Hello everyone, this is Tristan from Broken Window Studios. I wanted to let you know that this game is still alive, and that we've had some upset but are actually ready to release a build on Friday, march 5th. That build will feature a wide number of additions, including updates to the lighting, new support for the latest version of Oculus Rift, and updated mechanics such as our new conversation system. The game will also fully support Tobii eye tracking and a number of other cool features.

About Oculus

Reflections is a game that is designed to support VR from the ground up. However, in the interrum between updates, Oculus released changes to how VR is handled that caused incompatibility with the latest runtime (0.8). Because we don't want to be misrepresenting the game in it's current state, I've removed the VR Support listing from the store page for the time being. Please don't worry, however! The game currently runs with Oculus version 0.8 in our development builds, and will be updated to be compatible with Oculus again this Friday. At that time, we'll update the store page to reflect that and include the correct information about VR compatibility. I know that the delay has made it hard to play Reflections with VR, so we are committed to fixing that ASAP. I apologize personally for the delay in updates, which I'll explain more in the next section.

Why was the last update Delayed?

We had originally scheduled a release for for Christmas, but it was pushed back due to major issues with the state of the build that weren't resolvable in time for the scheduled release. At the time the build was due for release, I was the only person working on correcting bugs, due to our reductions in budget and team size. Because we didn't have the resources to fix issues and didn't have the person who set up the majority of the codebase, I was forced to admit that we would be delayed in submitting a version for users until we could sort through those issues. The bad news for me, and the reason for the delay in communication/updates, was that I had no idea how to tackle the issues we had without finding another programmer to assist. A number of small issues had compounded and caused a lot of errors which needed to be fixed before the game could be released, and we didn't have the manpower to get them done in a timely fashion. The good news is we ended up adding a new developer to the team in January. His name is Daniel Strayer and he's a longtime friend of Broken Window Studios who worked with us back on the early Grave versions. He's now working for us full time and we have arranged a payment deal that allows him receive compensation without breaking the bank for the studio. What's been great about having Daniel is that he's immediately turned things around and has gotten us ready for a stable and greatly improved version to release this week. I know it's not usually a good idea to be overly personal in these types of messages, but I wanted to say that the main reason I didn't update sooner is that the issues we had with release were actually really disappointing to me, and I had a period of lapse where I wasn't being very effective at communication and that ended up compounding as the time duration increased. I know that as a business owner and the public face of Broken Window I should be better at managing those things, so I'm pushing to improve that process and stop letting setbacks intimidate us as a team. It's sometimes really demoralizing to see things not go as planned and we've suffered a lot of that recently. I think we've finally fixed a lot of our issues and should be delivering more regular updates. I appreciate your support and patience along the way. We were trying to release updates every two weeks at the outset and that ended up becoming completely untenable. We were spending every week simply fighting fires, fixing bugs and responding to reports when what we really should have been doing was improving features, building new levels and generally finishing the game. We have sorted through these issues though and should be able to move forward towards completion at a reasonable clip.

What's coming in this update?

There's a lot coming in the update and to be honest, I can't say for sure what all of the features will be as we've had such a delay in releases that some features may be pretty drastically improved and I've just forgotten them. The game isn't entirely transformed and we're holding back new levels until a future update, but a few things you can expect will be:

• Updated support for Oculus Rift version 0.8.
• Huge improvements to the pickup mechanic and object interaction.
• Integrated Enlighten lighting system with Unity 5.
• Integration of Tobii Eye Tracking.
• Totally new conversation system with branching conversations and dialogue choices.
• Improved progression paths for Act 2. Streamlined gameplay interactions and merged a few complex levels to create more interesting paths.
• Integration of Emily, Chelsea, David, and Jason in both act 1 and act 2 with full interactions and conversations.
• Updated UI and menu system.
• Refined quality settings to allow play on a wider variety of machines.
• Numerous bug fixes and improvements.

What's the plan for Reflections?

First off, I want to say that Reflections is a deeply personal game to us and we have a lot of really cool plans for the game moving forward. Our schedule has been really unpredictable, mainly because the game development process is extremely time consuming and we have to juggle tasks that are very time consuming for a small team. Our current goal is to work feverishly on the next set of content and move forward to a full launch by summer. We are currently pushing to make that happen but will be transparent about our updates and progress. I've gotten over my anxiety about our progress and will making sure that there are both regular versions of Reflections on Early Access, and updates about how things are progressing. Thank you very much to everyone who has purchased the game and supported us. This has been a challenging road for us but we are committed to making Reflections the best game possible. See you on Friday with our new build!

[ 2016-03-01 02:12:05 CET ] [ Original post ]