Our latest sprint FORTUNE continues the work of populating the Reach! Both character creation and character progression specs have been designed. Meanwhile, Tech was focused on finalising the storylet service, a fundamental piece of code which enables the player to interact with stories in-game. Both Art and Content have been continuing their work on filling out ports, locomotives, wrecks, characters and even our first Ambition!

Art

Both artists have been working at full steam this sprint. While Paul has been busy with the Leadbeater & Stainrod Nature Reserve, Toby worked on a port called Magdalene’s.



Pulled from the art brief: The glass spires of Magdalene's pierce the clouds like swords stuck in the firmament.

If you’ve been enjoying our FBG Podcasts, you may have seen a sneak peek of Paul’s updated version of the Inconvenient Aunt during our art podcast. Here she is in all her inconvenient glory.



Toby has been bringing a few more locomotives to life. As we continue development, you’ll see various classes of vessel. Previously, we’ve shared a Tackety Scout. This sprint we have a Reach Marauder! A ship captained by the sky-maddened: those who have looked too long at the stars.




Content

This sprint James was tasked with creating pitches for various locomotives that will be seen throughout the High Wilderness. Each vessel is pitched with a name, an outline of their fiction, an art brief, a difficulty tier, and proposals for their behavior.

Chris and James also began work on the first ambition for Sunless Skies. This ambition resembles the 'Retire to a Life of Luxury' ambition from Sunless Sea.

Unlike in Sunless Sea though, players don't have to retire in only London. In addition to accruing a big retirement fund, players need to purchase accommodation suitable to the manner in which they want to retire, and they can do so in any of the major hubs: London, New Winchester, Pan or the House of the Feather.


Gameplay and Design

Quite a bit of tech work this sprint went into preparations for the closed alpha. For example, Mac ensured there were versions of Sunless Skies across all three operating systems: PC, Mac and Linux.

Liam and Mac also worked on the storylet service, which has many different pieces that allow the storylet content to function. These may include the functionality of how storylets update or how available storylets are called up when a player enters a port.

Meanwhile, Barry has been implementing passions, which are what control AI behaviour when not in combat. Passions can have a wide range of effects: the possibilities include making a pirate hunt trading vessels, or causing a creature to seek out others of its kind, or visit particular features (like wells or wrecks). Note that these are just examples: we haven't decided exactly which ones to implement yet. We've designed the system to be flexible and easy to extend.


Our next FBG Podcast will be Friday 9th June at 16:00 BST, where we’ll be happy to take your questions. In our next sprint, GANYMEDE, we'll be working to enrich the Reach with audio, legacies and scouts!

Our latest sprint FORTUNE continues the work of populating the Reach! Both character creation and character progression specs have been designed. Meanwhile, Tech was focused on finalising the storylet service, a fundamental piece of code which enables the player to interact with stories in-game. Both Art and Content have been continuing their work on filling out ports, locomotives, wrecks, characters and even our first Ambition!

Art

Both artists have been working at full steam this sprint. While Paul has been busy with the Leadbeater & Stainrod Nature Reserve, Toby worked on a port called Magdalene’s.



Pulled from the art brief: The glass spires of Magdalene's pierce the clouds like swords stuck in the firmament.

If you’ve been enjoying our FBG Podcasts, you may have seen a sneak peek of Paul’s updated version of the Inconvenient Aunt during our art podcast. Here she is in all her inconvenient glory.



Toby has been bringing a few more locomotives to life. As we continue development, you’ll see various classes of vessel. Previously, we’ve shared a Tackety Scout. This sprint we have a Reach Marauder! A ship captained by the sky-maddened: those who have looked too long at the stars.




Content

This sprint James was tasked with creating pitches for various locomotives that will be seen throughout the High Wilderness. Each vessel is pitched with a name, an outline of their fiction, an art brief, a difficulty tier, and proposals for their behavior.

Chris and James also began work on the first ambition for Sunless Skies. This ambition resembles the 'Retire to a Life of Luxury' ambition from Sunless Sea.

Unlike in Sunless Sea though, players don't have to retire in only London. In addition to accruing a big retirement fund, players need to purchase accommodation suitable to the manner in which they want to retire, and they can do so in any of the major hubs: London, New Winchester, Pan or the House of the Feather.


Gameplay and Design

Quite a bit of tech work this sprint went into preparations for the closed alpha. For example, Mac ensured there were versions of Sunless Skies across all three operating systems: PC, Mac and Linux.

Liam and Mac also worked on the storylet service, which has many different pieces that allow the storylet content to function. These may include the functionality of how storylets update or how available storylets are called up when a player enters a port.

Meanwhile, Barry has been implementing passions, which are what control AI behaviour when not in combat. Passions can have a wide range of effects: the possibilities include making a pirate hunt trading vessels, or causing a creature to seek out others of its kind, or visit particular features (like wells or wrecks). Note that these are just examples: we haven't decided exactly which ones to implement yet. We've designed the system to be flexible and easy to extend.


Our next FBG Podcast will be Friday 9th June at 16:00 BST, where we’ll be happy to take your questions. In our next sprint, GANYMEDE, we'll be working to enrich the Reach with audio, legacies and scouts!

In order to help us find and fix bugs during Sunless Skies development, we will be holding a closed alpha, beginning 5th June!



GOALS
This alpha will help us find technical bugs and discover initial player experience within the framework of Sunless Skies.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
If you are interested in being involved with the development of the game and aiding the production of Sunless Skies, we'd love to have you join our alpha list. Joining the alpha means experiencing Sunless Skies in a very unpolished state, without all features implemented, and plenty of bugs.

If that doesn’t sound appealing to you, it’s best to wait for Early Access, which will begin this summer, where players will be able to experience a more complete piece of Sunless Skies while we’re still in development. Early Access will start with a single region available to players in a close-to-finished state.

TIMELINE
Alpha testing will begin the 5th of June and run until the end of July. During this time, we will invite people from the alpha list in batches to help us test Sunless Skies, so it’ll be important to keep an eye on your email for your invitation link.

REQUIREMENTS

• Must have a Steam account you can use
  
• PC/Mac/Linux operating system

WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
We’re looking for a variety of people to help us test the alpha!

• People who have played Failbetter games before
  
• PC gamers who haven’t played our games before (especially RPG fans)
  
• Players with accessibility requirements, so we can build Sunless Skies with specific accessibility feedback in mind
  
• People who have QA or previous testing experience (though not required!)

For those invited, we'd of course ask you to install and play the Sunless Skies alpha. Each batch will be involved for at least two weeks, though you are free to help us test until the alpha ends! We will be looking for you to report any bugs you find, along with your general thoughts on the game so far.

If all of that sounds good to you, we’d love to have you help us test Sunless Skies! We expect to be inundated with requests, so it’s important to note that joining the list doesn’t guarantee being invited to the alpha.

Join our alpha signup list!

TL;DR Summary:

• This is a closed alpha, so not everyone is guaranteed to get in
  
• Only join the alpha if you don’t mind an unpolished state of play full of bugs
  
• You need a Steam account to help us test
  
• PC/Mac/Linux alpha will start 5th June
  alpha will close at the end of July
  
• You will not be able to carry through your character into Early Access

In order to help us find and fix bugs during Sunless Skies development, we will be holding a closed alpha, beginning 5th June!



GOALS
This alpha will help us find technical bugs and discover initial player experience within the framework of Sunless Skies.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
If you are interested in being involved with the development of the game and aiding the production of Sunless Skies, we'd love to have you join our alpha list. Joining the alpha means experiencing Sunless Skies in a very unpolished state, without all features implemented, and plenty of bugs.

If that doesn’t sound appealing to you, it’s best to wait for Early Access, which will begin this summer, where players will be able to experience a more complete piece of Sunless Skies while we’re still in development. Early Access will start with a single region available to players in a close-to-finished state.

TIMELINE
Alpha testing will begin the 5th of June and run until the end of July. During this time, we will invite people from the alpha list in batches to help us test Sunless Skies, so it’ll be important to keep an eye on your email for your invitation link.

REQUIREMENTS

• Must have a Steam account you can use
  
• PC/Mac/Linux operating system

WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
We’re looking for a variety of people to help us test the alpha!

• People who have played Failbetter games before
  
• PC gamers who haven’t played our games before (especially RPG fans)
  
• Players with accessibility requirements, so we can build Sunless Skies with specific accessibility feedback in mind
  
• People who have QA or previous testing experience (though not required!)

For those invited, we'd of course ask you to install and play the Sunless Skies alpha. Each batch will be involved for at least two weeks, though you are free to help us test until the alpha ends! We will be looking for you to report any bugs you find, along with your general thoughts on the game so far.

If all of that sounds good to you, we’d love to have you help us test Sunless Skies! We expect to be inundated with requests, so it’s important to note that joining the list doesn’t guarantee being invited to the alpha.

Join our alpha signup list!

TL;DR Summary:

• This is a closed alpha, so not everyone is guaranteed to get in
  
• Only join the alpha if you don’t mind an unpolished state of play full of bugs
  
• You need a Steam account to help us test
  
• PC/Mac/Linux alpha will start 5th June
  alpha will close at the end of July
  
• You will not be able to carry through your character into Early Access

Our EXOGENESIS sprint is our first specific pass at populating the Reach, which means working on its denizens from officers to the agents you’ll encounter in the skies. Our art team, which has recently doubled, continued their work on ports, brought some agents to life, and created our first pass art pass over the UI. Content also continued work on various ports, while also creating a magnificent spreadsheet that will help keep track of Sunless Skies’ officers. Meanwhile, tech busied themselves with expanding on the pathfinding discussed last sprint, along with implementing tooltips (hugely important for our wordy games), balancing survival mechanics, and implementing agents.

ART
While Paul is busy tackling Titania, one of our more complex ports so far, we’ve wasted no time putting Toby to work. His first job was Hybras, a rather fungal settlement with a dark secret.



Toby also created one of our agents, a Tackety Scout, while Paul tackled the Scrive Spinster. During the Sprint Review we all oohed and awed over both, though the Tackety Scout stole our hearts. In James’ words, “It looks like it might explode at any minute....it's perfect.”



Meanwhile the art team has been giving Liam’s initial UI wireframes an Art Nouveau-influenced facelift. Below you can see some initial designs on how they might look, though we’re sure they will go through a few iterations.





CONTENT
The writers tackled two more ports this sprint. James fleshed out the London stronghold, Port Prosper, where London Loyalists (or opportunists) can accept bounties for hunting pirates and Tacketies. Meanwhile Cash designed the Leadbeater & Stainrod Nature Reserve, where a research outpost conducts investigations into the secrets of the Reach.

Officers

Another beautiful spreadsheet has also been created, this time it’s all about officers. While the writers are currently pitching their content ideas for officers, this spreadsheet details which slot they’d go in (First Officer, Signaller, Quartermaster, Chief Engineer, and - of course - Mascot), where players would recruit them, which bonuses they’d provide, and how bonuses would change when upgraded. This lets us ensure that officers provide an even distribution of bonuses, and ensure that there are satisfying choices to be made for each slot.

Non-Player Locomotives

Meanwhile, we’ve started turning our Kickstarter backer survey responses into locomotive names! We’d like to note that no fewer than three people recommended “HML Ubiquitous” and we feel strongly that all three should be entered in the game.

In Sunless Skies, when certain non-player locomotives spawn in the game, they're given unique names. So instead of seeing a generic Tackety Scout, you might see the 'UCE Vagabond'. These names are drawn from a list of six hundred entries inspired by our wonderful backers. Our task has been to take information provided by them and turn it into names that fit the period and tone of Sunless Skies. Six hundred times. Six actual hundred.

If you haven’t filled out your Kickstarter Survey, please do so at your earliest convenience! And if you know someone who hasn’t, poke them!


GAMEPLAY & DESIGN
Continuing the pathfinding work for combat, Barry has focused on long-distance pathfinding this sprint.



Some background on this: pathfinding in Sunless Skies will be based on nodes, points on a mesh. When an AI agent needs to get somewhere, it looks for the best (usually, the shortest) path from its current location to the destination node.

The world of Sunless Skies is very large, and pathfinding between nodes that are very far apart is computationally expensive. We could solve this problem by making it so that AI agents only move around when the player is nearby. But in Sunless Skies we want agents to sometimes remain active and pursue their own agendas at distant locations. So we need a more efficient method for them to find their way around.

The solution we’re using is to group all the nodes in a given area together, and treat them all as a single point on a larger meta-mesh that covers the entire map. Even though it covers the whole map, the number of nodes on it is manageable. So the AI can use it efficiently for long-distance pathfinding, and then switch to local pathfinding to deal with obstacles in its immediate area.


Our next FBG Podcast will be this Friday 26 May, at 16:00 BST! This week will be focused on art, to answer any questions you may have about the art process, especially now that we have multiple artists!

Our EXOGENESIS sprint is our first specific pass at populating the Reach, which means working on its denizens from officers to the agents you’ll encounter in the skies. Our art team, which has recently doubled, continued their work on ports, brought some agents to life, and created our first pass art pass over the UI. Content also continued work on various ports, while also creating a magnificent spreadsheet that will help keep track of Sunless Skies’ officers. Meanwhile, tech busied themselves with expanding on the pathfinding discussed last sprint, along with implementing tooltips (hugely important for our wordy games), balancing survival mechanics, and implementing agents.

ART
While Paul is busy tackling Titania, one of our more complex ports so far, we’ve wasted no time putting Toby to work. His first job was Hybras, a rather fungal settlement with a dark secret.



Toby also created one of our agents, a Tackety Scout, while Paul tackled the Scrive Spinster. During the Sprint Review we all oohed and awed over both, though the Tackety Scout stole our hearts. In James’ words, “It looks like it might explode at any minute....it's perfect.”



Meanwhile the art team has been giving Liam’s initial UI wireframes an Art Nouveau-influenced facelift. Below you can see some initial designs on how they might look, though we’re sure they will go through a few iterations.





CONTENT
The writers tackled two more ports this sprint. James fleshed out the London stronghold, Port Prosper, where London Loyalists (or opportunists) can accept bounties for hunting pirates and Tacketies. Meanwhile Cash designed the Leadbeater & Stainrod Nature Reserve, where a research outpost conducts investigations into the secrets of the Reach.

Officers

Another beautiful spreadsheet has also been created, this time it’s all about officers. While the writers are currently pitching their content ideas for officers, this spreadsheet details which slot they’d go in (First Officer, Signaller, Quartermaster, Chief Engineer, and - of course - Mascot), where players would recruit them, which bonuses they’d provide, and how bonuses would change when upgraded. This lets us ensure that officers provide an even distribution of bonuses, and ensure that there are satisfying choices to be made for each slot.

Non-Player Locomotives

Meanwhile, we’ve started turning our Kickstarter backer survey responses into locomotive names! We’d like to note that no fewer than three people recommended “HML Ubiquitous” and we feel strongly that all three should be entered in the game.

In Sunless Skies, when certain non-player locomotives spawn in the game, they're given unique names. So instead of seeing a generic Tackety Scout, you might see the 'UCE Vagabond'. These names are drawn from a list of six hundred entries inspired by our wonderful backers. Our task has been to take information provided by them and turn it into names that fit the period and tone of Sunless Skies. Six hundred times. Six actual hundred.

If you haven’t filled out your Kickstarter Survey, please do so at your earliest convenience! And if you know someone who hasn’t, poke them!


GAMEPLAY & DESIGN
Continuing the pathfinding work for combat, Barry has focused on long-distance pathfinding this sprint.



Some background on this: pathfinding in Sunless Skies will be based on nodes, points on a mesh. When an AI agent needs to get somewhere, it looks for the best (usually, the shortest) path from its current location to the destination node.

The world of Sunless Skies is very large, and pathfinding between nodes that are very far apart is computationally expensive. We could solve this problem by making it so that AI agents only move around when the player is nearby. But in Sunless Skies we want agents to sometimes remain active and pursue their own agendas at distant locations. So we need a more efficient method for them to find their way around.

The solution we’re using is to group all the nodes in a given area together, and treat them all as a single point on a larger meta-mesh that covers the entire map. Even though it covers the whole map, the number of nodes on it is manageable. So the AI can use it efficiently for long-distance pathfinding, and then switch to local pathfinding to deal with obstacles in its immediate area.


Our next FBG Podcast will be this Friday 26 May, at 16:00 BST! This week will be focused on art, to answer any questions you may have about the art process, especially now that we have multiple artists!

In DARK MATTER we foray further into combat! Tech have been busy plotting enemy behavior and implementing pathfinding. Meanwhile, our writers have continued spinning tales for the ports within the Reach. This sprint, we also welcome a new artist to our team—Toby!



ART

First off, a very warm and exceptional welcome to our new artist Toby Cook! We are delighted to have him onboard this space locomotive with us and we’re sure we’ll be featuring his work within these blogs sometime soon.

Paul has been continuing to bring various ports within the Reach to life. This sprint, we’ll give you a glimpse of Traitor’s Wood:



Traitor’s Wood: “A gloomy forest rears up from a flinty outcropping. Grave firs rise in furrows behind the station, where a few gaudy tents have been set up, sheltering from the persistent drizzle. A great stone bulk, like a barrow mound, rises over the trees in the far distance.”

Paul and Chris have also been fine-tuning the art brief process now that we have more than one artist!


CONTENT

James and Olivia fleshed out two different ports this sprint: Hybras and Magdalene’s. Hybras was a once-promising port, but suddenly and mysteriously became deserted. It’ll be up to you to uncover the fate of its inhabitants.

Magdalene’s on the other hand is a port that will allow players to improve their Condition. For a price, the skilled staff at Magdalene's will tell you precisely the lies you need to hear. Terror works differently in Sunless Skies to Sunless Sea. Every time Terror reaches 100, your Condition worsens. Reducing Terror is easy; improving Condition is hard. But Magdalene's is one of the few places you can do so. But be warned: each time you do, the price goes up.

Chris has also been putting his sinister talents into creating a Discovery called Old Tom’s Well. In Sunless Skies, wells are wounds in the heavens, often used to banish and imprison beings which are disinclined to die. At Old Tom's Well you can encounter the Cursing Church, a fledgling sect which considers the wells sacred.


GAMEPLAY & DESIGN

Now that Barry is back from his holiday, he’s been heavily working on different aspects of combat. One of the first things he shared with us during our sprint review meeting this week was the pathfinding he’s implemented.



Note: The light blue squares are the path for the agitated agent. The green line is its next target.

Then he proved his driving skills as two enemy agent locomotives chased after him. Barry also implemented what we call Tactics, the motivation for which paths agents choose to take. We'll build on this further next sprint with Wrath and Passions, the driving factors behind agents' (locomotives or beasties) behaviour in-game.



Tactics are meant to be modular and reusable. In Sunless Sea players could expect enemy vessels or passive vessels, but in Sunless Skies it’s not so black and white. In the High Wilderness, players can expect to find these agents have a variety of different motives. When we design them, we’re no longer thinking “will it fight the player?” but rather “when will it fight the player” and “what else will it do?”

Our very first sound effects have also been commissioned, such as different engine sounds for our three types of player locomotive, changes to Terror levels, and discover and general UI interaction sounds. Lottie and Liam have been working with the lovely Soundcuts team on these, the same audio production studio we worked with for Zubmariner's SFX.



This Friday at 16:00 BST we’ll be holding our bi-weekly FBG Podcast on Twitch—we do hope you’ll join us! Lottie will be hosting this week, as Haley will be off on holiday in America, and will be joined by Sam and James. If you have any questions for them to discuss in the podcast, feel free to send them to @Failbettergames!

Our next sprint, EXOGENESIS will be all about the people of the Reach, as we begin designing crew, locomotives, and more agents!

In DARK MATTER we foray further into combat! Tech have been busy plotting enemy behavior and implementing pathfinding. Meanwhile, our writers have continued spinning tales for the ports within the Reach. This sprint, we also welcome a new artist to our team—Toby!



ART

First off, a very warm and exceptional welcome to our new artist Toby Cook! We are delighted to have him onboard this space locomotive with us and we’re sure we’ll be featuring his work within these blogs sometime soon.

Paul has been continuing to bring various ports within the Reach to life. This sprint, we’ll give you a glimpse of Traitor’s Wood:



Traitor’s Wood: “A gloomy forest rears up from a flinty outcropping. Grave firs rise in furrows behind the station, where a few gaudy tents have been set up, sheltering from the persistent drizzle. A great stone bulk, like a barrow mound, rises over the trees in the far distance.”

Paul and Chris have also been fine-tuning the art brief process now that we have more than one artist!


CONTENT

James and Olivia fleshed out two different ports this sprint: Hybras and Magdalene’s. Hybras was a once-promising port, but suddenly and mysteriously became deserted. It’ll be up to you to uncover the fate of its inhabitants.

Magdalene’s on the other hand is a port that will allow players to improve their Condition. For a price, the skilled staff at Magdalene's will tell you precisely the lies you need to hear. Terror works differently in Sunless Skies to Sunless Sea. Every time Terror reaches 100, your Condition worsens. Reducing Terror is easy; improving Condition is hard. But Magdalene's is one of the few places you can do so. But be warned: each time you do, the price goes up.

Chris has also been putting his sinister talents into creating a Discovery called Old Tom’s Well. In Sunless Skies, wells are wounds in the heavens, often used to banish and imprison beings which are disinclined to die. At Old Tom's Well you can encounter the Cursing Church, a fledgling sect which considers the wells sacred.


GAMEPLAY & DESIGN

Now that Barry is back from his holiday, he’s been heavily working on different aspects of combat. One of the first things he shared with us during our sprint review meeting this week was the pathfinding he’s implemented.



Note: The light blue squares are the path for the agitated agent. The green line is its next target.

Then he proved his driving skills as two enemy agent locomotives chased after him. Barry also implemented what we call Tactics, the motivation for which paths agents choose to take. We'll build on this further next sprint with Wrath and Passions, the driving factors behind agents' (locomotives or beasties) behaviour in-game.



Tactics are meant to be modular and reusable. In Sunless Sea players could expect enemy vessels or passive vessels, but in Sunless Skies it’s not so black and white. In the High Wilderness, players can expect to find these agents have a variety of different motives. When we design them, we’re no longer thinking “will it fight the player?” but rather “when will it fight the player” and “what else will it do?”

Our very first sound effects have also been commissioned, such as different engine sounds for our three types of player locomotive, changes to Terror levels, and discover and general UI interaction sounds. Lottie and Liam have been working with the lovely Soundcuts team on these, the same audio production studio we worked with for Zubmariner's SFX.



This Friday at 16:00 BST we’ll be holding our bi-weekly FBG Podcast on Twitch—we do hope you’ll join us! Lottie will be hosting this week, as Haley will be off on holiday in America, and will be joined by Sam and James. If you have any questions for them to discuss in the podcast, feel free to send them to @Failbettergames!

Our next sprint, EXOGENESIS will be all about the people of the Reach, as we begin designing crew, locomotives, and more agents!

CHROMOSPHERE brings us our first animations and our first pass at quite a few complex tasks! We also get to see different terrain types within the Reach, animations for the player’s locomotive (so much steam!), and a few AI agent animations. Tech has been busy with our first-pass at combat implementation, title screens, storylet-UI, and collision damage. The Content team, besides writing up stories for wrecks and discoveries, have been very busy working out the complexities of a randomised loot system for Sunless Skies. In fact, we haven’t seen them in a few days. We should probably check on them.

ART

If you saw our Sunless Skies development roadmap, the term ‘iterative design’ will be very familiar. In a similar fashion, Paul has been iteratively creating ports within the Reach.

He’ll lay down a skeleton of what each port could look like, and then at a later date go around and add more detail and finalised touches. In Chromosphere he’s been busy with the ports New Winchester, Carillon and Port Prosper.



In the third panel above you can get a glimpse of what a dock may look like (though of course things may change as we continue through development). Please be sure to mind the gap.


CONTENT

Content have been diving into maths this Sprint in order to create Sunless Skies' randomised loot system: the Cache of Curiosities! The Cache of Curiosities returns from Sunless Sea. It's a randomised loot system used to generate the contents of wrecked ships, abandoned homesteads, and secret stashes.

We want to keep the surprise and flavour players got from looting wrecks in Sunless Sea, while using the content to convey tidbits about life among the stars. In addition, we've made it easier for writers to plug these rewards into their content. It’s now easier for them to adjust the average value of a particular cache, and easier to match rewards to challenges. The spreadsheets James forged in the creation of this content are as beautiful and terrible as an encroaching star.

Also in this sprint, we've been working on Discoveries. Discoveries are randomised locations and objects you can find in the skies, which have content attached to them. They might be wrecks, homesteads, asteroids, or anything else we can come up with!

One of the Discoveries worked on this sprint was the wreck of the Parzifal, one of the Legendary Wrecks! The writers also insisted on sharing pictures of mushrooms with the office throughout their research for some fungal meteoroids.


GAMEPLAY & DESIGN

Now that Mac's implemented a rough title screen, we've been playing builds of the game internally! Here you can see us oohing and awwing over his shoulder:



He has also been working on collision damage for players’ locomotives, by assigning different materials with ‘soft’, ‘medium’, or ‘hard’ qualities. When a locomotive bumps into something, it will take that quality along with the current speed, into consideration before tallying the damage done.

Mac also took a look at creating a straightforward way for the Content team to be able to add or edit different content-specific areas within ports, such as stories or shops.

Sam has been busy implementing Liam’s storylet-UI designs into the game so our writers can begin inserting actual content into the game and begin testing out stories. This sounds straightforward, but is quite a complex task and forms a large part of a Failbetter game!

Meanwhile, Liam has been animating various sky-beasts and horrifying us all with his swarm animation.



Beside the bees (bees!) he has also been working on things like the Scrive-Spinster, with all their pages fluttering through space, and, very excitingly, one of the player-locomotive’s animations.

Liam’s been working on animating our locomotives in a way that gives as much immediate feedback as possible, so players can see and feel how their locomotive races through space.



In order to do this, he’s been using the steam trails and some parallax. For example, the locomotive sways from side to side when it turns so it feels much more 3D and realistic in its maneuvering compared to the relatively static boat animations in Sunless Sea.

Players will also notice that when their locomotive’s going full speed, the steam trail will appear longer than at slower speeds. All these pieces of animation work together to create a more satisfying feel to moving throughout the world.



This Friday at 16:00 BST, we’ll be back with another FBG Podcast! We’ll be discussing the Sunless Skies Roadmap, so you if any question on game development scheduling or about the roadmap itself, please come join us on Twitch!

CHROMOSPHERE brings us our first animations and our first pass at quite a few complex tasks! We also get to see different terrain types within the Reach, animations for the player’s locomotive (so much steam!), and a few AI agent animations. Tech has been busy with our first-pass at combat implementation, title screens, storylet-UI, and collision damage. The Content team, besides writing up stories for wrecks and discoveries, have been very busy working out the complexities of a randomised loot system for Sunless Skies. In fact, we haven’t seen them in a few days. We should probably check on them.

ART

If you saw our Sunless Skies development roadmap, the term ‘iterative design’ will be very familiar. In a similar fashion, Paul has been iteratively creating ports within the Reach.

He’ll lay down a skeleton of what each port could look like, and then at a later date go around and add more detail and finalised touches. In Chromosphere he’s been busy with the ports New Winchester, Carillon and Port Prosper.



In the third panel above you can get a glimpse of what a dock may look like (though of course things may change as we continue through development). Please be sure to mind the gap.


CONTENT

Content have been diving into maths this Sprint in order to create Sunless Skies' randomised loot system: the Cache of Curiosities! The Cache of Curiosities returns from Sunless Sea. It's a randomised loot system used to generate the contents of wrecked ships, abandoned homesteads, and secret stashes.

We want to keep the surprise and flavour players got from looting wrecks in Sunless Sea, while using the content to convey tidbits about life among the stars. In addition, we've made it easier for writers to plug these rewards into their content. It’s now easier for them to adjust the average value of a particular cache, and easier to match rewards to challenges. The spreadsheets James forged in the creation of this content are as beautiful and terrible as an encroaching star.

Also in this sprint, we've been working on Discoveries. Discoveries are randomised locations and objects you can find in the skies, which have content attached to them. They might be wrecks, homesteads, asteroids, or anything else we can come up with!

One of the Discoveries worked on this sprint was the wreck of the Parzifal, one of the Legendary Wrecks! The writers also insisted on sharing pictures of mushrooms with the office throughout their research for some fungal meteoroids.


GAMEPLAY & DESIGN

Now that Mac's implemented a rough title screen, we've been playing builds of the game internally! Here you can see us oohing and awwing over his shoulder:



He has also been working on collision damage for players’ locomotives, by assigning different materials with ‘soft’, ‘medium’, or ‘hard’ qualities. When a locomotive bumps into something, it will take that quality along with the current speed, into consideration before tallying the damage done.

Mac also took a look at creating a straightforward way for the Content team to be able to add or edit different content-specific areas within ports, such as stories or shops.

Sam has been busy implementing Liam’s storylet-UI designs into the game so our writers can begin inserting actual content into the game and begin testing out stories. This sounds straightforward, but is quite a complex task and forms a large part of a Failbetter game!

Meanwhile, Liam has been animating various sky-beasts and horrifying us all with his swarm animation.



Beside the bees (bees!) he has also been working on things like the Scrive-Spinster, with all their pages fluttering through space, and, very excitingly, one of the player-locomotive’s animations.

Liam’s been working on animating our locomotives in a way that gives as much immediate feedback as possible, so players can see and feel how their locomotive races through space.



In order to do this, he’s been using the steam trails and some parallax. For example, the locomotive sways from side to side when it turns so it feels much more 3D and realistic in its maneuvering compared to the relatively static boat animations in Sunless Sea.

Players will also notice that when their locomotive’s going full speed, the steam trail will appear longer than at slower speeds. All these pieces of animation work together to create a more satisfying feel to moving throughout the world.



This Friday at 16:00 BST, we’ll be back with another FBG Podcast! We’ll be discussing the Sunless Skies Roadmap, so you if any question on game development scheduling or about the roadmap itself, please come join us on Twitch!