Forensic Friday 43: Steam Page Under Review!
Another Friday another Forensic Friday! This week won’t be as long as the the previous weeks, partly due to one of the devs taking a week holiday, and the other one (me) taking a week holiday the week prior. So it has left us behind of schedule by a week. That sucks! But nothing a few weekends of overtime can’t fix (help us). Any ado, this week has unexpectedly become a week of optimisations, polish and getting the steam page ready. You guys only care about 2 of those things, so onto the newwwwwwwws!
Communication System #
I initially started the week on the communication system, which was one of the final major systems at the tailend of the overarching gunplay system. However, a few issues arose with the power system which had to be addressed, and it eventually snowballed into a few days of refactoring, optimising and crying myself to sleep. In that light, the communcation system is done, just not fully tested. By next Forensic Friday, it should be done, code and graphic wise, and I’ll be able to show it off proper.
For now, I’ll just say it involves NPCs using radios to talk to eachother, communication towers to relay conversations, and a communication centre, which contains a console; this forms the beating heart of communication within the facility, and to the outer world. Lose your comms tower, and you may very well lose your entire facility!
Heres a terrible screenshot of how you’d construct all this.
I promise by next week you’ll get some nice sprite assets in there. But for now bask in the glory of placeholders. I doubt you’ll even be able to tell whats going on in this image (ノへ￣、)
New Walls #
A bit of random news, but we modified the look of walls, they now look more wall-y, I guess? All I can say for sure is that it looks a hell-of-a-lot better than the old walls. Hopefully I remember to stick a side by side comparison below:
Let us know your opinions in the comments below… Yep, we won’t let you forget its a thing!
These are how the walls look like in an actual build, barring the old regions still present in this screenshot, but anywho!
Dots, Dots Everywhere! #
NPCs now transform into circles when you zoom out far enough. Freaky! This is partly to save rendering overhead, since why the heck are you gonna be looking at NPCs that far out anyways. Jokes aside, It also actually gives more information! Especially when we introduce the raid system in the coming week, you’ll see some red dots hopefully ; )
3D Placements #
A newwww feature, and a very much needed one, 3D placement. Poles are no longer 2D objects that confusingly look taller than they are; but now are actually 3D. Awesome if I say so myself. Now noone will be able to avoid multiple floors. Mwuahahaha. Again in all seriousness, it will probably be peoples first exposure to the fact that our game has multiple floors, which is something that is important to communicate!
Take a look at a video of it in action!
Pinnable Lenses #
Lenses finally have made it back to the game, and they can also be pinned to the top of the screen. Very small feature, but a relic from the original UI! Nice to see it with a fresh lick of paint… talking about paint, tune in next week for some interesting features concerning… well paint.
Heres a screenshot of the pins, you’ll get an idea of how it works I’m sure.
Steam Page Under Review, and Screenshots Finally! #
The biggest news of the week! The steam page has been sent off for review. This means in 2 days or so, we will have a public steam page. Very exciting times. I wish it was up now so I could tell you all to wishlist, but alas, we must wait. I can show you what the page looks like with screenshots below though. Keep in mind this screenshots are very much placeholders, and will almost definitely change. However, they are probably good enough for now…
The very same screenshots can be found on our website too. They don’t match up with the labals, but who’s looking…
Also take a look at the library capsule (it’ll show up in your steam library when you have downloaded the game 👀)
Case Closed #
Thats all the new I have for this week. In summary, we are behind. Time to ride this burning ship of sadness. But anyways, another day another dollar, we’ll catch up by next week. Time to shelve this case file, and close it for good. As always, thanks for reading, present and future peoples. Have a great morning, afternoon, evening or night. Perhaps I should just say “Have a good day!” (or night)…
Case Closed.
The Team
Plasmarc Studios