Staxel Reporter – Issue #23

Hey everyone, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we’re going to talk about the newer character creation menu and the work we’ve been doing on SFX.

New Character Creation Screen

The character creation screen has had a major overhaul. We covered this briefly in issue #16 while it was still a work in progress but now that the main components are in place (there are still a few little tweaks left to complete) I thought we’d look at the new system in a bit more depth.

The biggest difference you’ll notice is that designing your character now consists of 4 stages (indicated by the 4 tabs at the top of the interface.)

The first of these tabs is where you’ll decide on your character’s most basic defining traits. This is where you’ll choose your character’s gender, their species, skin tone and personality type (the last of which doesn’t have any impact on the game at this current stage).

For the time being your name is set to the name you chose when you signed up. This may change in the future.

The second tab is all about hairstyles and headwear. In other words, this is where you get to accessorise your head! There are plenty of hairstyles to choose from, long luscious locks, short cropped and smart, edgy mysterious fringes, we’ve got them all. Alternatively, if your hair isn’t your strongest feature, there is a more than ample supply of hats to suit any occasion.

In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re also able to change the colour of your hair, as well as many of the available hats by using the colour palette at the bottom.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by looking into their eyes. This couldn’t be more true in Staxel as eyes are the most prominent facial feature you’ve got going. This is the third tab and it’s where you’ll design your character’s face. Again, notice the colour palette at the bottom, you have a wide selection of eye colours to choose from. Get an outlandish look with purple or orange eyes, or stick with something more traditional like blue or brown.

There are plenty of eye styles on offer as well, so you’ll always be able to get your point across, even without saying anything.

And so we reach the fourth and final tab of our customisation journey; the clothing section. In Staxel, clothes are going to be collectible items, so you won’t start out with every piece. Think of this tab more as your wardrobe, once you’ve collected a new item of clothing it will show up in this panel. As I’ve mentioned in previous Reporters, we’ve got loads of ideas for stylish outfits and clothing designs so get prepared to dazzle onlookers whatever the occasion!

New Sound Effects

Over the past week or so we’ve started working on the in-game sound effects. You may have noticed some weird noises playing back while interacting with things and browsing through menu and inventory screens.

This is because we decided to start off by setting up the sound effects directory but didn’t have anything to put in there, so I decided to take the initiative and create a selection of purpose built sounds to act as placeholder. Sure they’re just a bunch of recordings I made of myself blowing raspberries and tapping things on my desk, but who can really tell, right?

Thankfully we’re starting to get somewhere with it now and it won’t be long before things start sounding like you’d expect them to.

Currently, we’re working on a lot of tool sounds, which are mainly simple whooshing sounds as well as more unique sounding tools like the smoker gun and milker. We’re also getting started on sounds for UI navigation, this can get quite tricky as finding a pleasant balance of subtle but informative can be harder than it seems!

Sounds effects have the potential to really bring a game to life, and this is what we’re trying to achieve with the sounds you’ll hear in Staxel. We want to add sound elements and variety to nearly everything you’ll be interacting with while playing the game.

So now that you know, keep an ear open the next time you play and see if you can hear anything new. We’ve still got a way to go but you should start noticing things making their own noises pretty soon!

That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd