Long time no see!
Hello everyone! It's been a while since the last post.
I do want to apologize for the silence. Last few months have been a little more tough and so my focused was shifted a little more towards personal priorities. This did not mean that I have stopped working on the game altogether, but just that the progress was slowed down.
It's a little more difficult to create posts like these on a more regular basis, but what I do use more often is my own personal discord server to talk more regularly. So, if you'd like more regular updates, feel free to join at the following link: https://discord.gg/bJZCtEp
For the future, I will try and post an update at least once every-other week.
(This does not include the Discord updates)
Steam Next Fest!
Station Haven 3's Demo was available in the last Steam Next Fest! Being able to find my own game and seeing other people finding it on Steam's front page has been one huge achievement! Thank you to all who have found the game on Steam's Next Fest and have decided to either play it or wish listed!
Through Steam Next Fest, we have basically more than doubled the number of wish lists! Additionally, around 20% of the people who have played the Demo have also wish listed the game! I am unsure how good stats like these are, but to me, that's absolutely crazy.
If you are one of the people that played the Demo & wish listed, please join my discord or message me directly! I would love to hear your opinion and feedback of the Demo or to listen to any kind of criticism you might have for the game! Any feedback, to me, is good feedback.
Now, it's time to go over some
Teasers
Let's finally go over some of the stuff that's been removed, what's has been done and what's there in the future to come:
What's been removed:
As I mentioned previously, my vision for the full game release is to have a completely separate instance compared to the demo. What I mean by this is that the only things that will really be familiar if you play both the Demo and the Full game will be: the universe, some of the core gameplay mechanics and the story plot ( I hope you paid attention ;) ).
And so, the following has been removed (or reworked):
All cassettes
All "event trigger" locations (if you were grinding for the "That's just my luck" achievement, you know exactly what I am talking about) and their respective event.
All repair locations & repair system.
A lot of assets.
The Manual (⚰️)
Some other things that I'll keep secret for now.
I won't tell you exactly what's been removed or reworked (other than the Manual - that thing has been thrown out into space) so I can keep things a little interesting.
What's been updated (with GIFs!):
Here we will go on both gameplay mechanics, but will also dig a tiny bit into the technical side for those that might be intrigued by that
Gameplay:
All of these are still a "Work-In-Progress". The following may or may not be different in the final game.
New Item Interaction
The player can now pick up random items and carry them around
The items can be taken for a spin by holding down a key and then moving the mouse
New Item Delivery Mechanic (Some of you might see where this might be going already)
Some items are important and need to be brought somewhere to trigger certain interactions.
Only the correct item will work! Make sure it fits.
(I could have probably used a different second item to show what works and what doesn't)
New Inventory System
An easy way to track all the items you have collected throughout the game.
This inventory system will be persistent throughout the game.
The inventory is broken down in 3 sections: Cassettes (they are back), Important and Notes.
Inventory System Interaction
With the Inventory available, you can now pick up these items and have that be shown in your inventory.
When picked up, the item will be shown in its designated spot
This design is intentional and will have its use.
You can click on any items that you have to get a short description for it at the bottom (despite the low-quality gif, it's there).
Better movement
Added jumping
Added crouching
Better walking & sprinting animations
Sounds will now be different depending on the surface of the floor underneath the player.
Save & Load Game systems
Long awaited as it was not present in the Demo and a lot of people have voiced their frustration over that. I did not create a full save system for the Demo as I deemed it to be "too short to matter". This was a mistake on my part
Of course, the full game shall be present with a full and working Save / Load Game system.
Technical stuff:
Updated engine:
Unreal Engine 5.4Unreal Engine 5.6. This update was done for the following reasons:Better Lumen lighting optimizations.
Metahumans.
Better animations.
Overall better performance.
Completely removed level dependencies:
When this project first started, the scope of it was much way smaller. Because of that, I have made a lot of beginner mistakes. Once the scope of the game became bigger, a lot of these issues resurfaced, and a lot of reworking was done for it.
Optimizations for a lot of redundant stuff and a much better optimization focused on running things more smoothly.
The story:
Yes, you have read that right. As time has passed, my view of the story has also become different.
Does that mean that the story presented in the Demo is now non-cannon?
Quite the contrary. The story in the Demo is still as I want it to be, and I am glad to have that out there.
At the Demo's release, I already had the entire plot and story written down.
Now? That story has become barely a 15% in a much, much, bigger story.
What's next?
Well, simply put, more development! But also, more communication. I will try from now on to keep you guys updated on the development of the game and where we are.
The focus in these last few months has been basically on the actual core mechanics of the game and the skeleton that will support everything. So, currently, there's no real "Game" yet available.
Further updates will go into displaying more gameplay updates, but we will slowly start going into environments and perhaps even something else.
And, if you read this far, we can also let you into a little secret:
A trailer is coming soon.
Thank you for reading this far!
That's it for today! Hope you guys had a good read.
Once again, I would be glad to have you in my discord server at the link above or at the Discord button below. I post more updates there.
Until next time!