Season's greetings to our community!
As 2024 draws to a close, we want to express our gratitude for our community’s support and engagement. This has been an important time for PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, marked by the launch of Preface: Undiscovered World and the announcement of Prologue: Go Wayback! Sharing our work with you has been exciting and, honestly, nerve-wracking, but the community’s interest, feedback, and enthusiasm have made it all worthwhile. Thank you!
We’ve prepared a packed blog, reflecting on what we’ve achieved and sharing a glimpse of what’s ahead. And for those looking to try out Prologue: Go Wayback! we recently announced our second playtest, you can RSVP in our community Discord.
Preface Updates
Reflecting on the Launch
It has been just over two weeks since the launch of Preface: Undiscovered World. Just long enough for us to catch our breath. As many of you know, Preface is a challenging concept—both to build and to understand. Not a game, but a tech demo showing an in-development technology. And the early feedback from the community has been invaluable, even when it was critical.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2820060/Preface_Undiscovered_World/
While the Steam reviews leaned negative overall, this was expected given the tech demo’s early state and the complexity of communicating what the project is, especially to gamers looking for a fun time, or an impressive showcase - neither of which Preface is intended to deliver. However, we don’t want to attribute all challenges to misunderstanding. There’s always room for us to better articulate our vision and make our ideas more accessible and we are still learning more about this.
On a more positive note, the Preface community on Discord has been a source of constant inspiration. The conversations, insights, and camaraderie there have been incredible. Upcoming are some of our highlights from the Discord modding community on Preface.
Community Highlights and Mods
Our community has shown impressive creativity with Preface. Here are some standout contributions:
Planet Radius Mod by Dor: Dor discovered a way to modify the overall radius of the planet. Interestingly, the radius change operates independently from terrain height or object density, leading to unique effects. For example, making the planet slightly smaller increases the density of objects like trees and rocks, while shrinking it significantly results in dramatic and surreal changes to landscapes and gameplay.
Speed Mod by RoboDanjal: RoboDanjal increased character movement speed after deducing where user preferences were stored. By examining the reset_preface.bat file, they located the mebla_user_preferences.sqlite database within a Melba folder. Using DB Browser for SQLite, they successfully modified these preferences.
Ray Tracing Activation by YoyoGavri: By exploring the game files, YoyoGavri managed to activate ray tracing and temporal anti-aliasing on their 10700K/3070 setup, showcasing what’s possible when diving into Preface’s hidden potential.
We’re continually amazed by what you create, and we’re eager to see more in the future.
Introducing the GlobeUI Tool
As a modest holiday gift to our Preface community, we’re releasing our own mod! The GlobeUI Tool. This tool allows you to generate waypoint links directly by clicking on the virtual globe, simplifying navigation and interaction. This tool isn’t ours, it’s for the community: We’ve open-sourced the code and released it under an MIT license. You can find the repository here. Feel free to explore, adapt, and build upon it!
- Here you can find the interface to create deeplink using 3D Planet.
- The repo of the above, under MIT license.
A New Open-Source Shader Project
In addition to the GlobeUI tool, we’re excited to share an open-source shader project we’ve been working on. This shader is designed to help you achieve dynamic lighting effects, and we’re looking forward to seeing how you integrate it into your own projects. More details will be available soon.
Prologue Updates
Discord Playtest and Focus Group Feedback
We’ve been fascinated by the Prologue playtest and focus group session - ongoing at the time of publishing, but just about to wrap. We can already tell that the written feedback and survey responses offered by players interacting with the early build will shape how we develop the game moving forward. Your honesty and creativity are shaping Prologue in real-time, and we couldn’t be more grateful.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943740/Prologue_Go_Wayback/
We will take a close look at the results of this week’s playtest after the holiday break. And you can expect to hear from us then for a deeper discussion of what we have learned and how we plan to move forward. For now though, we wanted to acknowledge one of the leading positives and one of the leading negatives that we have sensed in chat.
- On the positive side we are over the moon that players have reacted well to the immersion offered by our machine-learning generated terrain and dynamic weather. The love of landscape, and respect for the incredible complexity of the geological and ecological systems that (alongside many others) underwrite it, are at the heart of our studio vision.
- Feedback around the interaction points with the game systems has been more middling. And particularly this is linked to the extent to which the game world prompts players and gives them feedback about their actions. The playtest has taught us alot about this, and we’ll have more to say later about how we intend to desiin more intuitive and engaging interactions in the game world.
These are just preliminary notes and we will return in the new year with a deeper dive into what we learned from this week’s playtest.
Highlights from User-Generated Content
One of our favorite parts of the playtest has been the community’s awesome screenshots. We wanted to take a moment to appreciate a few of the coolest moments from the playtest:
We loved this image that photographer Mr.Greasy described as “beautiful and brutal” - words that might well make it into our marketing text!
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There is a favourite screenshot of ours that we won’t publish! TeZ was our first winner ever, a historic moment! He made it to the end of the game and posted a shot to prove it. But there will be no spoilers here of what that looks like. Alongside all the top 5 finishers, we’re sending TeZ a special limited-run tshirt.
One of our first playtesters, aeqnx, grabbed this beautiful shot of the woods with the sun peaking through the canopy.
Thanks again to all our playtesters, the insight you have offered is invaluable in shaping the future of Prologue: Go Wayback!
Looking Ahead to the New Year
Prologue: Go Wayback has big milestones ahead in 2025.
- First, we’ll be talking much more about Prologue. Look forward to a series of blogs from our Creative Director Scott Davidson discussing everything from the vision to the nuts and bolts of the game.
- Second, we’re thrilled to announce that the second playtest is scheduled for early next year. The week of Feburary 3rd, to be exact. This will be an opportunity for more of you to get involved, and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts. You can RSVP for the playtest in our community Discord.
Happy Holidays
As we wrap up 2024, we’re reminded of how essential your participation is to everything we do. Whether it’s engaging with our releases, contributing feedback, or experimenting with mods, community has been at the heart of our progress. There’s always a fun conversation ongoing and we’re always open to more feedback, join our Discord to get involved.
From all of us at PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, happy holidays and best wishes for a wonderful new year. Here’s to more discoveries and innovations in 2025!