SpaceVenture version 2 (The Updated Engine Edition)

Hello everyone! As always, thank you all for your support and patience as we continue to work to get SpaceVenture out to you all. We feel that we’ve finally got some new information to share with you and hope you’ll find it exciting to see some progress on the project. For those of you just wanting the basic information in this update, we’re going to keep it short and sweet here in the below “Overview” and if you want lots more details, you’ll find that lower on this post.

OVERVIEW

It has been a massive undertaking to get SpaceVenture into the updated version of the Unity Engine. Way more massive than we ever dreamed, however, we are so happy to say that the update is complete and every scene is working even better than it did on Unity 4. We are calling the updated engine version of the game, “SpaceVenture version 2”. We now have a voluntary QA team of people that are extremely hardcore adventure game players that are hammering the new version of the game and reporting bugs. Once we have squashed those bugs, we are going to release the game to all of you who are Beta testers and do a round of bug testing that way as well. Once the Kickstarter Beta testing phase completes, version 2 will be released as a build to you $15 and up backers, and then the plan is to get the game out on Steam. Also, after listening to a lot of backer feedback on SpaceVenture v1, we’ve fixed a ton of issues and have made some changes to SpaceVenture to help make things more intuitive and streamline certain aspects of the game. 

FOR MORE DETAILED INFORMATION, KEEP READING

The Unity Upgrade Process (PHASE 1 of SV v2 release)

Originally, after releasing the first official build of SpaceVenture version 1 and receiving a lot of your feedback, we realized there were still a lot of bugs in the game. At that time, our plan was to just focus on fixing those bugs. Which we did fix a huge amount of them. Shortly before we were going to release a new build, Ken Williams contacted us about partnering with Cygnus (his new company). We took a step back together and looked at the project on Unity 4 and discovered that Unity 4 would no longer support the additional platforms we wanted to release the game on. Ken (with the help of his team) wanted to assist us in helping us upgrade to the newer version of Unity. Ken gave us the greenlight to announce this to you all in a Kickstarter update, which we did. The upgrade process was started in its infancy and Ken drew up a rough draft of a contract. Shortly before the contract was finalized, Ken re-evaluated his own project (Colossal Cave) and realized that it was behind schedule on certain releases and that he was about to cause it to be further behind by pulling programmers off of it. So they were not able to take part in the upgrade process of SpaceVenture as planned.

We decided to go ahead with the engine upgrade, since there was no way we could release SpaceVenture on any platform except Windows and Linux. This was a much bigger undertaking than we ever dreamed. 

Here is a list of some of the challenges:

• Every single scene (truly) was broken in some way and needed attention due mainly because of differences in the two versions of Unity.
• The navmesh system, which is how the characters navigate the scenes, had to be completely redone due to the new way Unity manages them.
• The new version changed certain things about objects in the game that had animators attached. As one can imagine, we have hundreds of objects that contain animators
• We purchased lots of plugins from the Unity store back in the day and a lot of these plugins no longer work with new Unity. So we had to get new ones or create our own custom solutions for dealing with this.
• Audio files in the game involving VO had defaulted to 3D as opposed to 2D. In some places, this was not a problem, but in most areas of the game, this had to be fixed.
• We had over 1000 scripts in the game that needed some code refinement before the new version of Unity would allow us to make a build of the game.

That list just contains some of the highlights of the challenge involving the upgrade process. The point in telling you all of this is to try and help explain why this process took so long. When the team finally completed the upgrade, it was such a huge and happy accomplishment for us all. It for sure reinvigorated us and has given us a breath of fresh air to help push us further and fuel our fire to get the game out to you all.

The QA Process (PHASE 2 of SV v2 release)

This is the phase we are currently in.

One of the things we wish we had done with the SpaceVenture v1 build, was put together a QA team for testing before we pushed it out. We, as a development team, really did test the game a tremendous amount before release. But it feels like in some ways, we couldn’t see the forest for the trees, being so close to the project as we are. This time around as we push to release v2, we contacted a series of people that we know really love playing (and possibly breaking) adventure games. 

It was a little over a month ago that we finished the SpaceVenture Unity upgrade, and (after making some major improvements) we just within the last few days got the build in the hands of our QA people. So here is a little of what is happening with the QA folks right now:

• Each QA person has been given access to a way to report bugs in detail to us
• Something else they are providing is video playthroughs of their bug testing. This allows us to see the bugs, but also lets us watch how different people are playing the game. So far, this has been invaluable to us!
• Every day, we are combing through any bugs that are found and triaging them based on High, Medium, or Low priority.

We are not 100% sure on how long this process will take, because as you can imagine, it will depend on how many bugs that are found and the time it takes to fix them. The good news is, so far, the items that have been discovered are nothing that should take a ridiculous amount of time to fix, and we are already in the process of fixing things that are found. But again, time will tell on this.

The Backer Beta Test Process (PHASE 3 of SV v2 release)

Once we complete the QA phase, we want to give our backer Beta testers a chance to help us out by playing the game and giving us feedback. We regret not pushing this further with SpaceVenture v1 and don’t want to make that mistake with v2. We realize that a massive amount of time has passed, and everyone (including us) is probably in a different stage of their lives than when we started building this game all those years ago. However, for those of you Beta test backers that are willing, we’d love to get your help when we get ready to release a build to you all.

Our current high level plans for this process:

• We will do a Kickstarter update when we get to this phase
• We will provide information on how to get access to the build
• We will provide a way for you to communicate your findings to us
• The build will be for Windows only. The plan is to work on other platforms, once the official build for v2 on Windows is released

As mentioned previously, we don’t know exactly when we will get to this phase because we are knee deep in the QA phase right now. But we will announce this phase once we’re there.

The Backer Release of v2 (PHASE 4 of SV v2 release)

As we finish up with our Backer Beta testing phase, our plan is to fix the things that need to be fixed based on bug reports. Next, we plan to release an official build of SpaceVenture v2 to you all that backed the game at the $15 and up level. 

Some information about this process:

• We will do a Kickstarter update announcing the finishing of the backer Beta tester phase and details about the Backer Release phase.
• As stated previously, the first release will be for Windows only, but now that we’ve gotten the game on the newer Unity engine, porting the game to the other platforms will be possible. We do realize that this process will still take some time, work and testing.
• As promised, we will provide a way for you all to download a DRM free version of SpaceVenture (version 2). 
• Once the DRM free version has been released, our goal is to then get the game on Steam, GOG, and other platforms that will accept the game.

IMPROVEMENTS TO SPACEVENTURE

After receiving an overwhelming amount of feedback from players that played SpaceVenture v1, we knew we needed to fix some things going forward. Obviously bugs, but there was a lot of feedback regarding other elements of the game as well. We took the vast majority of items being reported and put together a massive list. We spent hours pouring over that list and narrowed down all the items that we should prioritize going forward. I wanted to touch on some of the bigger items that we have changed about the new version of SpaceVenture.

“The Rooter Problem”

Rooter is for sure one of our favorite elements of the game. He’s a nice little sidekick that the Two Guys dreamed up that provides some fun comedic game mechanics, all in the sarcastic voice matched narrator voice of Gary Owens. And allowing players to use Rooter, is a key ingredient of SpaceVenture. What we noticed from the community of players on SpaceVenture v1, was that there was a tremendous amount of confusion on the following:

• When should I take Rooter’s drill head and use it?
• When should I pick up Rooter in toolbox mode?
• Should I carry Rooter as a toolbox between scenes? Is that important or even a mechanic in the game that is necessary?
• THE BIGGEST QUESTION: When should I be playing as Rooter and when should I be playing as Ace?

As it turns out, players were spending a lot of time as Rooter when the vast majority of the game doesn’t require you to use Rooter to navigate scenes and complete puzzles. Yes there are quite a few places in the game where you’ll use Rooter, but constantly switching back and forth between the two characters isn’t going to help. And there really isn’t any time you need to carry Rooter in toolbox mode between scenes etc.. So we decided to streamline everything involving Rooter and the good news is, it doesn’t really take anything away regarding play value.

In SpaceVenture v2, you won’t be able to just switch to Rooter anytime you want. For key puzzles involving Rooter, you will still have to use Rooter in other ways, such as..

• Whistling to turn Rooter into a toolbox
• Picking him up as a toolbox and placing him in certain areas
• Whistling to get him out of toolbox mode
• Grabbing his head for using as a drill
• Attaching items to his head
• Using his head for it’s tongue shooting action to grab things
• Possibly even swing across areas “Indiana Jones” style using Rooter’s drill head and tongue
• There are even some apps you can use while playing as Rooter and that Ace can purchase from his “PDA” app store

In certain situations, such as Ace being incapacitated, the game will auto switch to Rooter. We also added the following improvements to the interface involving Rooter:

• There is a “How to Play” set of  instructions on the Main Menu of SpaceVenture v2 that explain details on playing the game along with some information regarding Rooter
• There are now “Information” bubbles that will appear on the screen during certain areas that will provide some helpful clues regarding certain aspects of Rooter, such as how to attach an inventory item to Rooter’s drill head.
• We improved the UI for attaching inventory items together and added a very simple button that appears for detaching items as well.

Again, I think you’ll find that these are improvements that really make Rooter more intuitive, yet don’t retract from the gameplay experience. It also prevents so many “Red Herrings” of gameplay by confusing people on when they should be using Rooter versus not.

“The Curse of the Highlighting Mouse Cursor”

Something else we decided to change was the highlighted “hotspot” cursor in the game. This was a mechanic in which if you hovered over certain objects in the game, the mouse cursor would show a highlight effect. 

Though we feel like this was a great idea at the time, this feature never worked as well as we hoped. It seemed to confuse people, more than it helped. So for now, we have removed that feature from the game, with the intention, to possibly revisit it down the road if time permits. So no more confusing people based on this issue.

“Additional Artwork and Narrative Clues”

With reports that certain areas of the game didn’t have ways for players to figure out certain solutions, we added some additional artwork assets and narrative to help improve the chances that a player will at least know they are looking (or taking action) in the right place. We don’t want the game to be easy obviously, but we don’t want to hinder your progress in a situation where you know what you’re supposed to do, you just can’t figure out the right combinations of actions to do it. Example, In the Crane area of the game, Ace will need to drive “The Mule” and place it in a certain area. This area now has some artwork that helps queue you in on it. 

“For our Hyper Active Click Happy Crashers”

One very helpful thing that we discovered after watching playthroughs of SpaceVenture, is that people tend to double or even triple click objects on the screen a lot more than we ever imagined. This drew attention to certain odd situations that we had not accounted for in which certain events might get triggered multiple times. At minimum this would make events seem weird in the game because they were happening multiple times. In extreme cases, there was even soft locking that occurred that would require you to exit the game. To solve this problem in SpaceVenture v2, we updated our event system with some new code that protects against things breaking due to over excited clicking. This has brought a lot of extra stability to the game overall.

“Salvation through Save/Load Checkpoints”

We’ll spare you rehashing the troubles with the project regarding the save/load system. However, there is some new information to share. When you save your game, it will be saving the state of the scene (aka room) as you entered it. Already, when entering a scene, the game autosaves for you and if you die, it autoloads the scene from the autosave. Though you can also reload your own saved game to different scenes if you want. One of the concerns players have of course, is that they will lose progress if they die and have to start all over. As we old Sierra players have been taught, “Save early and save often”. 

To combat this, we have now added checkpoints for certain areas of the game that take a long time to complete. For example, there is a very long sequence where you are in an area known as “The Sewerplant” and you have to take care of a massive tentacle creature. This area of the game involves a long series of actions with Rooter, and then eventually Ace. Originally, in this type of scenario, If you got killed, the reload would start you all the way back at the beginning of entering the scene. So in areas like this, we now have a checkpoint save that occurs. So you won’t have to redo ALL of the work you did to get there before. The game is still going to be challenging and deaths will occur, but we hope you’ll find that as far as losing your progress goes, life will be a little easier than in v1. 

Speaking of deaths!

“We need more deaths!”

We know you Space Quest fans love your death sequences, so we added five new deaths to SpaceVenture v2 that weren’t in v1. We actually hope to add a few more before the final release. We’ll leave it to you to find them all. Some of them are really hilarious to watch, but we’ll let you be the judge of that.

BACKER REWARDS

Please do not send us any shipping address information at this time. When the time comes, we will do a survey from Kickstarter to get this information from you.

So what is the deal with the backer rewards?

The plan with backer rewards still remains the same. We want to release the game on Steam and other platforms, and whatever money is made, proceeds will go to paying for reward shipping to backers. As we have already mentioned previously, unfortunately after all the time that has passed, the project doesn’t have the funds to pay for rewards shipping. We promise that no one will receive any money from whatever sales are made on the game until we have taken care of the backer rewards to the best of our ability. We also still plan to make an option available for any backers that want to escalate getting their rewards sooner by paying for the shipping themselves.

I do have some new information regarding rewards to share. As we close in on releasing SpaceVenture v2 to the public, we are about ready to get Mark and Scott together in person to do a big box signing extravaganza. They don’t live near each other, so we want to try and knock this out in one go. This will involve anything and everything that was promised to be signed, including signed copies of the SpaceVenture game boxes as well as, some backers backed the project at a level to where they can send their own game boxes (Space Quest Boxes) to us and we’ll get them to sign the boxes and send them back. 

For those of you who are going to be involved in getting your game boxes signed, we will be sending you a message when the time comes. Make sure you are keeping an eye on your emails from Kickstarter. When we make the announcement about this, there will be a cutoff date because (again) Mark and Scott don’t live near each other and shipping boxes back and forth can be tricky and get expensive. This is best to be done all in one meeting.

FOR ALL OF YOU THAT MADE IT THROUGH THIS BIG POST

Here is a short video we put together to showcase some of the fun stuff found in SpaceVenturehttps://youtu.be/t5Tnr6zfEHM

FINAL THOUGHTS

Well that is the update everyone. We hope this update gave you some good insight as to where our heads are on getting this game finished and out to the public. As always, thank you all for your continued support and patience. We really do still appreciate you all. Whether you are someone who has given us positive feedback or negative feedback, know that you are appreciated regardless of the feedback. It is very important to us that we get this game delivered, albeit very late, but delivered none the less. Thanks again!