In our Developer Blog Updates we’ll talk about some of the work we’ve completed in the previous two weeks and explain our approaches. Through this you’ll get an understanding of our game development methods and tidbits on the features we’re planning for Dredge!

Sprint 16

The focus of this sprint was getting a nice stable build out for our awesome Closed Beta team – stay tuned for our findings from that! On the development side though our theme was iterations:

Demo Build

Gate off some currently Still-In-Progress work like some of the research and upgrade options, ensure things like our console and debug commands weren’t accessible and just to stop anyone from thinking that we had actually properly translated the game rather than running things through Google Translate we removed the language picker from demo builds for now.

This has been a fantastic experience and we are blown away by our amazing beta testers. Summary of what they’ve taught us coming soon!

Boat Concepting

With our new feature of Shipyard Upgrades players can now gain a bunch of new storage space in their boat and those major upgrades need a boat model change! We love our little starting tug, but these upgrades definitely exude progress.

Visible Damage on Boat

Previously you’d need to open your cargo up to see if your boat was damaged, now however the boat model itself updates – better get those holes patched up quick!

Time Based Quest

One of our early quests aimed at guiding players into the exploration aspect of the game is now on a timer, those who complete the quest within a certain amount of time will get a bonus reward.

Fish Encyclopedia Wireframe

A feature for the Achiever player types is our fish encyclopedia! With this you’ll be able to see how many of the total species of fish that inhabit Dredge you’ve caught, along with how many rare aberrations you could discover…

Depth-based locations

Previously Dredge had a concept of fish types (e.g. coastal, shallow, abyssal) but while fish were flagged under a type there wasn’t really a concept of “depth” that they lived at. Not anymore! Our world has officially gotten deeper (and shallower) so don’t expect

Merchant Trader Setup & Dock

A character that is introduced in our second area, she travels around the various island groups in Dredge and provides an opportunity to sell your catch and repair some of your items without needing to go all the way back to Greater Marrow.

Usability and User Experience fixes:

• Relic Quest now has a Pursuits Board posting
• We’ve moved the “Rotate” item up from the bottom right to be placed on the tooltips as we noticed rotate was getting missed a lot by players. Hopefully this makes the action more visible.
• Another thing that sometimes gets missed is the compass displayed in the top centre of the screen. The Mayor now points this out to you in some early dialogue. 
• Currently players can access their Cargo, Trawl Net and Cabin by tabbing through their inventory, we’ve decided to hide those tabs in some views if they’re not relevant to the player (such as when the player has yet to unlock trawl nets altogether!)