I apologize for the massive delay in development and news. I had a lot of problems in my personal life that I had to face, and during this time I was not able to invest the time in the development of my game that I would have liked to. If you are not interested in the long story you can skip the next section.
Now I've been back for 2 months and during this time I've reworked the entire game. SCP: Observer is the first game I ever started developing back in January 2021. In the beginning I developed the game without any programming knowledge and only 2 months I realized how badly the game was actually programmed. What I'm saying is that many design patterns commonly used in game development or development in general, were not used at all. Anyway, enough nerd stuff, I've redesigned the entire game from scratch and all you need to know is that it's better now. My girlfriend now helps me with graphical stuff because I'm not good at it. More information about what is better can be found in the next section.
Major changes
Please note that any of the following changes and generally anything in this game is subject to change and not final. The following screenshots were all directly taken from the game itself.
As you can see in the image above, I've reworked the camera interface and action system that I talked about in a previous post. To complement this, I added a new way to move through the cameras. By pressing W, A, S or D you can move to the next connected room in the corresponding direction.
The above map shows all rooms you can observe in the Light Containment Zone. The map below shows the same in the Heavy Containment Zone.
The screenshot above shows the new SCP-035 model from SCP: Containment Breach. I'm not 100% satisfied with it, but in my opinion it's a huge improvement over the previous model.
Small changes
- Added new camera actions like closing doors - New character controller similar to the one SCP: Containment Breach - Security cameras rotate on their own - Massive performance increase - Reduced game size on disk by almost 500MB (Current total size: 529MB)
Conclusion
I hope this post has given back some hope that this game will ever be released. For now, all I can say is that I have a release date planned for early 2023, as well as many new posts about the current status and progress. I am investing all my free time into this game to finish it in the given time frame. Thank you all for your understanding, here are some more pictures.
Development News 14/01/2022
Happy New Year!
I know I'm a little late, but I wish you all a Happy New Year. I have made good progress in the last few days and I want to show you some of it.
I added what I call an "action system" to the game.
You can now use various actions by pressing the number keys on your keyboard. Currently there are 2 different actions in the game. Activating a Tesla gate and swapping cameras. I'm planning on adding more actions to the game and this way I can easily add more in the future.
You will also notice a slightly different user interface. I finally updated it and it is close to what I would like to see in the final version.
This new system is the biggest thing I could do during the holidays. I also took a first approach to a main menu. Feedback is very welcome.
Now that a release date is within reach, I will start working on a trailer. The trailer will finally show a release date and I'm looking forward to it.
Until then, goodbye.
Development News 25/12/2021
Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
I know I'm a little late, but I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
I have not been idle over the past few weeks and have been reworking the Heavy Containment Zone, just as I did with the Light Containment Zone. During this process I noticed many bugs that need to be fixed and some general improvements that the game needs.
The zone itself is not complete and needs much more before it can be released. Even though I'm releasing the game in Early Access, I still want to deliver great and, most importantly, bug-free content.
At some point in the near future, when I'm sure what else I need to do and how quickly I can get it done, I'll release a trailer announcing a release date.
Until then, I wish you all a wonderful time with your families and friends.
Development News 21/11/2021
The biggest graphical update so far!
After over a month of silence, I'm finally getting back to you with some great and exciting news. I've spent the last month completely revamping the Light Containment Zone and I'm still not 100% happy with it, but it's pretty close to what I envision one day.
What's new?
If you remember how it looked before, you can see that the overall brightness is higher and the camera looks much more like a real CCTV camera. If you look closely, you can even see glitch effects and slight distortions to emulate a surveillance camera.
Despite the fact that SCP-3199 is running towards you, you can also see a button with a camera in it. This button is used in some rooms to switch between different camera perspectives so that you can see the whole room.
Similar to the camera button, there is also a button that allows you to activate a Tesla Gate. This can help you when you are trying to survive or this makes them just more angry.
This picture here shows you the perspective outside a surveillance camera. As I said before, I'm not completely satisfied with the look of the HUD yet and it will be changed in the future.
At the edge of the image you can already see a bunch of monitors, with the help of which you can watch the entire zone. This may save your live in some situations, but you still need to monitor the cameras manually if you want to survive.
I also introduced a new game mechanic last month called Events. There are a number of events for each zone and the game selects one of them, which then occurs at a random time in that scenario.
I don't want to say too much about it because it takes the fun out of it, but some events must have something to do with that generator in the middle of the picture.
The last thing I wanna show you guys today is the new map. Compared to the last map it's pretty similar, but I removed a lot of unnecessary hallways. This makes it easier to follow the path of an SCP without getting confused.
You can move around the map using the WASD keys. Note that some rooms are not yet visible on this image, such as room SCP-173.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this update and I look forward to releasing the game one day. It still needs a lot of tweaking and bug fixing, until then I will update you regularly. You can also go on my website getmyisland.com I will post smaller updates and changes on there.
