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Forensic Friday 77: Sounds, Content & Polish

Hey Readers! #

Hey welcome to Forensic Friday! For the first time, the contents of this blog will mostly be in video form, albeit a short video covering a bit of the sound design work we have been doing for the game. Then we’ll dive into the plethora of content we have added and generally the state of development (which is looking very up). Containcorp is feature complete, at least as pre-alpha is concerned, and just needs some polish, optimisation and lots of playtesting before we can truly say Containcorp is a GOOD product. Anyway, let’s get onto the sounds. It’s time to ditch my textual form for now.

Sound Design #

New Events #

The game sports two new events: the monthly financial report and the facility director’s death. The former is pretty simple, every month you get a report detailing how well the game thinks you are managing your finances. The latter is an event you encounter when your facility director dies, you are prompted to either continue the story with a new facility director or end it there. Since the facility director is inhabited by you, then the game should definitely acknowledge your death!

Graves #

The dead can now be buried, which is a totally useless feature if you are a perfect player. Death is one end to the story of a character, and graves create a permanent reminder of such deaths. Right now there’s no way to engrave gravestones, or any behaviours like NPCs visiting the gravestones of their friends and such, but all these will work their way in with time. And of course with the prospect of anomalies, maybe the dead could rise again…

Caves & Mountains #

Above me, you’ll see some new generation features. Caves and mountains! They exist largely as pure environmental challenges to contend with but really help to make the land plot feel more interesting especially the mountains. Building into mountains yields a lot of stone, which can be a quick and easy way to construct a site, but stone is quite ugly. So of course there are drawbacks. Once hauling speed is affected by the weight of items, then we’ll make stone quite heavy too, so it’ll have to mostly be used in place.

Minor Experiment Changes #

Just a quick aside experiments now show an Observed Result field, which details the findings of the experiment after it’s finished. It doesn’t have any overarching gameplay impact but some may be quite humorous so we think they’ll be worth reading.

Content #

The real meat of this Forensic Friday is going to cover the content that’s been added to the game. Obviously not ALL the content, but just enough to give you an idea of what’s in the game currently.

Each anomaly in Containcorp comes with a decent amount of content: behaviours, hidden and unhidden; numerous experiments; tailored story events; and unlockable research, that makes each one rich with play experiences but also takes a fair bit of time to implement. For the purposes of the pre-alpha, we are aiming to make the game fun and compelling with just one single anomaly, so we have a good basis to move on and add more anomalies. It also gives us a good idea of the minimum amount of content an anomaly needs, and how that correlates with playtime.

Not every anomaly will have a dozen experiments, we’ll likely have a range of anomalies starting from MINOR; where we just focus on interesting behaviour or containment; all the way to MAJOR; anomalies with a bunch of content. Giving every anomaly a million experiments is cool, but could lead to content bloat where there is a lot of content but a lot of it is meaningless. Additionally, implementing content takes time. Much longer than just implementing anomaly behaviours it seems!

In any ado, here is all the content we have added for S-0033, the first anomaly in the game.

This research tree gives a good holistic view of all the content for S-0033 since accessing and experiencing content is quite intimately tied to the research tree barring grants and other systems. The main content additions involving S-0033 are the “Medusa” helmet and “Reversed Engineered Concrete”. Both can be accessed via the research tree.

The Medusa Helmet #

The Medusa helmet is the first piece of gear we have added to the game that can be used to defend against anomalies. Specifically, ones that require an unbroken line of sight to ward off any danger. It grants users with 360 peripheral vision and prevents them from blinking. Though as overpowered as it sounds, it’s not perfect and will frequently glitch out momentarily, giving a few highly hazardous moments of ill protection.

Reversed Engineered Concrete #

Reversed engineered concrete is an outstanding innovation sourced from the very chemical composition of S-0033 itself, resulting in a material that is super strong and resistant to damage. However, its downsides and risks are unknown. Maybe it explodes in contact with water. Maybe it’s highly flammable. Maybe it can spread and infect other walls. Maybe certain anomalies can pass through it. Maybe it’s all of the above or none of these at all. You’ll have to find out yourself!

The Debarreller #

Since S-0033 slows down in tar, we need a way to actually fill its containment cell with tar. The Debarreller is the solution.

The Debareller lets you turn the new barrel item into the fluid that flows into pipes. You can then output this fluid using drains, allowing you to flood anywhere you wish. The only fluid barrel in the game currently is tar but eventually, you’ll have fluids like blood, milk and many, many more.

Other content #

Besides the new items, blocks and extensive research tree. I’ve also added 10 experiments to conduct, around 4 hidden behaviours to uncover, and a multitude of secrets which you can only find out by playing. We’ll see how playtesting turns out regarding the content, but we think even with just 1 anomaly we can make things interesting for a while, which really shows promise.

New Science Production Objects #

Whilst closing up the content for S-0033 I had to add 2 new science types, which you may have noticed in the research tree screenshot above. These new science types are Psychology and Engineering research points. Psychology represents any research pertaining to the study of history, neuroscience, sentient behaviours etc. Engineering pertains to any research that involves creating tools, gears weapons etc.

With new science types comes the need for new science production objects: the behavioural study booth and the engineering workstation. Which you can peep at in the images below.

Small things #

Chairs #

I’ve added chairs to the game, they serve no purpose other than aesthetics, but eventually, characters will get annoyed if they work with a chair.

Anomaly Reticles #

Anomalies now have icons that display at all times to make sure you can keep track of them. It was becoming a real issue to keep tabs on exactly where anomalies were with there being multiple floors, so this was the solution. It’s also been applied to characters as well which really helps make the game feel more cohesive and less janky, as you always know where characters and anomalies are at all times.

When you mouse over these reticles, they reveal the floor number they are on. Double-clicking brings you to that floor number, which should help you quickly navigate. You can see a video below of it in action.

Generation Quips #

Very minor thing but you now get warnings for each of the generation settings. There is not much else to say about this.

Tutorials #

The last major thing to mention is tutorials. The game currently has 62 tutorials. These are all handwritten and accessible through the new tutorial menu found in the top left corner.

The game doesn’t currently have any interactive tutorials, but the tutorials do automatically pop up when you are doing something relevant. For example, when you open the research menu for the first time you’ll get the “Research” tutorial popup, or if you are trying to build a pipeline, you’ll get the “Pipes & Fluid” tutorial. When a tutorial has been suggested, it gets marked as pending, and will appear in the tutorial list accented like in the image below:

You can mark tutorials as read and they won’t ever pop up again unless u unmark them of course. All pretty typical and standard stuff when it comes to tutorials, but was quite a lot of writing work!

State of Development #

We are in a really big turning point of development now. It can be enjoyed for hours at a time without many hitches. The game-breaking bugs have been sorted as far as I am aware, which is truly a great milestone to hit! I even daresay the game is fun (from a limited test size of 1). So the game is playable, and I have been having fun with it, much to my surprise. I did find myself skipping meals just to keep playing so I think it might have some merits!

The AI was also redone over the past week to make it more optimal, and the game runs a lot better as a result, but optimisation is a never-ending process. Eventually, we have to release it. The only thing left as far as I am aware is to finish my playthrough of the game and fix any bugs I encounter. Once I have finished my playthrough, I’ll be confident that the game is bug-free enough to pass on to playtesters with ease, without the worry of bugs killing game flow and muddying the game design.

Website Changes #

Marking this turn in development, the website has gone through an overhaul. Our entire social presence in fact. We have a new website, which is a lot cleaner than the old one which had videos playing in the background, gradients changing color like crazy. It was a mess really, and not mobile, or generally browser-friendly.

We are starting to gather a lot of cool screenshots from playtesting which really makes the game a lot better and more involved than ever before!

We also finally have a press kit (after years of putting it off), which is neat.

And the YouTube channel has been updated, in preparation for uploading more up-to-date content (and frankly a lot better content). I am still deliberating whether I should make the video showcased in this Forensic Friday public, but I’ll think about it. I supposed compared to the other videos we uploaded it can do no harm!

Case Closed #

Things are pretty close all things considered. It’s likely in the next Forensic Friday we will be talking about pre-alpha testing and the much anticipated KICKSTARTER. Thanks for all the support, won’t be ending this blog with a cat mostly because I don’t have any pictures on hand. Case closed.

Case Closed.
The Team
Plasmarc Studios