Hello, and welcome to our final steam update for the Beta milestone!
In case you missed it, a couple of weeks ago we talked a bit about the sounds behind Outpost Rhea, showed off 'The Hydroponics Lab' track from the game's OST, and teased a new track, '"Routine" Maintenance' to be released once we reach 200 Twitter followers:
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, if you haven't already, if you wanna hear the full track.
Beta Progress
The past couple of months of updates have been heavily focused on SFX, Music, and Voice Acting. With Gold milestone fast approaching, we figured it's long overdue to talk again about progress on the actual game. Back in early April, we discussed our Journey Into Beta, and outlined a series of goals:
- Major Puzzles connected by spaces that are sufficiently detailed and make reasonable in-universe sense to be there.
- Critical bugs are minimized to reduce programming workload leading to launch.
- VA Casting completed for all Major and Minor roles, with Major roles recorded and pending any required script changes/re-recordings.
- Player and Puzzle-specific SFX recorded, most ambient and other non-priority sounds pending.
- Testing data on puzzle difficulty and readability ready to inform possible changes.
With our internal deadline for Beta coming up, now seems like a perfect time to talk about these goals, and how the team feels we're progressing towards them.
Music, SFX, and VA Casting and Recording
We've spoken at length about our sounds the past few updates, so to keep it brief here - We're pretty happy with our progress on this front. - Not only is our entire VA Cast decided, we've also had the game's OST in the final stages of production with Simon, as well as a varied range of SFX coming in for specific puzzle and environmental elements aboard the station.
Puzzle Functionality
As Beta has progressed the past few months, we've made a concentrated effort on puzzle functionality. As it stands today, each of our major puzzles is playable and solvable within a vacuum. You're probably asking "What does that actually mean?" though.
Let's say we were to drop you into one of our puzzles as it is right now, with ZERO context, ZERO clues, and ZERO guidance. Just you and a bunch of random puzzle elements. Given enough time, you'd probably be able to work out specifics and complete the puzzle, but it'd take a lot longer than what we'd like for the final product, and you probably wouldn't have too much fun with the guesswork.
At the end of the day, the puzzles are "solvable", but are missing a lot of quality-of-life and narrative features that'll make them launch-ready. As we continue to get our VA Audio implemented in-engine, the gap between now and Gold will steadily close.
Bug Fixes
As you might come to expect in any software field, bug fixing is a steady and ongoing task. But on the programming side, we're feeling pretty good about the state of things. Since our patch to the demo at the end of March this year we haven't encountered any serious issues with Networking, and despite the occasional small issue popping up in testing, things are looking and feeling good. Although, speaking of testing...
Testing Data
We've been discussing how best to tackle a few elements of testing, particularly focused on "Fun" testing - Making sure the puzzles as they are right now are fun to play and solve. - Admittedly, we haven't had much opportunity to see the puzzles played by third-parties so far. Something we're aiming to remedy as we move towards Launch.
Originally we had planned to have some testing data before the end of Beta production, however, this hasn't really panned out as we'd hoped. For now, the goal posts have been moved back for testing into early Gold production, which will be running from July through to the end of August.
And lastly, you may have noticed I'd neglected to mention the first goal: Connecting the Major Puzzles together...
Environment Glow-ups
A major part of our environmental workflow in Project Regolith is modular pieces. Not only because it makes building areas simpler, but it also makes sense that deep-space construction would be done using modular materials. One of our major concerns though, was that a lot of the station may end up looking too similar and areas we wanted to stand out more would blend together with others.
Our solution for this was to adjust the workflow slightly, and also split our pieces into a couple of categories - One that fits the more sterile and industrial elements of the station, such as the Engineering department or Maintenance areas - And another that feels a little more livable, suited for more "Civilian" aspects of the station.
In a couple of rarer cases, we've also got more purpose-built areas that don't fit this modular mold perfectly... But we'll save those for another update.
For now - Here's a peek at this workflow in action with some work-in-progress lighting with the Hydroponics puzzle found in the Steam Demo:
Ultimately, we're a lot happier with the cleaner style of the new area. We're excited to share some more progress shots of the space as the lighting is improved and we move closer to launch. And if you preferred the older look, not to worry, plenty of other areas will be maintaining that more industrial modular style!
And with that, today's update comes to a close and so does the Beta milestone! Next time we'll be talking a bit more about our goals lfor the Gold milestone, and what that'll mean for the project! 'Til then, you can get more updates and content on our socials!
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See you in Gold!
- Ryan