Hey everyone!
Today isn't your regular update... it's a really big totally not joking even though it's April 1st update. No really, it's all very honest. Maybe we're the fools? Here's what we're talking about this week:
- The We Happy Few Steam page is now up!
- We're coming to PAX East! And changing up the pre-alpha for April.
- T-shirts and posters for Kickstarter backers are almost here!
- Super awesome dev updates
Steam page
We are glad to announce that the official We Happy Few page is up on Steam!
"That's the great thing about the wishlist. You don't have to remember! It notifies you when the game is released on Steam. Ha ha ha. Downers."
- Uncle Jack
Thank you to everyone who shared the news on Twitter and on Facebook - it's really helping us to spread the word. Please continue sharing the news with your friends and family, as adding the game to their wishlist will be the most efficient way for them to get notified of the release :) And, as you know, spreading the word is the biggest hurdle we have.
For those of you who have access to the pre-alpha, you can now upload your screenshots directly to Steam! Others can marvel at your photographic genuis. And, if you're a regular Steam user, feel free to drop by and hang out with us on the Steam forums :)
Kickstarter Rewards
We are also really excited to announce that the T-shirts and Posters for Kickstarter backers will soon be on their way. They are currently in production, and we're hoping to have those finalised and ready for shipping by the end of next week. As a reminder, the box sets and other physical rewards will take longer to ship, as we will still be creating art and music for some time to come.
For all Kickstarter backers with physical rewards, please make sure that your address is up to date inside BackerKit! This is really, really important, as we don't want to send things out to the incorrect address. If you have any questions or concerns, email us at [email protected].
PAX East 2016
PAX East 2016 is in 21 days and we are going to be attending! We have gone a bit ridiculous this year, and really hope to see you guys at booth 9148. It's going to be something else.
Last year we met a lot of amazing fans, and many of you have been following us closely for over a year. The feedback and encouragement you have given us has been immensely helpful. We can’t thank you enough, and look forward to catching up with you this year.
Stay tuned for a blog post with more details about what we have in store for you at PAX ;)
Narrative Team
Alex
This week I wrote up another slew of encounters, including one in which we discover how Wellies become Wastrels. I wrote up a bunch of conversations that Bobbies can have between each other while you’re stalking them. Apparently they discuss boots and food a great deal, but you might learn one or two things about the world if you listen. We’re prepping for our big recording sessions next week, where we hope to get quite a lot of encounter dialog with multiple actors in England, drawn from, I am told, a theatre. Let us know if any of the new dialog, once it’s integrated, sounds stagey.
As you know we’ve been working on a “death and dying” update. Naturally, that calls for Arthur to have an obituary. Because we are quite mad, the obituary for each cause of “going on vacation” will have a few different bits of Arthur lore; all of which requires a bit more thinking than writing.
In my copious free time, I’m continuing to work on Mad Scotsman’s playthrough, editing the cutscenes. We’ve discovered that some scenes were not adding enough to his story to justify their existence, so we cut them, and I’m weaving the remaining scenes back together. That will take a little new dialog, a new encounter, and some environmental cues.
And, I’ve been looking for someone to video us at PAX. I think I’ve found a good guy. Hopefully you’ll see some nifty updates.
Meanwhile we’ve been discussing and designing the new multiplayer mode. Obviously we can’t have players just talking to each other with headsets; they won’t have the right accent, generally. To keep the “voice” of the game we’ll probably have to use some sort of system where players can select barks from a range of prerecorded responses. In keeping with our overall ambitions, it should be a pretty wide range of responses. Once we implement full body awareness, players with motion capture rigs (like a Kinect) should be able to communicate by gestures, too. We won’t have any of that ready for PAX, but maybe soon after. So far, we’re primarily testing multiplayer in the Linux build.
Design Team
Vince
Hello everyone! I didn’t update you guys for the last two weeks, so let’s do a little recap! I did a few simple encounters named “Record locations”. They are basically normal Garden District houses, but once you progress to a certain point in a certain quest, those 3 normal looking houses will now Wastrels with updated dialogs and a new chest containing quest items. It was simple in terms of layout, because I’m just using any old Garden District house. The challenge was to actually spawn new Wastrels with custom behaviors.
Next on my list was pretty much cleaning up after Shawn made new level art for all the Garden District houses. They look a lot more “inhabitable” now, and much less brown. Unfortunately, changing a lot of stuff in these houses caused a few problems, but I’m always here to clean up everything. No worries, everything is working fine now! And looks much nicer too, thanks Shawn!
Finally, I did have time to, at long last, work on an awesome encounter I might’ve mentioned before: hallucinogenic salad. There was also new art for this house, and since it’s a Garden District house, I had placeholder VOs to add, new animations. It’s one of the best parts of the level designer’s job: put everything the other team members made together and being the first to play it and see it all unfold. It’s always very gratifying for everyone to see all their hard work come to life.
The next best step to this is actually watching you guys play it and enjoy it (hopefully) when it’s all done ;)
Art Team
Marc-André
This week I've been working on tweaking the new filler generation system in the Garden District to remove a lot of bugs I’ve encountered. Bugs such as floating wooden planks in the streets, missing rubble piles and foliage. A lot of decorative objects have also been added to the buildings to help embellish the area.
Emmanuel
This week I was transformed into an ugly old grumpy goblin and I was placed underground where I had the task of shoveling piles and piles of feces in order to get better loading times. I was able to get my head of the ground for a few hours to make a new CubeMap :')
I have been doing mostly “under the hood work” a.k.a some optimisation:
Shawn
The past few weeks I have been focusing on the interior houses in the Garden District of Wellington Wells and a few of the encounter areas. Most of this work has been going in and furthering the look already in place. More high class stuffiness! A lot of my focus previously was outside of the editor so it has been fun to get my hands dirty in engine again!
Bug showcase
It’s 5 o'clock somewhere
Hatchman
Lovely day for it
Thank you for tuning in!
Compulsion Team