Better Late Than Dead
The Development Process & Weekly Milestones
I wanted to go into a little detail about the development structure that we're implementing for Better Late Than DEAD. As you are involved during the Early Access period I felt it would be great to let you know how the team works and how we will begin to implement suggestions and fixes.
First, we will work on a weekly milestone list. This list is everything that we aim to complete between Monday - Friday. We've published our first weekly milestone list at: http://steamcommunity.com/app/352950/discussions/0/541906989412361083/
Each week, me and the team will go through all of your suggestions, calculate the time required and then prioritize these to organize the following weeks milestone list. This allows us to actually respond and implement community feedback on a weekly basis. Of course, big suggestions may take longer than a week.
Every week will have fixes, potentially a new feature and the team are working hard on adding new items/ crafting recipes each week. Of course some weeks may look more packed than others, but this system lets you see everything we're working on.
I have also slightly updated the trello system. I think this won't necessarily be a place for bugs (We have a bugs section in the Steam Forums). This will be a place to show you progress of the weekly milestones and to see what type of features/ items could be implemented into the game. Check it out at:
https://trello.com/b/Y4XPBL2l/better-late-than-dead-community
Of course, we will be reading and replying to all comments in the forum so please keep suggestions coming, even the most simplest of fine tuning can really improve game quality.
All the best,
Chris
Update 0.11.7
It is time for another update. We have listened to the community and have started to make some changes to the game based on your suggestions. We are also working through the bugs which have been reported.
The following changes have been made
0.11.7
- Stones no longer instant kill animals
- Items now stay equppied when loading a save
- Duplicating item bug fixed
- You should now hear a sound when shakig trees
- You can now hold down left click or E to repeatedly shake a tree
- You can now turn around when using focus mode (Right click)
- Bears now have a bigger aggro range... No more sneaking up on them
Thanks again to everyone for joining us on our adventure on this rather strange island.
Many Thanks
Tim
Patch 0.11.6 Now Live
Firstly I would like to apologize for the delay on the latest build. This was due to unforseen errors when uploading and issues with steam DRM. Thankfully this is all fixed now. Of course you can expect the next build soon as well. With many more fixes and performance improvements.
We are constantly trying to improve the overall performance of the game and we will be working on this over the next couple of weeks. We have also taken on board many of your suggestions and are discussing how we can implement some of these into the game to make it more enjoyable for everyone.
A big thank you goes out to everyone who purchased the game day one and are sticking around for the adventure and growth of our game.
Many thanks
Tim
Day 1 Update - Optimization [Now Released]
For all those who have purchased the game already, thank you for joining us on our little journey through Early Access. As ever we are trying to respond to major issues as soon as possible and of course to all of your posts in the forums.
We have been working hard on doing our first round of optimization on the game, the changes are as follows.
0.11.6
- Changes made to trees to improve performance
- Changes made to blur fx to improve performance and look
- fixes to current translations
A short update list today but we will have another update for you tomorrow.
Thanks again to you all
Tim
Better Late Than DEAD Is Now Live!
David Sixty Four gives a brief 3 Minute review of his experience with the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OpoT8mJ-zY
And Randomise User shares his first day on the island:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSNXEzP9LHk
We have two massive focuses for the first couple of weeks. The most important being optimisation, please report any issues you have with performance and if possible send us your computer specs (Preferably a dx diag) to support@excalibur-publishing.com and we will do everything we can to increase the games performance.
The second objective is to really nail down a sense of what the community are after. We have a development roadmap in place which include working on trap system, sleep system and multiplayer, but we have factored in free time to work on community feedback too. It will be very exciting to see what you all want from Better Late Than DEAD over the coming months, so keep suggestions coming.
I’d also like to introduce everyone to Dragon Stryder, he has been part of the community for several of our other published games and he’s kindly offered to help us out in the forums as a mod, answering questions and he may raise some important issues from the community. He is not part of the development team, but considering this is early access, there’s an argument that everyone is part of the development team!
Anyway, thanks for all the messages, suggestions and feedback. We will be around to answer as many questions as possible and value all of your support.
All the best,
Chris
Better Late Than DEAD... It Lives, Very Soon!
We are fast approaching the Early Access launch of Better Late Than DEAD. We’d like to thank many of the community members for getting involved in the forums to offer support and suggestions. We have a long road ahead of us and we are at an early stage that allows us to really truly take on your feedback.
We also have a special piece of news. We were anticipating a release for MAC later on, but I can confirm that the MAC build will also be available tomorrow too. Of course, standard SteamPlay rules work here, if you buy it on PC you get the mac build and vice versa!
Better Late Than DEAD will launch at the following times:
PDT 3am
CDT 5am
BST 11am
CEST 12pm
EEST 1pm
AEST 8PM
And will cost around $6.99/£4.99 (Launch week discount will be added too!)
To whet your appetite, the game will begin with a comic story. We’ve made this live and you can view it below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8kuiqf7T8A
We are also preparing a development roadmap to release ahead of the launch. I am working with the development team on this to factor in a decent timeframe for features but also to discuss regularly every player suggested comment so that we can implement these features into our development plan. I’m hoping to reveal how we are planning to select features, but suggestions will be prioritised and based on time required. We will try to be as open as possible with this procedure to keep everyone in the loop.
We will read and respond to as many posts in the forums as possible, so please continue to make suggestions as to how we can improve the game.
We will need to work on optimisation early on, this is high priority so we would like your assistance with this. When playing, if you experience performance issues, please get in touch with us via email at support@excalibur-publishing.com with your computer specs and details of the types of performance you are getting. We hope to of course, conquer this issue so your help is invaluable.
We have three months of planned content and improvements to make for Better Late Than DEAD. However, the list below is what we can achieve BEFORE we even consider working on player feedback. We’ve left room in our schedule to implement player suggestions so this will be the bare minimum we can develop.
Development roadmap
- Sleep system
- Trap system
- Bow and arrow (combat and crafting)
- Aquatic animals, yes including sharks!
- New Items
- New crafting recipes
- More island details
- Keybinding
- Better server handling (saving, loading, optimization, etc)
- Dedicated server
- More characters visual on multiplayer
- Game story enhanced and evolved upon
- Bug fixes (This is early access after all!)
- Optimization (Very important, please help us with this!)
There's a lot of stuff here, and I'm pretty sure I missed a bunch, but myself and the team will be around to answer questions and to update you with progress. We are really looking forward to working with you all to make a fun game.
Better Late Than Dead - Multiplayer Set Up At Launch
Over the next few months we will be expanding upon multiplayer for Better Late Than Dead. this includes increasing player count, improving performance and we are considering server options for players so game worlds can stay online 24/7. We will also be implementing the steam features required so that it will be easier to join friends games.
Right now, I wanted to let everyone know that we will have 4 player multiplayer at launch this Thursday. However, the method of multiplayer is a little more complicated and requires some knowledge of port forwarding to connect via IP address. We will be definitely expanding upon this as I know this is not the type of multiplayer many will be expecting, but in the first few weeks, this is the process that we will need to launch with...
See below for a small tutorial as to how players would connect in Better Late Than Dead.
Multiplayer Set Up Guide:
First you will need to make sure your router is accepting traffic to your desired port (default 25000) and PC. Each Router is set up slightly differently for this but portforward.com has guides for most manufactured routers.
http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/
When on this site, you will need to locate your router manufacturer, then the router model. Both of these should be found on the router itself (if any ads pop up, click the x in the top right corner.) The site will then ask you to pick your game, sadly at the time of writing this guide, our game is not listed here, please click on Default Guide which is in the top explanation.
Read this guide through and follow it’s instructions to open the port number for the game.
Once the above has been completed, launch the game and click survive online and then create a server. You can now give yourself and your server a name. Leave the IP as it is and the port should be the same as what you previously set (default 25000). You can also set a password for your server to prevent others from joining. Once you are satisfied with the information click connect.
To connect to a server you will need to have the hosts IP address. They can find this out by typing IP Address into google and it should show your public ip address at the top. Type their IP address into the IP section and then their port number into the port section. Then enter the server password if this has been set. Then click on connect.
Release Date And Even Earlier Access
We wanted to let you all know that we have delayed the launch of Better Late Than DEAD. The reason for doing this is to launch with a better game straight out of the gate. We only get one shot at launching the game and want to release the best version we can. The new release date is the 23rd of July 2015.
We are however still sending out the “Even Earlier Access” codes to the selected winners and we are hoping that they will be able to provide us with valuable feedback over the next few weeks to make a better game for everyone.
Thank you for those of you selected to help us shape the game in the weeks up to launch and thanks to everyone who will get involved in the forums and help offer constructive feedback. This game will evolve on player feedback and we I hope that we can implement your suggestions and make a game that you’ll play for many hours.
All the best,
Chris
Even Earlier Access
We have a small competition on our Facebook page (And for Steam users too, see further below), simply follow the instructions in the post below and we will be selecting a few people to join us in the run up to launch:
https://www.facebook.com/betterlatethandead/photos/a.1011073145576972.1073741830.761190027231953/1028619667155653/?type=1
While we would use the above Facebook post to help gain more interest in the title. We understand that some users do not have and/or do not want to use Facebook. Those who still want to get involved and help us can still do so by either commenting on this announcement... But some may not see this announcement so I've also set up this Forum post:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/352950/discussions/0/598199244892790472/
Good luck and thanks for help spreading the word
All the best,
Chris
Pricing & New Comic Panel
We want as many players to help us progress with the development of the game so we have chosen to lower the entry barrier to allow as many of you involved as possible.
Finally, we also have a new comic panel to reveal today, this is the third one so far and this will be used as part of the intro for the game. but included will be voice over, visual FX and atmospheric sounds. We can not wait to show you the whole thing.
