Thank you very much, everyone! Just as an FYI, given that this is Easter weekend I'm going to be slow responding until Monday. But I am reading when I get a chance, and I'm taking a moment to pop by my computer at the moment.
I find it funny that you actually enjoy people preemptively asking for being part of the beta. Usually developers like to have their fans keep the hype up but personal communications on the low burner until you know you can deliver something for their hunger.
Most of those folks who asked are ones who have been with us through four or so games in the past, so I'm pretty comfortable with it. But yeah, there's definitely a reason that I didn't solicit more widely before now, heh.
I would like to participate, but if there is a queue, you can let someone else take my spot, if someone really desires it. I am not really part of the community, so I feel like others should have priority. If a spot is left, sure I'd take it. 
I've added you to the list! There's not a queue per se, but rather I'll be letting folks in in waves. Mostly based on a matter of having some returning faces and some new faces in each wave, and so forth. The first wave will mostly just be people that I know really well so that they can get the obvious things out of the way before anyone else impales themselves on it.
Then everyone else has a smoother experience.
If anyone in particular wants to volunteer to be the front-line cannon fodder in that way, or specifically wants to volunteer to NOT be that sort of cannon fodder, do let me know. Some people love that, some people hate it.
Still mostly confused on what to expect from the game, but sort of secretly hoping for a mix of Simcity with SimEarth. Probably am very far off, but who knows. At least Simcity was mentioned previously.
The video should make it a bit more clear, although it's just a short tease for the most part (though it does show bits and pieces of gameplay all the way through, a lot of it is just a second or two at a time because there's so much, and then there are longer stretches.
I do get a kind of SimCity vibe from this in some ways, but it's kind of SimCity meets Civilization. It's been a loooong time since I played SimEarth, but I'm not recalling too much that would be similar here. I only vaguely remember the mechanics of that game despite playing it a lot, though.
This game looks gorgeous, fellas! I really like how the GUI is coming together. The minimap looks great. I see that it has two sizes. Will it be dynamically scalable, or are there set sizes to choose from?
A lot of the GUI still needs work around the edges of the screen to truly shine, but it's getting there. The tech screen is super gorgeous, and what's going on in the actual main view as far as popup info bars and whatnot I'm super pleased with.
The minimap comes in three sizes or can be turned off. If there was particular demand for another size we could do it, but to be perfectly honest I never really find myself looking at the minimap. I'm never lost, anymore than you get lost in your SimCity city, if that makes sense. And if I want to survey everything that is going on in the world, then I prefer to just zoom out, like I would in AI War or Supreme Commander. But whatever floats people's boats.
Oh! Is that bars on the right, in the Burlust's picture? Like the one where the incident took place
That's actually a "hotel and casino," but close enough, heh. Funnily enough when they are on their own as an individual race, they don't have any explicit bar building. It's kind of implied that that's everywhere, heh. But in the player building set there is a lager house.
And I already love the Fenyn. (Being a vegetable, I love plants.)
Haha, yeah, they're really a favorite of mine, too. When the races have terraformed more around their cities, it's even cooler. In those screens there's only been light terraforming around each city.
Bear in mind that when you play as the Fenyn you get the standard player building set and not their version you see pictured here. Though you do get their terraforming tiles, of course. The buildings you see in these screenshots only show up when the AI plays as these races. Each race works really differently from the others, and from you.
documenting stuff that I understand but that you won't without more text than "~*~"
So a bunch of the documentation was in tilde-emoticons until recently?
We use the tag ~*~ as a thing that we can do a Find All for and come back and fill in details later. There's no point in me writing tooltips for myself too early in the process, after all.
The Skylaxians & Spire look pretty nice together like that, but the Neinzul one looks odd in comparison with its...emptiness? Aside from the semi-blending in to the foliage Fenyn picture, everyone else seems much more easy to spot.
When you go into targeting mode, you won't have issues spotting races. And there are buttons you can press to make all the names just pop up, too, for each building. Likely there will also be some overlays we add that you can toggle for certain things.
With the Neinzul, their buildings are actually alive (same with Zenith and Spire), but the Neinzul have really short lives if you recall from AI War. So they wind up wandering and getting super spread out, which is very different from any other race. They're an odd bunch for sure.
Looks great, cool screenshots and waiting forward for the videos. Hope SBR is not that complicated because I do not do that well with complicated games (except for europa universalis 4 and TLF, which for some reason I easily learned how to play, unlike crusader kings of crusader kings, which I have given up trying to learn after 8 hours).
I can't speak to it with any certainty yet, because I'm sure things are harder to learn right now than they should be (given that it hasn't undergone player testing beyond me yet). But my goal here is that this should be easier to learn than TLF by a substantial margin, and given the general game mechanics I don't see why that can't be the case. It will be quite hard to learn how to play
optimally, same as with SimCity or most games of that sort. But playing optimally is not the goal of most people who play such a game. Getting in and being productive and creative on a middling difficulty shouldn't be too bad for most people by the time we hit 1.0 -- that's the goal, anyway.
I've been following this game with anticipation.
I'll have some free time, so I'd like to sign up for the beta, please!
Added you!
I'm not sure if I'll have the time to test this properly any more*.
*When I signed up the beta looked like it might start in March. I wasn't being irresponsible!
I totally get that! And even if the timing of the beta had not changed, things in people's lives shift and I'm not about to hold that against someone. It sounds like you might still be able to test some and give some feedback, and honestly first impressions testing is quite useful as much as someone who puts in dozens of hours. Both have merits. We'll be doing the beta right up until June 5th when we release, so if you want to test a more polished version sometime in May (if that fits for you), I can note that down.
If you'd rather be thrown into the really early version that will break your spirit from lack of clarity, then I can get you in prior to the 18th.
I semi-kid about that. Some people enjoy basically being given a complex thing that doesn't have proper documentation and then reporting what is confusing or what doesn't work. That then makes things easier for everyone who comes after, because I learn what wasn't immediately clear to new players and can adjust. Or the things that consistently trap people and kill them early because XYZ information was needed in order to not accidentally murder yourself. That sort of thing gets weeded out by player testing, but the first wave or two of players get the worst of that. If that sounds like your bag, let me know. If not, I
completely understand.
I would like to beta test please, add me to the list!
Done!
