Today's Gamma Update: Friends, Chat, Browsing, And More!

http://www.uberent.com/pa/2014/02/25/gamma-features/

Yes, it's posted!

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The new armoury, music, UI, and matchmaking are especially uber but then again this whole update is shaping up to be just that.

ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT!!!

For your convenience, here's a copy of the post:
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The upcoming gamma phase of Planetary Annihilation is all about you and your friends. We’ll be rolling out a ton of features over the course of development that’ll make it easier to connect, team up, browse compare, and check out the Commanders you own. Today, we wanted to talk about some of these awesome social and experiential additions that’ll totally take Planetary Annihilation to the next level.

From top to bottom, Planetary Annihilation’s user interface is being reimagined and refocused to make it even simpler to find what you want, when you want it. We’re expanding server browsing options, for instance. In Gamma, you’ll be able to filter potential matches by player count and number of planets. We’ll also make it easier to create a new game.

The new front-end menus, on the other hand, will support dynamic news items. We’re also going to add a video hub that’ll display content from us and you. In the future, we plan to expand this to show new players how to play the game.

And did we mention how you’ll be welcomed to the game? Our orchestral soundtrack will be rolled out during this phase.

Gamma will also introduce new social functionality such as friends lists and instant messaging. We’ll be expanding our Twitch.TV functionality as well by adding visual cues, controls for audio settings, and the ability for streamers to run commercials (because we’re totally cool with folks monetizing videos of our games).

Also during the gamma phase, you’ll be able to compete against friends on the leaderboards to see who’s really the best and you’ll be able to view a variety of stats after matches. We’re also going to roll out a spectator mode that’ll feature its own chat and provides a real-time display of players’ economies.

A totally new concept that we’re going to introduce during gamma is the Armory. When we add this feature, you’ll be able to see all the Commanders you already own or have been rewarded as a backer of the game. You’ll also see special badges you’ve earned there. Cool!

Gamma phase’s social features and rebuilt UI will make interacting and playing a breeze — and the game that much more intense to play as a result. Most of what we’re talking about today will be rolled out over the course of the phase, but you’ll get an awesome taste of what’s to come this Thursday, February 27th, when Gamma releases.

We’ve got some more to share before Gamma releases as a free update. Stay tuned!

You were really fast.

I just want to get this picture in:

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Before people start asking for specific dates and times.

Our orchestral soundtrack will be rolled out during this phase.​

This is the only thing i care about now

Great news!

I'd love to see some kind of unified platform for mods also, (a bit like steam workshop) so we can easily download and enable/disable mods with minimal fuss.

Just before everyone gets all hyped up on this, I'd like to put a bit of stress on the "during this phase" bit. This doesn't guarantee we get it on the 27th. It is theoretically possible that this is still weeks/months away. Guessing from how the chap(apologies, I forgot his name) in charge of sound was still heavily working on it last time I heard. If it was all done and ready to deploy, we'd be getting new game sound effects from him by now.

But I sure darn hope we get it soon!

I was surprised that I checked the site at just the right time too.

Something like: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-pa-mod-manager-v3-2-0.50726/

Yeah, sure.

lol, I've actually only checked it twice today, this morning and just now when I found the post.

Pretty much, but actually built into the game for all to see and use. Funny enough I lurk here regularly and never bumped into this, probably because I figured I wouldn't bother with mods while the game is such in a volatile state of constant improvement. Thus I never ventured to that part of the forums.

When it's done though. Now then imma go and mod the hell out of it.

Right now I'm wishing for some more performance improvements and new planetary invasion ways so the 30+ minute games can be fun too.

But yea I'm also looking forward to this update!

Some mods usually break for a day or two after patches, but in general things just keep working. There are over 50 mods on PAMM right now, I think.

This does mean that we'll be loosing our delta/alphas...

And getting our theta and fall commanders if I'm right.

And getting a host of others, most likely. There are still 7 unnamed commanders not in the files that we've seen pics of.

Kickstarter commander pwease?

We're working on all our reward Commanders, for sure. I just saw the Theta today. Dude looks mean.

Give us a Theta preview!!!

I can has picture?

Almost as buff and op as you?

Leaderboards yay! Bet not this week thou.

Someone wants brownie points