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. ART One of the tasks tackled by the art team in JANSKY was implementing labels within the game. This means that as your locomotive cruises through the High Wilderness, any wrecks, ports or locations with names will show on screen. Paul has implemented this specifically in the Reach, and you may even see some of our backer-created location names appear!
As we continue towards Early Access / Games in Development, Tobias has been busy creating and tidying many different decorations and ambiences. One of the challenges specifically with decorations, is the balance between a space that is too sparse, or a space that is too dense—balance is very important. Ambiences pose their own problem, as depending on the content, there may or may not be an icon that covers a third of the art.
All the Reach ports are receiving plenty of buff and polish, and thus we’re happy to share a comparison with you: the first screenshot of Magdalene’s we shared versus the current version after some polish.

This sprint also received a lot of UI work from Liam, who created a new pre-roll for the title screen of the game for Early Access, along with adding crossfading to make UI transitions smoother. CONTENT The Content resource was a bit light this sprint due to our writers being busy on other projects such as Fallen London’s Election, Exceptional Stories, and Reworks project. One of the tasks they tackled was revising port area names in the Reach as they were too long and were being cut off by the UI. This is a great example of some of the conflicting pieces that go into game development and why it has to be so iterative. Chris and Olivia also worked with Richard Cobbett, one of our excellent freelancers, who was pitching his ideas for a port in Albion. Meanwhile, James worked on loot and death storylets for sky-beasts. Lesleyann also tackled testing the mechanics of the Magdalene port. GAMEPLAY AND DESIGN Besides his UI work, Liam also implemented the ‘options’ panel, adding audio and both UI and font scaling as options. A ‘graphics’ menu was also added by Mac, which when it is finished, will allow users to change their screen resolutions for the game. Mac also worked on implementing how players will be able to spend their experience points in the character progression screen. Players will be able to use their experience points on special storylets that will grant them skill stats. For example, in Fallen London they’re Watchful, Shadowy, Dangerous and Persuasive. In Sunless Skies they are Iron, Hearts, Mirrors and Veils.
When players spend their experience point, a roleplaying storylet will appear that will allow them to choose one of two options. Your choice allows you to shape your character and their history.
Adam and Caolain both worked on the design and implementation of two of our AI agents, Adam on the Cantankeri (which Liam showed in a previous podcast) and Caolain on the Tackety Scout. Alongside this, Adam also worked on adjusting many of the player controller variables. These adjustments affect how the player-locomotive move. The adjustments included things like max speed, lateral thrust and heat gained from thrust. All these tweaks are made to ensure that the movement and all the controls of the locomotive feels right when players fly through the High Wilderness, and will certainly be an area of feedback we're looking to receiving from Early Access. The tech team and Lesleyann have also working on finding and fixing any of the bugs scurrying about! If you’d like to know more about what to expect for Early Access, you can read more about it in our earlier post or, tune in to our next FBG Podcast on Friday 4th of August at 16:00 BST. Ahead of the podcast feel free to send any questions to @failbettergames on Twitter.