Attention Officers,
Thank you for joining us for the 60th edition of our biweekly development briefing, September 22, 2023!
Today, we have some important details to cover in the form of a Public Service Announcement regarding the game's ongoing development process, and technical reasons for a lack of public build updates as our many departments work effectively towards delivering you all the 1.0 version of the game. In this process we will describe avoiding development crunch, maintaining efficiency, and a technical perspective that represents the challenges our currently rapid and all-enveloping development progress presents for releasing incremental public updates.
It's all about forward momentum rather than perpetual Early Access, and we will see this project through to meet you all at its many future successes and a mature, complete stage. We are incredibly pleased with the progress we’ve made so far, and although we're sorry about the absence of recent incremental public build updates, we appreciate you all continuing to stick with us so that these exciting game changes can be released together once 1.0 eventually arrives.
(Note: The term “incremental update” refers to a public build that is released as an update in-between major milestone development versions of the game. These public builds contrast with development builds of the game, which are not yet released)
As we discuss examples that illustrate this development topic, you will also find substantial new work-in-progress content throughout this briefing!
All-Enveloping Development Progress and You
Ideally, we'd love to provide you, our playerbase, with as many public builds to play as possible. However, due to our current progress there are currently interconnected and inseparable challenges with doing this based on our status of a rapid, all-enveloping game development focus over this period in preparation for the 1.0 release.
Examples of some such interconnected challenges that result from this progress are outlined in the section below; the main point is that we are in extremely rapid development of many different interdependent systems across the game, and to ship an incremental update would require effectively halting, reverting, and synchronizing fragments of our forward progress at a critical moment winding up to the larger 1.0 release.
An All-Enveloping Example
In this hypothetical example, let's say we plan to release a public build as an incremental update that contains the new level, Coyote, for you all to play.
As previously mentioned, we've been working on every single aspect of the game— from revamped SWAT AI (to be showcased at a later date!) to extensive UI/UX overhauls/additions. They're not compartmentalized into any "group" where we can just cleanly export them to a public build in isolation from the rest of the development build features.
This means that at this stage of development from a technical perspective, adding the new Coyote level would require us to also add all these other features in some form:
- First of all, we need to provide you with our new AI spawn system and AI improvements. This means a lot of polishing, subsequently taking time away from our current pre-content 'lock' focus and therefore delaying full release. This sort of content-lock roadblock taking away from our current development priorities is a trend for all the remaining bullet points below.
- ("Pre-Content lock” refers to a point in time where we solidify existing features, stop adding new ones, and polish them for a new release).
(Image below: A slice of Coyote’s current WIP version)
(Image below: Some of Coyote’s WIP AI points of interest)
- We would need to provide you with all our new Coyote level characters, most of which are still pending character rigging, and one or two are still being developed in the art stage.
- If we don’t do this, we would have to use generic models as placeholders, which would create a dull experience without the desired character variety.
(Image link below: WIP new character models for various levels)
https://imgur.com/a/S24iKZC
- We also need to provide you the new Quantum Sound System, without it, audio would not work properly in the public build
- We need to provide the new level select system.
(Image below: a WIP example of the new level select system)
- We'd need to provide you with the new customization system, weapon select system, Station Lobby, audio tracks, and items that are tied to each system. Many of these are still in the later stages of development, yet they are by no means ready for a public build.
(Image below: views of just a couple areas of the new Police Station)
- Furthermore, we’d need to provide the briefing menu, interactive tablet, briefs for each level with voice acting, maps, and media details.
(Image below: tablet view of a new map)
- Next, we'd need to revert all other changes specific to this development build, and then fix any issues related to linking old systems with new systems (e.g., all the new UI code gets reverted, but code that has already been written in for that purpose in other areas also has to be rewritten and fixed).
- Lastly, we would need to then spend at least several weeks ensuring a solid Quality Assurance pass has occurred, testing an adhoc game build that will be almost entirely different from its intended proper state in 1.0.
- - -
Further Meaning and Forward Momentum
Metaphorically, releasing incremental updates during this phase of the development cycle is like tearing down a house, rebuilding it halfway with improvised parts, furnishing it, and then tearing most of it down again to rebuild the ‘final’, largely different house that we are working towards.
Releasing updates when this massive, interdependent development is going on creates an unsustainable strain on the team, effectively causing us to crunch and redo old work just to release an update.
Our goal is to release a strong product that we can continue to update post 1.0. Making sure our team is working effectively, love what they are doing, and love what they are working towards is something we see as critical to our process.
That's important, and we’re doing it with the technical limitations for public builds and momentum in mind. Our ultimate goal is providing you all with a complete experience that will enhance the game’s quality, replayability, and will naturally keep you coming back for more as we push new updates post 1.0.
Conclusion
We have tons of great content and fixes in store for you all, but we hope this briefing paints a better picture of the technical limitations for why we cannot release it in incremental public builds while we work spanning every area of the game towards the 1.0 release— to the end of Early Access.
Before we go for now, here's a glimpse at a new level with the image below: a beachfront home where the events that may take place contrast the pleasing, cosmetic view of a distant pier and rolling waves.
This concludes our 60th development briefing. Be sure to tune in next time for more development news!
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