Game News Colony Ship Update #50: First Chapter is Playable, Early Access in March

[Infinitron]

Tags: Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game; Iron Tower Studio; Vince D. Weller

The latest Colony Ship development update is brief but brings good news. The game's opening chapter is now playable from start to finish and looking good. Vault Dweller plans to continue playtesting and improving it over the next four weeks, but he believes the Early Access build is on track for release in mid March. The update includes a batch of screenshots from the game's opening moments in the Pit, which looks better than ever.

As the title says, the first chapter is finally playable and it looks and feels pretty good. It's another major milestone as there's a huge difference between calling up some scripts to test a quest or check dialogues and actually playing the chapter from start to finish.

Next step - playtesting it internally (that's what I'm doing now), improving the locations and visuals (until now the focus was on quests and scripting), adding more dialogues and events, and expanding options where appropriate. I assume we'll spend the next 4 weeks doing that, then see where we're at. So far it looks like we're on track to release the first chapter in mid March, but time will tell.

See you in a month.
​

Excellent. Let's hope there are no last minute issues.

 

[Rarre]

YES!

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Good luck gentlemen!

 

[Whisper]

Incline is near.

 

[Daedalos]

I literally shouted FUCK YEAH! out loud at the screen when I read the post and saw the pictures.

Gentlemen, the incline cometh.

Couple of questions though, for you Vault Dweller,

Are there any plans to visually touch up the dialogue screen and the reading experience further before or during EA?

I'm thinking maybe something like sprusing up the paragraphs of text, adding abit more spacing, perhaps different type/italics/font/colour for the direct conversation, and the descriptions that your character makes.

I know this is all icing on the cake, but i'm just curious because it enhances the reading experience.

 

[MurkyShadow]

While I'm still undecided if I will dive in and start playing the Early Access release,
there is no question I'll be throwing money at the screen in support. I still enjoy
replaying Age of Decadence. And there is little else, if anything, that gets me
excited at the moment. Good luck and godspeed!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Are there any plans to visually touch up the dialogue screen and the reading experience further before or during EA?

I'm thinking maybe something like sprusing up the paragraphs of text, adding abit more spacing, perhaps different type/italics/font/colour for the direct conversation, and the descriptions that your character makes.

I know this is all icing on the cake, but i'm just curious because it enhances the reading experience.

Naturally, we'd like to improve everything that can be improved, but the text is low on the list. Right now the focus is on improving locations and adding flavor dialogues (we added that diner, so we had to add the cook and dialogues):

As you approach, the woman turns on her makeshift grill: a metal plate resting on two crates above a simple burner.

"What can I get you?" she asks. One look at the unappetizing mass of recycled protein sitting on the grill is all it takes to dissuade you from the "special." She points at a vat with some kind of tear-inducing steam seeping out from around the edges. "Today only, three fifty for a fried New Yorker."

^ MRY contrubution to the war effort​

 

[Daedalos]

Are there any plans to visually touch up the dialogue screen and the reading experience further before or during EA?

I'm thinking maybe something like sprusing up the paragraphs of text, adding abit more spacing, perhaps different type/italics/font/colour for the direct conversation, and the descriptions that your character makes.

I know this is all icing on the cake, but i'm just curious because it enhances the reading experience.

Naturally, we'd like to improve everything that can be improved, but the text is low on the list. Right now the focus is on improving locations and adding flavor dialogues (we added that diner, so we had to add the cook and dialogues):

As you approach, the woman turns on her makeshift grill: a metal plate resting on two crates above a simple burner.

"What can I get you?" she asks. One look at the unappetizing mass of recycled protein sitting on the grill is all it takes to dissuade you from the "special." She points at a vat with some kind of tear-inducing steam seeping out from around the edges. "Today only, three fifty for a fried New Yorker."

^ MRY contrubution to the war effort​

Thanks for answering. Seems logical obviously, and cool with the added diner.

I was only asking, because on the outside it seems like a relatively small task to tinker abit with the different visual styles of text and paragraphing. I just recently watched the pathfinder 2 beta stream, and they way they outline text from eachother and highlight other stuff is simple, yet really neat and effective way to improve the reading experience to the player.
I'm looking forward to March. I wish you and the team the best. Hope you can stay sane and healthy in these crazy pandemic times.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I was only asking, because on the outside it seems like a relatively small task to tinker abit with the different visual styles of text and paragraphing. I just recently watched the pathfinder 2 beta stream, and they way they outline text from eachother and highlight other stuff is simple, yet really neat and effective way to improve the reading experience to the player.

It is a relatively simple task but everything takes time. There are new signs (store signs, medbay, etc) we haven't updated yet because there are tons of other small tasks to do. It's almost overwhelming right now and it takes an effort to stay focused.

For this task, most likely we'd need to apply the font tags manually to each dialogue node, which is a simple task for a large team that can afford to put a junior designer on it for a few hours, but a time-consuming task for a very small team (we lost the second programmer, btw, who decided to seek his fortune elsewhere - a very understandable notion, and we lost two contractors, so we're down to a skeleton crew once again).

 

[Whisper]

(we lost the second programmer, btw, who decided to seek his fortune elsewhere - a very understandable notion, and we lost two contractors, so we're down to a skeleton crew once again).

That is not good. This will delay release much?

 

[Vault Dweller]

(we lost the second programmer, btw, who decided to seek his fortune elsewhere - a very understandable notion, and we lost two contractors, so we're down to a skeleton crew once again).

That is not good. This will delay release much?

Not really, as at this point (now that the game is playable) most programming tasks are done. Now the biggest obstacle and reason for all possible delays is location design.