Please PM
tigersfan, and NOT me if you're interested in this. He's going to be coordinating all this. Now, many of you are familiar with the batched-alpha approach that we take with Arcen titles, but this one we're going to try a slight variation on that.
TimeframeThe timeframe for the start of the alpha is the middle of next week for the first batch, and then likely a new batch every day for a bit after that. Us actually hitting a beta date of the 29th is looking increasingly unlikely, because we've been putting more effort into getting this thing super-polished in terms of interface and "feel" and so forth right from the get-go. But it won't be long after that, either way.
What this means is that this is a very short alpha, and if you don't have at least a few hours in our target timeframe, please don't volunteer. In the past we've had people sign up for an alpha and then give us no feedback (or indeed, no communication) at all, and that's just not helpful at all. Congratulations, you got a free game out of it, but that's not helping make it any better of a game.
On this particular project, we're going to be very explicitly running multiple phases of alpha, and please indicate what days of the week next week you would be available, as well as what phases you would be interested in participating in, in order for us to figure out how things match up. Again, please send all that to
tigersfan (Josh) via PM.
The PhasesPhase 1: This phase will be the least fun, to be frank. There will be no tutorial, by design. We will provide no explanation whatsoever. You download it, you run it, and you sink or swim. This is not random meanness on our part.
We want to know what confuses you, what is obvious to you, and what took you a long time to figure out. A lot of the game is pretty intuitive in our opinion, but a lot of it is also left up to experimentation to really get the most out of it. That creates a problem for us in terms of how much we guide you versus how much we leave you to your own devices. We know we'll need to put in substantial guidance, but
where to best direct the guidance is something we're not in as good a position to say. If you want your first impression of this game to be frustration-free, don't volunteer for phase 1.
Oh, I also didn't mention that Phase 1 won't have any of the meta aspects, or even the edicts, available for you. You'll get to play a game with all of the in-game mechanics unlocked, but none of the meta aspects to distract you from the core experience. We want feedback on that alone at this stage.
Phase 2: We'll be turning on more of the meta aspects of the game (unlockables, edicts, etc) starting in this phase. Perhaps not all of them (we'll still be implementing them, likely), but enough to get the idea. We'll also attempt to have more instruction in place for the start of the game, so that this is less bewildering to start. That said, it's still going to be more bewildering than later phases, because we won't have
your feedback yet. We're still going to be looking for what hangups you run into in terms of clarity, where you feel lost or overwhelmed instead of happy with all the possibilities, etc.
Phase 3: We may or may not have multiplayer enabled by this point. We've been coding the multiplayer all along, but not testing it yet. PVP likely won't be a thing yet either way. There's no sense making people wait excessively for beta just for multiplayer, when the solo experience is already nailed down by then. This phase will be further refined in terms of how we're introducing it to you, and hopefully there are very few points at which you feel overwhelmed or lost. If there are still sticking points, then we'll likely go for more phases. If there's not much, we'll fix what you report and then head to beta.
During BetaUnusually for us, the core game is going to be practically feature-complete by the time we hit the first alpha phase. The art will likely be 100% complete, it's looking like, as well. A large volume of bugs is pretty low due to the nature of this game, too. So it's all about balance, adding the meta features (more missions to make all the unlockables available, multiplayer server listings, PVP, co-op, hopefully leaderboards, etc). In other words, all stuff that fits around the core game experience, not that changes the core experience itself (balance aside).
That's the current plan, and why alpha (and beta) are going to be relatively short even compared to Shattered Haven (which was super short).
Anyway, that's the current plan! Timing is currently a bit fuzzy because things keep taking longer than expected with getting the interface polish really clear, and making sure that the unit movement works in multiplayer turned out to be a bigger deal than expected, etc. Having a minimalist GUI that is nonetheless informative and comprehensive is harder than you might think, although I think we're almost there.
Cheers!
