What would be the killer feature in an alpha?

I'm looking for it to be functionally complete, i.e. a game that I can play and fully explore the features of the game.
So, really, a game that's in Alpha.

I personally would rather have something sooner, so that we could give them feedback, rather than later.

IMO, something functionally complete is a late alpha, that is almost about to enter beta, for shakedown.

Killer feature for me: It runs on Linux. Any distro, not just Ubuntu.

The ability to have me, my best bro and 20 AI scattered across a galaxy, no server nonsense to block us out, the ability to save and load whenever one of us has **** to do and do nothing but throw piles of units at each other for two weeks.
And some micro 4x elements.

Killer feature? Rudimentary loading of mods, along with a model / texture format. It doesn't need to be pretty but I'd love to be able to get some of those 'I never thought they'd want to do THAT' type questions out early.

Yeah, my own thoughts kinda go along these lines as well, gives us modders time to get familiar and work with Uber on things like formats early on.

Also might allow for "Day Zero Mods"

Mike

alpha killer feature ...hmmm ... mouse support
proposed killer feature for beta: keyboard support.

or were they stretch goals to be implemented later, can't remember <ponder>

alpha and beta are always so vague terms, understood very differently by all concerned.

For me, as a first shot at something runnable would be a basic system, where you can try a few basic systems without necessarily being able to really play. e.g:

• - running the game in different variations of client server mode (player numbers, PC numbers, diff. platforms if possible)
  - creating various solar system setups with differing numbers of planets/planet sizes/variations in the planet generator
  - having a look at the available units/buildings with whatever basic behavior currently there (testing the scale in terms of numbers by manually creating huge armies)
  - if any basic AI is there, the ability to let run multiple AIs against each other

all in all more being able to test the infrastructure and the available content, than actually playing. The play tests I would consider to start with beta, but that's just me.

When it comes to what input methods for the game should be developed first, we should start with neural input, followed by (in order):
Kinect (for xbox using the homebrew drivers that let it run on PC)
Kinect (for xbox)
Kinect (for pc, might as well finish with one controller before moving on)
PS2 EyeToy
WiiFit Board
Touchscreen
N64 Controller
Xbox Controller
Touchscreen (Multitouch support)
Voice/dictation
Apple mouse (don't support anything other than primary mouse button)
Nokia N-Gage
Real mouse
Numpad
and finally....

Dvorak Keyboard.


This release schedule will ensure that fans will always praise the drastic improvement in functionality while still wanting more the next release.

Negative. Beta is content complete, i.e. all the assets there.
For Alpha, you're generally looking at functionally complete, but missing a lot of assets (usually with placeholders instead).

Remember, alpha and beta are just .. names. Alpha and beta have more defined defintions for "beta testing" for methods designed with the traditional publisher model, but if you look at indie games for instance, often times new features will get added and rebalanced even after things come out of beta.

In this line: I imagine we will not see all sea units before alpha.

Killer feature in alpha? be able to destroy planets
But I will be happy to test the alpha even without some basic features..

The killer feature would be to turn a lush green prairie with rolling hills into brown and battered crater infested wastelands

Neutrino, Garat (or any Uber employees); I'd like to know what Uber considers to be alpha and beta. Not in academic terms, but in a more pragmatic definition.

Well, I was part of the SMNC alpha/beta so allow me to share my view:
It was next to impossible to draw lines and call one build alpha and the next one beta. We will probably see more of a continued progress over time. As far as pragmatic definitions go I'd say:

Alpha: Good enough to test if it works. Does it crash? Do already implemented core features work as intended?
Beta: More stable build, should run for most people without crashing; still not optimized, low performance unless you have a powerful PC; first attempts at balancing the game; new units/features will be added and tested.

Uber will call it alpha once they have enough to give us backers a first look without frustrating us too much. It will be called a beta once PA works well enough to share it with players outside the hardcore fan circle.

But those are just my guesses. I'm not a developer or Uber employee.

In case you had forgotten, Jessep, you were the one who got me into the SMNC beta. Pretty sure you had only been part of it for a few days yourself before me.

Because it's an alpha I'm guessing Uber just want to get it working on almost all the different hardware configs people will throw at it. The second phase will probably be fixing HUGE game breaking bugs.

Don't expect the game to be balanced or fully working during alpha. I've been in a few before and they really are more hard work than fun. At the time of backing PA i had a few financial issues so i could only get into the beta. In some ways though this is more of a blessing. The frustration of having to go through huge amounts of game breaking bugs / getting it to work in the first place, is something i just don't want to go through right now. When the beta comes around, I'm more than happy going through listing all of the balance changes and minor bugs that crop up.

As for killer feature? The game actually working to some degree on most AMD / Intel hardware configs

I'm being pessimistic again >.<

It would be nice to have some basic scripting / modding APIs exposed, even if not polished or with a risk of crashing if improperly used, so that people can provide early feedback there. I imagine that's a pretty low priority though.

Active developer interaction (to the extent it's feasible with this many people) and frequent updating/bug fixing will make testing feel meaningful, even if frustrating.

This is a good point. If the developers aren't ready to get feedback (still busy working on features) then there is much less of a point to get people on the alpha. I imagine they will need to be at the point where they can break someone off core development and deal with issues that come up during alpha testing - that, or they run it for a week, collect the data, and then dive back into development for a week, release a new build, etc.

So, as I was saying, this takes me back to the "what do you think the killer feature in an alpha be" .. for you?

I for instance, think that once I can smash planets, testing new builds will be AWESOME.