Hello again, chasers! Spring is in full swing, and so is the development of OUTBRK! In this month's newsletter, we're excited to give you a sneak peek at some of the upcoming adjustments to our gameplay systems, including the Camera Module and the Weather Reporting Module. We'll also be showcasing a preview of the new Shop environment, which will be displayed in the background when players will browse the in-game shop for new cars and accessories. We are also introducing a new weather preview development tool to speed up the creation of in-game weather scenarios.
Gameplay Systems Adjustments
After gathering valuable feedback from our players during the playtest sessions, we're making some tweaks on our gameplay systems to improve the player engagement loop.
The Camera Module is getting a refined interface to help with the understanding, and additional features to improve the gameplay loop. The major changes coming to the Camera Module are : All pictures taken now award points, instead of just the best one for each weather element. We also introduce a camera storage limit so each picture is more meaningful and balances the fact that we now reward each picture taken.
By introducing a camera storage limit, we felt the necessity to separate the weather reporting feature from the camera to not waste precious pictures only to create a new weather report.The standalone Weather Reporting Module gameplay loop will be much alike what is currently in-game when reporting with the camera, with a little bit of quality of life improvements : Opening the Weather Reporting Module will show the player getting out their cell phone. If a reportable element is present in the field of view, it will be targeted, and information about the element will be displayed on the cell phone. The player will be able to report the element if it is not already reported by another player.
Shop Environment Preview
Additionally to this, we’re also working on the Shop background environment that will be displayed when players will navigate menus to purchase new cars or accessories. There is still a lot of work for this environment to look as good as we want, but here is a work-in-progress preview :
New Weather Preview Tool
To streamline the process of creating new weather scenarios, we're developing a new preview tool that will help rapidly generate and fine-tune in-game storms. The pre-visualisation mode accurately displays scientific data in 3d, which allows us to verify our generated scenarios to accurately reproduce storm structures and storm evolution over time. This visualization also hints how detailed the data is and how far we will be able to go in improving our cloud rendering in the future.
As always, your support and feedback are invaluable to us as we continue to develop OUTBRK. Please keep Wishlisting the game on Steam, as it helps us break through the visibility algorithm and reach potential new chasers! If you haven't already, Wishlist OUTBRK here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1107320/OUTBRK/
Thank you for joining us on this exciting journey, and we can't wait to see you out on the stormy roads soon!
Till next time, chasers.
-The OUTBRK Team