Augh, forums! Why do you suddenly stop emailing me about a specific topic every so often? I know it doesn't just happen to me, it happens to at least Keith also. I've gotten a ton of notifications about other threads (most of which I've set aside for now), but I'd been really surprised nobody had really responded on this thread yet.
What about letting us understand the game until we may be aware of AI is failing?
I mean I dont think completing my first playthrough anyways. Just getting a bit familiar with HUD, mechanics etc, is enough until Monday dont u think?
There's definitely that side of things, but in general I'm not sure that I want to have a bunch of testers racking up a bunch of feedback while:
a) I'm not around anyway.
b) When I get back I have something time-consuming else that has to be attended to.
c) Some of the things that the testers are going to immediately and universally notice and complain about are the things being attended to in (b).
Otherwise yeah, I would have just done it.
In general, starting tests at the end of the week is a horrible idea. If there is a problem, then the testers riot for 3 days until the programmers get back in the office, or the programmers have to come in on the weekend and frantically code while their families are neglected.
We tend to code on the weekends anyway, in bits at least, but in general yes. My main thing is to just let people have at it over the weekend, and I ignore it all until Monday if I at all can. Then I open the gates of hades on Monday and see what happened.
Same 3 days is time to test for the testers as well though 
Yep. Merits on both sides, so it really comes down to the state of the game more than anything else, for me, at any given juncture.
I've been thinking and I have to agree the orange shirts should be started on the week end I'm sure if we can endure being nuked with pollution that they can endure a janky ai. (unless your sick of people pointing it out to you of course XD)
It's less about what I'm worried people can endure, and more about what I think will best serve the game. As some others have mentioned, this isn't a beta for marketing purposes. I'm actually listening to what you guys say, and a lot of things change based on that. THAT said, whether you like it or not, your first experiences with the game color how you look at things down the line.
The worst thing for the game is this scenario: You come in and go "well that part X stinks but I know it's inwork and I'll give it a pass for now." Then time passes, part X improves, and you're very pleased with how improved it is. All is well!
But the truth is, potentially, that if you had come to the game fresh, without seeing part X being janky in the first place, then you might have felt that even the revised part X could still use some more work. We tend to anchor our expectations to what we first see, and it's easy to confuse "better" with "good." That's one of my absolutely central reasons for holding back testers into waves like this. It's a lot less to do with my worrying about them not being able to handle something, and a lot more to do with them being willing to put up with something "because it's a beta" that no reviewer or post-launch player would be okay with.
Not a long weekend for me, I confess.
Sounds like a long week instead.
I'd prefer to start hammering on the game by Tuesday if possible, even if that's a little ahead of the rest of the group. My girlfriend is out of town for a week, so I have lots of free time could use a distraction from loneliness. The week after is likely to be busier (she's back and some work stuff is happening) so I may have difficult life decisions to make if I get my first taste of SBR then. :-)
Makes sense! I'll send that out to at least you today.
Sharpen your teeth! Paint your faces! We shall bathe our weapons in the great sea at the other end of the world!
...ehm. Reporting for duty. Whenever, whatever. Tell me what to watch out for I'll report every crack, bend and patch of rust that I spot.
Thanks! I think what I will do is go ahead and send out the invites either late tonight or early tomorrow, depending on when Keith has a chance to get to two particularly egregious regressions presently in our working copy (caused by me, I'm pretty sure).
Hm a shame, but more long weekends are ahead and a Monday isn't necessarily bad either, so people can't overplay it, because of work reasons. 
I am happy to wait for the next round then of blueshirts or if orangeshirts get delayed near a weekend (or need another group of people by then).
I'll go ahead and put you in with the orangeshirts, and if you don't have time to get to it until next weekend, that's absolutely positively cool. There's no pressure for some response RIGHT NAOW when you get the game. I have no earthly expectation that people will drop everything for this, and as I've basically said if people are trickling in that's more useful than everyone dumping in at once, anyway. So if you decide to play in the next couple of days, that's fine; if you wait until the weekend you can actually think of it as doing me a bit of a favor that way, too. I really don't care one way or the other, honestly and truly!
.811 is going to be a massive change. There are just tons of things that are getting fixed. Delaying the next wave was the right choice.
I appreciate it -- the AI is still doing some somewhat strange things for reasons I'm not 100% sure of, but it's a lot less noticeable now. It's having trouble feeding itself and housing itself sometimes, despite the code to the contrary, and I'm not really sure why yet. With a rules change in this version, though, that's no longer a barrier to them growing up (or you growing up).
This will be "cheaty" in the next version on the part of the AI in terms of there being no negative repercussions for them (whereas you have crime to worry about), but it actually will dovetail really well into an upcoming "distress" mechanic for the AI that will be their counterpart to crime but instead relate to how they handle diplomacy and war. You handling internal matters like crime is interesting, but the AI doing that is invisible. So either it works perfectly and you never know, or it messes up and you complain. I'd rather just not have it do it at all (and the AI already doesn't), and instead have AI-specific mechanics in place of crime that you actually DO see and which provide you with interesting opportunities or challenges.
Without being stressed on it.
Amen to that! Relatively speaking, anyway.
Is it too late to become orangeshirt? <_<;
Boom, you're on the list and painted orange.
I'm sure I'm on your list somewhere Chris, since I've begged enough, but I just wanted to confirm I would like to be whatever color shirt you want me to be. I've been preparing my body to be the best beta tester ever! So bring it on, because I think I've even started dreaming about this game with how much I frequent these forums. Everything's looking great Chris! Keep up the good going.
Thank you so much for the kind words! I do indeed have you on the list. Right now I don't have you as any particular shirt color, so it would probably be about 2-3 weeks out when I'll put you in, if that works for you. Or if you want in earlier, just let me know.
Any chance the invite and .811 are coming soonish?
If they would, I still got one or two hours of gaming time at my hands this evening (here in Europe) and I am starting to get itchy.
Ants!!!
Sorry about that! We're still sorting out a couple of things; the AI work took me vastly longer than I thought it would. My hope is that around 8pm or 8:30pm EST I can do the release tonight.
