Signalscope tutorial how to#

So I think the signalscope is more clearly integrated in the design of the game more than the probe was originally.

Some of the main clues and curiosities were designed to be investigated with the signalscope. Do you feel similarly about these signalscope updates?ĪLEX: The signalscope is a little more planet-design agnostic and a large part of the original narrative design of the game was created with the signalscope in mind. You mentioned previously that you wished you knew of the changes to probe design when doing original level design. And if they’re getting the same signal from different locations, we want the player to put together that those signals are probably related somehow. The other thing we need to teach them is that if an object is making that sound in the solar system, there might be other objects in the solar system making the same sound. So in addition to the planets you can see in the sky to find signals we’re adding something that you can isolate and find in the village.īecause the one thing we currently never teach players-and we need to-is the idea that the signal is being made by a particular object and they can hunt down that object and find that sound. The final big thing we’ll be doing it making sure people use the signalscope better is improve the village tutorial. We wanted a channel where you could just hear everything and were rewarded for exploring. We still have frequencies (and we’ve added to that list) for all the specific signals but we’ve added to this list a natural channel that you can you just pick up sounds from around the solar system like the tornadoes on Giant’s Deep or the waterfall on Timber Hearth. So instead of having all the signals in one channel we’ve been increasingly splitting them into their own channels, that happened a while ago, but we’ve been delving further into it. That seems like an obvious solution, but it took us a while to get to thatīut you've made alterations in addition to those UI changes, yes?ĪLEX: Yes. And it was kind of impossible to tell what distance the player was attempting to aim at, but we know spit out the distance of a signal that’s hit. Players were pointing the signalscope at, say, the rock in front of them, and think the signal was coming from that, when it’s actually from the other side of the planet. The tool’s only useful if you can pick up signals on the planet you’re on AND on planets far away and know where those signals are. The big thing we added recently that’s been kind of a gamechanger for the tool is a distance indicator. So for the UI we added a direct indicator when you were on a signal that let you know when you were exactly pointed at it, where before it was just the signal’s wave getting bigger or smaller: that didn’t tell you much.

Additionally the algorithm we were using to pinpoint the signal’s location wasn’t optimized and the UI didn’t tell you enough. What specifically wasn't working about the tool?ĪLEX: Originally all the sounds you could pick up were all on the same frequency so it was hard to isolate a signal.

Signalscope tutorial how to#

That's the goal.īut it never 100% worked because players didn’t understand how to use it properly and even if they understood it, the tool wasn’t easy to use. So you could use the signalscope to hunt down the other threads to a specific mystery. So the big structure of the game is that you have these clues that point you towards these major curiosities and a few of them are tied together heavily via using the signalscope.įor example, if you find a quantum area through the signalscope you learn the quantum signal you can then subsequently use your signalscope to find other quantum locations. Can you explain why you wanted to revise the tool's design?ĪLEX: The original concept behind the signalscope was that you would use it to find a signal and then you would then go investigate what it was. We recently went through a revision to the probe design and now we've gone through a similar revision to the signalscope. We talked with Outer Wilds creative director, Alex Beachum, about changes to one of the main player tools, the signalscope!