Two weeks until Early Access begins on Steam! That is just 14 mornings!! Holy cow… Put the date – 13 Jan 2023 – on your calendar. The first Early Access version will feature 4 weeks of military service starting from the day 1 as you arrive to the army.
Game features many different military activities, such as
- military drills,
- rifle shooting practice,
- grenade throwing practice,
- cleaning service,
- camping activities,
- marching,
- obstacle course,
- Cooper test,
- and even eating!
Not to mention the free time activities, such as
- playing payazzo or slot machine in the canteen,
- watching news on TV,
- reading magazines,
- exercising in the gym,
- getting to know your platoonmates,
- and exploring the open-world!
Things still missing in the Early Access:
- Weeks 5-8 of the basic training period.
- Different educational branches (i.e. signaller, scout).
- Military leadership training.
- Depth in some minigames.
- Some unlockable Challenges.
- Most of the storylines do not finish within the first 4 weeks so there will be sort of a “cliffhanger”.
We’ve put up a new wiki site: finnish-army-simulator.fandom.com
Feel free to add more information to the wiki as you learn more about the game while playing. A large knowledge base will most likely make the game easier to grasp for the new players. Please also use the Photo Mode in the game to capture those unforgettable moments in 3rd person mode!
Here’s what we did in December:
- [FEATURE] Added Challenges Menu and unlockable Challenges to the game to allow competitive replayability for some activities / minigames using Steam Leaderboards.
- [FEATURE]: Thermometer UI is now available during Tent Watchkeeping (“Lähivartiovuoro”).
- [FEATURE]: Player now gets sanity penalty for staying in the rain or for wearing dirty clothes.
- [FEATURE]: Player can now change dirty clothes to clean ones in the Equipment Warehouse.
- [FEATURE]: Player is no more allowed to leave the barracks without outdoor equipment.
- [FEATURE]: Implemented 3rd Person Photo Mode to allow players to take beautiful screenshots!
- [FEATURE]: Added 3 difficulty levels and implemented permadeath support.
- [FEATURE]: Added effects when sanity is low.
- [FEATURE]: Added a voice over dialogue for the day 1 bus trip.
- [FEATURE]: Enlarged the player inventory and closet box size from 8 –> 10 slots.
- [FEATURE]: NPCs may now go to the Sports Center or Canteen during free time.
- [FEATURE]: Draftee Market in TV Room is now functional.
- [FEATURE]: Input Mapping UI.
- [FEATURE]: Dynamic (area-based) Gain, Gamma, Lift, Shadows, Midtones & Highlights controls. This allows us to create more immersive experience by changing these parameters depending on the time & place!
- [FEATURE]: WIP: Sauna mechanics.
- [FEATURE]: WIP: Log Splitting mechanics.
- [FEATURE]: Flashlight support for the player.
- [FEATURE]: Overall weeks 1-4 are now ready. Just some bug fixing to do for days 26 and 27.
- [ART]: Band T-Shirt for Satanae Virgines (Lord Apollyon’s metal band).
- [ART]: Story related items.
- [ANIM]: Some new animations & improvements to the previous ones.
- [LOCALIZATION]: Added some German translations.
- [LOCALIZATION]: On-going English translations for weeks 1-4.
- [VOICE]: A ton of new voice-over lines for weeks 1-4.
- [WRITING]: New free time dialogues for NPCs.
- [WRITING]: New story content for week 4+.
- [CODE]: A lot of story specific implementation for weeks 3-4.
- [CODE]: Implemented Game Over UI for permadeath.
- [CODE]: Implemented the rest of the missing skills.
- [CODE]: A lot of bug fixes here and there. QoL improvements.
- [CODE]: Split navmesh into multiple smaller navmeshes for optimization.
- [DEV]: Tool to detect missing voice-over lines.
The visualizer plugin seems to be broken so we could not updated December 2022 Git commit count. However, it seems to be around 240! A new record for sure. 🙂