February has drawn to close and Tau Station’s universe has continued to grow and evolve. In some ways, it’s been a tough month. We’ve been reviewing all our processes and identifying where we need to change our approach in order to meet our development goals. This has meant reevaluating priorities, changing our focus in a couple areas, and generally pushing harder on timelines. The results have absolutely been worth it, though, and we’re seeing that difficult work delivering results. We wrapped up the month with some big additions and improvements to gameplay, accomplished our first major data migration between servers, and we’ve built up a solid momentum for moving forward. Enjoy the new status report about February.
We’re not quite ready to announce the launch date for Alpha testing but we’re getting close. The enthusiasm for Tau Station that we’ve been hearing on Twitter and Facebook has been really encouraging, and we’re looking forward to bringing you all into the universe soon.
February Work Updates
Gameplay
- Completed first pass at programming for instanced NPCs
- Implemented career tasks
- Added dangerous and illegal actions
- Incorporated Orwellian level checks into illegal actions
- Fixed a room rental bug in the Inn
- Implemented an in-game email confirmation after booking a hotel room
- Updates to combat for when a character is unconscious
- Mission bug fixes
- Continued Alpha release game flow mapping
- Implement items repair
- Work on security cameras
UI and Art
- Improvements to Employment Center, Career Advisory, and Side Jobs designs
- Began implementing inventory UI
- Additional medical item, weapons, and NPC artwork
- University UI design draft
- Chat UI design draft
- Traveling screen UI design draft
- Worked on how to display huge amounts of information without using tables.
Frontend and Accessibility
- Implemented selenium testing
- Worked on Chat
- Compiling info needed in the controller
- Hyperspace background for traveling screen
Backend
- Completed first large data migration from the narrative server to the dev server, and implemented a system for ongoing updates
- Began work to integrate combat into the mission builder
- Continued work on economic exchange system
- Continued improvements to API and player preferences
- Continued improvements forums and player blogs
- Implemented backend for Chat
- Implemented rooms for the employment center
- Fixed race condition in messages
- Improved modifiers
- Work on data recovery, back up, and Redis,
Narrative
- 3 more missions written, 6 more in progress
- Wrote area descriptions for Government Centers for all Alpha Stations
- Wrote area descriptions for Storage for all Alpha Stations
- Reviewed and prepped area descriptions, NPC descriptions, 13 missions, and 50+ jobs for migration to the dev server to begin testing
- Revised and added additional career tasks
- Drafted Alpha education courses and benefits
Planned for March
- Implement instanced NPCs
- Merge combat into the mission builder
- Add more preconditions to the mission builder
- Implement in-game chat UI
- Add security cameras to station areas, along with disable and repair actions
- 24 more missions written
- Finalize career perks
- Finalize Alpha education courses and benefits
- Finish implementing the inventory UI