Arcen Games
General Category => The Last Federation => Topic started by: x4000 on April 18, 2014, 03:32:12 pm
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Release notes: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=The_Last_Federation_Alpha_Release_Notes#Version_1.0.21
Restart steam to force a quicker update if you like. Or if you have the GOG.com version, then there is a little button that will have appeared on the main menu screen.
What's new?
1. The last 28 achievements for the game.
2. Slowing down "out of your control" racial attitude and influence shifts, to keep the situation from drifting so quickly as you play.
3. The way that buildings and techs affect RCI values is a lot more sane, leading to RCI values that won't be so insanely high.
4. Planets changing hands are bad bad bad news for the RCI values, now.
5. RCI values now affect more, which gives you further options via sabotaging or aiding them.
6. Several improvements to dealing with large fleets attacking a planet/outpost, letting you do more there.
7. Battles that go on for a long time now get progressively more dangerous (for all sides) as attack power creeps up after turn 50 now.
About an hour and a half to go until the release on Steam, Humble, and elsewhere. :)
Enjoy!
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Good luck! The game really started shaping up in the last couple of weeks. I was worried for a while that you weren't going to have enough time to do the necessary polish, but it all worked out. Hopefully this game will crack the top 10 in the Steam sales chart upon launch. Fingers crossed, I guess.
Oh! Major props to the testers, they were amazing. Having wave after wave of them seemed to work well, too.
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Congrats :D! All will be well - I feel it...
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I'm sitting here refreshing the Steam page every few minutes hoping that by "1 hour" it really means "significantly less than 1 hour" LOL.
Can't wait to try it out. :)
I'm really happy for you guys...this is looking to be a fantastic game and your best work to date. :D
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Coming Soon: This item is not yet available... Steam... Your countdown SUCKS!
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Coming Soon: This item is not yet available... Steam... Your countdown SUCKS!
Haha. I was just about to say...
Oh well. Chris said it's coming, and I believe him!
....but seriously steam, whachu doin'?
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STEAM! Please don't mess this launch up...I gotta relax... everything's gonna be cool. Hopefully... ???
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Not to spoil the positive vibes in this thread but the decimals in Planet view should be trimmed to the tenth place or else big words like Pandemonium screw with the GUI.
Already Mantised
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14217 (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14217)
You can create more horizontal space if you shift the box more to the right so "big words" can fit in.
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Happy I'm not the only one waiting for the game. Damn, it's 22:07 pm here in Rome and I have to go out! Come on, steam, let me do a quick battle at least before tomorrow! Come on! :'(
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Not to spoil the positive vibes in this thread but the decimals in Planet view should be trimmed to the tenth place or else big words like Pandemonium screw with the GUI.
Already Mantised
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14217 (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14217)
NO! You have messed up my zen! How dare you! :P
*edit* Agreed btw. Haven't played the game yet, but I can't see why any number needs more than 1 or 2 decimal places in a video game, probably.
Or at least, no more than X number of digits total, if there are very small numbers that require more precision after the decimal point.
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well i reckon you may have cracked it with this final flurry of changes up to 1.0 ! :)
- nerfing the 'improve relation with other race' dispatch option
- greatly reducing the personal influence gained by doing dispatch missions
- slowing down the passive attitude shifts of the races
- increased player agency in relation to RCI and its effects...
blimey, i think you have thoroughly shifted things so the player will really want/need to make use of all the tools/options available in order to win the game.... and so really engage with everything the game has to offer!
Those more dangerous and effective missions are going to be so much more attractive and important now in achieving victory... and the feeling of connection with and influence upon the solar system should be so much greater.... very nicely done ;)
its a great game guys, best of luck to you all on the launch!
and it's been a brilliant experience to be involved in this final week of testing - so thank you for that.
I feel really confident that the game is going to be received well and we can all look forward to a few years of TLF! All being well...
Congrats ;)
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EDIT : Ok, nevermind. I will endure the 3am tonight when I come back home (hopefully 3am since the rome+public transports in night = nightmares) and buy it from steam. Damn you Arcen Games, you're making me do this with your so-very-interesting game!!! :(
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Thank you all so much for the kind words -- and all the help with the testing, too! I am going to try to relax this weekend and decompress some before coming back to it Monday. That said, I'll be watching for serious errors, and will address any of those that crop up. Glad the last batch of changes have been happy-making, I like them quite a bit as well. :)
Steam should auto-unlock the game at 5:00 EST sharp, or 2pm PST by their clocks. It's an automated thing, so it should "just happen." Which is awesome, because prior to Bionic Dues that was never the case, and there was the "well, we're waiting on Valve, they are going as fast as they can" etc stuff. Not anymore! They're really been streamlining their system tools for devs an incredible amount the last year or so.
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Just wanted to say thank you for allowing me to be a Round 3 Alpha Tester, and that some of my feedback helped improved the game. Enjoy your well earned rest.
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You were of immense help, as were so many others here. Even some of the folks who just had a few things to say really made a difference, because sometimes there was a key insight there. But we've also had some real all-stars here, who I would name but for fear of missing someone in the call-out. ;)
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I wanted to say thank you as well...I have 7 of the 8 races in my federation.
It was a let down though. The thoraxians just outright accepted the federation when they became space faring, same for the evuks (sp?) However, it the Boarines want to join, but have no tab for federation deals. I feel very confused right now on the exact critera of joining the federation except in the cases of X race needs Y relations.
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Wow, congrats on getting almost all in! For the Boarines, if you don't have a federation tab with them right now, then probably what you should do is visit the skylaxians or similar and use them to convince the boarines to get in.
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Steam pushed its release to tomorrow....
Available: April 19th, 2014
This game will unlock in approximately 1 day and 0 hours
This is BS.
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What... the.... heck???
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WTF! -- releasing 19th?
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Yeah, it's not true -- something is up with their system. I've reached out to them and am waiting to hear back. Sigh. Everything is all ready to go, a switch just has to be flipped apparently.
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It looks like it's available now on Steam. One minute it said April 19, the next minute it says now available. Go figure.
I can't wait to get off work and get this baby!
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Hey Chris. i absolutely love what the game has turned into! :D
And i am so glad i got to be a tester for this great game :)
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YES, here we go, just bought it. Downloading...
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Thanks so much! And yep: glitch fixed! All live now. :)
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Phew. All good now. Congrats!
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Thank you so much! It's also now live on the Humble Store. They actually got it up at the proper time, heh.
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Congratulations on a great release, and thanks for letting me help out. :)
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Congrats on the release! May your coffers fill to overflowing. You deserve it! 8)
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I downloaded the game off the Humble Store, but when I tried to play it told me that there needed to be a 'LastFederation_Data' file next to the executable. I tried unzipping again, with the same result.
And now I can't find it to redownload in my humble library - even though searching for the word Arcen gives one result, taking me to the part of the list where it should be, but where there is nothing to be seen. Your game is haunting my computer.
(This isn't a problem for me because steam keys! But still, something weird is happening in humbleland.)
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I downloaded the game off the Humble Store, but when I tried to play it told me that there needed to be a 'LastFederation_Data' file next to the executable. I tried unzipping again, with the same result.
And now I can't find it to redownload in my humble library - even though searching for the word Arcen gives one result, taking me to the part of the list where it should be, but where there is nothing to be seen. Your game is haunting my computer.
(This isn't a problem for me because steam keys! But still, something weird is happening in humbleland.)
Yeah, sorry about that -- I sent them one convenient zip file with all the stuff in there, and they decided to split it apart. In so doing, they split it in a bit of an incorrect way. They then realized that, asked me about it, and are fixing that as we speak. Apologies!
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Congratulations on another unique game released, I'm hoping this one grows and expands for a long time to come.
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Question: Is the Humble Widget link in the store the most direct way to buy the game or do I wait for a Fastspring link to show up? I want as much of my money to reach Arcen!
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Question: Is the Humble Widget link in the store the most direct way to buy the game or do I wait for a Fastspring link to show up? I want as much of my money to reach Arcen!
Humble Widget gives us the biggest cut.
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Humble Widget gives us the biggest cut.
Excellent! Thanks for the reply.
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Congrats. This is what we were busy with instead of final testing. :P
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Congratulations on the release it was great testing and watching the game change and develop, thanks for the opportunity.
So annoying that I'm away for 4 days so can't play the release version, I have everything crossed that the release is successful so you can continue making fantastic innovative games.
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Anybody else think the balance seems a bit out of whack on the combat for the release version. It seems way harder to me now.
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Just wanting to say congratulations on the release, and thank you ever so much for allowing me the opportunity to test for you. It was a fun trip, and I'm super-happy with the final version.
Congratulations, and even more success in the future.
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Wow, congrats on getting almost all in! For the Boarines, if you don't have a federation tab with them right now, then probably what you should do is visit the skylaxians or similar and use them to convince the boarines to get in.
I tried, got bored, then just shot some conspiracy theories. The end result was the same. Very good.
I will have to try again with these slowed down relations.
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Anybody else think the balance seems a bit out of whack on the combat for the release version. It seems way harder to me now.
I did notice that ships seemed to be able to kite me, which was not really difficult, but kinda annoying. It was frustrating trying to follow them and having my energy blasters poof out right before hitting them every time. I even tried chasing at full engine power but that didn't seem to help.
I seemed to hit them a lot better if I pretended like I was trying to get away from them, or fly parallel to them.
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I notice TLF is in position 13 on the sellers chart! It'd be a huge boon if it could crack the top 10. Fingers crossed.
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Just bought the game, but I am away from home up until Tuesday. :(
But I post now, because I wanted to say this: Even though I only read the forum, wasn't an Alpha Tester, it was an amazing ride. Seeing the game transform from Sideways scroller to Shmup to Wego TB (incredible!), reading the many open minded discussions between Arcen and the community, watching the videos- it was really something. On top of that: the insights and transparancy from Keith and Chris about the inner workings of Arcen Games are one of a kind. This is how it should be, how games should be made. As a player, fan and customer one feels always heard. This is no small feat to complete.
Thanks for all of that and compliments, your honest, great and creative work has built a great community, too (props to the peeps here, too).
After having said that, I can't wait to get home and finally play TLF. My "Batman in Space"-Batsuit is waiting for me. :)
Congrats on the release!
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We're at #11 now! So incredibly close to the big boy table...
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We're at #11 now! So incredibly close to the big boy table...
Quick someone buy 1000 copies or something, heh!
... actually to drop off without breaking the top 10 now would suck.
Edit: Question. How much of a difference would it make in breaking the top 10 or not? Or is that impossible to answer? It does make me curious.
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I'm honored to have played a small part in helping get this game off the ground. Good work Arma team! Good work, volunteer army of testers!
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First of all: thank you hugely to everyone here wishing us well and who has helped us to make the game what it is. I wish that I could respond to everyone, but I am so... tired... ;) About to sign off for tonight, and I'll just be handling critical things over the weekend. Then back to it on Monday!
Humble Widget gives us the biggest cut.
Excellent! Thanks for the reply.
Bigger than FastSpring, actually. I'm kind of unsure if I want to even add FastSpring, as it's a hassle to do yet one more store, and we earn less!
Congrats. This is what we were busy with instead of final testing. :P
Wow! That is definitely worth skipping final testing for, haha. :D
We're at #11 now! So incredibly close to the big boy table...
Quick someone buy 1000 copies or something, heh!
... actually to drop off without breaking the top 10 now would suck.
Edit: Question. How much of a difference would it make in breaking the top 10 or not? Or is that impossible to answer? It does make me curious.
Generally the top sellers list is a representation of how well you're already doing, not something that helps you do better in and of itself. Unless that's the only promo you have on the steam front page, of course; but we've never had one and not the other. I think we've been in position #6 before for a while, and I know we've been in #8. Valley 1 and AI War both hit in that range. Other more recent stuff struggled to make it out of the 60s for most of its release window, and I think maybe topped out in the 30s? I don't know, my memory for that sort of thing is notoriously bad. It's documented in the forums somewhere when we talked about it at the time.
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Generally the top sellers list is a representation of how well you're already doing, not something that helps you do better in and of itself. Unless that's the only promo you have on the steam front page, of course; but we've never had one and not the other. I think we've been in position #6 before for a while, and I know we've been in #8. Valley 1 and AI War both hit in that range. Other more recent stuff struggled to make it out of the 60s for most of its release window, and I think maybe topped out in the 30s? I don't know, my memory for that sort of thing is notoriously bad. It's documented in the forums somewhere when we talked about it at the time.
OK. So it's nice, but going from 11 to 9 and the added visibility from being on the first page of the top sellers list is not going to make a huge impact?
Edit: Oh, I get it. If TLF wasn't on the new releases page then the top sellers page would make a bigger difference.
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Edit: Oh, I get it. If TLF wasn't on the new releases page then the top sellers page would make a bigger difference.
Bingo. Being very visible on the front page is huge. This is why we waited until (cough) late on a Friday. They don't do releases on the weekend. We'll be sitting right at the top of the new releases page all weekend, which is the thing that is most visible for us. With all the new games coming out on steam, there are a lot of games that are getting pushed off the front page within less than a day. That's a disaster. It used to be that we could have at a week or two on the front page. Coming out late on a Friday is not normally what we'd choose to do for press reasons, but in this case it worked out ideally for visibility purposes. Knock on wood.
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Coming out late on a Friday is not normally what we'd choose to do for press reasons, but in this case it worked out ideally for visibility purposes. Knock on wood.
Yep, seems to be working well. Still bang top of the new releases page. Thanks!
Ohh, you hit the top 10. Cool! Edit: just as soon as I type that you've gone back down to 11.
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I'm curious when the Wiki is going to be opened and community access granted to edit it?
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A big congrats for the release! Here's hoping this one will be a big seller, as usual I think it deserves it.
And it was one heck of a testing cycle, too. Fascinating to see the game evolve, and I'm glad to have been able to help during that, even if it was almost exclusively the combat side of the game. Probably for the best though, as while I love strategy games I aint the best at them and sure aint the best at figuring out balance issues.
And as with BD I appreciate the existence of the "Misery" difficulty, too. That actually ended up being very well balanced in this one and will be the setting I use every time. Havent had even one situation that I would think of as "cheap" or anything.
As for these most recent patches, pretty good overall, though good grief is it harder to get influence with everyone. The Acutians in my game were pretty much disliking me alot right from the start despite not being the ones I chose to get the ship from... blasted jerks somehow managed to get to being spacefaring *instantly*, so smuggling missions really irked them. Previously I might've tried to fix that with influence, but..... argh, too much effort now when the score is that low, and when they keep making things that I want to steal. Choices relating to hostile actions are alot tougher to make now.
Very much enjoying the game overall!
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Congrats on the successful launch! FYI, I figured out why the combat seemed off to me. I was trying to brute force a couple drop off missions.
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Previously I might've tried to fix that with influence, but..... argh, too much effort now when the score is that low, and when they keep making things that I want to steal. Choices relating to hostile actions are alot tougher to make now.
awesome :)
also, second place in best sellers on linux list for steam right now! - i know its just a drop in a big windows ocean still - but all the linux users really appreciate the support!