Bug : Magical disappearing rocks! Put a rock in a box, close it, open again : no more rock!
Bug : Watering drone disappearing after reloading game (That one is much more frustrating than the magical disappearing rocks, sorry about that!)
Bug : Player can be blocked by NPCs, especially in doorways : you can now push them if they block the way. Please be gentle!
Bug : Sprinklers could not be destroyed / moved
Bug : When a storage box is destroyed, sprinklers stored inside did not reappear
Bug : storage box has no name/description
Bug : Lack of feedback from the interface produces multiple clicks on send bug report button
Bug : some musics are not playing / music ends unexpectedly
Bug : skilltree icons for knowledge (flask) and creativity (lightbulb) were inverted, creating much confusion.
Bug : dandelion and dandelion salad had no text
Bug : bug hotel & bee watering station cannot be moved
Bug: Friday night quizz happens everyday of the week. (Nothing ruins your Friday more than realizing it is only Tuesday.)
Translation : a few errors and missing translations in French
Bug : Quest from Ruby asking to talk to Anne Droyd starts every day after being skipped once.
Bug : Empty text for quest asking to talk to Anne Droyd.
Bug : Maria Telkes quest for cornbread could not be completed.
Once again, thank you for your patience and understanding!
Quick bug fix
On this release day, I concentrated on the most annoying bugs that were reported.
Bug : AZERTY users can't change the keyboard binding because the Q letter opens the quest log. (This is a temporary fix, a better support for customizing the controls is on the way.)
Bug : on systems using an unsuported language, all the texts are blank or "Lorem Ipsum". The language will now correctly revert back to english when no better match is found.
I will continue to work on all the reports you submitted, thank you all for your patience!
It's a date! The game will be released on March 16!
Howdy Scientists!
It's official, WoMen in Science will be released on March 16th! The feedback I received is very positive, despite a few very annoying bugs that I still have to correct before the release. A big thank you to the testers and youtubers who gave me their comments, it is a precious help for me.
Deciding on the price of a game is far from simple. You want the game to be played by as many people as possible, but the economic model must also be viable to ensure that you can continue to develop it. You need to take into account that Valve will take a 30% cut, another 30% in taxes, then you have to pay for the software you use, contractors, advertising if you can afford it, ...
I chose to set the price 30% lower than my goal during the Early Access period, to reflect the fact that the game still needs many updates to be complete. That puts the price at $13.99 for the US and Europe markets.
The advantage is that it is a price that seems reasonable to me, the flaw is that it will limit my ability to make significant discounts. However, there will be an additional 10% reduction during launch week as a thank you to all my day 1 supporters =)
February progress report
Howdy Scientists!
Just a quick update to tell you that I'm still on track to release the game in early access next month, probably around March 16th. From now on I will mainly do tests and fix bugs, and hopefully do some marketing.
Here are a few stats about the game:
- 140 items, most of them craftable - 18 plants, and 8 genetic variations (each plant can have up to 3) - 7 trees - 20 quests - 17 artifacts that you can bring to the museum - 1420 strings of text that need to be translated in 4 languages - 633 of these are part of dialogues
And that is just the beginning!
January progress report
Howdy Scientists!
We wish you all the best for 2020!
In December I worked mainly on cutscenes, quests and dialogues. I use Articy Draft to manage all the dialogues, here you can see the main dialogue tree for Carl Linnaeus. All characters have at least one, but sometimes a few more for quests, cutscenes and special events. Linneaus is one of the big ones, since he is our museum curator and there is a little bit of dialogue for every item you might bring him.
We are also working on a few more crops like potatoes, crocus, lavender and strawberries, and polishing the looks of trees and rocks during winter.
This month we will wrap everything up in order to be able to use all of February to make tests and hunt bugs, and be ready for launch in March.
December progress report
Howdy Scientists!
For the last month I mostly fixed bugs and worked on the new dialogue system. I also completely changed the way I process mouse events. This was a lot of work since I had to modify pretty much every clickable game object, but it will ensure that the game responds much better when the mouse is over a sprite or a click is received.
Irene finished the music, with different tracks for each season. Daniel is still working on the portraits for our 21 characters.
November progress report
Howdy scientists!
There is good news and bad news ...
Bad one first ? The release date will be postponed to early March 2020. I’m sorry about that, believe me after 18 months, all I want is to share this game with you all. But there are a few things I did not have the time to implement yet, and several aspects of the game that need more polishing. And much more testing is required too.
The good news is that with this 3-month extension, I will be able to finish the new dialogue system and we should have about 30 minutes of original music to listen to while planting cabbages or sequencing their genes.
Here are the most notable features I added during the past month:
Weather and Seasons
Chicken and Rabbits
And here is a preview of the portraits Daniel is currently working on:
This month I will continue to work on new quests, and the new dialogue system.
October progress report
Howdy scientists!
With the game early access launch planned for early December, I can begin to feel the excitation growing. I won't lie to you, it is a bit stressful to release something and imagine all that could go wrong! Will player enjoy the game as much as I did enjoy making it ? Will there be awful bugs that I could not discover in time ? But it's also very exciting finally being able to share the result of 18 months of work with other people!
Here are the most notable features I added during the past month:
Housing and schedules for all the 20 NPCs
Day/Night cycle with lights and shadows
A plant's characteristics are now displayed
This month's objectives are mainly adding many fun quests, making trees grow over time, and adding two cute animals. Here's a preview of our chickens :
