Fractal Space News

Hello! Thanks to The Promidius for his great efforts and work to make this happen, we now have an Official Discord Channel for testers to communicate between each other easily, talk directly to us and report suggestions / bugs.

If you prefer to use Discord rather than the Steam community, feel free to join our Official Discord Channel here: https://discord.gg/NceYxww

Thanks, and see you soon on Discord!

Hi again everyone! Here is some news about latest improvements of Fractal Space PC version 0.1.5c for November 2017!


The game was crashing on Linux hardware. This has now been fixed, and the game also supports all resolution types. You can now play the game with any resolution on Windows, Mac and Linux!


In addition to improving the general main menu visuals, if you launch the game for the first time, the game starts automatically a new game. If you launch it with a game to resume, the game is resumed on launch. This avoids to go through the main menu every time you wish to play. You can still come back to the main menu or access options in-game ;)

You can also prevent the game from auto-launching and display the main menu instead by pressing the left CTRL (or Command) key as soon as the auto-save warning is displayed.


We have added in the Steam Guide here, the section regarding errors "A Wild Error Appears!" and what to do when they happen, as from now on code errors will be displayed in red at the bottom left of the screen.


We also added a few tips regarding performance Options in the guide.

Lighting is much more optimized: performance should be better in both Chapters. Some areas might seem now darker; please do point them out if you think they are way too dark. We also did this intentionally to encourage the usage of the Flashlight.

Lighting is more realistic: There are now less areas where lights are "very bright on close surfaces", creating a blinding-bright zone on the closest walls of realtime lights. This makes the general feel less colorful, but more realistic.








 
Destructible Walls: They are now replaced by Destructible Windows. Windows can be destroyed with the basic Taser, whereas Destructible Walls require the Taser Firepower Level 2 Upgrade to be destroyed.

Destructible Walls found in Chapter 1 and 2 are Bonus Rooms - you will need to play them again once you have acquired the Taser Upgrade in Chapter 3, as Upgrades are Persistent, and remain even if playing an earlier Chapter!

Bonus rooms are not yet designed; if you do break the wall, you will currently find nothing behind ;)







A lot of small improvements and tweaks have been made on most 3D models and textures to look better; the light some objects emit is now more realistic compared to the previous very bright binary "emissive or not" aspect they had.

Screens are now improved and there are more of them for better prediction of the switches usage. The User interface has also been improved for most pages of the game.










At first, when you pick up a Healthpack or Taser Ammo pack, it is used automatically on-the-spot to heal you or recharge your Taser Energy. If you acquire the Taser Backpack or Health Backpack upgrades from Upgrade Terminals, you will then be able to store 1 to 2 of each of those packs.

This will allow you to always keep a Taser Ammo pack or Healthpack for later use in a hard situation ;)



 

We have made a lot of progress on Chapter 3, and it's soon ready! We expect to release it before Christmas, as a first playable version!

Talk to you soon, on the next development update :)

We have switched to the mobile version the last few weeks in order to complete some of the features we've been working on for a while. Details on the Pocket Edition's additions (still Work In Progress) can be found on the dedicated page here.

All these new additions have taken a lot of time, which is why we didn't upload any PC Pre-Alpha version update on Steam. We hope to soon complete and release the Pocket Edition Update 1.7 and switch back to working on the PC version!

 

In parallel of improving and adding new features to the Pocket Edition on Android & iOS, we've been working on the PC version's third chapter.

Since Chapter 3 is introducing a few new features, it takes a long time to build. Here's an example of a room (pretty dark one for now) that builds itself in real time:



Here's a sneak peek of a couple of new rooms in Chapter 3:















 

We have done a couple of improvements on the Security Center Interface on PC. We've added a Power System, which constrains you to enable a limited amount of functions simultaneously:



 

We have reworked the bridges, which looked very simple as well previously; they now have nicer textures and shapes :)



 

In previous PC builds of the game, the ventilation shafts were very simple, assembled rectlangular-shaped objects. We now have new ventilation shafts which have the appropriate and necessary shapes. We'll improve the 3D models and textures later on during development, but for now it already looks and plays much better:



Thank you very much for reading, we'll keep you posted next month in a new update!

Charles from Haze Games

The latest Steam Update of Fractal Space Pre-Alpha preview build has been updated. A few of the changes have been listed in the sections below.


The Taser Gun now has more realistic and more immersive visual effect when shooting:



We also have new electrified grounds, which allows us to create large traps without having to create a large number of lasers:



Lasers now have particle effects! Later will come an option to disable for performance purposes:



We have a few additional rooms in Chapter 2, and some modifications in the rooms that were already present. Example screenshots here:

• You can now jump even when crouched: you will first stand up automatically
  
• Hold Space key or A button to use Jetpack: no need to press the button twice
  
• Fixed behavior if jump vertical trajectory is obstructed by an object
  
• Overall better movement reactivity of player character
  
• Many floating lights, objects and other visual issues are fixed
  
• Fixed some doors which were not opening / closing or disappearing as player progresses
  
• Reworked Doors: Texture fixes and frame looks better + red & blue lines to show if locked or opened
  
• Reworked Cubes to look better
  
• Ground Bloc Switches: Now look nicer as well
  
• Reworked lighting to have more lights in Chapter 1 - some areas are darker intentionally - flashlight tutorial placed earlier in the game
  
• Taser could sometimes shoot in "void" - also be fixed
  

We were at Reboot Develop 2017 Conference at the end of April. It was in Dubrovnik, the real-world King's Landing from the famous Game of Thrones TV Show!

It was a great experience; we had some players try out the game, had some positive and interesting feedback on some of the work in progress game mechanics. We also managed to see a few of the conferences there with great speakers like Renaud Charpentier, Matthew Steinke and Chris Taylor. We also met other interesting people from the games industry.

We have gathered a lot of feedback, and also a few new bugs that were discovered on the spot!

I would like to thank Peter and Kjus for helping so much with the bug reporting and testing prior to the event; this helped getting a build ready for people to test more relevant aspects of the game.

We have been working on the build v0.1.1d for Steam. It will be live within the next hours. It will include a lot of main bug fixes reported on Steam and during the Reboot Develop event.


Now that this Steam updated build is released, we need to slow down the work on the PC version and return to improving the Pocket Edition of the game on iOS and Android.

We want to add new languages, fix a few issues that some players reported, but mostly improve the User Interface and some usability issues, like the jump button being too far away for some large screens like the iPad Pro and large-screen Android tablets.

The next major mobile update of Fractal Space: Pocket Edition will allow us then to focus on marketing the mobile version, and return to work 100% on the PC version.

We are happy to write to you again :) We hope you're alright. We're back here to write about the current progress and state of the game :)



As mentioned in the previous development update, we have a PC Pre-Alpha build ready for anybody to play and test, if you are willing to play an early version in order to provide useful feedback and opinion on the game and find out bugs!

Current pre-alpha testers are currently finding a lot of nice glitches, bugs and other issues, but also provide interesting ideas for current and next chapters of the game. If you're interested in helping us improve the game, you can simply request a Steam key for the PC Pre-Alpha build of the game by sending an email to [email protected]

The Pre-Alpha Steam build is updated about 1-3 times / week to fix all bugs which are encountered by players and test new experimental features.

Special thanks go to Peter and Kjus! They have both found many bugs and created videos for them! Peters also helps with Hungarian localization! Thanks very much to both of you!

We are focusing on fixing all bugs and polishing the first 2 chapters of the game, mostly because we want a good playable build for... Reboot Develop!



We are happy to announce that Haze Games is going be present at the indie games event Reboot Develop in Dubrovnik, Croatia!

We are thus working actively on a fully working build of the first 2 Chapters of the game on PC, for the people on-site to play! We are getting some very useful feedback, bug reports and comments from Pre-Alpha players that have requested a Steam Key. Thanks to them, we hope to achieve a bug-free and fully playable demo build :)

This also means we have to work on Posters, Flyers and Business cards for the game; a different, time-consuming type of work, but also very important.

We hope to have a few players at our booth - if you live in the area, please feel free to come and see us, we would be very happy to meet you!




We have reworked all tutorials to be fully compatible with display of keyboard/mouse icons and Xbox One / Xbox 360 controllers! Now, we're sure everything can be understood easily, and those controllers are now fully supported:



Note: Later on, we'll add support for the Steam Controller and various others.

Using a gamepad, the Jump/Jetpack buttons are now either    OR   .   The player can use either of these 2 buttons at anytime to Jump/Activate Jetpack.

In most circumstances, using   to jump is fine. However, using   button to use the Jetpack forces you to remove your right thumb from the right joystick... This is bad, since you cannot look around or change direction without interrupting jetpack thrust.

Instead, you can now use    for Jump/Jetpack, and keep both your thumbs on the gamepad's joysticks while using the jetpack. This makes it much easier to control!


We have been working on an interesting feature for Fractal Space on PC: The Upgrade System from Upgrade Terminals. These Upgrade Terminals allow the player to, for example, improve Taser capacity, movement speed, Jetpack duration, maximum Health, or unlock new abilities:



You can only select one type of upgrade out of 2 to 4 choices every time you encounter an Upgrade Terminal. They are not always easy to find (or reach). Upgrades being persistent from a playthrough to another we hope it improves replay value for a New Game+. As soon as an upgrade has been selected, the Upgrade Terminal is not longer available, you'll need to search for the other ones throughout the station if you want to upgrade more!


We will be adding the Sprint Ability to unlock from Upgrade Terminals very soon to the Pre-Alpha for current alpha players to test. This allows you to run much faster. We've been making sure it works nicely, both with and without controller.


The Focus Abilitiy is not yet ready for testing and will be introduced in Chapter 3, when it is ready for pre-alpha testers to play with. However, further work has been done on this feature to make sure it works well while in Zero-Gravity, and a few new rooms exploiting it have been created.


We are also working in parallel on the third chapter of the game, which will mainly exploit Zero-Gravity and introduce the Focus Abiltiy described above!

Here are a few screenshots of some of the new rooms of Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 Work In Progress!











We hope you enjoyed reading us today, and we'll be back next month for more news! Have a great day, and happy gaming!

Charles and Amélie, from Haze Games