KickStarter Exoplanet: First Contact - a space western action-RPG - now available on Early Access

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/531660/view/3131689217751526606

BUILD 0.63​

Hey folks! It is almost Christmas, and there’s no better time to take a breath after this tough and exhausting year. We were working hard to release our biggest update ever, and we've put a great deal of effort into delivering as much content as possible to please everyone who fancies trying a space cowboy outfit on this holiday. So yeah, it is another regular monthly update.

Let’s see what’s in the box!

Spoiler

CHANGELOG

GAMEPLAY

We have released the very first iteration of stealth last month, and now it is time to improve it. We started with NPCs’ AI.

First of all, there was an issue when NPCs do not notice Jack when he is in stealth mode, even if he’s right in front of them. But not anymore!

Second, NPCs now have an indicator. If Jack lurks or sneaks somewhere nearby an NPC, the NPC gets suspicious. Thus, if the question mark above an NPC becomes red, it is time to fight or skedaddle.

We have another surprise for those who like to play as a thief. Pickpocketing. Master this craft to steal random loot from NPCs or to plant anything into their pockets. It is also the very first iteration and is not much useful in quests yet but we are definitely going to expand it by developing a crime system.

Of course, you need a teacher to learn something like this. Look for an abori in the Scalphunters camp named Short Fused. There’s a chance he will agree to teach ‘stupid huma’ his craft. Watch your pockets, though.

Another thing to mention is upcoming gameplay changes. We do understand that gameplay-wise Exoplanet could use an upgrade, and it is our top priority for the beginning of the next year. Particularly, melee combat and gunplay.

And the very first gameplay change is a small tweak for Jack. When the guy is out of stamina, he staggers and slows down in order to catch his breath. Not much for a Christmas gift but it is a harsh world after all. Deal with it, Jacky.

NPCs received a better present—speech bubbles to share their piece of mind. These bubbles are usually a reaction to events around them, to Jack himself and his success and failures.

[i.imgur.com]

LEVEL DESIGN

We have completely reworked the very beginning of the game. Jack still wakes up in the desert but the desert has changed. We have also improved the tutorial, so there are gameplay changes as well. The idea behind this change is to improve user experience, to give the player a direction and to show some basic mechanics.

This is work in progress, so we really need your feedback. Any comments are welcome.

QUESTS

There are two more quests for Jack. The very first one, Survival for Dummies, is connected with the new beginning. The next one, Dust Devils, can be found while exploring the world, so make sure you won’t miss it.

VISUALS AND SOUND

We’ve made a great deal of visual and sound improvements for this update. They are mostly cosmetic but it is still worth mentioning. We've also fixed some animations and assets, and replaced some old sounds with the new ones.

FUTURE UPDATES

While we are releasing updates for The Edge, there is another work in progress. We have been developing the new big location with the town for quite some time now. We will share more information about it later, so it is better to join our Discord[discord.me.Exoplanet] if you want to see more sneak peeks in the new year.

NEW WEBSITE AND FORUM

Last but definitely not the least.

We just launched the official Exoplanet website with a forum. They are available at https://exoplanetgame.com/ and http://forum.exoplanetgame.com.

So far, our website is mostly a landing page with some interesting stuff and a news feed but we are going to expand it a bit later, once we have all the planned mechanics in-game. Subscribe to our mailing list[exoplanetgame.com] to receive important updates about the game, and sign-up to our forum to ask us anything or to share your gaming experience. Keep in mind, there's a chance the mail will end up in spam folder, we are doing our best to fix it.

That’s all for now.

I believe we all deserve a break to spend some time with our folks. And we wish you the same thing. Enjoy your holidays, have a great time with your close ones and be happy.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Alersteam and personally from Jack Sharp.

 

[Abu Antar]

Is the game worth €8.50? I have been eyeing the game even before this thread was created.

 

[Modron]

Yeah been wanting some codex impressions myself after the last big content update.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/531660/view/3122687725493102355

BUILD 0.65

Hey cowboys! It’s the end of February, so another monthly update is already here. What’s new, you ask? See for yourself.

Spoiler

CHANGELOG

GAMEPLAY

We are working hard to improve melee combat, and there is a new feature added for those who fancy knives. Now you can finish an enemy with a blade if his health is reduced to a certain amount.

We have also fixed knockouts, navigation errors for Outcasts and Scalphunters patrols and many other pesky bugs and issues.

QUESTS

Idol in Anomaly quest was significantly reworked. There are new ways to solve it and brand new cutscenes. On the top of that, now you can obtain beads whether you helped Scalphunters with the idol or didn’t.

There’s also a new quest connected to this one, it is called Making a Profit.

LEVEL DESIGN

Our level designers are very busy at the moment with an important task—they are doing their best to improve the abandoned ship, so there are no big changes on The Edge in this update but some furniture in the mining village.

SOUND

There are plenty of SFX changes, though.

First of all, we’ve reworked the attenuation of sounds in the game world to make it more plausible, decreased the initial volume of the game audio mix, improved the balance between all the in-game sounds and the positioning of sound effects close to the player’s character.

Second, we have also slightly improved the sounds of range weapons, reworked the sound of impact while shooting and fixed a bug where the sound of a hitting shot was not audible.

And, of course, we finally added sounds of a barge.

VISUALS

Another batch of apparel's was transferred to PBR.

NEW TEAM WEBSITE

Recently we launched the official Exoplanet website[exoplanetgame.com] with a forum[forum.exoplanetgame.com].

And today we also would like to bring to life our old hacked and broken team’s website, https://alersteam.com/. There’s a brand new and simple design, and we hope you will like it.

That’s all for now. Thanks for your support, we will be back in a month with another update.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/531660/view/3117060763987252230

BUILD 0.66

Hey folks! Another month has come to an end, so it’s time for another update. Let’s take a look at the changelog.

CHANGELOG

QUESTS

We’ve improved the ‘Daily Bread’ quest. Now Rusty Nails is alright with any food Jack brings to him but the rot. Also, Jack can learn more about cooking his meals with a bonfire.

Rusty Nails is also eager to learn about his pal’s fate, so he has a new quest for Jack. Perhaps, this brave space cowboy can find any information about Rusty’s lost friend.

There are also some under-the-hood changes for some quests and their logic.

GAMEPLAY

We've polished combat finisher death animation, added a knockout visualization and fixed a few issues.

LEVEL DESIGN

As I mentioned in the previous update, our level designers were working hard on improving the abandoned ship, and today we are ready to show you the first results.

SOUND

We’ve reworked the balance of in-game sounds and improved sounds’ audibility and positioning of NPCs, environment and the protagonist. Also, we've fixed the layering of equipment sounds.

VISUALS

A great deal of work was put into the ship. We’ve added a bunch of new assets and new textures for humans. Also, we’ve transferred some new hats to PBR.

That’s all for now. Join our Discord[discord.gg], we will be back in a month with another update.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

WTF is that?

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/531660/view/3207136576663343179

Exoplanet: First Contact
Announcement​

BUILD 0.67

Hello, friends. April is over and we release a new update. We want to tell you about the improvements in gameplay, new quests and changes in game design.

But before we come to the list of changes, we’d like to tell you that we have started developing our Discord channel where we publish almost daily unique updates, tell about the game development and share interesting working materials that nobody sees. Here you can also leave your feedback about the game, share your ideas and interesting content, and also ask your questions to the team and get the answers.

Spoiler

CHANGELOG

GAMEPLAY

A lot of players asked us to give them some extra instruments for orientation because of our complicated multi-layered level design, that’s why we decided to add a compass. It’s always available at the top of the screen. At the moment it’s only the first iteration, and we’re going to improve it.

We’ve also added the effect of poisoning. Every time Jack is influenced by toxines, the green mist on the edges of the screen will inform you about it.

QUESTS

As you know, for the last few months we’ve been working on the spaceship and its detailing . Now the new quest Dead Leviathan is available, where Jack has to overcome the systems of protection coming to life and find the way out.

Besides, we have renewed the quest Wild planet, and now there are many more variants of events for the meeting with robbers on the spaceship. Find out how Jack can avoid being robbed!

More variety was added to the quest Find Curios. Now Jack can get a small aborigen if he breaks the wall with his pick if he has enough skill. He is also able to render the boy unconscious and hand him over to Skalphunters. Besides, a lot of cutscenes are added to the quest.

LEVEL DESIGN

Our level designers have taken a small break in the work with the ship to improve other areas of The Edge. This month the changes have touched upon the ancient aborigen cemetery and the caves where there are ancient tombs.

We weren’t really happy with the topology of the old cemetery, that’s why it was remade from scratch, with a lot of new assets we had been preparing for several previous months.

The caves at the cemetery were also considerably changed. Now it’s a gigantic dungeon where you can see well-preserved samples of aboriginal ancient architecture.

Apart from it, with the help of new canvas we have also repainted the outpost of the Outcasts and partially a ship.

SOUND

We brought our gunshot sounds to an upper level. At first now they are audible at further distance. But also, now they have a more immersive spatial effect that gives an impression of a distance between the listener and the audio source. The related demonstration is in the following video. Enjoy!

Besides, there was an improvement of the sounds of aboriginal mortar and rifle, the way the sounds of the carabiner’s shooting work, some special settings of hearing the sniper weapon were added and the sounds of waving pole arms were remade.

Another important thing. Thanks to our audio engineers, we reduced CPU and RAM usage by about 10 percent, which means now you have a little bit of extra performance and we have a little bit of extra space to show you more high quality content. Optimizations are not limited just by these improvements (and we already have got some plans for it) but we are glad to announce that we have such results.

ASSETS

We’ve added a lot of new architectural assets, the first sets of electronic devices inside the ship on the temporary texture, extra animations of beetles—arphants, crucases and kabarogs, some new types of ladders and a new set of furniture.

Besides, some headgear was transferred to PBR, and some textures were fixed in different places.

CONCLUSION

That’s all, thank you for your attention, everyone. We remind you about Discord—subscribe to get access to the unique content of the devblog[discord.gg]. And also follow us here and add the game to your wishlist!

 

[Lord_Potato]

Damn,it's looking better and better. Might be a real gem when it gets released.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I really wish I videotaped my playthrough of the original zone now that it was scrapped. It was actually really cool in a weird way. Memory is hazy, but I recall getting to the edge of the land and it was actually floating and I managed to jump off it and land in some lizardman camp or something.

Actually, looks like they have the legacy build in the opt-in dropdown. Going to grab some footage(and, *ahem*, back it up) before it's removed.



[edit]
Definitely not the start I remember, but I think it's the same area just started in a different location.

 

[ArchAngel]

Damn,it's looking better and better. Might be a real gem whenif it gets released.

Fixed it for you.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Jinn]

Hope that's actually tied to a skill and not just a universal stealth take-down. Because we all know how shit those are.

 

[Abu Antar]

All Events > Exoplanet: First Contact Events >

DEVBLOG #5
Important announcements and a few sneak peeks of work in progress.
Hello, friends!

While we’re preparing a new build, we’d like to tell you more about the things we’re working on right now and what changes await you in the game — and not only there.

DISCORD

Especially for those who like to follow the process of development we publish unique updates in Discord almost daily, in #devblog channel. There we share the freshest works and will be happy to get feedback or an interesting idea from you. You can also get some answers to the questions about the game right from the development team.

DEVBLOG

We work hard on the Edge, adding a lot of new content and we also improve assets that already exist in the game. And at the same time we work on a considerably bigger location with the town and a canyon.

We make a lot of small changes that improve the general look and atmosphere of the game.

Working on the sky—creating clouds and working on their interaction with the sunlight.

A bonus for those who love watching the stars. We’re improving the night sky of K’Tharsis by adding nebulas and constellations.

We’re creating new concepts of plants to make biomes richer.

You already can see some of them in the game, not in the final variant though.

We substantially redo mobs of K’Tharsis giving them a more alien look. That’s how, for example, crucas will change:

Remember the shark from our old demo?

We also considerably changed it and are ready to show you new concept arts. This monster will go to the desert very soon!

We have also added a new powerful monster called alpha to the game.

We’re thinking of putting more difference into the population of K’Tharsis—looking for new shapes and styles for abori.

One of the most important processes is the work with colours. So we’re trying many variants of painting for different assets.

We’re also working on the replacement of the UI for a long time and experimenting a lot, trying to find an interesting combination reflecting both sci-fi setting and a cowboy theme.

Within this change we also did some work with the dialog box and made it more stylish and qualitative, and also more comfortable for the eyes.

A great deal of work was dedicated to compiling icons with new UI—here are the first attempts of stylization.

This is just a part of changes—the team is adding new content into the game all the time. To stay in touch join our Discord channel, leave feedback, subscribe to our page on Steam and—the main thing—add the game to your wishlist!

Follow us on social nets:

DISCORD
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
VKONTAKTE

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

Working on new trees—we want to make locations not only more alien looking but also more picturesque.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

What do they mean this will be released in chapters? As in each chapter will be a separate game or are they going to update the same game with each chapter individually?

 

[The Wall]

Space Cowboy on Morrowind planet? I'm officially interested

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/531660/view/3367018787396773840

DEVBLOG #6

Hello, friends!

In our last article we started telling you about a new UI, and now we’d like to give you more details about the latest changes. Regretfully, despite the huge work we’ve already done, these changes won’t go in the nearest build—nevertheless, we’d like to share the results with you and will be happy to hear your feedback.

MENU

As you could see in our devblog in Discord[discord.gg], we’ve completely changed the main menu and made it much more stylish, modern and suiting the theme of the game. We’ve also changed the style of the logo, adding more sci-fi to it. That’s not a final variant yet—but we’ll be happy to hear your opinion.

INVENTORY

We’ve done a great deal of work over the inventory. We’re trying to make it more intuitive and
“lightweight”. We’ve also experimented with rotating the icons in the inventory to demonstrate the look and the description of them better. And finally we tried to make sure that the interface goes well not only with day time, but with night time as well.

All these changes touched upon the loot screen too—in the new interface it has become much neater and more informative. Besides, we’ve made a “cleaner” display for tracked quests.

NOTIFICATIONS

The system of notifications was totally reprocessed—a lot of elements have changed beyond recognition, and we’ve also added something new. Also the Q button activates the compass at the top of the screen.

That’s how, for example, scanning looks like. The colour of the wave changed according to the main colour of the interface, and we want it to highlight enemies, loot and neutral units with intuitively clear colours.

Prompts during the scanning have also become more stylish and intuitive. We paid attention to the layout of the text and icons, so that players can find everything they need for a fight as fast as possible. Now the level of the enemies, the number of their lives and weak spots are completely evident.

The same thing has happened with learning tips—now all the important information will be formed in a proper manner.

DIALOGUES

In our previous devblog we showed the changes touching upon the dialogues. They will be much more readable and convenient.

At the moment we are also working on adding the display of the options that are unavailable for Jack and that demand a certain level of skill.

JOURNAL

We have redesigned the journal window: took away the wall of the text and added more visual elements. Now quests are conveniently combined into categories, it’s easier to switch between them and, thanks to redesigned visuals, it’s much more convenient to persept what is written. By the way, the glossary will look the same.

LOADSCREENS

Showing you something beautiful in the end—remember our post about alpha recently? You can meet this handsome guy during the loading of the game! We’re working on adding more of such screens to the game and want them to reflect useful information about K’Tharsis.

Here are all changes about the UI for now—but we’re working on a huge number of other updates. We publish all of them almost every day in our Discord, in #devblog channel.[discord.gg] There you can not only see all the interesting changes before they get into the game, but also leave your feedback that we read attentively and consider to every post! The game will definitely become better with your help, so be sure to come! And also follow us and add the game into your wishlist!

 

[HoboForEternity]

Pretty eh UI in term of look and usability but i guess it looks tidier if nothing

 

[cyborgboy95]

Redesigning load screens as a part of working on a new interface.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Abu Antar]

All Events > Exoplanet: First Contact Events >

BUILD 0.68
Telling you about some new quests, changes in art, level design and sounds.

Hello, space cowboys!

We’re happy to show you the summer build and want to tell you about the new content and the improvements we have made, and also about the bugs we got rid of—thanks to your feedback as well.

We also remind you that we publish unique updates in our channel in Discord almost every day—and now you can comment on every piece of news to share your opinion, influence the game development and ask questions.

And now let’s see what is waiting for us in the build.

CHANGELOG
QUESTS

We’ve dedicated a lot of time to improving the quests that already are in the game and adding new ones. For example, the story of Herbalist got an extension with the quest Tools for Herbalist. Now when a grateful abori reaches the mining town, he can teach Jack the basics of the craft.

We’ve added more interactivity into the quest Grave Business. We’ve also divided it into two parts and organized the space better—instead of some small graves, which were not very comfortable to look for, there is a big and significant one. And for improving cutscenes visually, we’ve worked on more harmonious placement of decorations.

In the quest Quick Adventure you can see a lot of beautiful and mysterious things—Jack headed to research aboris’ ancient burial in an attempt to find out who stands behind the tomb raiding.

We’ve also added an occasional event—the quest View Enjoyer. Now you should drop by Lucky Hole more often—there is a chance to meet a mysterious stranger who will make an interesting offer.

LEVEL DESIGN

We keep improving the space ship for the quest Dead Leviathan—new animated elevators are added, and we’ve also reworked the decor—we’ve normalized the position and the size of the chairs for the environment to look more natural.

We’ve also reworked most of the surfaces and reset the parameters of renders to make locations and objects more natural, colours richer and textures more plausible. And each surface sounds more accordingly.

In particular, we’ve renewed hulks, remaking three already existing textures and adding the fourth which gave their skin and body structure a more alien look. The clothes of new hulks are also already remade for the new system of colouring. Besides, we’ve made them new better eyes, considerably adding to these creatures' humanity. We’ve also added a hat-helmet for the main guy. But actually anyone can try it on.

A kid-abori deserves a separate talk. He’s also transferred to new materials and got new eyes. He’s so cute that we’re thinking of adding more abori kids to the Edge.

ANIMATIONS

Going on with the topic of abori-hulks—we’ve added them some new animations, and now the movements demonstrate their power and strength much better.

We’ve also added the movement animations to women NPCs.

SOUNDS

Many bugs are fixed in this build. The loudness of some sounds is normalized and some uncorrect effects are replaced. We’ve also «fixed» music which used to stop from time to time—now the track will please you while you reveal secrets of K’Tharsis.

That’s all for now—a lot of changes about which we were writing in the #devblog channel in Discord will be introduced in the next two builds, but you’ll definitely find things to watch in this one. So add the game into the wishlist and be sure to share your feedback in the comments in our Discord—it’s very important for us to hear what you think of the changes in the game.

See you in the vastness of K’Tharsis!

 

[Skdursh]

Who here who has good taste in games has played this and has an opinion on it?

Pick one:
A) It is worth buying at this point in development.
B) I should wait until it is further along and has more content.
C) People should forget about it entirely.