Name | Sunless Skies | ||
Developer | Failbetter Games | ||
Publisher | Failbetter Games | ||
Tags | |||
Release | 2019-01-31 | ||
Steam | € £ $ / % | ||
News | |||
Controls | Keyboard Mouse | ||
Players online |  59  | ||
Steam Rating | Very Positive | ||
Steam store | |||
SteamSpy | |||
Peak CCU Yesterday |
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Owners |  50,000 .. 100,000 +/-   | ||
Players - Since release |   +/- | ||
Players - Last 2 weeks |   +/- | ||
Average playtime (forever) | 0 | ||
Average playtime (last 2 weeks) | 0 | ||
Median playtime (forever) | 0 | ||
Median playtime (last 2 weeks) | 0 | ||
Public Linux depots | Sunless Skies Linux Depot [868.48 M] | ||
DLC | SUNLESS SKIES OST |
Today its been exactly a year since Mask of the Rose was funded on Kickstarter, and we've just released a demo of the first act, available right now on Steam!
Spotted a bug? The demo has been through our internal testing, but if you see any bugs or typos we missed, please let us know by emailing mask@failbettergames.com, attaching your player log. Here are some instructions to help you find your player log. We will probably only update the demo if something pretty bad has slipped through, but this will let us fix everything before we release the full game. Thank you! Release Date News We have also announced that Mask of the Rose will release in Oct/Nov this year. Hopefully this taste will keep you going until then! As ever, your friends, Failbetter Games |
Tech bug fixes
Narrative bug fixes
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You may have seen that we Kickstarted a new game in the same universe as Sunless Skies in February this year. Now we're pleased to announce that it has a shiny Steam page!
We hope you'll take a look at Mask of the Rose, and wishlist to find out more about romancing bats! |
Update
Narrative bug fixes
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Update
Tech bug fixes
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Update
Narrative bug fixes
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We're working on more bug fixes next week so expect further builds soon. Thank you for your patience and all the help with testing the FPS issues on the beta builds. |
As promised, Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is now available on PC and consoles!
There are literally hundreds of other improvements, bug fixes, and optimisations you can read the full change log if youre curious! And of course it includes everything weve added since the original launch in the Wayfarer, Vagabond, Horn, Hoarder and Urchin updates. Wed like to take the opportunity to thank our excellent porting partners, BlitWorks, for doing such a fine job with the ports. And whether this will be your first visit, or a triumphant return, we warmly welcome you to the High Wilderness! |
Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is now live. For the full patch notes please see the following post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/596970/discussions/0/3132794099846307448/ |
Were glad to announce that Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition will be released very soon, on Wednesday 19th May. This will be the first version of Sunless Skies we release on consoles, and will also be a free major update for everyone here on Steam! |
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#LoveIndies celebrates indie games and the teams behind them. We started this event in 2018 by rating, reviewing and recommending our favourite indie games, and inviting our community to do the same. |
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We'll have more to share about the Sovereign Edition for Sunless Skies as work continues, but we hope that for now, the opportunity to return to or discover Sunless Sea is an enticing one. See you in the dark, Your friends, Failbetter Games Note: Sunless Sea: Zubmariner Edition is already available on PS4 and Sunless Sea is available for iPad. |
Releasing a game is a fiddly business. Theres no giant red button you can press to launch your baby into the world. In fact, there are so many buttons that when we released Sunless Skies on January 31st last year, everybody in the office got to click at least one of them. It took about half an hour. We stood around sipping champagne out of plastic flutes, taking turns with the mouse. |
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N.B. With regards to scrolling with gamepads, R3 is still used to move up to see logged branch choices and down to view long quality results. There are a few outstanding issues with R3 scrolling, in particular on non-hub bazaars. We will address these issues in a future update. Bug fixes
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Engine upgrades and Full Steam Mode All locomotives now have equippable engines that can be upgraded to increase speed at a small premium in fuel. The better engines have minimum crew requirements. If your crew count drops too low, your speed will be limited to that of a basic engine, but there are otherwise no ill effects. To make these a little easier to meet, we've also increased the Quarters values of many locomotives. The best engines also grant access to something called Full Steam Mode. Engaging this will grant your locomotive a large further boost to speed, but will also consume considerably more fuel and limit your manoeuvrability. NB crashing while in Full Steam Mode is not advised. In general, Full Steam Mode should significantly speed travel along familiar routes. It is not recommended for ventures into the unknown, pirate dens, Cantankeri bases, tight corners or enclosed spaces. The Albion-Eleutheria transit relay This new quest will allow seasoned captains to leave their mark upon the sky. Assist an Insistent Surveyor in establishing a new transit relay that will directly link Albion to Eleutheria. Be warned: this is a costly, perilous, and demanding quest. But once the relay is completed it will be available to all future captains in your lineage. The Chiropterous Hoarder Recruit a winged horror of profound cunning and unreliable manners. Rumoured to have been one of the Masters of old London, this peddlar of immortality has fallen on hard times. Take it on a macabre journey to perfect a new method of prolonging life. Perhaps you might become friends on the way. Perhaps you might become more... Bug reports and feedback In this update, we're replacing our support email with a way to submit feedback directly from within the game. Pressing F8 will bring up a short feedback form. Sending this will submit it to our database, and automatically attach a screenshot, save file and game log. Our hopes for this are that it will make it much easier to submit reports and also help us understand and fix issues more effectively. It was helpful to have an email during early access as fixing issues sometimes involved tweaks to people's save files, but now the game is very stable we think this will work better and of course, we'll continue to keep an eye on the forums for anything that can't be handled effectively this way. Devilry Have you discovered the Abstemious and Patchwork Devils, yet? Have you delivered them to a howling well? If so, you may be interested to learn that a 'Retired' Devil now needs a similar service. Completing his story will unlock a third and final revelation at the Well of the Wolf. Additional patch notes
Keep in touch If you'd like to keep hearing from us, you can follow us here on Steam or on Twitter, or join us on Discord. And as always, thanks for playing! |
Were busy preparing for PAX West, which starts on Friday! We're hoping to see some of you there.
Were delighted to be showing in such weird, wild and wonderful company! If youre coming to PAX, well be at booth 7314 on Level 6 of the WSCC. Well have a big picture of a train. Cant miss us. The Skies are Yours, Failbetter Games |
We're also ready to announce the next major update: Hoarder. Here's what to expect:
All being well, the Hoarder update will be with you in September. If you'd like to hear from us when it's out, you can follow us here on Steam or on Twitter, or join us on Discord. And as always, thanks for playing! Patch notes for the Horn Update
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The Amiable Vagabond Offer a commission to this gentleman of the skies (and no fixed abode), who will take you to the abandoned quarters of the sky. Experience a tale of fortunes lost, found, and lost again. Meet the 'skylarks': the community of ragged wanderers who rove the heavens, and help them find the way to the Sugarspun Garden - a place surely too good to be true... Meet the Amiable Vagabond at Polmear and Plenty's, or sometimes in London. He's partial to a sky-story or two. Wonders of the Skies and St Anthony's Lighthouse Bold explorers will discover that several existing spectacles now have stories attached to them:
In addition, a brand new spectacle has been added to the skies! Skyfarers in search of respite may stop at St Anthony's Lighthouse, a gothic addition to the mists near Worlebury. New agents The Winchester War is hotting up. Upon visiting London, skyfarers will witness the inauguration of a new class of locomotive in the service of Her Majesty a development that the Tacketies are unlikely to allow to go unanswered. Meanwhile, in the depths of the Reach, a fungal menace is stirring. Three new agents with unique challenges, behaviours, and stories will begin to appear in response to your explorations. We've designed these to add more interest, variety and challenge to encounters in the mid-game, when the player is sometimes revisiting previously explored locations in the Reach we hope you enjoy them! New discoveries In order to reward captains who have invested in assaying equipment, two new types of discovery have been sprinkled across the heavens: Celestial Ruins and Windswept Habitations. Each has its own stories, and can host a variety of encounters. Excavate treasures from crumbling ruins that predate humanity! In Albion, seek refuge and plunder in long-abandoned homes and factories. Perhaps you'll even encounter a band of skylarks squatting there, eager to swap stories! Other fixes and improvements
#loveindies We're in the middle of this year's #loveindies campaign! This is a community celebration of indie games. Reviews mean so much to indie teams. If you have time to poke about in your Steam library and leave a couple of reviews for indie games you've enjoyed, you'll be making someone's day! (If one of them were Sunless Skies, it'd be ours.) Follow development We still have more improvements planned for Sunless Skies! Now Vagabond is out, we'll be shifting our focus to other areas of the game, including character progression, game balance, a range of quality of life improvements and journey times. To keep hearing about development and updates, you can follow us here on Steam or on Twitter. You can also talk to other skyfarers on the Failbetter Games Discord. |
It will be released next month, on 12th June. After this update, we'll switch focus from events and encounters during journeys. Some of the things we plan to look at are character progression (particularly in the mid and late game), UI, survival and journey times. To keep hearing about Sunless Skies development and updates, follow us here on Steam or on Twitter. You can also talk to other skyfarers on the Failbetter Games Discord. |
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Albion We've fully reworked the game's second region, Albion. It's now significantly smaller than before, while still being a lot more open than the Reach. We've also worked to make the possible encounters more varied. We hope these changes will make it more interesting and enjoyable to explore and traverse please let us know your thoughts! We may do further work on encounter variety in Albion and other regions, especially if people feel it makes a difference. Our artists have also been working hard on the look and atmosphere: You can learn more about the Albion rework in our last Steam update. Gods of the Sky In the Wayfarer update, the capricious gods of the sky will tease, torment, and occasionally reward skyfarers. New story events will fire while you are traversing the heavens, granting opportunities to earn the gods' attention or their wrath. Once the gods have noticed you, further more perilous events may occur. Manage your crew's superstitions. Deal with a frost-fingered visitor. Negotiate with the Whisperwinds. At all costs, do not call at the Empty House. Officer secondments A number of your officers have found new ways to be helpful. If you can bear to part with them, establish them at a port and let them make themselves useful. Perhaps they will establish an exclusive salon, or a handy workshop! You will have to do without their counsel in the meantime, of course, but officers on secondment may be able to furnish you with story items, advantages at port, or new Prospects and Bargains. In this update the Inconvenient Aunt, Incautious Driver, Repentant Devil, Felined Eccentric, Captivating Princess, and Fatalistic Signalman all have secondment opportunities. Talk to them to learn more. Spectacles The heavens are replete with wonders and horrors. Originally, skyfarers could only marvel at them, and thrill or lament at their effects on your crew's Terror. But now, a number of spectacles can be interacted with. Come! Approach! Disembark and explore some of the skies' most enigmatic mysteries. Visit the last vestiges of the Kingdom of Hours. Join the dead in their observances. Excavate the corpse of the Silent Saint. Here is the full list:
Let us know what you think if people like them, we may add more! Critical damage Sometimes, attacks will do more than just damage your hull. They may now trigger story events shortly after the battle. Perhaps you will suffer damage to your engines, or find an unexploded shell lodged in your plating! Fortunately, you can repair critical damage at each region's central station. Usually, repairing your engine's hull will sort it out, but some damage may require more dedicated treatment. Petrichor, the food of the dead Ports in the Blue Kingdom no longer sell Supplies. Instead, they sell Petrichor, the same spun-sugar delicacies on which the dead subsist. Living captains and their crew may consume petrichor with what we are assured are only trivial side-effects. Survival balance adjustments We've been listening to people talk about their experiences and watching streams, and we've come to the conclusion that the balancing for some of the survival mechanics is currently not creating the best experience for most players. These mechanics both have very important roles to play in shaping the experience, and we feel it's important to get the balance right. For this update, we've made some adjustments: somewhat increasing the rate at which Terror goes up, slightly reducing the amount of Terror removed when returning to a hub or discovering new ports, and reducing the number of Crew available at hub ports. We think these changes might be controversial, and we're not certain yet we've got the numbers quite right. We considered putting these particular changes on an opt-in branch so we could watch people play and gather feedback, but we were concerned that might result in misleading feedback since we might disproportionately hear from particularly skilled players. So we decided it would be better to include it in the main Wayfarer update. It's possible we'll make further adjustments in smaller updates before the next major one. And it's likely we'll make further changes in future for instance, to provide more potential solutions for captains struggling to maintain more than a skeleton crew, or to rebalance easily exploitable methods for managing Terror. As always, we'd love to hear what you think, especially once you've spent a few hours with the update please let us know on the forums. Follow development We're still not done improving the game. We'll be ready to talk about the next major update in a few weeks, after we've had time to read and discuss your thoughts on Wayfarer. To keep hearing about Sunless Skies development and updates, follow us here on Steam or on Twitter. You can also talk to other skyfarers on the Failbetter Games Discord. |
Finally, to stay up to date on what we're doing: |
Other fixes
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Hello! This week we have another patch with more than 50 fixes. Among other things, we've resolved various UI issues and controller annoyances, and also reduced the number of accidental spiders, which we're told is a good thing. The full change list is included below.
Controller fixes
Content fixes
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Its been a couple of weeks now since we released Sunless Skies, and were really happy with how the launch has gone. |
Just in time for the weekend, we have another 40 or so fixes, including an optimisation that should greatly improve performance in the storylet interface.
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Hello! We have a small patch today with a dozen more fixes, mostly for controller issues. These were planned for Thursday's patch. We were able to complete and test them today, though, and hope they will make the experience significantly better for controller users. So we're releasing them ahead of time.
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Hello skyfarers!
Updates
The 10k Challenge Thank you to everyone who took part in our 10k Challenge, either by streaming Sunless Skies or by watching! We haven't finished calculating how long Sunless Skies was streamed for, but we've already confirmed it was far higher than 10 000 minutes. That means we'll be donating the full 10k to SpecialEffect! Thanks again for all your support and enthusiasm we're looking forward to continuing to support and improve the game. Failbetter |
Also in this update: Tutorial Tips: We have added tutorial hints which will pop up in a window when triggered. You can disable and reset them from the main menu. Adjustable difficulty settings: Available at every new save game and upon a captains death. New Ambitions: The final two Ambitions are in place, bringing our total up to four. Truth is an ambition you can select similarly to Wealth or Fame, and theres one other which will be hidden to your first captain: The Martyr-Kings Cup. New Facets for your captains past. New Officers: Recruit and discovering the stories of the Felined Eccentric, Forged Companion and Fortunate Navigator. The Clay Conductor can also now be recruited and his storyline completed. Achievements: Achievements have been implemented. We wish you luck completing them all! Read the full patch notes on our forums, and if you find an issue, heres How to Report a Bug. Live Stream on Steam Streamer, zailor and now skyfarer FuzzyFreaks is streaming Sunless Skies live on the steam store page for launch! Look out for her there over the weekend, introducing new players to our game, and say hello from us! The Sunless Skies OST The soundtrack is now available on Steam, GOG, Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon and Google Play. Limited Edition Merch: The Failbetter Games Collectors Badge Set and Presentation Box In celebration of Sunless Skies launch, we have worked with our utterly fantastic merchandise partner Gametee to create this limited edition badge set. This collectors edition comprises a trio of antiqued gold butterfly clasped badges in a black velveteen presentation box gold hot-foil embossed with a coin of Empire. Inspired by turn of the century Art Nouveau, each pin represents a Failbetter game: The Exceptional Hat from Fallen London, The Lonely Buoy from Sunless Sea and The Last Lamppost from Sunless Skies. They are available from Gametee, and they can ship internationally! Launch Excitement! Right now, streamers all over the world are playing SUNLESS SKIES to help us raise up to 10,000 for SpecialEffect. Search the tag #sunlessskies10k to find a streamer and cheer them on! Thank you, again. Well see you in the High Wilderness. We remain, your friends, Failbetter Games |
Build Version: Blue Kingdom update. 1.1.9.5.08b4e1b8
Tutorial Tips We have added tutorial hints which will pop up in a window when triggered. You can disable and reset them from the main menu. Adjustable difficulty settings Weve added our difficulty settings which can be chosen when you first create a new save game. Youll also be able to adjust your difficulty settings when you die and pass on a legacy to a new captain. The difficulty settings are:
New Ambitions The final two Ambitions are in place, bringing our total up to four. Like the existing Fame and Wealth ambitions, you will be able to choose The Truth from the character creation screen. However the fourth ambition, The Martyr-Kings Cup, will only be available after completing a particular quest, so it is only something you will see once unlocked and after passing on a legacy. New Facets Weve added the rest of the Facets so you can continue to level up your Captain. New Officers The rest of the Officers have arrived. Have fun recruiting and discovering the stories of the Felined Eccentric, Forged Companion and Fortunate Navigator. The Clay Conductor storyline can also now be completed. Chart The Chart has been reworked to bring it in line with the aesthetics of our UI redesign. Achievements Achievements have been implemented in Steam and GOG. We wish you luck completing them all Sky Captains. N.B. We are aware that some players who played throughout Early Access may see the wrong Achievement incrementing when docking at ports (e.g. the achievement tells you youve docked at a Blue Kingdom port when you dock at a Reach port). Please send us your save files so we can resolve the issue. Updates
Known Issues As mentioned above there are a number of outstanding issues to fix but well be putting out patches with various fixes over the coming weeks. Please see our Known Issues page for the full list, but there are some notable issues listed below. As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page you can help us by sending a quick Bug Report (please dont post bugs on the forums, we dont man them 24/7 and they can easily be missed).
Bug Fixes
Controller Specific Fixes
Fixes from the KickStarter Backer Build
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The Failbetter office is slowly winding down for the holidaysour last little revitalising break before LAUNCH(!)but before we snarf many a minced pie heres our exciting COMMANDER update!
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Build Version: Commander update. 1.1.7.4.f187636
Finally, a massive thank you to all our Early Access players who have helped us with feedback and bugs, especially those who do read the Known Issues and Bug Reporting pages. Special shout outs to those who have been tireless in their typo hunting efforts too. You know who you are. IMPORTANT INFORMATION - PLEASE READ! Before we delve into the details of new features, there are a couple of important things we need our player base to be aware of:
Now for the new stuff Whats New Complete UI redesign Our user interface has been completely reworked and it's not just a visual change, there are some pretty big functional changes too which we will details below. Storylets
Side Panels
Engine yards
Banks
Bazaar
Shops
HUD
Graphics settings
Other UI changes
Whats not been updated Implementing the new UI was a much bigger job than we had anticipated so we had to descope the interface updates for the Commander release. Heres a list of things that weve not updated.
Docking Rework Docking is no longer automatic but activated by a prompt [R] - you will need to ensure your steering is good and you come in at the right angle. Once activated your locomotive will be pulled in and the Stations Storylet will open automatically. The port index UI which previously displayed on the right of the screen when docking is now incorporated into the Storylet panel - mouse over the Storylet ambience artwork and the list will appear - you can switch between Stories and Shops and then select a relevant area to explore. Closing the Stations slet will not undock you, you need to press R again to undock (or W to move forward and break the docking clamps). If you accidentally close the slet but want to access it again, you will need to undock and redock. This is not particularly user friendly at the moment and we have plans to alter this in future. While Agents can still enter docks at the moment, if you kill them while they are in dock their loot drops are now accessible. Agents will also zero their wrath once you are docked, meaning no more death at Stations. Smuggling Speak to the Gloomy Middleman at London to begin a quest to unlock Smuggling. This is mid game content and youll either need Veils at 40 or Villainy at 3 to access it. Once the quest is complete youll be able to start smuggling contraband between regions by picking up special smuggling prospects at select Stations and Platforms. While you can have a maximum of four regular prospects, you can only have up to two smuggling prospects on the go. These take up regular prospect slots in your Hold, so while you can have a combination of regular and smuggling, you can only take on a total of four prospects at any one time. Contraband can be sourced from smuggling shops found at the same Stations and Platforms where you obtain smuggling prospects, and occasionally from Agent loot drops. The new contraband items are:
Selling a contraband item from the region from which it is sourced will result in a substantial loss of Sovereigns. Selling them in other regions will result in a small profit, but prospects are where the real money is to be made. Each unit of contraband you carry increases a quality called Contraband (found in the Possessions interface under Smuggling) and takes up hold space. Stashing them openly in your Hold makes them rather easy to spot by customs, who will promptly confiscate them. However, equipment is available to help with this. There are now seven pieces of locomotive equipment in game (some new, some existing) which grant the Hidden Compartments quality. When you have this quality a new bar will appear on your Hold underneath the Hold capacity bar. This quality does not increase your maximum Hold space, but it does provide secret places in which to stash your illegal goods. If your Contraband quality is higher than your Hidden Compartments quality then you are more likely to have items seized by the Revenue Man. If Contraband is lower than Hidden Compartments then your captain may be particularly savvy at finding ways to sneak things through customs. Be warned, smuggling can be a very dangerous business. If you are caught by customs one too many times you will be arrested, and smuggling trials often have fatal consequences for unlucky Sky Captains. New Weapons The last of the weapons have finally arrived; rockets, mines and exotics. Mines Mines are explosive charges that you can deploy behind your locomotive. Wit & Vinegar manufacture two variants, the Sneeze-Lurker and the Zounderkite. Both mines have slight arcing abilities and will detonate when they collide with something or when something enters their proximity zone, including you, so be careful when deploying them. Mines deal both collision and blast damage so really pack a punch. Rockets Portsmouth House have created two rockets, the Albertine Candle and Her Renewed Majestys Jubilee. Both are large weapons which can only be equipped to large armament slots on certain ships (Parsival, Agravain, Altani, Moloch, Medea). Once deployed you can either let the rockets reach their destination, or set the them off early by pressing the fire button again. Like the mines, the rockets deal blast and collision damage and the Jubilee also arcs towards enemies. Exotics Exotic weapons are obtained from rare loot drops of specific agents. All but the Mangonel are large weapons so will need to be fitted to a large armament slot. The exotic weapons are:
Details of tier, slot and quality requirements for all weapons and equipment can now be found on their tooltips. Weapon tooltips also detail damage, range and heat values. Rockets, mines and The Wrath of Heaven all deal blast damage on top of collision damage, however this is not yet reflected on their tooltips. Updates
Known Issues As mentioned above there are a lot of outstanding bugs in this build related to the new features, particularly those related to controller support. Please see our Known Issues page for the full list. As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report. Bug Fixes
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Welcome, skyfarer! |
Survival changes In the previous build we introduced new survival content triggered by high Terror and also low Fuel. In this build weve added an additional survival complication; your Crew. The low Crew storylets will fire periodically when your Crew is less than the Safe Manning Number for your locomotive. This value can be found in the Possessions interface under the Your Train section. Having low or even zero Crew will not kill you outright, but many things can go wrong when you dont enough staff to operate a locomotive, things that will impact your other survival qualities. Engines may fall into disrepair causing Hull damage. Accidents may cause loss of fuel, supplies and even the death of yet another crewmember, filling the survivors with Terror. Best to make sure you keep your locomotive fully manned. Terror reduction Now, when you discover a new port your crew will be flooded with relief and Terror will be reduced by 20 points. This will only happen the very first time a captain comes across a new port. Subsequent visits are a been there, done that sort of affair. Players with existing save games will be able to take advantage of this new feature the next time they load the game and visit already discovered ports. Enjoy the little exploit while it lasts as its the only time youll ever see it. Save File Support As mentioned, we highly recommend you start a new save file in this build. Not only will this allow you to go through the Opening Game Experience but youll also gain access to a lot of new content, as well as old storylines which have been heavily tweaked (such as those at Traitors Wood and Polmear & Plentys Inconceivable Circus). Once we release the Commander update (in December) we will no longer be supporting save files older than those created in this build, the Survival build (1.1.6.2.e8412a5). If you do wish to keep your existing save game however, then all youll need to do is make sure you load the save file up and save it in the Survival build. We do appreciate that a number of you have already sunk many hours into your current captain and may feel reluctant to start a brand new game. The whole purpose of Early Access has been to give us feedback and to help us find issues, and throughout that time there have been a number of bugs and content changes that might have left your qualities in unusual states. Weve always done our best to manually fix save files for affected players when they report issues to us, but now that we are coming closer to launch we will be unable to do so for old save games and we recommend you start anew. Updates
Bug Fixes
As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report. |
Our REACH update is now live! This update completely transforms the first region of the game and features improvements to Terror, Condition, Fuel and Crew.
SEGMENT DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS One of the reasons we evolved our strategy for segment design across the three regions is that earlier on in development, players gave us feedback that areas like the Reach felt empty. It was possible to fly for long periods of time without seeing anything but the sky below your locomotive. So when we started building Albion and Eleutheria we made it a rule that players should always be able to see *something* physical, preferably something you could hit with your locomotive. In his talk at EGX, our Creative Director/CEO Paul Arendt explained that this actually came from an idea of replaying Sunless Sea for the PS4 port, as Sunless Sea is largely about coastal navigation - you follow walls. So with this update, you'll be able to see we've redesigned the segments of the Reach to be more labyrinthine. Captains may find that journeys now need to be more planned, which should make flying feel more engaging than before. And, if youd like to look even further behind the curtain, Pauls also written a design blog about this very topic. THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE DARK Many different art tools and strategies are used to create that more contiguous atmospheric feeling, to make sure it feels like youre flying *within* something not just on top of it. As you travel through the new Reach you'll notice branches and other luscious (often horrific) foliage that the player locomotive will sail beneath, as well as more complex middle layers to add that visual depth and richness. Upgrading our post-processing tools in Unity also meant our artists could add more intricate 'profiles' to specific areas within the region. Profiles can contain things like colour grading and lighting effects. For example, one of the things they control is blooming, which is a term to describe a light effect that looks like a glow on brighter objects or diffused light. These effects are great for areas like the Nature Reserve that should look quite humid, or Lustrum for that snowy haze. SURVIVAL UPDATES Our next build in November will focus holistically on Survival upgrades, but we've made changes already that you'll be able to see in this build, most notably with Terror. Terror is now less predictable, which will encourage desperate tales of survival and reduce the reliance on central ports to manage Terror. We'll be monitoring the effects of the changes closely, and gathering feedback to make any tweaks that are needed. TERROR
INTRODUCING: NIGHTMARES! We've changed how Condition works, and renamed it Nightmares. It now begins at zero and can go as high as four. It no longer increments automatically; Terror events will offer opportunities to drastically decrease your Terror at the cost of increasing your Nightmares. As Nightmares rise - as before - you will experience increasingly horrifying story events. Youll also notice weve changed: FUEL The rate at which fuel is consumed is now determined by your locomotive's weight, taking into account cargo, equipment, and the locomotive itself. The chart will now make it easier to see where fuel and supplies can be bought. When you run out of fuel you will no longer die immediately. Instead, you'll enter a story event where your captain has three last, tantalising options to find a way to keep going. CREW AND RECRUITMENT As its now possible to recruit crew through Port Opportunities, this means we've now removed shops where crew could be acquired. The game now keeps track of if you have enough crew aboard your locomotive to run it properly - dubbed the 'Minimum Safe Manning' quality. We'd recommend remaining fully staffed, after all, you've got a lovely locomotive. It'd be a shame if something happened to it. Out there. In the dark. Join Our Stream! Kat Brewster, a Sporadic Academic and occasional streamer, will be streaming from the REACH update today at 15:30 BST with our Editor/Writer/Content Manager, Olivia Wood, on her Twitch channel! We hope you'll join us there and come with many questions, brave skyfarers. Nextime, on Sunless Skies In our November build, you can expect even more updates to Survival mechanics! Plus an overhaul to the New Winchester segment, the final opening game experience, and more player weapons (hooray)! |
Build Version: 1.1.5.3.aa85c96
Fuel Now when you run out of fuel you will no longer die immediately. Instead, you'll enter a story event where your captain has a few tantalising options to find a way to keep going. There are many different things that can be burnt after all, but at what cost? Fuel is also no longer available to buy at every Station but you can check which ones sell it by clicking on the Stations chart icon. Plan your journeys carefully. Fuel Efficiency The rate at which fuel is consumed is now determined by your locomotives weight and that of any cargo and equipment it is carrying. Engine yards now display a locomotives base weight alongside the Quarters, Hull and Hold capacity. Mousing over this icon will show you details of the change in fuel efficiency if you trade your current locomotive in. Your current locomotives fuel efficiency can be seen in the Hold and youll see it change as you equip items, acquire cargo and use up fuel and supplies. Supplies and Crew Now the more crew you have, the faster youll get through your supplies. And while falling below half crew no longer increases your rate of Terror gain, we dont recommend keeping a low crew count. We now check if you have enough crew aboard against your locomotives 'Minimum Safe Manning' quality. Expect to see new consequences for low crew in future updates. Weve removed shops where crew can be acquired at a whim. You can now recruit crew through Opportunity storylets found at Station. Since these opportunities often leave you with the option of either reducing Terror or acquiring crew, you may have to make some tough decisions. Chart Since fuel is no longer sold at every Station, weve tweaked the information on the Chart icons so it now tells you whether or not fuel is sold at a particular Station. Click the Station icon on the chart to see this information along with the Stations description, export details and whether or not new Prospects and Bargains are available there. On loading an existing save file, or on discovering your first Station on a new save, the Station icons on the chart will be highlighted with a red exclamation mark. This is simply to draw attention to the fact that the icons are interactable. After youve clicked and displayed Station info for the first time, you wont see the exclamation mark again. Updates
Known Issues Below is a list of known issues for this build. For a full list of known game issues see our Known Issues page.
As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report. Bug Fixes
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SUNLESS SKIES will be released on 31st January 2019. It will be available on Steam and GOG for PC, Mac and Linux. |
Today’s release is all about improvements to combat! In order to make combat more satisfying. We’ve tweaked a lot of AI mechanics so that we can make our agents’ behaviour more nuanced and layered.
Agents now have three ramming stages: Preparation, Acceleration, and Collision. At the Preparation Stage, Agents will rapidly come to a standstill when a target is in sight, and will indicate with a Tell. Then, the Agent will accelerate rapidly towards their target. During the Acceleration Stage their default movement parameters are thrown to the wind and they'll have a more powerful speed. If they manage to hit a collidable object, they'll transition into the b]Collision Stage[/b]. This means that if they hit a player or Agent, that locomotive will suffer damage; if they hit a inanimate object (like a chunky rock), the ramming Agent may receive some damage; and—the most fun bit to test for our development team—both the ramming Agent and their target will be knocked back. Below is an example Barry was testing before we balanced out the mechanic: NEW AGENTS For those exploring our newest region, Eleutheria, you may now have the pleasure of meeting The Undeparted. These spritely chaps were featured at the very end of the Eleutheria trailer. They’re quite good at sidling up beside you. They’re particularly fond of hiding in patches of darkness like extinguishments. You'll also find new Bull Cantankeri and Senior Scriveners roaming about, who are a bit tougher to beat than their little brothers and sisters. RECOIL AND KNOCKBACK New knockback and recoil effects have also been implemented to ensure that when projectiles are fired player locomotives and Agents will react in a more realistic and satisfying manner. BLUE KINGDOM With Eleutheria out in the wild, our writers are busy preparing the Blue Kingdom. Our Narrative Director, Chris Gardiner, recently shared a cryptic design chart in the Failbetter Discord. Our art and architecture inspiration for the Blue Kingdom starts with Mesopotamian structures. The grand scale of ancient structures seen in things like Pieter Bruegel the Elder's drawings of the Tower of Babel were hugely inspirational. We were also drawn to the incredible blockbuster effect in John Martin's paintings. In our design document for this region, Chris has put specifically, "They generally show civilisations in the middle of apocalyptic scenarios, which isn't exactly right for us, but the sense of dynamism and risk they convey is valuable. The player should feel in danger in the Blue Kingdom, and as if they could be crushed by vast cosmic forces" OUR NEXT RELEASE: SURVIVAL AND THE REACH We’ve also been working on plenty of research and development for the improvements to survival mechanics and the Reach segments, which will be part of our next release build in October—stay tuned! STREAMING ON STEAM For this build, our most skilled locomotive captain, Lesleyann, will be showing off some of the latest combat mechanics along with Haley, today at 15:30* directly on our Steam page! We hope you’ll come join us! *Note: Stream will start around 15:30 BST but may be a few minutes late as we upload builds. Keep a look out on our Failbetter Twitter for the most recent updates. SUNLESS SEA & PAX WEST In case you haven’t heard, Sunless Sea: Zubmariner Edition has just launched on PS4! It’s our first ever console game and we can’t wait to see what you think of it! And, if you’re eager to try it out and in the Seattle area, it’ll be playable in the Sony section at PAX West 31st August - 3rd September. If you attend, be sure to send your pictures to @failbettergames on Twitter! |
Build Version: 1.1.4.5.2f2c56e
Knockback Knockback is now in place on all player and Agent weapons, including area-of-effect type attacks. When you fire your weapons your locomotive will recoil, and all projectiles cause knockback to player locomotives and enemies alike, making combat feel more weighty and realistic. Many Agent projectiles also deal blast damage so try not to get too close! N.B. Knockback has not been added to small asteroids and space debris. While it would look amazing, we are not sure at the moment whether it’s something we are going to implement. It may have an impact on performance for example and we’ll need to assess that first. Turrets All Dreadnoughts and the Empyrean Outriders now have turrets mounted to their locomotives. Their turrets will cease to operate at a certain level of damage, but they are no longer an easy target from behind, and close range combat with them is not such a good idea. Their turrets will rotate and fire at you or any other beastie that the Agent is feeling wrathful towards. Arcing We’ve implemented arcing on Agent weapons. The Empyrean Outrider’s turret uses powerful homing missiles which will relentlessly hunt you down unless you are nimble enough to get out of their range. Arcing has only been implemented on Agent weapons so far, we didn't have time to balance this feature on player weapons. This will go out in a later update. Auras Aura attacks are a new type of Agent ability. Unlike weapons, they apply an effect over an area without producing a projectile. Empyrean Outriders for example, will drop a barrel bomb which will tick down and explode. If you are within the blast radius when it goes off, you will take damage. It’s not just Hull that can be affected by these AoE attacks, the Outriders bomb will kill Crew for example, and the Scrive-Spinster’s scream attack will also grant Terror to anything in its range. Aura attacks can be foreseen by their warm-up visual Tells, so a sharp sky-captain will have time to react and get their locomotive out of harm's way. Headlight awareness and wrath crescents We introduced the wrath crescent in the Threat build and with Eleutheria we saw the arrival of the first Agents that react to headlights (Dousers become wrathful when headlights are on, Outriders are angered when it’s off, Grievers don’t like a light shining in their face when they are trying to catch forty winks) In the Combat II build most enemies are now aware of your headlight. Aggressive Agents will be able to sense you from further away when it’s on. Turning it off will allow you to get closer to them, or enable you to run away before they attack, though at the cost of increasing your rate of Terror gain. The Wrath crescent has been improved and will start to indicate the direction of potentially hostile Agents much earlier, allowing you to react accordingly. Will you turn tail and run or will you head into the fray? New Agents This update sees the release of three new enemies: the Undeparted, Bull Cantankeri and Senior Scriveners. Player movement We’ve made further adjustments to player locomotives - all player vessels are now more manoeuvrable. Engine Problems Now when your stats drop and you are no longer eligible for an item you have equipped, your locomotive will start to suffer from Engine Problems. Your engine’s heat value will be halved, hampering your ability to take on enemies effectively. When you next dock, your equipment will be removed along with any boosts they confer. Vessel Names When you illuminate an enemy with your headlight you will now see its class, e.g. Tackety Scout, Cantankeri, Douser, etc. This information will disappear after a few seconds and you'll not see it for that individual Agent again. If you encounter an Agent of the same type, you won't see its name until a full two minutes has elapsed since sighting the first one. If the Agent is a Tackety Scout, or an Enduring or Glorious Dreadnought, then you’ll also see one of our Kickstarter backer’s vessel names. These backer names will also be seen on transient Wreck discoveries. Updates
Known Issues Below is a list of known issues for this build. For a full list of known game issues see our Known Issues page.
As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report. |
(The Undeparted, seen in the trailer, didn’t quite make it into this release, so look out for them in the upcoming Combat II release.) A note on performance Some of our players have been experiencing performance issues in the last few builds. We made a bunch of fixes in the Roleplay update which addressed various exceptions caused by weather and wrath that lead to an eventual game freeze. However, we found that some rare weather exceptions remained. We believe we’ve fixed the last of the weather issues now, but like peeling an onion, once we fixed those bugs we found other performance issues lurking underneath which had been hard to detect until the weather errors were out of the way. We've spent the last week continuing to peel that performance ‘onion’ and we've made significant improvements. However we can see there is more for us to do to improve performance across the game, so this is not the end of the optimisations. To help us out, you can report your performance issues and provide us with your output logs. Les has instructions on how to do that in the full Patch Notes post on the forums. The Road to Full Launch We’ve been considering our progress, your feedback and the time we have left before launch. We’ve decided, to ensure the game is the standard that you expect from us, that we’re going to move the launch release to January 2019. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that we want to do more work on a couple of areas of the game than we originally budgeted time for. Since we worked on the Reach, we've gotten a lot better at designing and building regions. We're very happy with how Eleutheria has turned out, and we think it's important to bring the Reach up to the same standard, both in terms of atmosphere and the quality, variety and frequency of the experiences during exploration and traversal. Although we anticipated we'd want to make some improvements to the Reach and had set aside some time for it, it’s significantly less time than we need for the full range of things we want to do. We think the Reach is a particularly important region to get right because of its position in the middle of the other three, and because it's where players are first introduced to the High Wilderness. We've decided it's worth taking the extra time to get it right. Here's a preview of our work on The Reach We also want to revisit some of the survival mechanics, which in their current form don't always shape the experience in the ways we’d like – especially Condition and Terror. This won't add an extra four months of work. We considered launching in November or December, but those are very difficult months to release an indie game. This is partly because of the large number of sales events, and partly because so many AAA games concentrate their releases and marketing in the run up to Christmas. We'll use the extra time in that four month period to make further improvements to the game, including to the UI and the reading experience. And of course, we’ll be sharing all this work as we go in regular Early Access releases. We'll be releasing COMBAT II as planned, in the week of 30th August. The next major update after that will be out in early October, and will include the improvements to The Reach. We'll update our road map soon with further details. Live streams in the dark We’re celebrating the release of Eleutheria with another guest stream! This time you’ll find us on the official Caffeine channel with Alex and Meeks. A number of Failbetters will be there throughout, including an in-depth look at writing some of the new ports with James Chew - please drop by and say hi! As a double treat, artist Tobias Cook will be appearing on the Gamasutra twitch channel talking about how art and level design intersect in Eleutheria. Drop by today at 12pm PDT (8pm BST) to join in the chat. |
Build Version: 1.1.3.5.4d9e3cf71
A note about performance Some of our players have been experiencing performance issues in the last few builds. We made a bunch of fixes in the Roleplay update which addressed various exceptions caused by weather and wrath that lead to an eventual game freeze. However, we found that some rare weather exceptions remained. We believe we’ve fixed the last of the weather issues now, but like peeling an onion, once we fixed those bugs we found other performance issues lurking underneath which had been hard to detect until the weather errors were out of the way. We've spent the last week continuing to peel that performance ‘onion’ and we've made significant improvements. However we can see there is more for us to do to improve performance across the game, so this is not the end of the optimisations. Players will still see brief dips in FPS in certain circumstances (docking/undocking, deploying scouts, just before crossing segment borders as the next segment loads), but they should not experience continued stuttering. Anyone that does needs to report this to us so we can diagnose the problem. Details of what we need you to send us are below. Any player who has experienced the stuttering in previous builds should take the following steps after today's update: If after taking these steps you experience further persistent performance issues, please dock at the port in the segment where you experience any stuttering and send an email to skies@failbettergames.com with your save files and your output log so we can look into individual cases. Updates
Bug Fixes
Known Issues Below is a list of known issues for this build. For a full list of known game issues see our Known Issues page.
As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report. |
Skyfarers, in this update you’ll find a plethora of additions that embellish roleplay within Sunless Skies! This build also features:
And some extra news:The Blemmigan Gallivanter, one of the three blemmigans achieved during the Sunless Skies Kickstarter is now available in Sunless Sea! CHARACTER CREATION New character origins have been added: you can now play a priest, a revolutionary, a zee-captain, and an ex-Auditor of the Ministry of Public Decency! The whole Character Creation process has received a significant visual upgrade - everything is now much prettier and clearer, with lashings of gorgeous art. As requested by our Early Access players, you can now also cycle through your avatar's appearance options using a button rather than using the dropdown menu. There are a few new pieces of headwear to select from within the cameo creation, and a whole new section dubbed 'Attire' which features full-body outfits such as the diving suit. ORIGINS & DEEDS Levelling up your character has also received a substantial visual upgrade. We hope you'll find the process more pleasant and evocative! We've also added more than a dozen new facets to develop your character. You can now choose to have been one of the first brave souls to enter the sky, to have fought at the Blockade of New Winchester, or to have received a foretelling of your own death! Every origin now has a unique facet to develop its story: Auditors can choose why they were fired from the Ministry, for example, while priests can decide what happened when they suffered a crisis of faith. This update also includes our first two 'deeds' - character facets that are only unlocked by experiencing certain circumstances while playing. Part of the fun of these is in discovering them, so we'll keep what they are and how they're unlocked a secret for now. Perhaps a small hint, though: one of them is called 'A Narrow Escape.' AMBITIONS An extensive new Ambition is now available! The Song of the Sky is a grand tale of fame and its pursuit, written by Harry Tuffs. The Song of the Sky looms in your mind, a half-finished monument. Unlike the Sunless Sea version of this ambition, the Song of the Sky isn't just about achieving fame; it's about actually writing the story you leave behind, the creative decisions you make while doing so, and the pitfalls of publishing it. It's not enough to merely accomplish great deeds - you must ensure they are portrayed in a manner that does them justice! What better way than to write them yourself? Will you create a romantic adventure or a searing expose? Are you the hero, or merely the witness? Is it a story of glory or of horror? Deal with an Omnivorous Publisher. Fall afoul of the Ministry of Public Decency. Write your legend! OFFICERS As you may have read, Kieron Gillen has joined the list of exceptional Sunless Skies guest writers and has written an exquisite and horrifying journey with an Incognito Princess! Other officers becoming available in this update include the fiercely competent (and fiercely adorable) Rat Brigade and the brooding Repentant Devil, written by James Chew and Emily Short, respectively. Our next build in July will also introduce the Incautious Driver. You may find them milling about both The Reach and Albion. As officer stories stretch across multiple regions, not all these stories can currently be completed - but as the game expands, more of them will open up. MASCOTS It is now the Perfect Pangolin’s true time to shine - new mascots have arrived! Though, you’ll have to wait to meet our Perfect Pangolin in Eleutheria. Alongside her Magnificence, the other more available mascots include the Kickstarter-exclusive Obviously Delicious Rabbit, as well as the Inadvisably Big Dog, and the Useless Cat. The canine and feline mascots can be picked up at certain locations depending on your stats. NEW LOCOMOTIVE EQUIPMEN Locomotive equipment has received a substantial overhaul, with stats, requirements and costs changing. About a dozen new pieces of equipment have been added, including the Wit & Vinegar Winch and Pully, Lamellared Sky-Steel plating, a Gleaming Galley, and Sensible Plumbing. All the locomotives now handle differently, from the lumbering Pellinore to the nimble Parzival, which rewards the skilled player with precious maneuverability in a fight. You'll also find two new locomotive models available:the Agravain-class juggernaut (a lighter, more versatile version of London's dreadnoughts), and the Medea-class destroyer (an experimental engine, the product of exiled genius). The Agravain is available immediately, but you'll have to wait for the next build for the Medea, as it lies in Eleutheria. NEW LOCOMOTIVE WEAPONS Higher-tiered levels of the shotgun, rapid-fire and project weapons are now available! Shoot your enemies with even more efficiency and power. We recommend the Cotterell & Hathersage Golgonooza: "What immortal hand or eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" The pride and terror of Cotterell & Hathersage, colloquially known as 'the Finisher'. Its recoil is never forgotten by those who fire her. The opinion of those fired upon is best sourced through a good medium. WHAT’S NEXT Mark your diaries for upcoming terror and dread, as our next build release will be Eleutheria, the third region of the High Wilderness! In Mid-July expect a whole new spooky region to explore; new, nightmarish agents, and improved survival mechanics (you'll need them). This FBG Podcast we’re trying something different! Join us on FuzzyFreaks’ channel Friday 8th June at 13:30 BST, where she’ll be trying out the latest build. A few of us will be on voice chat and we’re sure many other Failbetterers will tag along in the Twitch chat too! Fuzzy often streams for 6+ hours too, so there’s plenty of chances to catch the stream live. |
Build Version: 1.1.0.4.cd2a9a87a
Bug Fixes
Known Issues Below is a list of known issues. For a full list of game issues see our Known Issues page.
As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report. |
One of the things we really wanted to finesse was the feeling of 'Threat' within the game. Sunless Skies is a brighter, more diverse landscape than Sunless Sea, so it's extremely important to us that there’s still has a sense of peril and dread. |
Build Version: 1.0.9.4.72fb12b
Scouts The Diffident Bat finally has some company. This update sees the release of an additional three scouts, the Star-Smitten Bat, the Intrepid Cavy and the Ratronaut. For Kickstarter backers there is also the Cyclopean Owl. These are not just pretty pets, but useful lookouts each with varying abilities. There are three attributes by which scouts can be ranked:
The helpful critters can be acquired from a very special merchant who you'll encounter at New Winchester. This trader will appear after roughly a month of in-game time on a new account and will have already set up shop on existing saves, so it's worth a detour to take a look at his wares. Be warned though, the merchant is a traveller and once you've poked around his shop he will move on. Fortunately he will always leave a clue as to where he intends to visit next (after a number of stops he will move on to Eleutheria so ensure you do not squander your opportunities to purchase new scouts). Wrath Agents now provide visual feedback when they are provoked. A crescent will be seen around your locomotive indicating the direction of the agent and their hostility towards you. The colour will change from white to red as an agent's wrath builds and if it decides to attack the crescent will pulse deep red before vanishing. Some agents have bespoke animations, like Scrive-Spinters which emit a red glow of rage when they decide to hunt you down. Other agents will be updated with similar effects in due course. Some beasties like the Scrive-Spinster and Enduring Dreadnought now have damage indicators. Dreadnoughts will start smoking when they reach 50% health and will catch fire around 25%. Scrive-Spinsters have a similar effect where they start to ooze yellow particles as they take damage. Again we'll be applying similar effects to other beasties throughout the High Wilderness in future updates. There are now bunch of new ways for you to accrue wrath from various enemies. Some agents in the Reach will be friendly or hostile towards you depending on your allegiance in the Winchester War. Some will become angry when you are running errands for their enemies in the form of Prospects and Bargains. Other agents, like the territorial Chorsiter Bees, will take issue with you when you are carrying certain items. Approaching them may raise their hackles and while they'll check you out they will generally leave you alone. If you're carrying Nectar however, well, just remember our advice. Don't antagonise the bees! Updates
Bug Fixes
Known Issues Below is a list of known issues. For a full list of game issues see our Known Issues page.
As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report |
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Build Version: 1.0.8.3.e51bc7cfe
Updates
Bug Fixes
Albion Known Issues Below is a list of known Albion issues. For a full list of game issue see our Known Issues page.
As always, if you find a bug that's not on the Known Issues page then send us a quick Bug Report |
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Patch Notes - v1.0.6.5.8046df9 (27th February 2018)
We’ve also made numerous changes to some of the beasties that roam the Reach. Cantankeri are a little faster, Reach Marauders can turn sharper and Enduring Dreadnaughts have new weapons and are a bit tougher. We’ve also made the agents less accurate, enemies like the Tacketies and Dreadnaughts will now take potshots at you even when they don’t have a perfect line of sight. Controller Support Gamepad support is finally here and currently works with Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PS4 controllers. Plug in a control pad and have fun navigating across the Reach using the bumper buttons to strafe and the triggers to control forward and backward thrust. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to implement a login check to reset everyone’s default controls automatically to include the updated controller mapping, but we’ll be including it in the next update. For now if you want to take advantage of gamepad controls you’ll need to manually reset the controls to default.. You can do this from the title screen (select Options > Controls > Restore Defaults) or in-game (press Esc > Options > Controls > Restore Defaults). After many hours of gameplay we’ve added a default configuration which we feel is the best fit, however everyone is different so you can remap the gamepad controls at any time after having restored to the default configuration. The gamepad controls introduced a lot of new functionality in order to be able to move through the various interfaces without using a mouse, so there are also keyboard equivalents in place, however these are not fully supported yet so you cannot rebind them at the moment, there is no functionality for the chart or moving between tabs in shops, and they are not currently shown in the Controls menu. They are as follows:
As simple as the gamepad controls look, it was a phenomenal amount of dev work to get it working correctly within Skies. Naturally there were lots of bugs and we’ve painstakingly nuked all but a bunch of minor issues which we’ll fix in an upcoming build. Make sure you read about them on our Known Issues page so you are familiar. As always, if you come across any that aren’t listed then send us a quick report, details of how to do so are here Movement We’ve made a couple of very subtle tweaks to locomotive movement. We’ve mentioned before in one of our Upcoming Changes threads that we are toying with the idea of having difficulty settings for movement. We won’t be implementing this until much closer to launch but in the meantime we wanted to adjust the controls to make the locomotives feel slightly less ‘slidey’. It’s been hard to find a balance because while a lot of players have told us they find the locomotive difficult to control, there’s also a lot of people who like the feel of it. One thing we don’t want to do is make the default controls feel ‘dumbed down’, hence why the changes we’ve made in this build are minor. Once difficulty settings are in place, you’ll be able to make stronger adjustments yourself. Here are the tweaks we’ve made:
Updates
Bug Fixes
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Hello, skyfarers! |
Hello, Skyfarers! An update, in which we discuss the EXPLORATION release and the ever-closer reveal of ALBION! |
Build Version: 1.0.7.4.1f12226aa
Bug Fixes
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You may have noticed these past few sprint blogs that we’ve been changing the format a bit, as we add many large features into the game. We’ve also recently restructured our production process and in 2018 we’ll be handling these blogs and our FBG Podcasts a little differently! |
With the recent revamp of the proc gen system becoming available within the game to all, our focus this week has been to add some finishing touches to exploration in the Reach. Final touches and testing are being completed for Discoveries & Spectacles, which we hope to bring into the game soon. Additionally, the update to Terror’s visual effects and music are being finished as well. |
Today our Prospects and Bargains trade system is now officially available to players on Steam and GOG!
More About: Proc Gen Coming to the Main Branch While the new proc gen system was originally released on its own branch, today it is being merged into the main branch of the game. This means: If you moved over to the proc gen branch, then you can transfer back over to the main branch once the update is live. You’ll be able to import your save file and this time your map will not be regenerated. If you’ve never tried out the proc gen branch, then once the update goes live you will still be able to load existing save files, but you will see some changes: your chart will regenerate and you will be moved to the New Winchester starting area. However, you will not lose any progress you have made on that character. More About: Directions The High Wilderness is vast, and so we wanted to add in a system that can help players find ports related to quests. Currently the only quest using this is the starting quest to Port Prosper, but we’ll be implementing this feature across a range of storylets in the future. Directions are based on a 16-point compass (north, north-northeast, northeast, etc.) and are always given from the position of the region’s hub port no matter where you are in the High Wilderness. If the port in question is in the inner ring then it will be ‘some way’ from the hub port; if it is in the outer ring then it will be a ‘long way’ from the hub, e.g. Port Prosper is a long way north of New Winchester. Dev Blogs and Podcasts Christmas Schedule The Failbetter offices will be winding down over the Christmas period. The last dev blog before the holidays will go live Wednesday 20th December, before picking up again in January. Our next FBG Podcast should take place Friday 5th January when we’re back in the office. We hope everyone has a lovely holiday and we can’t wait to show you some exciting things in the new year! |
Build Version: 1.0.6.3.4ea876f |
Now that the new proc gen system is accessible in Early Access via branch, the team has been busy QAing and bug fixing the Prospects and Bargains system, which is due into the game before the end of the year. Alongside that, Art, Content and Tech have continued their work on various tasks for our other regions like Albion and Eleutheria. |
We are delighted to announce that the new procedural generation system, discussed in the QUINTESSENCE blog, is now available for Steam and GOG users.
To revert to the main branch: follow the same steps above, but select 'NONE - Opt out of all beta programs' from the dropdown menu in Steam’s ‘Betas’ tab GOG
To revert to the main branch: on the ‘Settings’ page, select 'default' branch and click 'install' again FBG Podcast Scheduled for Today Postponed Also, our FBG Podcast about trade with Chris has been postponed due to some unforeseen circumstances. We are hoping to reschedule for Wednesday 6th December at 16:00 GMT. |
Build Version: 1.0.4.6.24e7833 We’re releasing this build initially on a different branch as there are some risks with us having redesigned the proc gen system. However eventually it will become the main branch and everyone will be updated to this build. We recommend starting a new character/save file within the new proc gen build. However if you are attached to your character or do not want to lose your progress you can load save files from previous Early Access builds. When importing existing saves you will see a warning that this will regenerate your map and move you to the New Winchester starting area. You will not lose any progress your character has made in terms of level, experience, possessions, progress through storylets, etc, but you will need to rediscover all previously uncovered areas of the Reach. N.B. You will be able to change from the proc gen branch back to the main branch at any time, however once you have imported your character’s save file from the main branch into proc gen, you will not be able to load that save file in the main branch again. This is why we recommend starting a new character within proc gen. Alternatively, make a back-up copy of your character’s Lineage folder before you import it into the proc gen build (details of where to find these files are on our Bug Reporting page). Please be aware that some saves imported from very early EA builds (builds before v1.0.2.3.2dbd705 released on the 25th October), may see their Scout unequipped when they load the game. Your cargo number may also be inaccurate. Just head north out of the asteroid field towards New Winchester where you can dock and re-equip your bat, and the cargo number will resolve itself once docked. In the new proc gen system Port Prosper is no longer in a fixed segment, it will appear randomly in an outer segment, like any other port. Since the Fastidious Inspector quest directs you to Port Prosper in the North East, we’ve decided to disable this starter quest until we implement a new feature which can give accurate directions based on where ports are generated. Since this quest gives out a generous amount of Sovereigns we’ve temporarily boosted the Sovereigns awarded in the A Gift for New Captains storylet seen when starting a new character. After extensive bug fixing and testing we believe we have finally eliminated all incarnations of the missing ports and duplicate port bugs! However, leaving the Reach boundaries may still cause issues with save files and we recommend against doing this (travelling too far out of the Reach and trying to return will cause the loading screen to hang and you will need to relaunch the game). Updates
What’s not included in this build Discoveries and Spectacles: the world may feel a little busier now that agent spawn rates have been increased and we’ve added some new decorations, but Spectacles and Discoveries are still to come. Once released, they should make the Reach feel even more plush (and have effects on your Terror in the case of spectacles). Bug fixes UI
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The new trade system we're introducing in December to Sunless Skies will be an extensive overhaul that ties into storytelling, economy, UI and character progression. There's a lot to talk about, so we've divided this update into three sections:
We’ll also be showcasing the new trade system on our next FBG Podcast, which will be at 16:00 GMT on Wednesday 29th November (so our Narrative Director Chris can show everyone the ropes). The TL;DR Version The new trade system aims to create the sense of being an independant trader. You're trying to carve out a living in the gaps left by big companies. That means you'll need a sharp eye for opportunities, and wits, boldness, and knowledge of the skies to capitalise on them. If the risk pays off, you could land that big score and make yourself rich – for a while. At ports, you'll now be able to find Bargains and Prospects:
You can invest in a Bargain for a quick sale, or pursue a Prospect for a bigger reward. But don't delay! As time passes, old opportunities will vanish and new ones appear. Different ports offer different opportunities, and as your captain levels up you'll unlock new, more profitable ones! To support this new system, we're streamlining markets. Each region's main port will now buy any good, and each minor port will sell a single export. So if you want to sell, you'll visit the main port. If you want to buy, you'll need to find the right minor port. Using your map, you'll be able to see each port's export and when new trade opportunities are available there. You can also check the Prospects you're currently pursuing on your locomotive screen. Trade in Sunless Skies is intended to feel unpredictable and rewarding; to play like a story. It's meant to reward character progression and player knowledge. The initial implementation includes a slice of the Bargains and Prospects that will be in the final game, and we'll be following player feedback closely, and making changes (especially to costs and rewards). We hope you enjoy it! Why We’ve Changed Trade Before we started working on the trade system for Sunless Skies, we went back and looked at trade in Sunless Sea, focusing on what worked and what we wanted to improve on. We felt trade in Sunless Sea was: Flavourful: The trade goods were evocative and playful. They revealed things about the world: Casks of Mushroom Wine, Firkins of Prisoner's Honey, Bolts of Spider-Silk. Complex: Sunless Sea had about 22 trade goods. It also had more than 30 ports, each of which sold different goods at different prices. That's a lot of permutations, and as there was no UI dedicated to trade, players had to consult a wiki or keep extensive notes to engage with it. Familiar: This was a huge benefit – the trade in Sunless Sea worked more or less like trade in a various other games (notably Elite, one of its inspirations). Players who had experienced similar systems felt on firm ground. Reliable/Predictable: With a couple of effective exceptions, trade was reliable and predictable. A single port sold the same goods at the same prices, and once you'd worked out a trade route you could pump it indefinitely. Stingy, then bountiful: Profit on each unit of goods was low, but the hold space in larger ships was generous. This meant that trade began with fiercely tight margins, but as your resources increased it became trivial. Combined with its reliability, trade tended to provide a steady flow of cash as you travelled. Secondary: Trade was never the focus of Sunless Sea – it was a supplementary activity to add a sense of authenticity to the life of a captain. AIMS FOR SUNLESS SKIES After this, we identified three priorities to govern trade in Sunless Skies. Simplicity: This is a risky word, because it sounds like we're dumbing trade down. But that's not the case: we're not reducing the design space (quite the opposite!), we just want it to be governed by clear rules and supported by helpful UI. Harder choices; better rewards: Rather than being a routine, we want trade to be unpredictable. It should pose challenging choices, which can pay off handsomely. There's always risk, but after a good deal you should feel like Scrooge McDuck for a while. Profit won't be a curve or a line, it'll be spikes. Tighter constraints on hold space are a key part in this (we know hold space feels very tight at the moment – it'll become somewhat less so as new locomotives and equipment become available). Make trade a story: We want to convey the fantasy of trade – identifying an opportunity and committing your knowledge and resources to capitalise on it. We want to tie it to your captain and the choices you make about them. We want to use it to tell the story of the world. UNGOALS To keep ourselves focused, we also identified a number of things we aren't interested in doing. Market simulation: We aren't making a complex economic simulation where prices fluctuate based on supply and demand. Realism: We aren't trying to create anything realistic. As in Sunless Sea, the emphasis is on exploration and story. Familiarity: This is a risk, but we're prepared to try something unusual here. This mean's we'll have to put more effort into explaining the system within the game. The Nitty-Gritty: How Trade Works in Sunless Skies The new system combines a number of different elements: trade goods, markets, Bargains, Prospects, and character progression. TRADE GOODS As in Sunless Sea we've kept the trade goods evocative. Trading Barrels of Unseasoned Hours tells us something about the nature of the High Wilderness, and it's an item we can use in fun ways in stories. There are slightly fewer goods in than in Sunless Sea, (currently 14) so there's less to remember. Each region in the game focuses on a subset of goods which help tell its story. The Reach, for example, mostly deals in bronzewood, seeds, hours, souls, and Chorister nectar. A clear story like this aids player memory. Once you know the Reach is verdant and untamed, it makes sense you'd go there to get bronzewood. MARKETS 'Markets', here, means 'what can I buy at each port, and for how much?' Our goal here was to make them a clear, simple underpinning for the trade system, freeing up 'complexity budget' elsewhere. They're now governed by three rules:
This means if you find a bundle of bronzewood in a wreck, you know you can reliably sell it at the nearest main port. But if you're looking for a particular good, you need to find a port that sells it. You can now click on a port on your map to see a pop-up with a short description of it and a reminder of its export. Buying a good at a minor port and selling it at a main one won't net you any profit. It's like buying something from one supermarket and selling it at the next one. Instead, to profit from trading you'll need to seek out Bargains and Prospects. BARGAINS Each port will have a new 'bazaar' area. Part captains' club, part trading-house, anyone needing to buy or sell quickly knows this is the place to come. At minor ports, the bazaar offers Bargains: A bargain is a good offered for sale at a low price, but with limited supply. Let's use our earlier example: You can see how each bargain delivers a snippet of story, giving us another way to communicate the world of Sunless Skies. This Bargain allows you to buy up to three Jumbles of Undistinguished Souls, at the significantly reduced price of 45 sovereigns each (down from the usual price of 70 sovereigns). You can buy all three, or buy some now and come back later. Don't wait too long though! Bargains change over time. They're randomised, and a system of tags filter which Bargains appear. We can tag a Bargain to only appear in the Reach, for example, or only at metropolitan ports, or only at places with Bohemian leanings. When the Bargains at a port change, you'll get a notification on its map pop-up, so you can tell if it's time to visit again and see what's available. Bargains can also have requirements, only appearing after specific story events or for certain captains. You can always deliver Bargains back to the region's main port and sell them for a reliable profit. They're the meat and potatoes of trade. But you might want to store some in your bank and look out for a big return by combining them with a Prospect. PROSPECTS At major ports, the bazaar doesn't offer Bargains, but Prospects instead. A Prospect is a contract with someone at another port, who will pay an excellent price for a certain good. You'll need to source the good yourself, probably from a minor port. Here, your expertise comes into play – can you find the best trade route, and navigate the dangers on the way? The client will only want a certain amount of the good in question. You can just provide part of their demand if you like, but if you fulfil all of it you may see an additional effect. For example, if you complete a Prospect to bring a Tackety sympathiser a supply of munitions you might affect the course of the conflict in the Reach! The unwritten captains' code means once you've accepted a Prospect, no other captain will take it. It's recorded on your locomotive screen. You can accept up to four Prospects at once, and abandon them at any time. Here's an example Prospect you might find at New Winchester: This prospect will pay out 80 sovereigns per unit of seeds: double the normal base price of 40; Prospects are even more rewarding than Bargains, because they're more demanding. And if you can complete a Prospect by buying goods as a Bargain – well, that's how you make the big space-bucks. AFFILIATIONS The final piece of the trade puzzle is your captain, and their affiliations. As you level up, you choose new facets for your captain (like Scarred or Mentor), some of which increase an affiliation. Affiliations represent the circles you move in: Academe, Bohemia, Establishment and Villainy. As they rise, each unlocks new Prospects and Bargains. The higher the affiliation, the more profitable the opportunities. Captains with high Villainy will have more chances to buy cheap stolen goods, while those with high Academe will be approached by researchers prepared to pay for materials to further their research. So that’s it, our very very short post about the new trade system! We hope the Prospects and Bargains update will go out in mid-December. We can’t wait to see what you think! |
Build Version: 1.0.3.2.1dcb4f0
Bug Fixes Scouts
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For this development update, we’re taking a dive into one of the most important systems in Sunless Skies: procedural generation. Your feedback in Early Access has been instrumental in some major changes coming later this month, that will transform the way Sunless Skies feels to play.
SEGMENT DESIGN All this lead us to design a new system. Now, instead of allowing small units of terrain to generate anywhere in a particular ring, we are now dividing our regions' rings into curated segments. These segments can spawn in any rotation as long as they stay within their designated ring, which gives us more control to shape the environment, while still leaving some proc-gen to allow for varied player experiences. Each segment is designed by a collaborative team of an artist, a writer and a designer. They spend their time deciding:
(Above is half of a segment design example from one of the segment meetings) This segment design approach effectively allows us to do level design, so that we can deliver a world that feels detailed and lush. A world full of Victorians exploring and conquering space. A world that you will hopefully get to know with your captains. Here’s a bird’s eye view of part of an inner segment. You can see Port Avon on the right and some abandoned ruins on the left. Of course, moving to segment design means we had to redesign the in-game chart as well. Here’s what it looks like currently: And here’s what you can expect when the new proc-gen system goes live: When will these changes be implemented in-game? Most likely before the end of the month, but as it’s a huge change to the game, we’re going to add it on initially as a separate branch.This means that the original proc-gen system of the game will still be the main playable build of the game if players login to Steam/GOG, but that anyone wanting to try out the new proc-gen can follow some simple steps to open up and play on the new branch. We’ll be sure to post the instructions for everyone when it becomes available. We’re also hoping to add Spectacles and Discoveries into the game soon too, which will also help to make the world feel less empty. Once both Spectacles/Discoveries and the new proc-gen are in, space should feel more lush and exciting! If you have any questions about procedural generation or the new system, we’d welcome you to come join our FBG Podcast on 10th November at 16:00 GMT! We’ll have stolen Paul away from his artistic duties to talk about all the changes. REMINDER: Any backers who have not received their game keys yet please email skies@failbettergames.com, as it appears that quite a few people’s keys got eaten by spam filters. |
Greetings Sky-Captains, |
Today is a very exciting update for us (and you!) as today is our first feature update to the game! Once your game updates in Steam/GOG, you’ll be able to explore: Engine Yards, Banks, Legacies and—perhaps most excitingly—Character Creation. These features make up quite large systems within the game, and so we’ve spent this sprint and a few others tidying them up and bug testing them. Alongside that, we’ve also been working on Albion content, other large systems like Prospects and Bargains, and of course addressing feedback from players. |
The office has still been a bit quiet this sprint due to quite a few people taking holiday in this post-Early Access launch time period. Our Albion work continues to forge ahead in each department. Alongside creating the next region, we remain focused on taking the feedback we’re seeing from players and having internal discussions about our design and production moving forwards.
They will also start with most of the equipment assigned to the locomotive, however, players will lose one random piece of equipment from their hold. When players die in Merciful mode, they can choose between starting with a new captain as in the Legacy mode, or continuing with their previous captain from the last auto-save point. BUGS & FEEDBACK Lesleyann would like to remind everyone playing Sunless Skies to check out the Focused Feedback threads on the Steam and FBG forums. So far there are two posted: “Terror” and “Economy, General Progression and World Shape,” with plenty more to come! Keep a lookout next week, as we’ll be updating the game with its first new feature build—meaning our first update to the game that will include new bits and pieces and not just bug fixes. Catch our FBG Podcast this week at 16:00 BST Friday 13th October on Twitch! We’ll be joined with Cash and James, who would adore to answer any writerly questions, or in Cash’s case, singing requests. REMINDER: Any backers who have not received their game keys yet please email skies@failbettergames.com, as it appears that quite a few people’s keys got eaten by spam filters. |
This sprint, seven of our crew headed to EGX to showcase Sunless Skies! New and veteran fans alike stopped by to give the game a try and we were delighted to chat with everyone and hear their feedback. On Friday, Chris, Lottie and Adam headed to the EGX stage to chat with Eurogamer’s Johnny Chiodini, which you can watch on Eurogamer’s YouTube page. |
With Sunless Skies now officially available for Early Access / Games in Development, the MALMQUIST BIAS sprint was focused on analysing feedback and bug fixing. A few departments such as art have also begun to explore our next region: Albion. |
This patch is our first update and contains a number of bug fixes, listed below. Two big issues which have not been fixed as part of this update however are the disappearing ports bug and the corrupt save file issue which leads to a black screen overlaid with the HUD. |
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Since our Early Access launch is just around the corner—18:00 BST 30th August (!)—we thought we'd go into a bit more detail about what you can initially expect in Sunless Skies.
What’s Coming Throughout development we will release updates that add polish and more complexity to the mechanics you see initially. We’ll also of course be adding more regions, locomotives, ports, sky-beasts, loot, equipment, discoveries, wrecks, characters, and stories. Things that will be added in later:
This is of course not a full list, as that would make quite a long blog post! These are instead some of the larger, long-form pieces that will be added to the game in future updates. What Feedback We’ll be Looking For Opening the game to players in Early Access will provide us with crucial feedback to help us create a game of corruption, compromise and jeopardy. With Sunless Sea, you helped us discover what type of combat worked, what accessibility features were necessary and how much cannibalism truly meant to you. We’ll be looking for similar feedback in Sunless Skies, for example:
We’ll be hanging out in the Steam, GOG and our own community forum to see what players are discussing. Feedback and bugs can also be sent to skies@failbettergames.com, after checking our How to Report Bugs and Known Issues pages. Following our Progress We’ll be continuing development blogs just like this one even after we launch on Early Access, though things will change slightly. We’ll need to take some time to analyse the player response to the game once we go live—there’s a big difference between having 900 Alpha testers and at least 11,000+ Kickstarter backers flooding into the game—not to mention any new Steam or GOG players that want to purchase the game. That initial player response to the game will affect both the development schedule our producer Lottie plans, and the Sunless Skies Development Roadmap that Haley takes care of. We may find that things will change only slightly, but there’s a chance things may change dramatically, and so in the first few weeks our team will be busy with internal discussions before deciding on a designated path forward. Once that’s been determined we will be able to share with you:
We are currently buzzing with so much excitement people may begin to think we’re made up of bees. A huge thank you to those who backed Sunless Skies, and to the Alpha testers who have given us some excellent feedback—we couldn’t have done it without you all! We’ll be holding a special Early Access focused podcast 1st September at 16:00 BST in case you want to ask us any delicious questions. See you in the skies! |
The KEPLER sprint brings us ever closer to Early Access / Games in Development. It warmed us to our core to see such excitement about the release date of the open beta for Sunless Skies. While there are still many new bits and bobs being worked on for the Reach and a some new tasks for our next region, Albion, most of the work we’ll be focusing on from now until the 30th of August will be bug finding, fixing, and feature polishing. Oh, and extra, triple, quadruple checks to make sure that space feels spacey enough before you lot burst through the gate into the High Wilderness. |
Our JANSKY sprint leads us to a very special announcement—Sunless Skies is coming to Steam Early Access and GOG Games in Development the 30th of August! With that in mind, all teams have of course been working on buffing, polishing and bug fixing the Reach, our initial area for Early Access / Games in Development. |
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The INVARIANTHEORIE sprint continues our work at fleshing out the Reach ahead of Early Access. Art has been finishing up ports while also delving into even more ambiences, icons and decorations. Meanwhile Content have been working on experience accrual designs and working on Kickstarter backer rewards such as Correspondence and geographical location names. Tech have accomplished a myriad of different pieces to ensure all the bits and bobs are running for Early Access, including melee attacks, trade loops, scenic spawns and character progression!
This allows us to ensure that each name, holds personal meaning while at the same time blends into the Sunless Skies atmosphere and lore. Cash and James have both been busy with various port quest QA, such as New Winchester and Port Prosper. GAMEPLAY AND DESIGN This sprint Mac implemented melee attacks, which are important not only for some locomotive agents, but also for organic agents that may be lurking in the skies. Featured above you can see one of the tools we've created for ourselves in Unity. We're making sure we have a lot of them at our disposal to help us create a range of interesting types of enemy attacks. He has also begun work on implementing the character progression spec that Chris has created in a previous sprint. Character progression in Sunless Skies will be different than Sunless Sea, and more story-driven. Barry has continued work on Wrath, this time implementing instantaneous provocations, which means that agents will be able to become provoked immediately if shot at or attacked, as opposed to only becoming provoked based on qualities. He has also begun implementing Scouts, which will be very helpful to allow players to explore the skies! Henry has been working on scenic spawns and agent spawning tags, which will allow the team to have more control over where an AI agent spawns in game. These tags, for example, will allow specific agents to be spawned in specific regions of the High Wilderness. He has also been implementing locomotive equipment specs written up by Chris. This will ensure players can add different equipment to their locomotives. Caolain has taken his first dive into Sunless Skies by working on the design for AI behavior of the Tackety Scouts, as well as working on trade loops for the Reach. The trade loop designs will narrate which shops sell what in various points of the Reach. Besides learning all the ropes at Failbetter, Lesleyann has done her first general QA pass, focusing on both finding bugs and ensuring bugs the tech team has fixed have actually been fixed. She's also worked with the tech team ahead of public launches, such as Alpha updates, to work through major bugs which would stop any builds from going out. Our next FBG Podcast will be Friday 21st July at 16:00 BST! Our next sprint, JANSKY, will bring more content from Albion, continued art polish on the Reach, music triggers, and more AI behaviours! |
The HYPERGALAXY sprint finds us continuing to enrich the Reach. Art have finished their first pass at all the ports of the Reach and started on Ambiences, Decorations and a UI pass. Meanwhile, Content have written a tutorial specifically for Early Access, created a system to track faction conflict in New Winchester and created base content for Albion. Besides working on bug fixes for the Alpha, the Tech crew have been continuing their work on weapons, creating the in-game chart, and implementing plenty of UI and HUD systems. |
Now that we've spent some sprints building the Reach, GANYMEDE is where we begin adding flesh to the skeleton we’ve constructed. Art have continued their construction of ports, officers, locomotives and worked on improving the docking platforms. The content team outlined the next area of the High Wilderness: Albion. Tech have been busy implementing wrath, heat, armaments, shop mechanics and storylet UI. |
In order to help us find and fix bugs during Sunless Skies development, we will be holding a closed alpha, beginning 5th June!
WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR? We’re looking for a variety of people to help us test the alpha!
For those invited, we'd of course ask you to install and play the Sunless Skies alpha. Each batch will be involved for at least two weeks, though you are free to help us test until the alpha ends! We will be looking for you to report any bugs you find, along with your general thoughts on the game so far. If all of that sounds good to you, we’d love to have you help us test Sunless Skies! We expect to be inundated with requests, so it’s important to note that joining the list doesn’t guarantee being invited to the alpha. Join our alpha signup list! TL;DR Summary:
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Our EXOGENESIS sprint is our first specific pass at populating the Reach, which means working on its denizens from officers to the agents you’ll encounter in the skies. Our art team, which has recently doubled, continued their work on ports, brought some agents to life, and created our first pass art pass over the UI. Content also continued work on various ports, while also creating a magnificent spreadsheet that will help keep track of Sunless Skies’ officers. Meanwhile, tech busied themselves with expanding on the pathfinding discussed last sprint, along with implementing tooltips (hugely important for our wordy games), balancing survival mechanics, and implementing agents. |
In DARK MATTER we foray further into combat! Tech have been busy plotting enemy behavior and implementing pathfinding. Meanwhile, our writers have continued spinning tales for the ports within the Reach. This sprint, we also welcome a new artist to our team—Toby! |
CHROMOSPHERE brings us our first animations and our first pass at quite a few complex tasks! We also get to see different terrain types within the Reach, animations for the player’s locomotive (so much steam!), and a few AI agent animations. Tech has been busy with our first-pass at combat implementation, title screens, storylet-UI, and collision damage. The Content team, besides writing up stories for wrecks and discoveries, have been very busy working out the complexities of a randomised loot system for Sunless Skies. In fact, we haven’t seen them in a few days. We should probably check on them. |
If you’ve been with us since the early days of Sunless Sea development, you’ll remember there was a Sunless Sea development roadmap. The roadmap allows players to see where we currently are in development, as well as where we’re headed. |
The final sprint in March is BIG BANG! This sprint features quite a bit of work from our writers, as they begin to shape Sunless Skies with names and descriptions of sky-beasts and different vessel classifications. You possibly may have heard us mention bees before as well, which Paul has brought to life. Tech have also started the very first steps on combat with work on combat AI specifications. |
The second sprint in March, APHELION Pt 2, features an art terrain pipeline, a new port, character progression, and further work on implementing fuel and hunger within the game UI. This sprint also included some changes to the Terror mechanic. |
March’s first Sunless Skies sprint is APHELION. This sprint focuses on The Reach: the first region in Sunless Skies, where you will begin your journey. It also involves big chunks of setup for later regions: hunger, death, time, fuel - all of the basic building blocks of our game.
This means lots of possibilities. Starting with a monochrome chassis leaves options for armour types being made of different metals/materials. The colour elements could identify different factions at a glance. And we want to try and get steam coming out of the chimneys! Also on the art front, we should note that ports in Sunless Skies will look more like the Khanate than other ports from Sunless Sea: exploded areas that you can explore more than just sailing around. Production sprints on Sunless Skies last for 2 weeks. Next is BIG BANG, in which we will be working on combat, and we’ll be back with an update on that in early April. Until then, we hope you’ll join us to talk about APHELION during our live podcast on twitch, this Friday 17 March at 1600 GMT! |
Hello. How are you? It's so nice to be back on Steam.
Expect the first production update soon. We can't wait to take to the skies with you! |