First Public Version of A Valley Without Wind To Be Beta, Not Alpha

[c4sc4]

What I'm curious about is when we actually get our hands on this game, how will we be able to actually report bugs? It seems like it will be harder then on AI War where we can post a save of the bug but in AVWW, there are no saves and it seems like it would be unreasonable to post our whole world to report the bug. Also, because each world is going to be so different from one another, it seems like it may be difficult to be able to recreate it in other worlds.

[yllamana]

I'm sorry to hear about the delay in us getting to try the game, but I'm sure it's for the best. I liked the fancy forum post with pictures, too!

[x4000]

What I'm curious about is when we actually get our hands on this game, how will we be able to actually report bugs? It seems like it will be harder then on AI War where we can post a save of the bug but in AVWW, there are no saves and it seems like it would be unreasonable to post our whole world to report the bug. Also, because each world is going to be so different from one another, it seems like it may be difficult to be able to recreate it in other worlds.

Well, the worlds are actually saved out in a series of chunks, so you'll be able to post just the offending chunk data, which is really tiny, especially compressed.  Most likely what we'll do is make some sort of "export current area for bug report" function in game, which would just export the currently-in-memory chunks and player data and such, zipping it while it's at it hopefully, in a format that we can then read back in and see what's going on.

At worst, we'd have to export an entire region, I think, which is still smaller in most cases than an AI War savegame.  But most bugs would just require a single chunk, I think, because most things only happen in one chunk at a time.  We'll extend the tools for bug reporting as new kinds of bugs come up, I'm sure!

[c4sc4]

Well, the worlds are actually saved out in a series of chunks, so you'll be able to post just the offending chunk data, which is really tiny, especially compressed.  Most likely what we'll do is make some sort of "export current area for bug report" function in game, which would just export the currently-in-memory chunks and player data and such, zipping it while it's at it hopefully, in a format that we can then read back in and see what's going on.

At worst, we'd have to export an entire region, I think, which is still smaller in most cases than an AI War savegame.  But most bugs would just require a single chunk, I think, because most things only happen in one chunk at a time.  We'll extend the tools for bug reporting as new kinds of bugs come up, I'm sure!

Ah, I see, that makes sense. I didn't think about being able to post just a part of world. The "export for bug reporting" seems like it would be the easiest from the players prospective, instead of having to locate that particular area in their whole save.

[x4000]

Oh yeah, for sure.  All the stuff is just numbered, too, so you'd have a devil of a time finding anything by hand.  An export feature of some kind is pretty much a must if we hope to get any reports from anyone!

[Zhaine]

Minor disappointment at having to wait longer aside, I think you've made the right choice. It takes smarts to be that forward thinking and humility to openly change your mind and give such an honest explanation. I'm also encouraged by the fact that you feel your finances are strong enough to continue development without such a quick first public release 

[getter77]

Seems fine by me, especially given the snippets meanwhile can continue to be poured over by crafty folk for suggestions/notions/etc that would be right in line with the Alpha sort of feedback anyways.

Though:  All still reckoned the same on the "early" pricing as was generally figured when Alpha pre-ordering was going to be a thing?  Given that such things are usually a sliding scale increasing at the major intervals towards release with most places, it'd be great if the same price can be held that would've been the Alpha...or if not....sooner that newly reckoned the better.

[x4000]

Though:  All still reckoned the same on the "early" pricing as was generally figured when Alpha pre-ordering was going to be a thing?  Given that such things are usually a sliding scale increasing at the major intervals towards release with most places, it'd be great if the same price can be held that would've been the Alpha...or if not....sooner that newly reckoned the better.

That's something I've been really not sure about.  I'd like to do a three-stage pricing thing, but now we've got only two stages, so I'm not sure what to do with that.  We might have to invent some intermediary step during the beta, I don't know.  Maybe it's the half-off during the first month of beta, or something like that, I'm not sure.

I would have liked a longer period for the half-off time, but I'm not really sure I want to sell preorders for the game when players can't try anything out yet.  I really like for players to have something that they can demonstrate to themselves "this is worth a preorder" by actually touching it and playing it.  So that's been my dilemma, I'm not sure yet what I want to do.

[Nalgas]

I would have liked a longer period for the half-off time, but I'm not really sure I want to sell preorders for the game when players can't try anything out yet.

I do understand the feeling behind that, but on the other hand, it's worked really well for Grim Dawn so far.  They hardly even had screenshots or anything when they started accepting pre-orders, but they decided to go for it anyway because enough people on their forums were demanding to be allowed to throw money at them just based on the description of the game and their previous work.

I'm sure most people would end up waiting until there's something they can actually try first, but some of us are willing to take a chance like that, or want to support independent developers who do interesting things, or are just cheap/broke and like getting stuff at a discount.  Heh.

[x4000]

Yeah... it's really, really tricky though.  The one thing I never want is for someone to feel betrayed, like they thought the game was going to be X, but actually it was something completely other than what they thought.  Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, I don't know.

[Nalgas]

Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, I don't know.

I don't really think so.  There are good reasons for choosing either way of doing it, and neither one is necessarily right or wrong in any given situation.  Most of the time I tend to wait for something I can try myself or at least reviews of the final version to be out and rarely pre-order anything (and I'm getting increasingly sick of all the stupid pre-order bonuses that aren't available later, even if you're willing to pay for them, especially when they're mutually exclusive of each other depending on where you buy things from, but that's another rant entirely).

There aren't many things I'm willing to pay for without some sort of "proof" that I'm getting something worthwhile.  Actually, I think AVWW and Grim Dawn are the only ones I can think of from the past couple years, because both come from people with a good track record and good community involvement, and both are independent and could use my money more than a multi-million/billion dollar behemoth.  On the other hand, Valve, for example, will hold up just fine if I put off buying Portal 2 for however long, and they don't need me harassing everyone I know into trying their games.

[x4000]

All very good points.