flexible patch timeline alpha/beta patches?

Can we get an extremely flexible timeline for alpha/beta patches? The anticipation of moon expanding, unit cannons, planet destruction, optimization, is simply killing me! all I wasn't is rough dates and content, optimization planed to be patched in. it can be way flexible and taken with a grain of salt just more info please!

When the Patches are ready. They're working on bigger elements compared to earlier in the Alpha when the main concern was stability and bug fixing, now they're working on things like Orbital Units, System Editors and Interplanetary Gameplay, those kinds of things take a bit longer to create and test.

Mike

"when patches are ready" That is the worst reply that could be posted. I understand that in this stage of development its hard to "pin point" anything, but giving fans an extremely rough outline on what's planned for next patch or the next 7 is not to much to ask for when we paid $90 plus for the game and are dying to eat up all the info the developers have for us. We love the game! We want to know whats coming up in the game! We completely understand if some things are not met or certain time lines are missed. All we want is more information please.

When people are given timelines and schedules, they expect them to be followed.


And if you've ever done programming before, you'll know for a fact that timelines are super difficult to predict. You're literally inventing something that didn't exist before. How on earth could anybody know in advance how long it's going to take?

Uber made the right decision by not announcing things like that.


I know you're keen to get information and news, so am I. But everyone is just going to have to proverbially bend over and accept it.

So what is it you're asking for, a timeline or patch contents?

If you watch Today's (July 30th) Live Stream they list off the big ticket items they're working on(System Editor, Orbital Units, Interplanetary Gameplay ect) but trying to pin down when they'll be rady is impossible as Bullet pointed out, don't forget that Everything Uber has done, was done from scratch. They won't make it into a patch until the guys at Uber thinks it's ready.

There is no way to guess or give an estimate as there is nothing to compare it to. That's the problem when you're breaking new ground.

Don't forget it's not like Uber has a Patch schedule or any BS like that. They don't hold back ready patches or rush anything thought to meet that patch schedule.

You may not like the "when it's ready', but it's not wrong. It's the only answer that will always be right.

Mike

Patience is a virtue.

But based on what is known, you can expect most of features (expanding to other planets, kinetic bombardement, some better AI maybe...) to be present around start of BETA, and see a lot of polishing (probably performances, a lot of balancing, IA...) until Retail.

BETA is supposed to end around September and Retail to be around December.

It's very rought, but well, that's what you asked for !
(and the only thing we have...)

They said one update per week as far as I understood

That was a long time ago Petard... but it's holding true(ish) for now.

I don't expect it to happen forever though.

I wonder how often they'll be after release.

Some 1 needs to make a tutorial about how hard can it be make a game.
You guys not think a game like this, makes it alone the night to the day, dont you?
You all want a good game,or only a game to play 1 week and say (oh i pay 49.99 euros for this *****)
Relax!
A game ,try to understand at least those who do not know, it takes several steps, optimize some techniques off the game i think its important for now.
For now let's just wait some optimizations graphic,and some important steps in the construction of the planets.

The flip side of our iterative design methodology is that we simply don't pick "dates" for things very often. The rough alpha/beta/release timing is about as close as we get and even that is really speculative.

We also like to be able to swap priorities quickly if that's what is required. All of these practices have the effect of reducing management overhead by just letting people do their jobs. Part of the reason publisher made games are so expensive is that they lack this flexibility in scheduling because they basically "make stuff up" when it comes to schedule and then spend huge amount of energy "tracking to schedule".

So no, I can't give you any exact dates and if I did I would simply be making stuff up.

I will say that the pace is going to increase as we are bringing more team member on to help. Another full time graphics guy, more gameplay coders etc.

No, Beta Starts sometime in September.

Mike

Thats really good to the team.

ok ok, sorry if I came off as aggressive, I just love the game so much lol, and want to know all I can about it and when stuff is going to be going on with it! I totally understand what you guys are saying. Thanks! and cheers to more progress everyday!

Pacience is a virtue...

Guys, you are so cruel to point my errors so clearly...

But thanks for the corrections !

is it possible to get a rough priority list of what your working on, no dates nothing like that, just a rough idea of what you want to get done in what order.

if not i understand im loving the game atm anyways

We are working on about 30 things at once and exactly what they are changed on almost a daily basis. There is no way to really keep this updated without costing us a lot of additional labor time. We do use an internal database to roughly track this stuff but it's very rough and we don't keep it updated in a way that would be helpful for external people.

Basically our pace of development often outstrips our ability to document what we are doing. If we stop to document we slow down everything. This is one of the reason the build notes aren't always 100% complete btw.

Sounds like something a Community Manager might look to do

we the last thing i want to do is slow you down! keep doing what your doing, loving the pace the game is going atm!

but yeah a community manager would be super cool if they could keep us a bit more informed about what you guys are working on!