Forensic Friday 38: Steam Page Incoming
We’re back! Well, almost at the very least. With university finishing for both of us, we’re prepping for another Summer of hard work, and are ready to try and pull off significant progress. The “almost back” is down to some technical issues, where my computer has been taken in for repairs which makes development that much more challenging, and catching up with University friends for the last time before going out into the working world later this year. However, since it’s been a hot minute since we last formally put out a blog, we can give a taster for what to expect this coming summer!
Steam Page Incoming #
We’ve had this in the works for a while now, but we are making steps towards getting our own steam page - finally! [Barring the unlikely event that I get extradited to the US for incorrectly filling out tax forms] We should be able to list Containcorp within the coming weeks. We are still in the process of researching the best way to set up the layout for the page, and will be dedicating game development hours to the process - there’s no point developing a game for 3 years if no one is able to find it ever… This will likely involve new promotional footage of what we have developed so far, as well as some newly handcrafted promotional material, some of which can be seen below! Keep an eye out 👀
Consistent Blogs Everywhere + Youtube Revivial #
Next is something we’ve been neglecting for a while - social media. While we created social media platforms for the game a while ago, they’ve mainly been gathering dust - case in point look at our last blog post date. Therefore, in the spirit of a summer revival, we are planning on changing our workflow for how we do blogs. The blogs on discord will stay exactly the same, but we’re planning on also publishing them on Patreon, Reddit and the still in the works website. After checking, the last blog post on Reddit was 2 years ago 💀 - feel old yet?
Our other social media platforms, such as Youtube and Twitter are also in need of a breath of fresh air. We’re planning on bringing out more consistent videos mainly centred around lore, and just a general larger social media presence which has been largely lacking up until this point! It already sounds like a lot of work but there’s more…
Return of Mechanical Mondays #
Our possible fan favourite blog will be making a return, in a slight different form than previously. We’ve mentioned in previous blogs that with hindsight Mechanical Mondays were extremely stressful to put out. With the poll result being taken on Friday and a document expected by Monday, we spent large amounts of the weekend - which were intended for R&R - to write to the best of our abilities to bring anomaly ideas to life. However, this just isn’t a good long term plan and burnout was inevitable.
Therefore, Mechanical Mondays will be working similarly but with a few key changes. We will be employing a biweekly schedule, so that a poll can run from Monday to Friday, and then we have another week to build up the document. This does mean that there will be less documents than anticipated by the eventual game launch, but is a necessary change, and will hopefully improve the quality of and hype for the document releases! We’ll catch you in a few Mondays’ time!
The Website #
You may have noticed that our old website is up and running again, thanks to @Nick Karaolidis. However, the redesign of the website is still happening behind the scenes, and is very close to completion. With the current page, there’s no way to actually access the wiki, so our aim, as said in FF31 is a landing page, home for our dev blogs, wiki for game and anomalies, links to Kickstarter, mailing lists, other projects and most importantly this discord. Depending on how the launch of the steam page goes, we may not need mailing lists but the details and “what ifs” can wait.
The Updated Roadmap #
- ~~*FF28 - 30th DEC - Fixing Technical Debt
- FF29 - 6th JAN -Bodypart Refactor //=== Start Working on New Website ===//
- FF30 - 13th JAN - Technical Debt: Overhauling UI
- FF31 - 20th JAN
- FF32 - 27th JAN - New Features: Money and Grants, Guards
- FF33 - 3th FEB
- FF34 - 10th FEB - New Features: Prisoners Expanded, Gunplay
- FF35 - 17th FEB
- FF36 - 24th FEB
- FF37 - 3rd MAR*~~
- FF38 - 2nd JUN
- FF39 - 9th JUN
- FF40 - 16th JUN /=== NEW WEBSITE FINISHED BY NOW ===/
- FF41 - 23rd JUN /=== STEAM PAGE UP BY NOW ===/
- FF42 - 30th JUN - Start: Anomalies Foundation Work
- FF43 - 7th JUL
- FF44 - 14th JUL - Start: Facility Raids
- FF45 - 21st JUL - Start: Water/Flooding, Manager NPCs
- FF46 - 28th JUL - Milestone: All features now in place. Start: NPC Staff Expansions Doctors. Research System
- FF47 - 4th AUG
- FF48 - 11th AUG - Start: NPC Staff Expansions i.e. Janitors/ Cooks
- FF49 - 18th AUG
- FF50 - 25th AUG - Start Final Gameplay Features: Start work on AI Storyteller and first 6 anomalies.
- FF51 - 1st SEP
- FF52 - 8th SEP
- FF53 - 15th SEP
- FF54 - 22nd SEP - Start: Mod support
- FF55 - 29th SEP
- FF56 - 6th OCT - Polish: Tying game together into a playable product, Achievements, Continue modding
- FF57 - 13th OCT
- FF58 - 20th OCT
- FF59 - 27th OCT
- FF60 - 3rd NOV
- FF61 - 10th NOV
- FF62 - 17th NOV
- FF63 - 24th NOV
- FF64 - 1st DEC
- FF65 - 8th DEC
- FF66 - 15th DEC
- FF67 - 22nd DEC
- FF68 - 29th DEC
- FF69 - 5th JAN - Pre-Alpha Testing: Open up to a small group of testers to play through the game.
- FF70 - 12th JAN - Validation: Adjusting game design, balancing, bug fixing, streamlining.
- FF71 - 19th JAN - Pre-Alpha Testing Round 2
- FF72 - 26th JAN - Validation Round 2
- FF73 - 2nd FEB - Pre-Alpha Testing Round 3
- FF74 - 9th FEB - Validation Round 3
- FF75 - 16th FEB - Pre-Alpha Testing Round 4
- FF76 - 23rd FEB - Validation Round 4
- FF77 - 1th MAR - Pre-Alpha Testing Round 5
- FF78 - 8th MAR - Validation Round 5
- FF79 - 15nd MAR - Kickstarter: (No matter the state of the game by this point, we will run Kickstarter)
Case Closed #
With that, it’s time to close this case. It does feel good starting this again, and hopefully this summer can be where most of the work needed for this game can be completed. We want to be realistic about progress, and it’ll probably be quite slow as we get things sorted out, but hopefully we can build up some steady momentum!
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and as always…
Case Closed.
The Team
Plasmarc Studios