Dear PS community,
As most of you already know, Periscope Games is hosting internal playtests twice a week in order to make sure our first iteration of Post Scriptum is the most enjoyable as possible.
At the end of April, we had our big event with developers, streamers/YouTubers and internal playtesters etc.. We were very confident on what we had at that time and were only missing a few optimisations, our user interface upgrade and some minor corrections here and there to the game mechanic. That build was on Offworld Core A10.
Based on the stability of the A10 build, we weren’t foreseeing any major issues when switching to A11 in late April. Minor issues are always to be expected when you upgrade to a new core and things tend to break but nothing we haven’t experienced in the past.
Development kept on going with Weekend Playtest planned for May in mind.
Unfortunately our internal playtest last night [17/05/18] proved to us that we are not ready to share our current build with you guys and we will cover the reasons for this heartbreaking decision.
We will also explain why we do not wish to provide you our old A10 build as it will not provide the full Post Scriptum experience we want players to have for their first time.
However things are not as bad as it sounds though, far from it actually but a delay appears to us like the only viable alternative for that *one* critical issue.
Let’s start with the bad part then, the main reason why Post Scriptum will not be in your hands during the month of May as originally intended and marketed.
Since our A11 upgrade, vehicles are having a very hard time communicating between the server and client. In short, what you see is not necessarily what your teammates will see, so this sight was not uncommon at all during the play test.
This issue is new to us and is not something we encountered with A10 or previous builds and that is the reason why we were so confident about delivering the playtests in May. Classic game development some will say. And yes, that is THE ONLY reason we are not delivering the game right now as everything else is relatively smooth and in good working condition.
Now that the bad news is out of the way, let’s get to the good part! Yes, we also have good news for you folks.
As soon as we fix the vehicle desync issue we will get the playtests live to you!
Heavy optimization was made to the core, players are experiencing better framerate overall, the game looks sharper and our recent lighting tweaks will make it more pleasing to the eye.
We are also getting very close to our final in-game user interface. All those little things will overall give you a better experience of what Post Scriptum is all about.
Now, the question you are all asking yourselves.
When are we going to be able to playtest Post Scriptum then?
There is no clear answer to that question yet sadly. The process to fix this is a bit time consuming, but rest assured that as soon as this bug is confirmed dead we will very happily scream it loud on all our social media channels.
I think it is pretty clear by now that this is our only blocker. As soon as it is fixed, the game will be available to download for playtest. Weekend or not.
Thank you for your understanding, as a final word for today, all of us at Periscope Games want to thank this wonderful community for the support and excited responses we've been receiving during development.
Believe us, we want PS out in the public as much you do and both Periscope and OWI are all working around the clock to get this one issue fixed and ultimately get the game in your hands.