I hope its quite because the alpha is almost ready

MY BODY IS READY

Nah, we just make **** up as we go.

We are simply trying to keep the time down to make the streams more accessible as a lot of people complain they are too long. No point in beating a dead horse.

I want to see a blue box drop a little box from orbit onto a group of red boxes,then some really bad boom effect and the red boxes turn black and break into smaller boxes.

This would make me SO happy.

Impatience irritates me, and it probably irritates Uber more.

Meh, it's been 8 months. Its not really being that impatient.

Standard game development cycle is 3 years. 8 months is hardly enough to get an alpha build out that's fit to be released to internal testers, let alone the masses.

+1

Having a first playable for something of this scale already on a very modest budget is nothing short of extraordinary.

Especially when you consider that pretty much, everything Uber has done so far has been from scratch, everything.

How did they do this? Because the guys at Uber are the best when it comes to this Large Scale RTS Genre, they practically invented it and certainly have refined it as well!

Mike

Not only that Mike but they aren't pressured by a big publisher and they aren't a group of 50 guys gathered to create a game cause someone gave them time and money to do it.

They actually want to and and passionate about creating this game and without any pressure from anyone other than us (which isn't necessarily a huge factor) a great game can be born within a year!

I believe the game will be much better a year from initial release cause I'm sure Uber will make enough money to finance big updates and awesome stuff that will make us all have nerdgasms for years.

Yeah, I get it, they're moving fast, and I'm grateful they're working. but its still been 8 months of the promised ~year (*and they haven't had the courtesy to say if they need more time*) with little to show up till now.

...

You do realise that people will start complain that the video's are too short from now on, right? xD

I'd say structured haphazardly at worst. Personally I detest the extended Q&A and it seems to VERY quickly devolve into terrible, obvious and repetitive questions.

What would be REALLY awesome is if they took some of the questions proposed in the Forums for the past two to three weeks and responded directly for 10 minutes... and then took questions from the Livestream Chat for 10 minutes. We'd have:

25 to 30mins of "This Week's Presentation",
10mins of "Questions from the Community Forums",
---and then
10mins of "Questions about the Presentation" from the livesteam chat

That's my personal preference.

The one thing that is constant across any development project, is that timescales slip. This holds true for every company, in every sector. It was true when I was working with a friend writing mickey mouse Sales/Marketing apps for the local SME market, it's true for MS writing their new OSs, and it's true for Valve putting a new Half Life together.

The only difference is the amount; sometimes it's only minor issues and stuff only slips by a week or 2, sometimes it's major problems that add 50+% on to original time estimates. In my personal experience, it's very rare for something to get built on-time and exactly to spec, if only because people prefer to err on the side of optimism when pitching to clients. See any public (government) IT development project budget vs actual for confirmation of this

Personally, given the stated 1 year estimate from Uber (which I always thought was a bit too optimistic for a game with this scale), I'd be happy to predict alpha within the 1 year, and another 6 months to progress through to beta and release (I am estimating 18 months total to get to a release product). They already had most of the engine so that's helped the timescales a lot, but there are some things you can't rush, and QA is one of them

Depending on the state of the client build in the livestream on Friday, I reckon it'll be a couple of weeks through to maybe a couple of months to get one they are happy to give to the alpha backers. I am actually exited to see the current state myself; usually I play catchup after the fact, this one I'm likely to set the time aside to watch live

I'd be fine if it slips, just that they aren't saying it. Communication mang =P

If you're concerned about Communication levels, most people on the team can be contacted via PM.

Hey wait. Those are my questions half the time... :cry:

Be sure to put it on the "making of" DVD!

You may have found the reason we end up butting heads on so frequent an occasion then bobucles

I just assumed you planned what to show, because 15 minutes is a pretty exact number.

I assume 15 minutes is just about enough to show everything to everyone without complicating things and making people confused. Last livestream showed that too much technical stuff just makes everyone pissy and annoyed.

No game company ever did this so nobody knows what they are seeing, thats the problem.

Well 15 minutes is damn short!