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Forensic Friday 64: Starting the Year, Finishing up Hiring

Hey Readers #

Welcome to the first Forensic Friday of the year! Only 51 left, we are bound to finish the game by then right? Well, if this week’s progress has been any indicator that that is a… yes? So far this week has been an effort of getting the wheels rolling back on the development vehicle and pushing for the 2024 release. We will be trying our hardest to get this game out by the end of the year, but anything can happen! Though we can say without a doubt, the game will be released by 2025. It’s just a matter of statistics. We have roughly 12 feature batches to get through and 52 weeks to do so. Each feature batch can be done in 4 weeks of casual solo work, so the numbers add up in our favour! Though delays are inevitable, and time isn’t a free resource, we’ll be giving it our all to get this project out the the gates.

So, what have we been cracking away on this week?

Finishing up Hiring #

This week we spent finishing the last bits of the hiring process. The UI for view staff shortages is complete, and just waiting to be filled with lots of interesting data! Below you can see an image of what some of the data might look like.

It’s not immediately obvious how to read the graphs, but basically, the less green you see, the worse!

Other than that the final touches we have been working on is the shuttle bus, which transports NPCs to and from the site. It’s the final feature needed to cross-check off the hiring feature as done. Neat! The way it works right now is that a shuttle bus arrives and departs depending on the schedules you have assigned. So if people should be home at 7 pm, a shuttle bus will arrive at 7 to pick them up, and then if they have work at 7 am, another will arrive to drop them off at the site. This works through contiguous blocks of “Go Home” slots set in the scheduler timetable. It’s pretty simple in theory, and works great in practice!

Currently, no video is available, but expect one soon!

A New Music Sample #

We have a new music sample from our awesome composer. It’s a draft for “Drafts in Motion”, a contextual piece that plays whilst the player is building and constructing things. Neat! We’ll let it speak for itself.

I’m sharing an early draft… I tried to lay a solid foundation with a bunch of sound design and ambient tracks to accentuate the construction and development feeling. In this version, the electric guitar is playing the chords, but I’ll probably change that with an acoustic because I feel like this track would benefit an organic sound. Right now it’s too industry-ish.

I plan to make this track one of the longer ones (maybe around 8-10 minutes) since in the game the construction play times will probably be long.

Anomaly Poll Winner! #

The eager people among you (in our Discord Server) may have noticed that our first poll since the revival of our Monday blog concluded earlier this week. And without alleged interference from a certain individual in our Discord community, S-0200 - “The Puppeteer”, won by a landslide!

Many thanks to everyone who voted! We’ll catch you on Monday for Mythos Monday, where we’ll release the Anomaly case file, and there’ll be a new poll to vote in. We’ll see you then!

Case Closed #

The first week of the new year has come to a close. It may not be the most explosive start to the year, but we are expecting a slow burn to release. But things are looking up, and for once release is starting to peer over the horizon. Hopefully, that’s not a hallucination, and 2024 will be the year of containcorp! It’s crazy to think that 4 years of my life has been spent on this project (we only count 2), but honestly, not sure what we are going to do after release. Maybe a long vacation, and then get back to work!

Anyways, let’s file this case away. See you in the next one!

Case Closed.
The Team
Plasmarc Studios