Development Log Week 97

With the closed alpha tests coming closer every day, our work revolves more and more around getting the game ready for its first contact with actual players and ramping up our marketing and communication efforts. Oh, and we also have our first development video ready for your enjoyment!

Martin

A very busy week lies behind me during which I worked on three somewhat interrelated things:

Firstly, I went on a surprisingly tough search for a CRM tool that we could repurpose as a communication tool for our upcoming marketing efforts. See, we'll need to reach out to a lot of people if we want to make PU known to the world...journalists, bloggers, "influencers" and so on. And in a sense, we are trying to "sell" them something: We want them to check out our game and report about it. While the sales metaphor works relatively well, the respective tools that exist are mostly rooted in the classic sales term in which sales people actually sell products or services in a very old-fashioned manner. So finding a tool that we could bend enough to work with our process was everything but easy. We're trying out one now and we'll see how it goes. I'm sure you'll read more about our communication efforts on this blog in the future.

Secondly, and sticking with the communication theme, I prepared our very first development video. That's right! If you want to see moving images of the actual game, you can finally do so here:

Please let me know what you think about it in the YouTube comments or - even better - on our forums!

Last but not least, I fixed a long-known bug in the game which hasn't been an issue during development but had to be taken care of before we could commence alpha tests with actual players. As you can see, all our activities are shifting towards a common goal: Finally getting the game into you hands! Stay tuned!

Michi

With the internal alpha tests coming up I am focused on making them happen at the moment. This included fixing a few really annoying UI bugs but I was mainly creating content for the game itself. Yep, you heard that right, this is new to me, too :). I spun up our material editor and used it for the first time, not just to make sure it was working but to get some actual work done. The first test will have a relatively short timeframe, so there was no need to create all the content there will be in the game, just the things that are necessary at the start of the game.

I honestly thought that couldn't possibly take me more than a couple of hours or a day at most, but I was wrong! Even to build and sustain a small base quite a few things are necessary: the workforce needs water, food and other items. All of these need to be produced and the buildings that produce the commodities need to be built as well. This is what the editor looks like right now:

As always, we'd love to hear what you think: join us on the forums!