Planetary Annihilation Alpha Information

What platforms will the Alpha be on? I hope it won't be Windows only. I will only be upgrading my amount another $30 if the Alpha will be on Linux as well.

Edit > Found a reply about this in the other pages of this thread, could be get it confirmed though how platforms will be dealt with?

Read on starting here.

Mike

I agree.

Minecraft had a variable asston of testers who were simple cases of pay-to-get-in and didnt even get a longterm reward for it. They were "devalued", it probably made the game better since it funded the game better to better be supported and updated and built up higher, and it had the same effects as a small alpha test to find bugs from specific things like gravity and physics and vital game items needing to be added for basic function. Their alpha covered everything probably the best in all of history.

This game is a different case, but all the above things can happen like clockwork in this game too.

I was in the mine craft Alpha like all the other tens of thousands of people who were, and yes, it didn't feel like being a special snowflake: but at the end of the day, its not about me or anyone alpha testing. Its about the game, and more testers = wider net to catch bugs and issues in.

Will the alpha releases trickle down in relation to the kickstarter backers?
ie Will the 10k backers get the alpha first, followed by the 1k backers, followed by the $500 backers...etc?

Something tells me neutrino mentioned this....

Pretty much yeah, makes sense both in terms of the Backer style of KS and the fact that you start off with a smaller user group to test the process and deal with any high level bugs and issues before they're affecting hundred or more people at a time.

Mike

Ah, ok.

This is probably a question that cannot be answered yet (or is impossible to answer), but what would the length of time between each KS tier?
Just hoping that I will be able to make a meaningful impact by the time it reaches the $150 backers.

As quickly as it can be done. Depends how things go.

Mike

Will the alpha have a functioning AI?

At some point, yes; though not necessarily at first.

The Alpha guys will probably be part of the process of teaching the AI.

I don't particularly care if its by backer level, geographic location west to east, or RNG if you're going for "as fast as we can reasonably get people in the game" =p

I thought the AI is trained by pitting it against itself?

Alpha is an extensive technology test. Beta is a gameplay test.

AI training can be done a number of ways based on how it's setup. But any training is (mostly) useless if the mechanics are changing in any significant part. Or so I think...

Are we doing the Neural Networks thing again? I haven't heard much(or paid attention to) about the AI yet.

The simplest neural network to implement is trained by a process of;

• 1. Tweak some numbers randomly a little.
  2. Test the tweaking.
  3. If the tweaking was good, keep it. Otherwise keep the old numbers.
  4. Go to line 1.

Players playing against the AI counts as step 2.

Whether Uber does NN training against people is something I don't think has been explicitly stated yet.

I'm not sure am I understanding this right, what happens if I upgrade from Galactic to Cosmic now?

Is there a difference when it comes to the alpha?

That is a decent question actually. Are the cosmic pre-orders going to get their keys in front of the 100usd kickstarter backers. How weighted is 'early' vs 'level of backing.'

Not that it sounds like its going to be a big deal. They tone here seems to be that the difference between the first alpha and the last alpha players will be a matter of days at worst. I can live with that even if I'm last in line by being a very recent cosmic purchase.

No. No they are not.

Kickstarter backers are prioritised over all levels of pre-order.

Your posts are always spot on Nano, but do you have a dev link to that effect, cause that seems like Mavor is saying Cosmic will get slotted before the 90-150 KS backers.

Tbh I would feel kinda bad if my late May preorder gets me an Alpha key before the guys from September.

All will be moot though if the first and the last Alpha keys all go out the same week.