Dev Diary 30: End of Year
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows:
175 of 180 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining two bugs, one requires further testing and four require more work.
Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on.
In the last two weeks I have again been busy with a lot of admin. Some of this admin has resulted in Lab 77 having a proper press kit, which took me a while to do as I had no idea of how to make a press kit. I did finally take some time to do a bit of research on other games as well as press kit templates and I took the time to set up a specific page for a proper press kit. So if you are working in games press and you are reading this, why not check it out?
Furthermore, I finally took some time to implement an improvement to the background of the main menu. Having spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted, and trying several options that did not work for various reasons, I settled on using the teleportation and conveyor blocks to create a repeating background animation of S539-77 being moved about. I also realised in doing this that it also functions as a little tutorial or showcase of what the teleportation blocks are, and how they work.
Lab 77 main menu background.
I was very pleased with how the main menu turned out. And since I use prefabs for everything, it took me less than an hour to set it up. I only had to make the dupe of the player character as I don’t want the player to interact with the specimen in the main menu as that may be distracting.
Lastly, I do have to tell you that Lab 77 is not going to launch this year. I did set that as a goal earlier this autumn, however due to some setbacks and other issues this goal is not achievable. My aim has always been to release Lab 77 when it is ready, and at the high standard that I set for myself, which is why I am postponing the launch until that is met. I am optimistic for a Q1 release in 2025, but my main objective is still to ensure the quality and as such I will only release Lab 77 when I believe this goal has been reached. I will keep providing updates wherever I can, and I hope you look forward to the launch as much as I do.
This is the last Dev Diary of 2024, I will be back with more in 2025. Be good, be safe and see yous soon.
-Olav