Interested in being a part of a private alpha for Valley 2? Read here.

[MouldyK]

What movie?  That's a Duke 3D quote.  Are you thinking Die Hard?  Or am I totally missing that this is actually a DH quote?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

"When Nada enters the bank, he proclaims, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum." The line has become embedded in popular culture and is referenced regularly in the Duke Nukem series of video games by the main protagonist, a parody of 80s macho action heroes."

[x4000]

Wow, that's cool -- I never knew where it originally came from.

[madcow]

It's a good movie!*



*If you like movies that are good due to their cheesiness/badness. Which personally I do.

[MouldyK]

It's a good movie!*



*If you like movies that are good due to their cheesiness/badness. Which personally I do.

I love my cheesy things. I should download purchase in a store online some time.

[LayZboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YGu4zQgTvg

Related due to beta push-back / Duke-talk.

[Penumbra]

We rented that movie a long time ago just for that quote... So strange.... 

But, the delivery of "the line" is nowhere near as good as Jon St. John.

[x4000]

So, as will surprise no one, we're not ready for alpha today.  Beta should definitely be by the end of next week or I'm going to be pretty upset, though.  Alpha will get slotted in... as soon as we have things balanced to a point where the alpha testers wouldn't be wasting their time telling us stuff we already know.  We're getting there!  But this is actually a surprisingly big/deep game; in a lot of respects moreso than AVWW1.

Anyway, as a peace offering to those waiting patiently, here's a (pre-beta, obviously) screencap of the world map.  There's some old text in the bottom left, and some debugging stuff in the upper right.  And the resource bar in the upper left doesn't look quite the way it will in the final build yet, either.

The overlord's work map icon, and the player's icon on the world map, are also placeholder art in both cases.  And the ocean that you can see glimpses of is still the ocean art from the first game.  But the rest of the art is final for this game.  The completely-black areas are areas you've not yet scouted, whereas the partly-dark ones are corrupted tiles.

[Penumbra]

Oh wow! That looks amazing! It has a nice MoM or even Civ feel to it. Will be great to see this guy in motion!

Will you require testers to sign an NDA to avoid "media leaks" of the placeholder art?

[x4000]

We're not that much of sticklers.  Ideally the people who are interested in helping us alpha test have our best interests at heart... and if not, it's not the end of the world with something like this.

[Mick]

Looks intriguing.

[Nanashi]

"Draws" and "Swaps" make it sound like a card game, and I see chinese styled houses and Freudian towers!

I know modding capabilities aren't a priority right now, but if they ever get added in, I'll probably want to make my own little architecture themepark.

btw: What's the reasoning behind Arcen's habit of writing full clauses such as "Press <button> to <function>" over something more truncated such as "<button>: <function>"? I'm kinda nostalgic about the days when people would write command lists like "eXecute, Open, esCape, saVe, Use" and always just assumed that terse descriptions were favoured to reduce visual clutter.

[x4000]

"Draws" and "Swaps" make it sound like a card game

Those are technical terms related to graphics debugging; they're not at all part of the game you'd normally see.

btw: What's the reasoning behind Arcen's habit of writing full clauses such as "Press <button> to <function>" over something more truncated such as "<button>: <function>"? I'm kinda nostalgic about the days when people would write command lists like "eXecute, Open, esCape, saVe, Use" and always just assumed that terse descriptions were favoured to reduce visual clutter.

Because often the buttons are things like a number, and then some folks will assume a numbered list instead of button assignments.  Our reason for doing stuff like that comes from long experience with users both in business environments and with our games and things not being clear.  You'd be surprised.

[Mánagarmr]

btw: What's the reasoning behind Arcen's habit of writing full clauses such as "Press <button> to <function>" over something more truncated such as "<button>: <function>"? I'm kinda nostalgic about the days when people would write command lists like "eXecute, Open, esCape, saVe, Use" and always just assumed that terse descriptions were favoured to reduce visual clutter.

People are stupid. Not kidding. Okay, maybe I'm unfair, but people of today and kids growing up today didn't live during the eighties when commands were obtuse and unexplained and you had to kind of "guess" your way forward, or as you say, understand subtle hints.

Also, we have a LOT more screen estate to play around with these days. Back then, screenspace were kind of a premium in 320x200 resolution

[x4000]

People were stupid in the 80s, too.  But they had giant manuals back then that explained everything in painful depth.  Plus computer use for anything other than word processing was limited to basically just the sort of people who don't need the extra tips now.

On the flip side, put me in front of some Chemistry or Electrical Engineering stuff, and experts in those fields are going to think I'm pretty stupid, too.  It's not so much about stupidity as it is about training (official or incidental-through-familiarity).

Kids these days are actually amazing with how fast they pick up modern-style technical stuff.  Mainly speaking of hardware, phone interfaces, and so on.  Arcen's stuff is a bit more old-school, and aimed at a somewhat more old-school audience, so we have to be more careful.

[Lancefighter]

People were stupid in the 80s, too.  But they had giant manuals back then that explained everything in painful depth.

And people actually read them, most importantly.