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DevBlog #22 - Thoughts on early access and showing the newest progress!
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Greetings! Here is a big update on what's happening at the Bugbyte headquarters. We now have a goal to have some type of early access release in the early months of 2019. We are aiming at around February – April of 2019. Our plan is to develop the game to a very playable point by then, and then continue on developing the game with the help of backers / early access players. Regarding the early access: We have plans for doing either a Kickstarter with a build available at the end for backers or Steam early access (Mobile early access depending on possibilities). Which plan we carry out at that time depends on if we see the game ready for a big release on Steam or not, if it needs more time in the oven still. I really want to take some time to thank you all our followers for your patience and support. When we embarked on this project we did not plan for it to take 3 years from initial idea to early access! As time passed we realized it will take a lot of time, but we have decided we want to go all in with this one and hope it will be the game that keeps us afloat and allows us to keep developing on it for more years. Now that we have that part out of the way let's jump into the fun stuff! Let's look at what we've been up to the latest month or two: Latest improvements:
We now have these different simulated systems:
The different gas, temperature, power, oxygen and comfort simulation systems are vital parts of the game adding some really nice depth to how you build your spaceship. Now it will really matters how you decide to build and how you place objects. E.G. If you place a bed right next to the ship core the simulated systems will affect the crew member sleeping in that bed negatively. Building life support facilities like oxygen producers and CO2 scrubbers are vital to keep your crew alive. You need to build these throughout the ship to keep levels in check. Similarly your crew will want ideal temperature levels, which can be regulated with heaters you build. Power can be directed to certain parts of the ship as you wish, you as a player have full control over this. You can link and unlink nodes, this allows for cool possibilities regarding emergent game play. Where in a disaster situation you can decide to leave a part of the ship completely out of power to save it for something more important. These systems will make designing and building spaceships not only fun, but meaningful too and opens up many possibilities for various emergent game play mechanisms. Above you can see our newest addition to the simulations! This comfort system will give a lot of depth to how you design your spaceship, where you place beds and kitchen and where you decide to put engine room and hangar bays. Various facilities produce different amount of "discomfort", so facilities that are deemed loud for example are uncomfortable for crew members. On the other hand, objects like the jukebox, flipper game or such produce comfort for your crew members. So if you want to build a room, which is relaxing, put some fun objects in there for your crew members to enjoy! Just to show you how cool this new comfort simulation is and what it can do. Above you see a character who has shit his pants walking around. The system recognizes this and calculates new values for tiles around the character. This will actually allow us to make this character with shit pants affect other characters negatively, making them want to avoid the other smelly character. Here is the Space Haven inventory view for a character! We want to show our love for the old X-COM series in our design, hoping we can pay a proper homage to the legendary game. We now have a fully functioning draft system, where you can not only draft crew members, but shuttles too! This makes it easy for the player to pick crew members for an away mission, and steer the shuttle to a destination, where the crew members can be unloaded and venture in to explore a derelict ship. Ok, guys! This is it, don't get scared now. Especially you Emmett, you always piss your pants. Our character trait system allows for creating a lot of different traits, which affect characters in various ways in different situations. Currently a character with the wimp trait will get scared when he is firing a gun, and could eventually panic and you lose control of him! You don't want this guy to be the last man standing and having the future of other crew members depend on him in a combat situation. This guy is the "Game over, man. Game over!" guy. Yes, there are aliens! And we have cool things planned for the derelict ships. Aliens can capture your crew members and drag them to their base. You still have a chance at saving them! We have also been working with our composer to create first in-game music and sounds. It's really something to experience the game come more alive with a new sensory mechanism like sounds. When you have been looking at the game for over 2 years, always without any sounds, it's really cool to suddenly hear sci-fi door opens and gun shots from the in-game events. Stay tuned! And remember if you want to chat with us or follow us on other channels you can do so from the links below:
Feel free to share any of these gfycats or this forum post on your favorite forums such as Reddit or other! That really helps us spread the word!
Sign up for alpha/beta testing of this game when that day comes below:
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It looks amazing! Getting closer and closer to see the game running.
 Amazing job!
Looks like great progress. Two questions:
1) Why are O2 production and CO2 scrubbing two different systems? It seems like extra complexity that doesn't add much as I don't foresee any situation where you want to do one but not the other. 2) Is sh1tting pants a real issue in the simulation or is that just a funny example to show off the comfort system?
I am so excited for this game! We need more devs like this nowadays. I don't have a ton of spare cash, but I will back this game in a heartbeat.
Looking awesome but I'd expect nothing less from the team. keep up the fantastic work and looking forward to the Beta
I actually really like the "bad smell" idea if that's going to be a real thing, but maybe it would be better to have it as flatulence instead of soiled pants? A negative trait like "gassy" might be a good addition. Unless you want to add another layer of complexity where we need to make sure there are enough toilet facilities for the crew to avoid the dreaded "brown alert".
Wow, those were some busy months at BugByte but I really admire the effect - so many great additions to Space Haven.
I especially like the power grid/nodes system as it allows for further development. For example you could mine 'normal' ore/minerals that give, let's say +100 power but you could risk searching for 'enriched' ore/minerals that power you up for +250. Negative effects could be 'solar flares' events that reduce your power production by -50% and you have to think how to compensate for that. Regarding early access - any chance for GOG alpha version for non-Steam users like me?
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