October was a busy month for Tau Station. We made good strides in all areas of the game’s development although our overall plan for the month was perhaps a bit ambitious. With several team members taking some much-needed vacation time we didn’t accomplish everything we’d listed on the October roadmap, but we’re adjusting and rearranging the work as we go. Now everyone is back and we’re heading into November well rested and ready to move full speed ahead.
This month our Managing Director, Leila, also attended Game Connection Europe. It was a great opportunity to meet with other game developers and folks in the industry, and to start showing Tau Station to the world. We know that this was just the first convention of many to come for us and will be hitting the road with the game more next year.
October Work
Gameplay
– Clones –finalized details about how the different types of clones will work in the game
– Careers – implemented a new career advancement system involving career tasks and XP
– Ration Cards – we’ve discussed how to implement food as a constrained resource and source of conflict within the game
– Orwellian levels – significant discussion and planning for how to integrate each station’s Orwellian level into more aspects of gameplay, including missions, travel, and trade
UI and Art
– Brig page design implemented
– Sick Bay page design implemented
– Gym page design implemented
– New background art for the Ruins area, the Employment Center, and the Security Office.
– Mapping the navigation for the Employment Center/Mission Leads/Career Advisory/Temp Jobs pages
– Began work on medical item icons
Backend
– Significant updates and bug fixes made to the Mission Builder
– Confinement to Sick Bay and the Brig added as possible mission outcomes
– Bribe mechanics have been implemented for the Sick Bay and Brig areas
– Began work to integrate the combat system into the Mission Builder
– Built the framework for our Perks and Modifiers system, which paves the way for creating more inventory items
– Breeds system has been completed and is in the testing stage
– Rebalanced confinement times and made it easier for the game designers to adjust them as needed for game balancing
– Continued API development – there’s still a fair amount of work to be done in this area, but we’re already seeing improvements when playing the game on a mobile device
This week we welcomed Joshua to the team. Joshua will take the role of DevOps.
Narrative
– 11 more missions written and ready to test
– 24 more temp jobs written and ready to test
– Began work on the game trailer
Planned for November
– Career page design and implementation
– Temp Jobs page design and implementation
– Mission Leads page design and implementation
– 20 more missions written and ready to test
– Finish writing the temp jobs needed for Alpha
– University course descriptions
– Begin creating the website tour
– Dynamic XP calculation for the Mission Builder
– Finish integrating combat into Mission Builder
– Medical Items
– Favor Point redemption framework for careers
– Begin testing the in-game chat system