Who's got alpha?

I got my first personal computer when I was 8, a Tandy Color Computer 2. I'd spend all weekend long inputting games by hand in BASIC so I could play Hobbit, or Lemonade or Pong... only to get kicked off the computer by my sisters the second I had a running game, with them claiming I'd been "hogging the computer all weekend". And they wonder why I don't visit for the holidays.

Methinks thou dost protest too much

My first gaming experience was on a Grandstand branded pong + lightgun console (it was a rebrand of someone else's, but I can never remember which one), which would have been mid-late 70s. We replaced it with an Atari VCS (the wood effect 2600), so it would have been prior to 1978. Both would work directly with a TV, without needing thermal printouts for screen updates

When you look back though, it is utterly astounding how much progress has been made in such a (relatively) short time; my current phone has more processing power than the university mainframe had when I was studying there. It also has more storage available than the entire fileserver infrastructure had at the first major company I worked at. I try not to think of things that way, because that's when I start feeling old :cry:

Super excited for the Alpha <3

Could get it anyday now. And when I do, Imma gonna be busy with starting to mod :3

:roll:

I really think you're assuming too much there.

I have a question that's been bugging me for a while now. That need for modding that some people seems to have, I can't explain it. Why would you mod an alpha game (so, not even remotely feature-complete)? I mean, why would people even play a mod when they're supposed to test the actual game? I thought mods were for when you're bored of playing a game so much you want to change it a little (as in like: I played Skyrim 80 hours, so I would like to see a different take on the gameplay), so you feel like you're already bored of a game you never even played?

Some people might want to play the game under different circumstances, with changes more to their liking.

At this stage, it might be to just get a lay of the coding they will be dealing with.

Yeah, I hope you don't mod it, cause it to crash and then tell the devs about it so they spend hours/days trying to figure out what's wrong only to find out it was your mod that caused the crash. Alpha is about testing their game, not about messing with it before its even confirmed stable in its own right.

I imagine modders want to practice and get to grips with what they can do. I don't think they are necessarily planning to release mods before it's close to finished.

You do it to see what is possible and how to do it. You can bet that I'll have a look under the hood. And I'll make a mod if I can think of something that is useful.

Some of the improvements in FA were heavily inspired by popular community mods. Modding is a great way to test ideas without distracting the developers from building the core game. If the emerging ideas are good they might very well influence the game development. As far as I'm concerned: the sooner the modding begins the better.

If you got a Lego set that was in alpha, would you not try building other stuff with it?

It's less about mods being needed for consumption, and more about the joys of learning and building.

If you guys honestly think that Uber will relinquish access to the servers or let you into the game files to tinker about with anything client-side and allow you to mod anything at this early stage you're delusional.

Seriously guys, stop getting your hopes up about modding the Alpha on day one. You are not testing the modding scope of the game... You are testing the GAME itself.

Once the game itself is stable, then you can try modding it client-side.

Once Client-side mods work, then Uber might let you upload stuff for server-side Mods.

But first comes the base game and all the bugs and problems that need to be settled before you can mod squat.

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Sorry to be so harsh, but you're putting the horse before the cart.
To use the lego example above;

You're asking for Uber to let you build stuff when you only have a dozen lego bricks and none of the lego nubs connect properly with each other yet... and sometimes the bricks explode.

False equivalency, legos are nothing like a videogame.

Spectacularly.

You will not be able to mod in any meaningful way on day one of alpha. You'll be able to start exploring client side files, and see various things, but the scope of moddability will be effectively zero, at least at first. As we keep saying, everything is being layered on iteratively. You don't put all the tools in your workshop before you've built all the walls and a roof.

That and its probably a good idea to keep modding disabled until your sure everything is stable. Easier to debug when you don't have to worry about someone having an active mod when they send you a bug notice.

You're clearly unfamiliar with my woodworking operations.

There is really no way to disable client-side modding (edit menus, replace some textures or models, patch memory). You technically can add some content-check or something like that, but I don't think Uber will do that. They have much more problems to care about.

If you're ok with rust, I won't argue.

Pretty freaking excited!!!!! Looking forward to the email.

So lets just say for argument sake you have crazy strict spam enforcement on your email - or for whatever reason you never receive the email...

Where else could we go to see if we have been given access to the alpha?