Hello community, The teams been hard at work since the holidays, which we used to recover from finaling the massive December Redux release, and its time to update you on some of the things weve been doing in the meantime.

EPISODE THREE

The teams been working hard on Episode Three this year. Wed started work on it in 2018 and then put it aside to finish up Redux and work through all the tech and pipeline improvements we wanted to use for the remaining Episodes of WINTERMUTE. One of the first things we did after coming back from the holidays was re-evaluate our plans for Episode Three scope based on the lessons wed learned from building and shipping Redux. A key lesson there was the importance of having enough gameplay and narrative content to fill the space of the game, to avoid the feeling of senseless backtracking or the world just feeling too empty, as it sometimes did in the 2017 Episode One and Two release. Building Redux provided a fresh perspective on how to better balance our narrative and survival experiences, as well as how to better write for narrative flow in our open-world survival experience. These key learnings let us review our plans for Episode Three to ensure we would hopefully avoid making some of the same mistakes wed made in the original 2017 releases, which we werent super happy with (and nor were many of you). Based on how we feel Redux turned out, and how you also seem to feel about the improvements, were confident were on a much stronger path now. Building Redux also showed us that the ideal length for a WINTERMUTE episode is about 5-7 hours. This gives us enough time to present a few interesting story threads, some compelling open-world survival gameplay, and enough narrative momentum to keep the story moving. Its also an amount of content that feels substantial -- these arent throw-away one or two-hour experiences -- but they are compact enough that you can finish them in a weekend if you like. In our original planning, we had considered building the episode around three major story hubs, each in a different region, but that episode would have ended up being larger than Episodes One and Two combined, and amount of content that just isnt sustainable for our team size. Just the testing on an episode that big would be a hugely daunting task, nevermind populating it with enough interesting narrative and mission content to fill the space. The Redux knowledge has helped us focus Episode Three down to a tighter experience that takes place in a single region.
Therefore, Episode Three is the story of Astrids survival after escaping Milton, and takes place entirely in Pleasant Valley. As you probably know, Pleasant Valley is a *huge* region, with a lot of scope for interesting environments and some great story moments. Weve been updating the region to freshen it up for the story, while adding some new landmarks and locations that are introduced in Episode Three. Im really excited about how its all coming together, particularly in how true to Astrids character and background the episode is.

COMMUNICATING FUTURE RELEASE DATES

As you know, hitting publicly announced release dates has never been our strong suit. As an independent studio without a huge marketing machine behind us, we count on our relationship with our community to be positive so that youll help us spread the word about the work were doing. We know we harm this relationship when we promise to deliver things to you and then, for whatever reason, they fail to happen. Unfortunately, project planning and game development as a whole is not an exact science, and while we are ready to work really hard to hit our goals, Im not willing to crunch my team to do so. In order to be more fair to the community, and also more fair to the development team, I think the best approach for us is to refrain from offering any more public release dates. So, moving forward, we wont publish release dates around any of our content, whether that be full Episodes or Survival Mode updates. Well keep working towards internal deadlines, of course, but we wont share news on when we plan to ship updates until those updates are essentially finished. That way, when you hear a release date from us, you know it will happen.

SPLITTING THE TEAM

One of the things weve been working towards this year, with the development team, is hiring enough people with the right skills to be able to create two separate teams -- one to focus on Survival, and the other to focus on Story. Weve made some great progress towards that goal and were getting very close to having all the people we need to accomplish that. Once were there, itll become easier for us to make consistent progress in both areas of the game, so that we can ensure a more steady supply of free Survival updates, as well as ensuring the Episodes get the resources they need. We still have a few positions to hire for to have full redundancy across both teams, but Im hopeful well get there within the next few months. If you know any great developers with experience crafting memorable and award-winning interactive experiences, please send them to our careers page!

SURVIVAL MODE UPDATE

Last year, we put a ton of effort into Redux and solidifying our foundation for the future Episodes, so this year were working to get back on track with producing more frequent Survival Mode updates. To that end, were working on a bunch of new features and content for the 2019 Survival releases. As per my earlier point about release dates, we wont be sharing any tentative release windows for the next Survival release, but I will say that weve already done a fair bit of work on the new systems and content that will comprise the core of the next free update.

A few things were working on for the next Survival update include:

• Adding the Revolver to Survival Mode.
• Overhaul of the aiming mechanics for the Rifle, Bow, etc., to do a better job of integrating Fatigue and the breathing cycle, and making aiming less frustrating.
• Adding a new Food item.
• Adding a new Clothing item.
• Fixing the Sprains system.
• ...and more!

One feature I can confidently say *will not* be added in the next Survival update is the Bear Spear. This has turned out to be much more challenging to integrate well into the core Survival experience, so were taking a bit more time with it to make sure its a solid and promising addition to the Survival toolbox. It will eventually make its way into Survival mode, but it wont be ready for the next update. And speaking of the Spear, we know that some of you [SPOILERS!] have been finding the Spear gameplay in Episode Two to be quite frustrating, particularly the last section in the Bear Cave, so were working on improving that. Were also hard at work on a new Survival region, but that wont be ready until (most likely) the update *after* the next one. As you know we always like to keep a few surprises in our back pocket, but everything will be outlined in detail in the traditional Update Video we launch on update day. If you arent already doing so, its not a bad idea to subscribe to the Hinterland YouTube channel so you get notified when the update video goes live.

MOTION-CAPTURE SPACE

In a previous dev diary I mentioned that wed been able to get our hands on the motion-capture gear from Capcom Vancouvers now closed dev studio. Weve been using the equipment and we thought you might like to catch a glimpse of the current set-up; this image is from the camera test we did to check out 18 of the 36 cameras. Unfortunately, we dont have enough space in our current studio to set up all the cameras, but were looking for some overflow space so that we can set up all 36. In the short term, were going to remove the built-in desks and set up the gear in-house so that the animation team can very quickly and easily iterate on narrative scenes or gameplay animation in support of our Survival and Story goals. The animators whipped up this simple little animation to show you how well it works -- all told this took about an hour or so to shoot and integrate. Its only a quick test and obviously not something wed ever ship, but its fun as a proof of concept and, lets face it, Jeremiah has some sweet moves worth sharing.

NINTENDO SWITCH VERSION

We get a lot of questions about when The Long Dark will be brought to the Nintendo Switch. As you may know, we spent some time last year trying to get the game up and running on Switch devkits and ran into a lot of performance issues. The latest version of Unity -- which well be rolling out as part of our next Survival update -- does offer some performance improvements (which should also make the Xbox and PlayStation versions of the game run more smoothly), but we still dont find the Switch performance to be at an acceptable level yet. Were going to keep working on it alongside our other priorities, but I want to set reasonable expectations around this -- not every game can run well on the Switch, and if were not able to get The Long Dark running at a level of performance and visual quality that Im happy with, we wont be shipping it. All that said, Im still hopeful that we can find solutions to the current issues, and we think The Long Dark would be really compelling on this portable platform, so were not giving up! ***** Thanks for reading this update, and if youd like to share your thoughts about the contents of this developer diary, I hope youll take a few seconds to join the official The Long Dark community, as well as following us on Twitter. If you havent already done so, and youd like to be kept up to date on project announcements outside of general development updates -- for example, sale events, new merchandise, and information about the studio -- please consider signing up for the Hinterland Newsletter. And if youre interested in more regular, bite-sized responses to community questions, make sure to check out the (almost) weekly Milton Mailbag. See you where we see you! - Raph

[ 2019-03-06 21:02:19 CET ] [ Original post ]