SpaceVenture is a sci-fi comedy adventure game that combines interplanetary exploration and puzzle-solving with satire. · By
I know a few bugs have been reported - do we have a date for the next build release?
I've already played it (only bug I managed to hit that briefly stopped me was the rooter head; but there was a way around it). There's a few weird things (when Ace goes to ride the mule all the way to the left - sometimes he gets on the mule, but it doesn't pan over, so he and the mule aren't visible and such - but just clicking back gets the mule to move, etc).
Just curious. :)
Yeah - I think it's because they'd just say "Yeah, we're still updating it" which, they probably don't feel is much of an update.
Some would say some news is better than no news, but some would say, "Well that was pointless."
That's why I poke my contact over there every blue moon if it's been awhile.
New Update!
Hello everyone! We wanted to give you a quick update with some pretty exciting news. First off, we wanted to thank you for all the feedback we got on the backer only release build of SpaceVenture. We learned a whole lot about items that needed some serious work on the game. We were able to resolve the vast majority of the issues that were brought up by you all that reported issues to us.
If for some reason you didn’t get the email for that build, please await word from us on a new build. That previous build definitely had some issues and we prefer to send out a new build of the game with fixes. So again, if you didn’t get that build, please stay tuned for a new more stable build of the game to be released in the future.
After releasing the build of the game towards the end of 2022, we immediately began working on another build, but wanted to make sure we had gotten the reported issues fixed. As always, things slowed down during the holiday season. In January, we began getting ramped up to finalize the new build to send out to you all here at the beginning of 2023, however, we have something really exciting to let you know.
In February, we were contacted by Ken Williams (Co-founder of Sierra On-line/Cygnus Entertainment) about a partnership that would involve some really great possibilities for the future of SpaceVenture. As you are aware, the majority of the team is only able to work on the game part time at this point. And no one is being paid anything, due to being low on funds. We are in talks with Ken about bringing some fresh funding into the project that would involve the following:
In return, we will be splitting any income made on SpaceVenture with Cygnus Entertainment. Our agreement with Ken is that no one makes any money off of SpaceVenture until our backer rewards are shipped. Again, to be clear, our agreement will still include the fact that once the game is available on the various online stores for purchase, we will use the income for reward shipping to backers. We still have plans for making an option available to people who would like to pay their shipping ahead of time, in order to get their rewards quicker. We will provide more information on this later.
As a reminder, please do not email us your address for reward shipping. Once the game is publicly available and we are ready to start shipping items out, we will request your address information.
Please understand that no contracts have been signed yet. We are still in the process of talking and Ken’s developers are looking at the project now and we are all trying to get a feel for what will need to happen and an approximate cost/timeline for everything. Since this negotiation put a few things on hold for us, we felt like it would be good for us to let you all know the situation.
Though this agreement is not solidified yet, we are encouraged by the possibility of working with Ken and Cygnus on making sure that SpaceVenture gets the level of polish that it deserves. As always, thank you all so much for your continued patience and support.
KEN AND ROBERTA WILLIAMS / CYGNUS HAVE RELEASED COLOSSAL CAVE
Just in case you’re out of the loop, we wanted to do a shout out to Ken and Roberta Williams along with our friend Marcus Mera. They have remade the game “Colossal Cave” into a new 3D/VR adventure game.
Please go check it out when you have some time!
New Home Page
In case ye missed it - I posted it here too: http://larrylaffer.net/archives/4968
Hey everyone, we hope you’re all having a good holiday season. We wanted to do a quick update on the project. We have been in the process during most of this year, trying to move SpaceVenture onto the newer Unity platform. We had built SpaceVenture on an older platform due to the licenses that we purchased back years ago before Unity changed their licensing model. Of course, this was the newest platform back when we purchased the licenses.
What we did not expect was how extremely different things would be on the Apple/Android operating systems during the time period of finishing the game. We originally had licenses for Windows, Linux, Android, Mac, and iOS, however, at this point, the out of date Unity engine that the game was built on, can only produce SpaceVenture on Windows and Linux.
So in order to fulfill the game being released on the other operating systems, we are in the process of moving into the newer Unity engine. As you can probably guess, this has been quite an undertaking due to there being so many changes to the newest engine and the code it supports. We are going scene by scene and fixing all the issues found after the upgrade. Ken Williams’ Cygnus team started to help earlier in the year with this, but due to their game “Colossal Cave Adventure” experiencing some slow downs on its various platforms, they had to switch gears and focus fully on it instead of SpaceVenture.
The SpaceVenture team is now utilizing the newer Unity engine and tools to get everything straight. We are fixing bugs along the way and addressing many of the complaints that we got from our previously released build. We realize that a lot of you would like us to go ahead and release the game onto Steam. It’s important to understand that we only get one shot at making a positive impression with players on Steam, and hopefully get decent ratings/reviews there. We are counting on income from Steam in order to pay for reward shipping to everyone. That being said, if we release on Steam and players are unhappy with the results, it will be tough to make the money we need for the shipping. We don’t want to release the game there until we’ve got it stabilized on the newer Unity platform and have finished addressing concerns from the earlier build. Also once we’ve got things stable, we’ll release an updated build to all of you as well, not to mention Steam keys when the game goes on there.
As always, thank you all for your patience! This has been the longest haul of our lives, but we’re still hauling and not giving up! We hope all of you have a great rest of 2023 and a happy new year!
I got the new beta version yesterday. The mail came from Pope, if you've missed it. Then again, I have no idea if they've mailed it to everyone yet.
That said, it is now a version you can actually play from start to finish as a game, not as something in which you are battling with bugs most of the time. Clear technical progress has been made. The minigames, like Rooter chip puzzle, now have skip options. These too have been improved. The timing of some scenes, like the first Quicksilver scene, has improved as well
Sadly, the save system is as bad as it has always been, I doubt it will change. The UI leaves room for improvement as well, but I guess the game is married to it, as they stated they want no feedback from it, which is a shame, as it just isn't very good.
Anyways, this does seem to be finally shaping up to be a shippable game. The previous version was more or less unplayable, this one, while still a bit rough at places, is just that, a bit rough at places.
