Grab your friends! Undercrewed is ready to launch.
As I type this I am dispatching the Kickstarter keys and everything has suddenly got very exciting.
Undercrewed will be available to buy on Friday 27th September.
If you havent seen it already we have a new Early Access trailer: [previewyoutube="daojBvemVFA;full"]
In this Early Access version I’ve limited the levels to 4 of the 11 to give me more time to work on those and also get feedback on the difficulty. I can’t understate how important it is to buy the game early and review promptly to help the Steam algorithm.
I haven’t been posting many updates because it's mostly been press stuff and not very visually interesting ‘in game’ changes.
Just as an example I’m going to end this post with a small section of the changes from the last week:
Multiple Retry buttons did not network sync
Engine sound when activating Bridge
SBG bug, sync the HP of people better so the HP getting synced is from the client that owns that crew.
SBG bug, the server can get out of sync and keep telling clients to go back to an old part of the level when they can see they have finished it.
Rename some rooms so they don't have developer names.
The exact time and position of the ‘game over’ explosion is not synced
A popup to stop someone clicking randomise or changing ship once they have populated the rooms
I hate the drop shadow on the text of the Randomise button on the ship builder screen.
Added in some visualisations on the settings page to know what the crew and gui will look like when ingame.
Better versioning for save files, and also auto deleting saved files from before launch because we don’t know if streamers / press unlocked rooms or levels that have had their ID changed
Rooms get a longer description when building a ship
I will be doing a countdown on Discord so I recommend joining the channel if you haven’t already: https://discord.gg/EMSmZNK
Lots of love >> David Strachan
Undercrewed Launches in September!
Greetings Captains!
I’ve been really excited to get Undercrewed into everyone’s hands. Because of this I will be launching Undercrewed onto Steam Early Access next month (date still to be decided but it’s likely to be the last week of September).
As you would expect from Early Access some parts are not finished, out of the 11 levels only 4 of them are included. This Early Access will be a great opportunity for me to get feedback about the current levels; length, difficulty, verity to make better levels in the future.
If you were a Kickstarter backer your keys will be sent out in the coming weeks before the Steam launch.
Since my last dev log update I have added a whole bunch of other things including some lag reduction systems, optional missions, better support for gamepads and local play, points for unlocking new modules.
I will write more about those updates in the coming weeks however I do have a I’m currently working on press things and having a trailer made, so you can look forwards and keep an eye out for any articles about Undercrewed!
For those who can’t wait:
The best way to keep up to date with what I’m working on is on Trello where I post what I am working on every day: https://trello.com/b/pBixGPBN/undercrewed and also the Undercrewed Discord channel where you can chat with me and fellow captains about what’s coming up and maybe even find a crew for launch.
Lots of love
David Strachan
Undercrewed July Update
Greetings Captains!
Over the last few weeks I have added a lot of content into the game including another species of enemy. This one is themed around spawning smaller enemies that explode if they crash into your craft.
This has been the most complex set of enemies I have made with many destructible areas and interesting enemy types to fight.
I’ve also done a full rework of the whole user interface to make it cleaner.
I’ve always been keen to allow people to resize the GUI to make it easier and clearer to see on different sized monitors, TVs and for those with visual impairment.
I’ve also fixed a whole bunch of networking things like handling when players cannot connect and refreshing lobbies when there are connection problems.
This shows everyone what I am adding each day and what is on my workstack. This isn’t a full bug list, infact one task I should add onto it is to combine all my todo lists onto this Trello account.
This morning I have been knocking off some of the easier crashes that I’ve known about
I have also been putting together some web forms so anyone wanting to send me bugs / feedback / love letters / suggestions can easily use the same system and it allows me to categorise everything more efficiently.
Many of the things I’ve been fixing recently will not have a huge impact to many people, however I see it as a good thing if I’m getting to a stage where there are no critical features missing and no high priority bugs left.
Gamepad and Settings
Not very glamorous but I’ve been working on making gamepads more consistent on the settings page.
I’ve been really pleased with how the gamepads work on menus, the cursor snaps to clickable objects and doesn’t move when there are no objects in a direction.
The scale of Undercrewed:
1.4 million characters long
50001 lines of code long
2670 hours of programming time (doesn’t include time making art, writing dev log, or anything else)
Level Unlock
While developing a game it is handy to have everything unlocked so you can easily test it all, so it came as quite a shock to me when I remembered that I actually needed to write the system that unlocks parts of the game as everyone plays. Here are the cool particle effects I made to go along with that:
Discord
If you haven’t done so already there is a great group of people over on the Undercrewed Discord channel where we often talk about design problems, game progress, features, ideas, other games: https://discord.gg/EMSmZNK
Rezzed
Last week was Rezzed in London and while I didn’t have a booth I met quite a few of you when I was walking around which was very exciting for me! I will be doing more expos this year and I will post about those closer the time.
Current Work:
I can’t launch without a trailer and other things so that's going to be my highest priority at the moment, also continuing to fulfill the Kickstarter rewards.
Release Date: Undecided (but soon)
Lots of Love
David Strachan
Undercrewed March Update
Greetings Captains!
I feel like I only just posted the last update, however, it is important I tell you about what I'm working on. Between us I’m shocked I remembered to do another dev log so soon.
Push to Activate
I’ve added the most requested feature! A button to lock yourself into the room so you don’t walk out (also an option so rooms require a button to activate)
Control Methods
I have spent a lot of time adding various settings I think will be helpful, can you believe I’ve only just added in options to rebind controls!?! It’s made my life so much easier. I have also added in lots of options for different control methods, graphical settings and many other things.
Ingame Help
I still need to add a lot of help into the game, I am at a stage now where I can watch people play and see how they interact which is a better way to work out where I need to add assistance. A popup box with some text on is the least fun way to learn something, so ideally I want to design it so players learn by trying things out and I only popup messages to make sure the player has understood.
With that said I’ve been trying out some displays to either inform the player about enemies they were fighting or tell them stats about how they are doing.
Online Scores
For those who want to get competitive with their teams I have added an option to compare your score to other scores, however this can of course be turned off if you want a more casual play style.
My more recent tweaks are less visual but in my opinion, more exciting from a development perspective;
Improved Netcode
I mentioned last time I would be working on some updates to the networking, those have gone very well and theoretically the game now has the ability to eventually resync everything if someone’s computer becomes very out of sync (like their computer locked up for a few seconds and the game significantly changes) . However there is still a long way to go.
Dynamic Asset Loading
I have put a bit of thought into when assets are loaded. In earlier versions things were loaded on demand however for a slightly smoother experience I load things in before they are needed now and I also dynamically work out what needs to be loaded (if you keep playing the same level over and over it doesn’t keep loading and unloading the graphics it will just do it the once and remember). Even on a bad computer it is unlikely someone will notice this improvement, however it makes me happy inside knowing everything is well managed.
New Sounds
I’ve added another round of sound assets (about 30), I feel the sounds really have a feel of their own now and I love the style of sound the game has, all the enemies have a unique sound for when they spawn so I’m sure the audio aware players will start to recognise familiar and formidable enemies. It’s been in the game a while but I should mention that the game has full 2D sound so you can hear things move around the ship correctly and moreover the sounds use the Doppler Effect which means you can hear the pitch gets shifted a little depending on if it moving away from you or towards you. You’re welcome.
Control the AI Crew
Another thing that is not fully added but is really nice is the ability to give commands to your AI team members, I’m still playing with different control methods that work on keyboard/gamepad. The bots are already very good at working out what they should do to best help the ship, but sometimes you might want them to go and do a task that no one on your team wants to do.
Feedback questions
It’s hardly an essential day-one feature but I spent a bit of time writing some questions that can be randomly popped up at the end of a level. It will help me work out what people like in a level and improve things for the future of the game.
We have at last started fulfilling the Kickstarter backer rewards! This has been exciting for me and Dex, it’s going to take a while to work through the list so don’t expect an E-mail tomorrow, but it does show progress.
For the next few weeks I will be transitioning to a more marketing role, there is still quite a bit of development I want to do before I let everyone get their hands on it. I would much rather spend my time just making the game because I hate advertising however in the current indie game meta having a successful game is all about how it's marketed (and this makes me sad).
Release Date: Undecided
Lots of Love
David Strachan
Undercrewed February Update = Development is going strong!
Greetings Captains!
I want to first sincerely apologise for not putting out more frequent updates, as you are probably aware the game has been delayed, but this is because the game is much bigger and grander than the original concept. I really do want you to get your hands on the game asap but I also want to make sure that it’s the best version it can be and I have included all of the new features.
Development is still going strong and I wanted to show you some of the things I have been working on!
Recent Features
The first feature I wanted to mention might not be a huge feature to some but it’s my absolute favourite feature in the game ONLINE PAUSING! Yep, using some sci-fi future technology I have put the ability to pause into the game even when playing online.
I’ve also been adding some cool events for you and your crew to deal with during the course of the game.
Maintaining the heat levels so you don't freeze up.
Enemy intruders on board your ship.
Gas leaks
I have also added a significant amount of content into the game (enemies to beat, levels to play, objectives to do, rooms to unlock). I’ve been streaming this on Twitch because it’s pretty interesting to watch and I really enjoy chatting and getting feedback while I work.
The progress as it stands:
Levels 1-4: 95% complete
Levels 5-8: 60% complete
Levels 9-12: 40% complete
My current plan is to polish up the levels that are almost finished and release those, this allows everyone to get their hands on the game sooner while I work on the later levels and also gives me feedback that I can use to improve Undercrewed.
Health Report:
>> At the moment the game performs really well (runs on a tiny computer with no graphics card)
>> There are no high priority game crashes that I am aware of
>> I have a huge list of bugs that I am working through including some in the networking
>> I need to put in A LOT of help, tutorials, popups etc.
>> Most features are in the game
Some of the minor things I’ve done just in the last few weeks:
Added 50 sounds which was no small task but really brings the animations to life
Optimising texture pages
Started the tutorial (will likely get replaced with a more interesting one)
Some minor menu graphical improvements
Some internal performance tools
Fixed many bugs
Online scores
I’ve put endless mode back in the game
I guess there will be a small number of people that have just scrolled down looking for the headline of a release date. You can’t imagine how much time I have spent thinking about the release date and all the things that need to go into it, I worry that it’s a single decision that can break the whole game.
Release Date: Undecided
I do need to post more regular updates because I don’t want people thinking development has stopped or slowed down, but a lot of the cool looking art is already in the game and updates like “I added 4 more options in the setting menu today” don’t seem as impressive. I’m just a lot better at writing code than I am at wordy marketing posts.
I will be starting off this month with a networking bug bash to really make sure you get the best Undercrewed experience.
Things have been really exciting recently for Undercrewed so I just wanted to give a little progress update.
I forgot to mention to anyone that Undercrewed was put in PC Gamer’s Cool Looking Indie Games to Look Out For.
Most of my time this month has been adding content; New Levels, New Enemies, New situations. I can’t wait to show everyone some of the new things I have put in. A few weeks ago I made my favourite level so far.
I have also spent a lot of time perfecting the tutorial because it’s really important that players have a good first experience.
I wish you all the best Christmas and I will see you all in the new year.
I regularly post updates and behind the scenes images of the development.
We’ve had a fantastic weekend displaying at our first expo, the reception from the players was fantastic!
I even got to meet some of you guys which was an excellent bonus for me.
I wanted to make sure there was a stable version for the expo however now I am back to work adding new content.
I have been invited to more expos in the coming months which I am still to announce.
I have been working on making the demo level really exciting to play, so there have been lots of different types of enemies added.
Lots of Love
David
Undercrewed heading to PLAY Expo
Evening Captains!
It’s an exciting time at Undercrewed, this weekend we will be displaying at PLAY Expo. So if you are around London come down and give the game a try. This is the first time displaying Undercrewed at an expo so it’s doubly thrilling for us.
It’s been really delightful to have so many flyers / banners / posters arriving at my house. However if you can’t attend this one we have been invited to many other expos in the coming months
I have spent a bit of time animating everything on the ships including how the turrets are brought into the rooms.
I’m really pleased with how polished everything is starting to look!
Everything is still on track for our launch date and I plan to get a playable demo version out before that for those who can’t wait.
Hopefully next time I won’t leave it so long between posting announcements.
