Blog - Page 10

I'm delighted to announce that Escape from BioStation is now in the alpha testing phase!

You can check out the full article for the awesome kickstarter folks here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1216280621/escape-from-bio-station/posts/1807891

 

Time appropriate greeting, earthlet!

So I'm starting to get excited, there might only be one more kickstarter update before this thing is actually finished! If you want more regular info on what is going on you can follow on twitter @tuskygames or faceblab https://www.facebook.com/tuskygames/ 

 So it’s time to let you know what’s been completed since the last update - In pictures

So in the last post, there was a picture of the "verybigship" - the baddies cruiser, but I wasn't happy with it so got a new one.



 The level 12 boss is done. Here's a bit of a gloomy shot of it:



There is now little ship for the heroes.



 Couple of new baddies; a floaty bot



 And one with a working name of "Merv":



 Redid boss 1 so now it uses little robots to power a shield. Also his hammer is on fire and sets everything on fire.



 So other than that all of the levels are pretty much done bar 1: the final boss. That should be wrapped up in the next week or 2. We've been doing lots of re-recording as well. We have Bonetopick (the main villan) and his underlings down, as well as a few other parts like the lift, scientist and computer. Lots of thanks to everyone who has given their time for that - It's going to be great to hear it "in situ".
So what I'll be working on next is the final Boss fight. Then I'll start on the 4 cut scenes. There are also a lot of other things like finishing off the options menu, save & load etc. We've also made a start on some media for the store page and getting a proper trailer together which should be fun. The current trailer is over a year old now and no longer a fair representation of the game, so I'm very keen to get that updated.

 In terms of go live date: I am confident that by December there will be a full, cohesive & playable “thing” ready for alpha testing. However are 2 main items that might cause a delay to actually going live. The key one is animating the cutscenes, which at the moment is a little bit of an unknown in terms of how long the might take. So once I have got through one I will have a better idea about if the timeline is still realistic. The other potential cause for delay is any issues and feedback raised from testing. I suspect that there might be quite a few suggestions to implement once there are fresh eyes on it - so again that presents another bit of an unknown.

 Testing is going to start from early December whilst the cutscenes are finished off, so at that time it will become more clear what is left to do. As such I have decided to move the original launch date from December to February.

 Sorry :(

 But that will ensure that there is plenty of time to test, refine, get a steam store page up and that kind of thing. It’ll make sure the game has at least some polish and isn’t launched without being refined. I especially don’t want to go down the route of launching something that is not finished and call it an alpha release.

 That’s all for now.

 The BioStation Drone

 

Howdy there space station fans.

What's new? Here's what's new:

ETA

I'm targetting completion of the game in December - Q4 2017 is the date listed in various places like steam and indieDB so I do want to try and hit that. There isn't much in the way of "contingency" time left in the timeline, though, but I think it is achievable.

Voice recording  

After months of attempting to find suitable times and means of getting the script down we finally got it done. There are still a few parts to fill in but at least at this point there is full voicing for the script. Once the talented sound engineer has had his way with the files then I can drop them into place within the levels and start on the cutscenes!

Bonetopick

The main cutscene models are getting there. Here's the dastardly "Admiral Bonetopick" in front of his vessel the "SS Verybigship"



Upgrades system  

You now earn biobucks from your space station related antics. You spend them on various upgrades including, but not limited to, increased max health; a machine gun; a rocket launcher; and a spell that makes the enemies fight each other.

Battle music  

At the moment most of the background music is quite serene and suits general exploring or puzzle solving. However the game has frequent combat bits. It was clear that it wasn't suitable to have some relaxing dreamy music playing when you were frantically trying to blow things up. So what will happen now is that when combat starts the music will shift up a gear and suit what is happening a bit more. Alexei has got started on that and should have them completed in the next couple of weeks.

Sound effects  

Playtesting the game up till now has been an eerie and silent experience, but no longer! It is full of explosions, footsteps and pew pew noises.

So that's in in terms of progress. It's actually a little bit more than I had planned to do which is encouraging for meeting the completion date. In September the key goal is to have the last full level completed. Also there are a lot of details that need to be filled in on some of the levels, since the initial set up was done in somewhat of a "broad strokes" way in order to have the structure in place.

 That's all for now!

 The BioStation Drone