Happy new year from all of us at Tau Station! Amid the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we’ve been focused on planning. We reviewed all our current and proposed features, then mapped out the game flow so we can make final decisions about what we’ll include in our Alpha testing release. This month we’ll take all that information and create a revised roadmap, and we plan to come back to you in next month’s update with an Alpha launch date.
We’re also very pleased to welcome some new faces to the project: Peter and Ilya, who are joining us on the technical side, as well as Will, Al, and Greg on the narrative. We’ve got a great team of people building the Tau Station universe.
December Work Updates
Gameplay
- Mapped out Alpha release game flow
- Added a Crime framework – actions can now be marked as illegal and punishment will vary depending on the type of crime and the station you’re on
- Continued work on public shuttles
UI and Art
- Created a hyperspace background for the travel screen
- Began university page design
- Continued work on the dialog UI
- Began UI work on inventory and storage
- More artwork for the market, medical items, and public shuttles
- Starmap improvements
Frontend and Accessibility
- Revised the Starmap display to work with and without JavaScript for improved accessibility, appearance, and performance
- Increased the point at which the mobile layout converts to desktop layout
- Accessibility testing
- Worked on confirmation dialogs
- Finishing off HTML linting
Backend
- Refactored the Leaderboards
- Completed a scalable action cost/difficulty code enhancement for the mission builder
- Added player bots for performance testing
- Completed and documented the first pass at our API
- Implemented a new real-time/streaming backup solution
- Finished new inventory system
Narrative
- 6 missions written and ready to test, 2 more in progress
- Finished all Side Jobs for alpha
- Began work on Career tasks
- Began large scale plot mapping
- Began work on university courses
Planned for January
- Create a revised roadmap to our Alpha launch
- 20 more missions written and ready for testing
- Send out the first Tau Station newsletter
- Finish all career tasks
- Finalize university courses
- Finish university design
- Design flyers and stickers for FOSDEM conference
- Finish implementing Employment Center and Side Jobs pages
- Implement mission dialogue UI design
- Finish shuttle schedules
- Integrate new action system into the mission builder