Reflections
Hotfix version 0.5.4 is up!
CHANGELIST:
-Fixed an error in objects that caused them to fall through the ground
-Fixed an infrequent crash bug in the office scene
-Attempted fix for an extremely infrequent issue where players could fall through objects in the environment
-Improvements for compatibility with Kaspersky antivirus
-Improved interactions with conversation prompts
-Improved character interactions with objects
-Updated lighting and layout tweaks in Office scene
-Various functionality fixes in office office scene
-AI characters are better at following you through the forest in Act 2
-Added auto-zoom for phone when looking at it to aid in control
KNOWN ISSUES:
-Texture options settings are disabled until version 0.5.6
We're working on the next batch of content for version 0.6.0 but that will probably have a more substantial time before it's ready to go. In the meantime, we're working on improving character interactions and will be rolling out another update with more dialogue and functionality for the AI characters. We're looking forward to showing you more!
HOTFIX Version 0.5.3 Is live
-Attempted fix for Kaspersky antivirus false positives (please let us know if you use Kaspersky and still encounter issues)
-Improvements to the grab mechanic
KNOWN ISSUES:
-Texture fix temporarily disabled texture quality settings.
HOTFIX Version 0.5.1 Up now
-Temporary fix for an issue where textures got corrupted resulting from quality settings
-Improved functionality of object grabber to better account for edge cases
-Updated the game icon
KNOWN ISSUES:
-Texture fix temporarily disabled texture quality settings. This will hopefully be fixed quickly but is waiting on a Unity update. Some performance may be affected on lower end machines.
Update Version 0.5.0 is LIVE!
UPDATES:
-Integrated with Tobii Eye Tracking
-Support for Oculus Runtime 0.8.0
-Updated lighting system incorporating Unity 5 Enlighten features for dynamic light bounces
-Completely redid the grab and pickup mechanic so it is much more stable
-Fix numerous stability bugs
-Simplified progression paths and removed some badly functioning paths. We will be updating this with more content in the near future
-New "stash mechanic" that allows you to store an object while moving
-Updates to the Run mechanic (now functions more like a standard run in many FPS titles, click the Left Analog Stick or tap shift to run forward)
Better code framework for more stability and future updates (which will be coming more frequently)
KNOWN ISSUES:
-Not all characters have a complete set of new conversations yet
-Oculus support is a few issues with text display and legibility
-General improvements to Oculus functionality and options are coming soon.
New version Coming March 5th, 2016 (with updated VR support)
About Oculus
Reflections is a game that is designed to support VR from the ground up. However, in the interrum between updates, Oculus released changes to how VR is handled that caused incompatibility with the latest runtime (0.8). Because we don't want to be misrepresenting the game in it's current state, I've removed the VR Support listing from the store page for the time being.
Please don't worry, however! The game currently runs with Oculus version 0.8 in our development builds, and will be updated to be compatible with Oculus again this Friday. At that time, we'll update the store page to reflect that and include the correct information about VR compatibility. I know that the delay has made it hard to play Reflections with VR, so we are committed to fixing that ASAP. I apologize personally for the delay in updates, which I'll explain more in the next section.
Why was the last update Delayed?
We had originally scheduled a release for for Christmas, but it was pushed back due to major issues with the state of the build that weren't resolvable in time for the scheduled release. At the time the build was due for release, I was the only person working on correcting bugs, due to our reductions in budget and team size. Because we didn't have the resources to fix issues and didn't have the person who set up the majority of the codebase, I was forced to admit that we would be delayed in submitting a version for users until we could sort through those issues.
The bad news for me, and the reason for the delay in communication/updates, was that I had no idea how to tackle the issues we had without finding another programmer to assist. A number of small issues had compounded and caused a lot of errors which needed to be fixed before the game could be released, and we didn't have the manpower to get them done in a timely fashion.
The good news is we ended up adding a new developer to the team in January. His name is Daniel Strayer and he's a longtime friend of Broken Window Studios who worked with us back on the early Grave versions. He's now working for us full time and we have arranged a payment deal that allows him receive compensation without breaking the bank for the studio. What's been great about having Daniel is that he's immediately turned things around and has gotten us ready for a stable and greatly improved version to release this week.
I know it's not usually a good idea to be overly personal in these types of messages, but I wanted to say that the main reason I didn't update sooner is that the issues we had with release were actually really disappointing to me, and I had a period of lapse where I wasn't being very effective at communication and that ended up compounding as the time duration increased. I know that as a business owner and the public face of Broken Window I should be better at managing those things, so I'm pushing to improve that process and stop letting setbacks intimidate us as a team. It's sometimes really demoralizing to see things not go as planned and we've suffered a lot of that recently. I think we've finally fixed a lot of our issues and should be delivering more regular updates. I appreciate your support and patience along the way.
We were trying to release updates every two weeks at the outset and that ended up becoming completely untenable. We were spending every week simply fighting fires, fixing bugs and responding to reports when what we really should have been doing was improving features, building new levels and generally finishing the game. We have sorted through these issues though and should be able to move forward towards completion at a reasonable clip.
What's coming in this update?
There's a lot coming in the update and to be honest, I can't say for sure what all of the features will be as we've had such a delay in releases that some features may be pretty drastically improved and I've just forgotten them. The game isn't entirely transformed and we're holding back new levels until a future update, but a few things you can expect will be:
- Updated support for Oculus Rift version 0.8.
- Huge improvements to the pickup mechanic and object interaction.
- Integrated Enlighten lighting system with Unity 5.
- Integration of Tobii Eye Tracking.
- Totally new conversation system with branching conversations and dialogue choices.
- Improved progression paths for Act 2. Streamlined gameplay interactions and merged a few complex levels to create more interesting paths.
- Integration of Emily, Chelsea, David, and Jason in both act 1 and act 2 with full interactions and conversations.
- Updated UI and menu system.
- Refined quality settings to allow play on a wider variety of machines.
- Numerous bug fixes and improvements.
What's the plan for Reflections?
First off, I want to say that Reflections is a deeply personal game to us and we have a lot of really cool plans for the game moving forward. Our schedule has been really unpredictable, mainly because the game development process is extremely time consuming and we have to juggle tasks that are very time consuming for a small team.
Our current goal is to work feverishly on the next set of content and move forward to a full launch by summer. We are currently pushing to make that happen but will be transparent about our updates and progress. I've gotten over my anxiety about our progress and will making sure that there are both regular versions of Reflections on Early Access, and updates about how things are progressing.
Thank you very much to everyone who has purchased the game and supported us. This has been a challenging road for us but we are committed to making Reflections the best game possible.
See you on Friday with our new build!
New version of Reflections coming TODAY!
We also wanted to let you know that we are partnering with Tobii Eye Tracking to bring you integration with the Tobii Eye X , which allows for a super awesome control variant where you can manipulate the camera and object interactions using only your eyes. This is a really cool feature that we've shown off at Indiecade and MIGS, so I hope you guys enjoy checking it out if you have the ability to do so.
Thank you very much for your patience and I know the updates have been sparing lately. This has been a highly transitional time for Broken Window Studios and we have been organizing ourselves to make sure that we are delivering the best quality game possible. In the coming weeks, you should expect to see Reflections transforming substantially, with new content, levels, voice over and dialogue, as well as a much deeper story and a lot of new ideas. This has been an experiment for us, and we appreciate you being along for the ride. We look forward to having you on board with us!
An Honest Discussion of Things
I know that you come to Steam to play games, not to have deep conversations with strangers about their work. That being said, if you support Reflections in Early Access, you're a part of the development process, and it seems that withholding the challenges along the way would be misrepresenting it. If you don't want to read this there's no need to, but I feel the need to express some of it. This is a bit of a dump of thoughts and feelings so you have been fairly warned.
Reflections is a very personal game to me. It started as a way for me to address how I was feeling as I got ready to graduate from college in 2012, before I had any big industry jobs or concrete career plans. In that way, Reflections is a study of what I think is so amazing about games, but it's also a pseudo-autobiography. It is a window into what I was thinking and feeling at the time, and still do. The challenge of doing something like this, particularly when you have a team of people working on it, is discovering the gap between what you are trying to say and how artfully it is currently being expressed.
In creative work generally, every criticism or complaint speaks volumes and the praise often seems dwarfed by it, even when the praise vastly outnumbers the criticism. This is a sentiment I've heard a lot of people express so I think I'm not alone; a single negative voice tends to drown out hundreds or even thousands of positive ones. That's just the nature of our brains to some degree; we have a confirmation bias, and deep down inside, most of us don't think what we do is worth anything. Success tends to feel like tricking people, and when someone speaks poorly of your work it often seems like they simply "saw through" your ruse. You are a fraud and they found out. The subtleties and complications of why someone posts a negative comment or review are almost never apparent, but I think it's pretty safe to say that they aren't intending to crush your spirit.
I know the game isn't finished, but there's something extremely vulnerable about releasing a game, particularly like this one, to the eyes of the public before it's truly ready to go. We needed the feedback, and even the very negative is making us feel like we understand what the game is a little better and what needs to happen to improve it. We don't take all the advice, nor do I think we should, but in general we feel that every comment is useful.
Unfortunately, that feedback sometimes comes at times when really unpleasant stuff has been happening. I've been subsisting on a bare-bones wage cobbled together largely from loans, contract work and now a part-time teaching job, and we have had to scale back the size of production to make sure the company won't shut down. At the moment, I'm the only full time employee on the game, and I'm doing it in addition to other responsibilities, such as making sure my wife and I don't end up on the street. It's hard to describe, but feeling financially uncertain really affects the output of creative work, and that has contributed to delays.
I become afraid to check back in, because I worry that I'm going to see someone who is disappointed or angry at me for what I have or have not done. I know that you're not supposed to care about my problems, so when I'm sad or depressed on not feeling productive I don't feel like I can share any of that. So instead, I just drop off, stop checking emails, stop reading the forums, and sometimes, stop getting out of bed. Video games are a huge inspiration for me in my life but they can also seem like an abyss, where I lose myself in them instead of making meaningful progress on my work or fixing my own issues. When life is good, I often play video games less, but when I'm feeling down it becomes a form of escapism that I get stuck in.
The challenge I have right now with production is that it's basically just me, and I'm at a point where a lot of the work left to do is all in the head space of what goes into the scenes to improve them. The mechanics are largely there, there are bugs still, but the largest thing left to do is really bring all the pieces together and make a cohesive game. This involves changing the conversation system, filling the conversations with worthwhile content, changing scenes around, adding a few new scenes, adding complexity to the scenes we have, removing a few things that aren't working and generally improving the game so it can be ready to launch. There's a really long list that I have in an Excel spreadsheet of everything I need to do, and while that helps keep organized, it can also seem pretty overwhelming at times.
This is my first commercially released game as an independent, and I think there's usually an act that people put on where they pretend that they are more confident or more comfortable than they actually are. I often call this "peacocking," the idea that you try to make yourself look bigger and more impressive to fool people. I think most people do it to some degree, and because of that a lot of genuine honesty can be seen as weakness. I don't want people out there to believe I don't know how to make games, or that I can't see the problems with the game, or that I'm giving up or quitting.
When we put in the timer for our updates, we felt that it was necessary to keep people excited and ready to check back in. What I didn't really plan for was how this type of game doesn't really work like a conventional consumer product. The biggest things that need improvement are on the side of narrative and engagement, not incrementally adding features or filling a metaphorical glass. A lot of what Reflections is needs to be retooled, refined, altered and reshaped before it's ready to ship in a final state. I think I'm going to remove the update timer because I don't think it suits. Reflections doesn't really run on the timetable I was thinking it would, and having the timer has been leading to a sense of failure that has actually slowed down my updates. Once we've failed to meet one date, every day that passes seems like it's putting more pressure or makes me feel added doubt. Will people think what we did was worth the extra time or would they just think we wasted the time?
I realized Reflections wasn't coming out as an honest representation of me or the feelings I wanted to convey when I started working on it in 2012. To be honest, the reason an update hasn't come out yet is I've been trying to tool with the concept and figure out the best way to bring the missing vitality back to the game, the concept that I had for it originally but that got hidden away by deadlines and financial obligations and a sense of prior commitment. I realized only recently that all I should be doing is focusing on making Reflections the best game possible. That's what I'm doing now.
We are extremely grateful for the support we've received on Steam and in the community in general. I really hope this huge rant didn't come off as whining or ungrateful. I can't actually believe that I wrote all this or that I'm about to click "Post." This actually hit Steam's word count a few times while I wrote it.
Delay Update Progress
The good news is that we have been in contact with Unity and they HAVE fixed the bug that was completely blocking us from making more builds. The fix has not yet been released, but it should be soon. Once that build gets released, we should be able to release updates again!
As for things we are focusing on in the next update:
We know we want to get the latest Oculus Runtime working again, as well as various bug fixes and performance optimizations. The game itself is still changing rapidly as we are still in Early Access, so I don't want to promise any particular content yet, but we will certainly have at the very least a preview of our new, more interactable conversation system.
Delay in Version update! Unity bugs + Oculus 0.7 coming soon
The bad news is we've had to commit a few bug reports to Unity, including a GUI issue that makes our camera render improperly. We very much want to get you a new version ASAP, but will have to wait for a little while until Unity releases a patch. Thank you for your patience! We will make the update as soon as possible.
On a separate note, we've currently got some substantial improvements in the works that I think you guys will really enjoy. It may be on a slightly slower schedule than anticipated, but the wait will be worth it in our opinion.
Thanks and have a good weekend!
Reflections Development Roadmap
When will the game be out of Early Access?
We're currently estimating that the game has 3-5 months of Early Access remaining. The holidays are a bad time to release indie games, so even if we were finished with development, it would likely be a good idea to wait until January/February. This is our current target for the "final" Reflections.
How long will the game be?
The current game is roughly in the ballpark of 1 hour long. We're pushing to make the final version of the game roughly 3 hours in length for a single playthrough, with the same expectation of diverse replay options as before.
Is the update schedule going to change?
Yes. We're looking to drill into some substantial new features and content, so we are going to need a little more time for each update. The game has gotten a lot of updates but has been missing deeper polish, so we're going to be taking more time between versions. We're expecting to switch to a 4-6 week turnaround for major content updates moving forward.
What are the upcoming features/Additions?
- Totally redone conversation system, allowing for the player to selection dialogue options and engage in conversation.
- Adding a level in the dorm room in college.
- Integrating an apartment section as a key portion of Act 2, with the option to pick your preferred apartment type.
- Splitting Act 3 into Act 3 and Act 4, allowing for another segment of play prior to the final conclusion.
- Heavy treatment of the story, including rewriting all of the lines and adding in sub-plots regarding your character's family.
- Intrigue and conflict plot lines involving both your partner and crush.
- Improving the grab mechanic so that it is more reliable and doesn't pop objects out of view as often.
- Voicing and animating characters. We're still determining how full this will be, but will certainly include emotes and "call outs" during significant conversations.
- Improvement of the follow AI and animal AI behavior in Act 2. They are currently way too prone to error.
- Full autosave system, allowing players to stop mid-session and resume where they left off.
- Better "zapping" system, which brings more objects and interactions from act 1 to act 2, and beyond.
- A pet character is in development.
- Ongoing improvement of gameplay interactions and feedback in all levels
- Integrating proper sound effects for every object and interactable in-game, as well as better ambient sound effects.
- Ability to run with objects, as well as investigating an elegant way to allow players to open doors while carrying objects. We're trying to figure out a way to do this that isn't terribly intrusive or convoluted, while still keeping things simple.
- Full hospital ending sequence in Act 4 that characterizes your life and plays through an interactive ending sequence.
Obviously, this is a sizable list, which is the reason for the extension in development time. We appreciate your patience and feel confident that Reflections will start improving quickly.
Thank You
We can't thank you enough for purchasing Reflections in Early Access. Your feedback and support have been invaluable to us, and have genuinely helped improve the game to date. This game has always been somewhat experimental, and some answers to hard questions have been provided by both your feedback and our ability to collect data and watch your playthroughs online.
Early Access is a strange beast, particularly for a narrative exploration game. Our goal is to build a game that can connect with a large number of people in a way that not many games have, and we appreciate you helping us get closer to that every day.
We look forward to showing you our next version soon!