The KEPLER sprint brings us ever closer to Early Access / Games in Development. It warmed us to our core to see such excitement about the release date of the open beta for Sunless Skies. While there are still many new bits and bobs being worked on for the Reach and a some new tasks for our next region, Albion, most of the work we’ll be focusing on from now until the 30th of August will be bug finding, fixing, and feature polishing. Oh, and extra, triple, quadruple checks to make sure that space feels spacey enough before you lot burst through the gate into the High Wilderness.
ART
One of the new pieces art has been tackling is a bonafide art pass on the chart, or in-game map. Whilst we are always amazed and entertained with what the developers produce when implementing the functionality of the chart, after that's been finished art add their creative polish overtop.
Paul created the chart, focusing on ensuring it fit the branding and art direction within the game. There was a brief glimpse of what we imagined it might look like in the Kickstarter Trailer, but actual implementation has to consider the functionality in-game. This is only the first-pass, and we're sure it will evolve over time as we receive player feedback.
Meanwhile Tobias has been checking off many of the ambiences and icons that'll be needed for the Reach. In terms of characters, he's covered The Turbulent Fabulist, Prudent Secretary and Parsimonious Chairman. He's also been busy on the core stats icons and icons for character progression.
CONTENT
Content have started an overhaul of quality assurance (QA) testing, which for us includes both testing the mechanics work as intended, but also editing the text where necessary. As they encounter bugs, they then of course work to fix them. Our entire content team works on this, along with Caolain and Lesleyann.
Chris also worked with Liam to set up and fill out the content necessary for the locomotive equipment that will be in for the Early Access launch. Each piece of equipment requires an icon as well as a little bit of fiction. This also goes for our bat scout!
GAMEPLAY AND DESIGN
Meanwhile in tech-land, Sam has started to dig into tasks that improve our content management system (CMS). These tasks range from small improvements like fixing preview images to larger tasks that allow the content team to work with a our CMS more easily as the add content to the game.
Mac accomplished the loot implementation, completed locomotive dock loading, and fixed a variety of bugs. These ranged from faulty must-events to Hunger not being reset at ports to many smaller issues that our very helpful Alpha testers have reported!
Adam and Caolain have continued working on the AI behavior for our enemies and sky-beasts, including Chorister bees and Scrive-Spinsters. Adam has also been making adjustments to player armament and player-locomotive lateral thrust to ensure the movement within the game feels 'right.'
Launches are production's baby, so Lottie has spent a lot of last sprint finalising our Steam and GOG pages and making sure we're set up correctly technically—things like enabling different Kickstarter backers to get their appropriate in-game content, and making sure our distribution channels are clear so we can easily update with any new content later down the line. She’s let us know that this is “SURPRISINGLY COMPLICATED.”
In order to make pre-launch as stress-free as possible Lottie has also focused on providing a clear plan of attack and acting as a repository for all last-minute tasks discovered in the run up to our final build. This leaves developers free for that final phase of polishing which makes such a difference to a game.
Lottie also also worked with our composer, Maribeth, on Albion's music, so we’ll have a head start on our next region of the game.
We won’t be doing a FBG podcast in lieu of giving our developers as much time as possible to work on Sunless Skies before the 30th, but you can expect us to be back on Twitch the 1st of September at our usual time of 16:00 BST!