Some changes in how we use PTE

I'm pretty sure the PA concept art was never used as more than just that. Concept art. It's even under the "concept art" section, and the game trailer is under the "gameplay concept" label. I don't know where you got the idea of it being used as advertisement...

How do you launch the PTE from steam? i cant find anything on the forums (or was to lazy to delve to deeply since the search algorithms sort of suck)

under the properties tab go to betas, then opt into the pte.

Sorry what? Ok, here. Let me pull a link for you.
Kickstarter. A website where anyone from rich snobs to average joes can advertise an idea and ask people to fund their project. PA's original trailer itself, point in case, was more than enough incentive for people to fund the project of Planetary Annihilation. People liked the idea, so the project was funded.

That's how Kickstarter works if you didn't know. Go to any kickstarter page ever that succeeded, and I guarantee you you'll find some type of media promoting what they're trying to get funded. That's called advertising material. It's designed to stimulate interest.

The Kickstarter video is advertisement for PA in every definition of the word. They're even asking for funding within the video. Now, I'm not super-cereal about every little nitpick detail in the trailer, but they obviously put a lot of thought and effort into the video and concepts it showed. The egg, Unit Cannon, Orbital Launcher, Asteroid belt, Halleys, and all of the artwork is extremely well-defined. It's labeled as "Gameplay visualization" and looks close enough to a real game that you have to wonder if it was even a visualization at all. That, specifically, is one of the major points that defined how many people were willing to fund the project.

All of the images including the one in question were released publicly and further fueled the funding of the game. Because they were released publicly instead of kept internal, it gave the backers insight to the creative process, but it also opened the doors to promotion. All images and video Uber released during the Kickstarter and during Alpha, Beta, Gamma, or whatever have you, is all promotional material to fund the game further.

Uberent is first and foremost, a company. As such, they need to make money from PA in order to continue supporting it. They do this by releasing material that caters not only to fans of the game, but also pulls in those from outside the current community. Everything they release publicly is subject to scrutiny, no matter how little it is, and that's one of the reasons most devs don't do this at all. It's difficult to handle the major repercussions, be it good or bad, from anything they do. Any material can be used against them, so clear and concise communication is key. Which is something we haven't seen on a few specific points. One, namely, is the art material used to promote PA's biomes.

The business side of PA is way, way more complex than most think it is, and all of that is only the surface of Uber's everyday trials. I'm not trying to pick sides, or pick fights, I'm simply stating that everything, including the original KS video and concept art is promotional material thanks to Uber's open development of PA and it's completely fair game for fans and customers to ask questions about what and why the material was used or not. The customers funded the project and have freely promoted PA with whatever opinion they see fit. Just like a publisher. Without the customers' satisfaction, PA wouldn't even be here so it's a cruel reminder of how different PA's development is to any other stereotypical publisher-funded game and how it must be treated as such.

Edit'd for clarity.

Edit @ below :

->

Yeap. Called it. Real-world definitions too stronk.

You're right. Sorry. xD Didn't want this to happen anyway. I'll stop.

Yeah, you kinda need to stop trying to simultaneously claim to not be accusing them of false advertising while accusing them of false advertising. Take it up with your local advertising standards agency, see how far you get. That should give your good idea how much merit your position has (none).

We're getting a little off-topic and aggressive here.

Uhh, it's not exactly advertising as much as it is displaying their concept. I mean, it's advertising in a sense, but it's kickstarter it's pretty obvious that it's only conceptual, what with the term "concept" and "conceptual" pasted everywhere... It's like going to a prototype demo, and then complaining that the final product looks nothing like the prototype... Are car companies falsely advertising for releasing prototype car images? Not really... Is NASA falsely advertising by releasing a warp-drive concept image? Pretty sure they're not...

What ever happened to the F11 key that used to show a colored overlay on the map that clearly showed the areas that were unpathable in red? I always thought that was a useful feature until one day it didn't work anymore, and hasn't ever been reintroduced. Can anyone make a mod to enable this feature again? Or is that impossible now with the use of the voxel based pathing system?

Settings, Keyboard, Dev Mode, En/Disable Navigation Debug Info. There don't appear to be default keys.

Awesome! Thanks, that worked!

Not sure if already suggested or not, but why isn't the PTE build advertised in the steam news on the main site of PA? Also the "we are working on" inputs by jables we had here lately? The last news is still about the HR kickstarter, not giving a very optimistic image about the state of the game for the steam community, while there is obviously (for us here in the uber forum) a lot of work going on.

Yeah I think that as well.
Uber is super great improving their communication right now and is working very visibly at awesome stuff.
... visible for us forum goers. It needs to be visible to the world. Even the people who never visit this forums.
I do hope Uber will start with a bit more promotion for their updates once they hit stable at least. In addition some news on steam about the PTE might be cool as well.

Another random idea: In the main menu embed the Uber twitter https://twitter.com/uberent
Just like youtube, but much easier to do updates on very regularly.
Basically a person who starts the game once every 2 or 3 days should see something new there everytime. Nothing big, just some "hey we are still here and working, look here is a new pte/cookies/whatever"

Doesn't even need to be twitter, just some update feed would be fine aswell

I just think embedding twitter is the easiest way to go. Why reinvent the wheel

Are we getting a new PTE soon?

Probably sometime next week.