Almost Alpha!

With only 1 more release to go before we have to be 'feature-complete' for Alpha, we are focused on getting those last items checked off.

In this build for Windows, Android, and Linux, we added a splash screen, improved the settings screen, added the research unit, and autosave support. There's even a whole new level in progress. The minimap didn't quite make it into this test package, but will be there next week, along with the ability to place buildings manually.

That means that most of the tech required is now in the codebase. We have one more pre-alpha release to get any last-minute Alpha Team requests added, then we're into Alpha!

Bug reports are coming fast and furious, and we're doing all we can to address the basics in time to hit Alpha.

We've had some interesting experiences working with Blender and Unreal 4.21 on this project, especially with Android. Linux support has actually been very similar to Android support, but with higher specs. The tricky bits have been mostly with landscape hit detection, Vulkan performance, and distribution size. We worked around the hit detection issues, and we will start building a brand-new package to handle the distribution size issue. Shake loose any textures or items we aren't using.

The sounds have been fun. We wanted to make sure that most of the world had some sort of audio or visual indicator that a dome was working, and then of course tie things like O2 level into breathing. Got a great crash course on sound work from the sound guy behind the Chaos demo, which was super awesome.

Lots of additional fun with getting assets compiled for Linux, but we're doing our best.

See you all next week!