Where are we at on the Hardware?

We have the PCBs from China, and they lookin' fine as hell.

The orders for all of the other parts have been placed, and they are all being shipped directly to our assembly house, PCBX - BUT OUR PROCESSORS ARE ON BACKORDER UNTIL MARCH 11th. This is very frustrating for all of us. Sadly, the audio chips that we planned to use this year are backordered ALL THE WAY UNTIL AUGUST, so… sorry guys, no audio on the 2020 badge.

PCBX will be able to solder all the components to the front side of the PCB so they are ready to go when the processors do arrive, then they'll only have to assemble the back side of the boards before they can be programmed.

Hamster has been creating pogo-pin programming boards so that PCBX will be able to program our code and test the assembled badges right after they come out of the ovens.

If hardware is your passion, Hamster will be streaming some hardware assembly on Sunday Evenings for the next few weeks from about 7PM ~ 8PM MST.

Streams will be hosted on Twitch - Subscribe to Hamster! https://www.twitch.tv/pcbhamster

Where are we at on the Software?

All of the mandatory parts of the scripting engine are now implemented and working! All of the scripting features we need to tell the story, check all of the hacked states we need, and control the game world are complete!

As for what we're still working on

• Collision detection. It works at all right now, but it doesn't feel "nice". We're working on making it feel nice.

• Currently the "save system" is only in-memory, so you have to play the whole game in a single sitting, but we're working on getting it to save to the hardware so you can power it off and back on into the same state it was when you last used a save point.
• We should probably write a main menu and save reset feature on that main menu.
• The Scripting Engine just got a whole lot more powerful with the ability to manipulate and compare variables, as well as copy those into and out of any field on any entity. This will allow for much more exciting and creative puzzles soon!
• Future software updates to the software and game scenarios that we will continue developing for the DC801 2021 badge will be made available to everyone who has the DC801 2020 badge, and can be uploaded to your hardware using any MicroSD card that is 64MB (yes, Megabytes) or larger.

We are continuing to have open meetings on the 801Labs Discord - https://discord.gg/xqGWardDr4 - on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7PM ~ 9PM MST where any interested parties are welcome to drop in and see the current state of the badge software. If you see people in voice channels, feel free to drop in anytime and we will be happy to answer any badge-related questions - and even help you set up an Ubuntu VM if you'd like to play around with the Desktop build and / or help to develop scenario content with us!

Where are we at on the Story?

We plan on shipping the game with a plot rich intro sequence, dozens of village residents to get to know, 10 puzzles of varying difficulty to correct the wrong-doings of the Big Bad against the village residents, and a plot rich end sequence. But we can't say anything more about this because SPOILERS!!! We're probably at about 80% completion for the whole 2020 playable scenario, so we're looking really good on this front! We think this will be something everyone will be able to enjoy. :)
 

Reach out to us!

If you have any questions or comments, or need to update your address, please email us at info@dc801.store
If you just think we're cool and want to hang out with us - join the 801 Labs Discord! 

Thank you for reading our update, and thank you all again for your patience!

- DC801 Badge Dev team