As mentioned in the excerpt, February has been a bit slower and we're now slightly behind our intended schedule for the next pre-alpha test. That said, progress has still been made and the near future is looking very promising.
Celestial bodies
One of Halcyon Online's core features is the ability to colonies many different kinds of celestial bodies, from planets and moons to asteroids and others (more on that to come closer to launch). Up until now Halcyon Online has only had the ability to colonise planets, mainly due to our galaxy seeder only populating galaxies with stars and planets. However, that is about to change with new features added to populate galaxies with other kinds of celestial bodies, namely: moons and asteroids! (and others, but again, we'll wait to announce these later 😉)
Our procedural galaxy generation now also generates planetary moons and asteroids, both of which can be colonised by players. In addition, players will start the game on their Homeworld with a moon of their own that they can colonise whenever they wish (however, don't wait too long else someone might take it from you!). Unlike planets, moons and asteroids offer different kinds of resources, requiring them to be colonised should players wish to build certain structures or spacecraft.
This work is very close to completion, and will be ready for the next pre-alpha test.
Research & technology
As I stated last month, lots of progress has been made on the research front, and our latest devlog went into some details regarding that set of features. I was hoping to be finished with Research by the end of February, but the combination of a family holiday for over a week (the first real break I've had in years), along with some technical complexities I'm still yet to solve, resulted in the research feature still having some work to do before we go ahead with the pre-alpha test.
As it currently stands, research & technology is about 70% complete, and I'm now at the stage where I'm reviewing all my work and ensuring it is at the quality that is required, which often means 1 or more refactors and a bunch of testing.
Game guide
Alongside research, whenever I needed a break from the cognitively demanding challenges of that feature, I've taken some time to work on the game guide. The guide itself will hopefully be at least somewhat usable by the time we're ready for the pre-alpha test, but it also won't hamper that deployment. If I find it's taking too long we'll simply go live with the test without that feature, but will most certainly be ready by our first alpha test, which is likely to be around the 3rd quarter of this year.
Test rounds
As a final part to this update, I wanted to share with you all the plans around our test rounds and what it means from a timing perspective.
- September last year we had our first pre-alpha test round. This was a very narrow test phase, focusing purely on the underlying architecture of the game and ensuring things were working as intended. Lots of bugs and issues were found and all were resolved.
- Our next Pre-alpha test round will now most likely go live by the end of this month, and will include the Infrastructure & Research features, allowing players to test more of the game's features and mechanics.
- Our third Pre-alpha test round will include our first set of player-engagement mechanics, including combat & missions. We hope to go live with this by mid-year at the latest.
- The Alpha test will be the first test where nearly all game features and mechanics will be available to test, but could be closer to the end of the year. Again, anything beyond a few months is hard to determine at this point due to the constant changes and refactors required within the game's Timewarp engine.
- Our first closed beta test will be anywhere from end of 2025, to early 2026, and will be the final, private test of the game before the open beta sometime in 2026. At this point, we expect most major bugs to be resolved, with a focus on content and balance, resolving these before the open beta test goes live.
- The open beta test will be open for some time, with the intention of us having 2 galaxies available for testing, both a PvE galaxy and a PvP galaxy, and is likely to be available for 6-12 months. The reason for this is that we need a lot of input from players regarding the state of the game, the content available and feedback on subscription pricing, tiers and what should be available. I want to work very closely with the community on this, as it's a contentious topic despite being a requirement for the game's success, and with my strong views on MTX being made public last year, it's important to ensure we get as many people onboard with any monetisation direction that we take.
As you can see, despite the amount of work left for us to do, the timing and reality of our launch is now looming on the horizon, and I for one cannot wait!
Until next time, Travellers!