TCMTurtle Posted May 28, 2019 Share Posted May 28, 2019 A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad. -Shigeru Miyamoto Take your time devs, make it what you hope it to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trypophobic Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 Throwing in my two cents since I planned the end of my business trip just for the day of release, and... I couldn't be happier! Thank you, Klei, for being a responsible development team. I'll take two whenever you fully release the game (atop the current copy I have had since this time last year) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cenamderi Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 What's the difference from what we are playing now and a beta test ? i thought Early Access was Alpha + Beta Testing ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OxCD Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 9 hours ago, Cenamderi said: What's the difference from what we are playing now and a beta test ? i thought Early Access was Alpha + Beta Testing ? The early access is an extended test, a compilation of beta. They're still some bugs, some major mechanisms, and some game concepts, that are still today subject to changes from the first EA day. That's the EA. In hindsight, you are balancing the whole stuff while you're still developping. All ideas and features are not implemented until the release. They're continuously adding feature, and using what we call beta version, to test those. That's updates, a compilation of features. Beta concept is to test those features before they assess it officially publishable. At least that's how Klei decided to order into chapters.If those terms are still blurry in your head, let's just call the EA a long beta, huh ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightinggale Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 8 hours ago, Cenamderi said: What's the difference from what we are playing now and a beta test ? i thought Early Access was Alpha + Beta Testing ? Traditionally: Alpha: playable, but usually contents is missing Beta: Everything for the release has been added. Now it's bug hunting+fixing and adjusting game balance Golden Master: completed version used for disc/disk/carbridge production Selling copies and make a profit from basically doing nothing more Maybe release bugfix patches, though that didn't really come until people got online However it has the flaw of only generating income after all expenses have been paid. Early Access doesn't completely fit into this picture, but the idea is to repeat this process multiple times. Once you reach the point where you can sell copies, you go back to put your game in alpha and make the next version. This is financially more realistic to do, particularly if you don't have Wall Street investors or anything like that. It also makes paying customers beta testers and they can provide feedback to improve the game. You could argue that such customers are paid because Early Access usually comes with a discount, but it's still very cheaply paid beta testers. Announcing the entire game to be in beta means it's the last cycle. It will not go back to alpha to add contents once it leaves beta. However to be completely honest, this isn't strict. Civilization IV from 2005 had a patch update in 2006 or 2007, which added DLL modding support. That shouldn't be possible if we follow the setup strictly. Master of Magic from 1994 was basically releasing almost an alpha version meaning it feels like it didn't really go through the beta stage. It took a number of bugfix patches to become playable (as in not crashing frequently). I would argue that online distribution has made names like alpha and beta more confusing. They are mainly aimed at the once and for all release, which was dictated by the physical box release approach. While online distribution and early access kills the feeling of "brand new game nobody played yet and it's done. No future updates", I would argue that it's still a very good thing. Games like ONI are only financially realistic to develop when using early access to provide money during development. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasza22 Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 In today`s game industry alpha and beta don`t really mean much. If you buy a game in alpha you can expect it being heavily unfinished or basically a first playable version of it, beta should be more close to release but some released games feel like they should be still in alpha so it`s all relative. Even release doesn`t mean it`s the end of development. It`s only when all the advertisements go up and the game is supposed to be "ready". But we all know ready games get stuff like a "day one patch" to fix issues that should have been fixed back in the beta period. then later you get a ton of further bugfixes and sometimes free dlc or paid dlc which used to be called expansion packs. Today`s games are just ongoing projects. You get some indications to how complete they are by them being alpha or release but they aren`t finished as long as there is enough people buying them to pay a dev team to manage them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 3 hours ago, Sasza22 said: In today`s game industry alpha and beta don`t really mean much. If you buy a game in alpha you can expect it being heavily unfinished or basically a first playable version of it, beta should be more close to release but some released games feel like they should be still in alpha so it`s all relative. Even release doesn`t mean it`s the end of development. It`s only when all the advertisements go up and the game is supposed to be "ready". But we all know ready games get stuff like a "day one patch" to fix issues that should have been fixed back in the beta period. then later you get a ton of further bugfixes and sometimes free dlc or paid dlc which used to be called expansion packs. Today`s games are just ongoing projects. You get some indications to how complete they are by them being alpha or release but they aren`t finished as long as there is enough people buying them to pay a dev team to manage them. There is a difference however between for instance day 1 "assassin's creed odyssey" (which had a lot of small bugs) and day 1 "fallout 76" (which was full out unplayable). It's quite unevitable to have some bugs around at launch. However, that should only stretch to very minor inconviences at its worst. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightinggale Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 6 minutes ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said: There is a difference however between for instance day 1 "assassin's creed odyssey" (which had a lot of small bugs) and day 1 "fallout 76" (which was full out unplayable). It's quite unevitable to have some bugs around at launch. I already mentioned Master of Magic, which was also pretty unplayable on release. For instance it had some ranged units, which would crash the game if exposed to melee combat. This means if you were attacked and didn't have ranged units, you lost. They would shoot you and if you fight back, the game would crash. If they ran out of ammo and attacked with melee, the game would crash. Either way it's game over and you should just hope you have a savegame from before the unit was spawned in the first place. The game became great after half a year of patch releases, but most reviews were already out by then, talking about a frequently crashing game. It's an open question how much that affected sales. Today there is an unofficial patch, which fixes the rest of the bugs, but it's worth nothing that the newest version is recent. It literally took decades to fix all the bugs from the release. So yeah there are some games, which are released in an unplayable state. It doesn't look like ONI will join that list Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gurgel Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 The traditional terms do not really work anymore. Early access is more like the traditional maintenance phase, where features get added. Maintenance used to be 60% of overall effort. But the traditional models also assume that distributing updates is complicated and high-effort. That is not true for this type of software anymore, since the traditional terms predate the Internet. Hence the traditional terms are mostly meaningless today. The only only with still some meaning is "beta", which basically means "feature complete, but has more bugs than acceptable for release". Of course, "feature complete" does not really have meaning either today, and even less so with early access. In essence, describing what a specific teams does is the only thing that makes sense. Klei is running a 1. development 2. test by focus group 3. fix 4. release 5. goto 1 cycle. The only thing that makes the actual release out of early access different is that it is expected to complete some things on the story-side. And they are already planning to go back to the original cycle after release, with the development of DLCs. I think for this type of game, this is an excellent approach. It would not work for all types of games. But that is where you can see masters of the game at work: They craft a custom process that works well for their specific case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copy3ms Posted June 3, 2019 Share Posted June 3, 2019 Guys just take your time. You are like the only company we have faith on. Even Blizzard let us down, you guys rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy Posted June 12, 2019 Share Posted June 12, 2019 @Bigfoot is there additional info to be given about the testing period? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rainbowdesign Posted June 24, 2019 Share Posted June 24, 2019 After the delay i wonder if klei has troubles to really polish the release update. Maybe you should consider to release the big update now as the last early release update, let the player test it and then make a polishing update and then release it next month or so out of early access. The benefit would be that the release version would be much better tested and balanced - and such would bring better publicity - and there will be no need to delay this update too long since its not the final release version for which REALLY you should take your time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasza22 Posted June 24, 2019 Share Posted June 24, 2019 On 17.05.2019 at 11:45 PM, Bigfoot said: Rather than launch something we’re not feeling great about, we’re just going to hold off a bit. We are moving release to July and we expect to open for testing around the end of June. 11 minutes ago, Rainbowdesign said: Maybe you should consider to release the big update now as the last early release update, I think the plan is to release the big update for testing right about this week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rainbowdesign Posted June 24, 2019 Share Posted June 24, 2019 2 hours ago, Sasza22 said: I think the plan is to release the big update for testing right about this week. I think they planned it but its just a hunch that they are still lagging behind and if they are it would be better the way i suggested then releasing too early or postponing it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minespatch Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 9 hours ago, Rainbowdesign said: After the delay i wonder if klei has troubles to really polish the release update. DST is also having lil' troubles right now. I'll be patient but Klei is currently trying to polish things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magpiedom Posted June 30, 2019 Share Posted June 30, 2019 Is there an exact date that's been given yet? I can't find one anywhere and I'm keen to get started properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasza22 Posted June 30, 2019 Share Posted June 30, 2019 5 hours ago, magpiedom said: Is there an exact date that's been given yet? I can't find one anywhere and I'm keen to get started properly. No date yet. We just know the game is out somewhere in july. The preview just launched. I expect there will be at least 2 weeks of testing but probably more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightinggale Posted July 1, 2019 Share Posted July 1, 2019 14 hours ago, Sasza22 said: The preview just launched. I expect there will be at least 2 weeks of testing but probably more. Judging from the bug tracker, I say 2 weeks isn't enough. The bug tracker has a bunch of glitches and maybe they can be fixed within two weeks, even if that is the case, the game would still need at least a week for people to play and not report new "must fix" issues. Nobody wants the game to be released with another "needs space suit to gather materials to build space suits" glitches as they are very damaging to the gaming experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RagingDrPhobos Posted July 2, 2019 Share Posted July 2, 2019 OK! IT'S JULY! can we get an official launch date or time frame or something? I've logged over 300 hours so i'm dumb excited to finally make it to space for the first time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathmanican Posted July 2, 2019 Share Posted July 2, 2019 Spoiler On 6/30/2019 at 10:34 AM, magpiedom said: Is there an exact date that's been given yet? On 6/30/2019 at 4:03 PM, Sasza22 said: No date yet. 19 hours ago, RagingDrPhobos said: OK! IT'S JULY! can we get an official launch date or time frame or something? We could try to start a new thread, and have 40 people post about how they want to hear the official date ("please say something"). And then hope for another response from @JoeW such as: Spoiler Just gonna slide in here real quick for a reminder. If we have something to say, we say it when it's ready to say. If we haven't said it yet, it's because we're not reasonably sure so we're not ready to say. So you're rarely going to get "We will say something Thursday" because if we aren't ready to say it yet, that means we're not necessarily ready to say that we will be able to say it by Thursday. That being said, we will have something to say Thursday. If we're lucky, we might actually start this post at the same time they are ready to say something. For now, I'm sure it's a week or more away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irate_ray Posted July 2, 2019 Share Posted July 2, 2019 19 hours ago, RagingDrPhobos said: OK! IT'S JULY! can we get an official launch date or time frame or something? I've logged over 300 hours so i'm dumb excited to finally make it to space for the first time 811 hours for me ...oops..it's only like the 57th iteration of the base. I've gotten quite efficient at blowing it up and starting over. There always alternative ways to survive ..) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightinggale Posted July 2, 2019 Share Posted July 2, 2019 I don't really get why the release date is important for the forum users. If you can't wait, you can switch to the test branch. If you don't want to do that due to bugs, then why are you pushing for that branch to be called release? It's not like calling the branch something else will magically make the issues vanish. Give Klei the time they need to fix the issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark_Recent Posted July 3, 2019 Share Posted July 3, 2019 I really wanna see launch early on but I prefer a nice and smooth launch then a rushed launch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr peeps Posted July 3, 2019 Share Posted July 3, 2019 THREE DAYS INTO JULY WHERE IS IT I NEED THIS PLEASE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dopplereffect Posted July 3, 2019 Share Posted July 3, 2019 With the Beta for the launch and debug mode enabled you can find Uranium! Just go to the Element Section to fill an area and scroll to the Bottom! There is also nuclear waste and yellow cake! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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