been working a lot on under the hood stuff lately, plus dealing with a tech-pocalypse right now, so for #screenshotsaturday best I can manage is some WIP of updates to Heat Retreat's travel state

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev
A screenshot of the work in progress "dashboard" UI element for Heat Retreat's pickup truck, with a partially done Aseprite drawing on the left and a reference image of a 1950's red pickup truck dashboard on the right A terrible drawing of my work in progress mockup of the Heat Retreat travel UI update, used to plan out the new UI. Barely legible, it shows my early thinking to place & plan out what information to show the player, necessary UI buttons and possible art direction
July 12, 2025 at 7:14 PM
coastwide.systems
And for context, here's the old settings menu 😆
A screenshot showing a primitive volume selection UI A screen shot showing a primitive version of Heat Retreat's settings UI, with black buttons for "Display", "Sound", and "Back" over a small red node background and dark gray base layer
June 23, 2025 at 11:44 PM