{"id":5246,"date":"2019-01-28T14:41:18","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T14:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=5246"},"modified":"2019-01-28T14:41:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T14:41:19","slug":"at-last-production-line-is-in-beta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2019\/01\/28\/at-last-production-line-is-in-beta\/","title":{"rendered":"At last… Production Line is in beta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I updated the version of the game today to build 1.66, on Steam, GoG and the humble store \/ direct. The latest update is 1.66, a build whose major feature is the introduction of the late-game ‘world events’ feature. That was THE feature that I was determined to get in before I could describe the game as feature complete. it may need some tweaking and balancing, but now its in, i’m calling the game ‘beta’. You can read the full list of changes in this version on the forum here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will still be a good few weeks of tweaking, adjusting, balancing and checking before we actually take the game out of Early Access and declare it ‘released’. And even when that is done, its very likely that I will continue to spend a decent amount of time of improving and balancing the game. I don’t have any firm plans for expansions yet, but I’ll have time to think about it, and to ask people what they might like to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Production Line is the first game I’ve every released in early access on steam, although I’ve done low-key betas before (Big Pharma was one). I definitely have enjoyed the EA experience, but I think it could possibly be facilitated better within the steam platform…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used my own system to gather data from players within the game to find out what the player-base thought my dev-priorities should be. I also had to use the ‘artwork’ upload part of steam a lot to share screenshots of stuff that was a work-in-progress or ideas for improvement. TBH it felt clunky, and not fleshed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also no way to tell (without collecting your own data) how many people have played a beta build on steam, making it a bit tricky to know that the ‘unstable’ branch had got enough testing before rolling out changes to everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway… Its been great fun, and a lot of effort (and time!) has gone in. I even got into the habit of doing almost-every-week video blogs to document work on the game, here is the latest one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n