Chris here! By any sane metric I can think of, AI War 2 shouldn't exist. And yet it's more than I ever imagined it could be.
When we first set out to make this game three years ago, it was far less ambitious. Even that was going to be really hard. Somehow, in the process of falling down the stairs over and over again during this period, we wound up with a game that seems to be superior to the original.
This game shouldn't exist, but it does, and I'm both proud and stunned.
The Secret? Community
The intro to this post runs the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, but it's not actually about me. I'm not capable of making -- even just designing -- this game on my own. I don't think anyone is, really.
The fact that this game exists isn't a testament to me having some brilliant insight or a singular vision that I doggedly pursued. The reviews of the game are lovely, but give me entirely too much personal credit.
The state of this game is thanks to dozens of people critically thinking about this game -- what this one and the original means to them and to others -- and then a process of relentless, continuous, arduous iteration and improvement.
MVP Award: BadgerBadger
This section is long, and in some ways tangential, but if you read it you'll understand why I've put it here so prominently. You have this guy to thank as much as me or Keith for this game existing.
Badger has been involved since the kickstarter, with questions and comments and key insights. For a lot of the first year, he was responsible for something like 80% of the bug reports and feature ideas on our idea tracker. When a lot of other people were just bouncing off the game and waiting around for Keith LaMothe and I to figure things out on our own -- understandable, really -- Badger was there providing really key insight and ideas.
But that was barely the start for him. After a while I was essentially like "so, do you just want source code access, given how much you're doing here?" Because he had started doing some mods -- nanocaust and macrophage, at the time, IIRC -- and it was clear he would be less hand-tied if he had more access.
What happened next was essentially us getting a developer -- volunteer, no less -- who contributed as much to the design of the game as I did, in my opinion. Not only did he single-handedly conceive of and implement the nanocaust and macrophage, but he also did the dark spire and marauder impelementations, among many, many other things.
Some of the most brilliant and devious things that the AI has in this game compared to the first one? Badger. Some of your favorite UI detail screens, like metal flows? Badger.
Not to mention all the bugfixes, balance tweaks, and... just oodles more. This game wouldn't exist in anything like the state it does now without Badger. Any credit for my "singular vision" on the game is doing him a major disservice, but he's a quiet sort of guy when it comes to taking credit, so I wanted to take this chance to call him out in particular.
Growing Volunteer Developer Corps
So, Badger is not remotely the only person I need to call out as being absolutely indispensable.
RocketAssistedPuffin has also been involved heavily for the last year plus, and has taken over huge numbers of things that I never would have had time for. After I implemented the new tech system one way, he's the one who figured out how to make it substantially more balanced. Most of the voluminous "balance change" sections on the release notes are from him working with other players or just reasoning things out himself.
Puffin has also had a ton of ideas on how to make things better in all sorts of sections of the game, and there was a period of about three months late last year where he and Badger were basically doing ALL the development on the game and I just pushed out releases of what they were doing. I was going through a really painful divorce and had a ton of anxiety and couldn't face work, and these two kept things alive and improving.
But it never stopped there. Those new tutorials you like? Puffin. I wrote the bulk of the "How To Play" in-game wiki sections, but the most basic and understandable ones for new players were... again, Puffin. I'm excellent at writing encyclopedic entries that fill you in on huge numbers of details, but he's the one who distilled "what's the most central stuff you need to know, as briefly as possible" so that people can actually get into the game in any reasonable timeframe. Compare his work here to the tutorials I did in the original game, and it's night and day.
And I'm still selling Puffin short, frankly, because he's done so many things over such a long period that I can't remember it all now.
More recently, we've had folks like WeaponMaster and Asteroid joining in and adding lots of bugfixes and quality of life improvements that I never would have had the time to do myself. Things like hovering over galaxy map links to see information on them were Asteroid. Endless tricky bugfixes were WeaponMaster. I'm selling them both short, but the release notes are filled with things that they either implemented or suggested or both.
And it doesn't stop there. Quinn stepped in an made a bunch of additions. Keith laid the original groundwork for the entire game simulation and multithreading (he was the main programmer and designer for the first year and a half, and actually on staff during that time).
And there were so, so many others. And more each month!
Volunteers Beat Modders, I Think
I'm pretty free with the source code access, because I'd rather have a consolidated community of people helping rather than a bunch of mods that you have to hunt down and find.
So a lot of the folks that have turned into volunteers are what would have been modders on most other games. They would have made their own thing that you had to install and then wonder about the cross-compatibility of.
This game does have a ton of moddability, and for anyone who wants to "just" be a modder, that's absolutely fine with me. But for a lot of the mods that are getting the most love, I'm happy to share source code access with those folks so that they're in no way hobbled, and so that their work can go out as additional content that every player can find via in-game options without having to hunt through Steam Workshop or whatever else.
It's an unorthodox approach, but a lot more team-oriented and lets us do quality control on each others' stuff, "mods" included, which is a big win. If someone wants to steal the source code for this game, they can just decompile it like any other game for the most part. I'd rather put my trust in people and see things flourish rather than retain a stranglehold out of fear or pride.
What Did I Actually Do, Then?
All of this help from others let me focus on some of the really tricky architectural and design problems, which led to things like us even being able to HAVE a simulation of this size, and to have it perform as smoothly as it does.
I got to build lots of mechanics that other people then actually turned into specific units. It also gave me time to focus on some really nagging problems that just made the early versions of the game... unpleasant.
If I hadn't had the time to think and talk to people about all those things, we never would have seen all the game evolve this way; I would have been mired in content development and other items just to get the basics out for the game.
The original design for this was something that Keith and I put together as a pair, but it only worked out so well. It was a good foundation, but needed... a lot of help. We both pushed that forward a lot, until the money situation got to the point where he (and all the other staff, eventually) had to step away, and I carried on "alone" (but with all those volunteers).
There came a couple of major turning points where I was reflecting on why I was so unhappy with this game as it existed, and listening to the various gripes that playtesters had, and then I was able to spend a month or three implementing something drastically new.
Fleets are the most notable of those, and they were initially met with a lot of mixed feelings and distaste because only part of my idea was there on the first public launch of those. Only in the last month or so has that feature completely come into its own, and that also had a lot to do with continuous feedback from people in early access telling me what they needed and what they did and didn't like.
We also had a number of points during development where we just couldn't escape certain performance problems, because there were suddenly battles that were an order of magnitude larger than the first game (which was itself the largest strategy game simulation of individual units that I'm aware of on the market until this sequel). So I got to focus on a whole bunch of crazy improvements and data structure inventions and even GPU shader tricks in order to make all this stuff work.
Without the rest of the community helping, there's no way I could have had time to work on all that sort of thing, even in three years of development. A game of this scope shouldn't run this well -- it shouldn't be possible -- but it is because I was given the gift of time by so many others.
A Decade In The Making
It has been 10 years to the day since the first AI War came to Steam, and it's been 3 years of developing this sequel.
We didn't do any work on any AI War games from late 2014 through late 2016, but the rest of that time has been spent at least partly working on the original game or this sequel.
From version 5.0 of the original game through version 8.0, Keith was pretty much the sole developer on that while I focused on other things. He built out a ton of creative and clever things that made a return in this game, and also pushed the concept of what the AI could be -- adding in some traditional decision-tree style logic in places in addition to the more decentralized-style AI that I had come up with back in 2009. That one that originally made waves on slashdot and reddit and hackernews and so on.
I've worked as the producer and design lead on this sequel, among my many other roles, and so the fact that there seems to be a "singular vision" is hopefully a sign that I did a good job in that role. But the degree to which this is a product of dozens of people's work, over an extremely long period of time, really can't be understated.
That's what I meant all the way back at the start. This sort of thing shouldn't have happened. It's just so... unlikely. A ton of people came together over a decade and helped make something unlike anything else on the market.
That's before even getting into other major (former) staff contributors like Daniette "Blue" Shinkle doing the vast majority of the art and coming up with the way-prettier style of ship that evolved AFTER the kickstarter, the awesome score by Pablo Vega, and 25 voice actors who did a fantastic job as various humans and the AI.
And good grief, I'd be remiss not to mention Erik and Craig and all the other folks at Indie Bros, who helped manage so many aspects of this game, as well as often doing work like helping clean up voice lines, etc.
I never wanted to make this game, because I didn't think I could. The original AI War seemed to be the high water mark of my career, and I spent a lot of time trying to make peace with that. But when the market shifted in 2015 and 2016 and finances started getting tight, it became clear that returning to the game that started it all was what made the most sense.
Thanks to all of the kickstarter backers for believing that we even COULD build this game. Keith and I felt like we could do something that would make you happy, but probably not something that would top the original. It took two extra years of development and an enormous village of people to make THAT a reality. So thanks to everyone for their patience and support during that time.
I also want to say a big thanks to everyone for their understanding during my divorce, which happened shortly after entering Early Access for this game. That made everything so much harder, and took me out of commission for a full three months or so where I just couldn't work much. I had to learn how to be me again, and come to terms with being a dad with shared custody rather than a full-time father, and all of that was incredibly hard.
But the good news is that, as has happened with this game itself, a lot of things in my personal life have turned out unexpectedly, improbably well in the last year. After deciding to date again (after 18 years off the market, wow), I wound up meeting the woman who is now my fiancée surprisingly quickly (all things considered). Kara and her daughter have made my entire world so much richer than I realized it could be, and my son finally has the sister he's wanted for so much of his life.
I feel incredibly fortunate, and a lot of my ability to get back to work and not crumble under the weight of anxiety and expectations for this game were thanks to Kara's support and presence. The reality of her life as a doctor and surgeon also helps to kind of put my own work into perspective, sometimes, in the best way.
However this turns out financially, and despite my anxieties about my future as a game developer, I'm incredibly proud of what we've all created together, and I feel surrounded by all the right people both at work and outside of work. This has been the hardest three year period of my life, but the end result has all been worth it.
Thanks to everyone, and I hope you enjoy the game -- both what it is now, and what's to come.
Very Best,
Chris
After Two Long Years, AI War 2 Hits Early Access!
It's been quite a saga, if you've followed along all this time. All that extra time paid off!
At this point we have what fans have nearly-universally hailed as a worthy successor to the original classic. We still have plenty more to do prior to 1.0 in Q2 of 2019, but the game is ready to play now and we hope you'll come enjoy it and give us further feedback.
Humanity has already lost the war, and now you command the last remnants in a desperate campaign to take back the galaxy.
More than most strategy games, your actions have consequences: taking every minor outpost you see is a surefire way to alert the enemy and spell your own doom.
Strike smart, capture new technology, and bring down a foe that overmatches you in every way.
What's New In 2?
The sequel improves the UI, the graphics, the audio, and many of the core mechanics. It's an across-the-board upgrade.
But even more than that, it brings in new friends and foes alike -- large factions are now possible, with their own sophisticated AI, economies, and rules.
Marauders are now able to conquer territory, and build up their own bases if left un-checked. The nanocaust feeds on the strength of those around it, while the macrophage happily grows in the background, sending out spores...
Enjoy the classic human vs AI cage match, or expand to a much wider living galaxy.
25% off Loyalty Coupon!
If you own the original AI War, or The Last Federation, or Bionic Dues -- check your inventory on Steam! You may need to restart it, or log out and back in. Inside, you'll find a coupon for 25% off on top of the launch 10% discount. Both are only valid this week, so hopefully this isn't sitting in your inbox too long!
Release Raptor is now free, and freely refund-available.
Okay, wow. It's been a busy couple of days figuring some things out. Thanks for your patience during this time. Things are slightly different than I had expected, but the current setup should let people get the exact result they want.
You will need to request the refund yourself, though, which is different from what I originally said -- I do apologize about that, but see below for the skinny on why that is.
Then we had a snafu based on the fact that I did this late on a Friday, so the game was able to remain up and available for several days.
Suddenly a bunch of people wanted the game, either for free (aka paying for it and then getting a refund) or with us actually getting the money for it. And other people asking not to be refunded.
Finally today I was able to have full conversations with Valve and Humble, we got things taken down, and I finally have some concrete answers for you on exactly what is planned next. Valve had some great suggestions based around the multitude of various requests that people have had during this period. I wasn't sure exactly what to do, so I was very glad for the guidance there.
The Plan: Short-Term
In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor has been taken out of Early Access and out of paid status and is now a simple free 2 play game on Steam. This is provided AS-IS, with no support, simply because folks wanted it.
Unlike most F2P games, this has no form of monetization at all. Various people wanted to play the game, and we spent a lot of time making it, so this was better than just taking it off the face of the earth. This was a really good suggestion from Valve, I thought.
Since there are such varying degrees of desire from folks on whether or not they want a refund, we're making this a process you can control. If you want a refund, just go through the normal refund process and it will accept your request for a refund regardless of playtime or purchase date.
A Point Of Clarification
If you take the refund option, the game will be removed from your account. However, given that the game is now Free 2 Play, you can just install it again directly. If you ever uninstall it again it will again disappear from your account when it is in F2P status, though.
If you have the game and did not refund it, it stays in your account and will count toward your total number of games. If you have it via the F2P form, it won't count toward your number of games.
This is... unintended on my part. However, it's how F2P games work on Steam, and this is definitely better than nobody having access to it. We're not ever going to take this game out of free status, so there's no real worry if you don't have access to the game in your account while it is not installed. It will still be there when you get back.
Also, protip: this game is not linked to Steam in any way, so you can just copy the contents of the game folder onto a thumb drive if you're worried about losing it. Burn it to a DVD if you like. Easy peasy!
The Plan: Long Term
I hope that in some future year that this game becomes viable. If that's the case, then we will likely start working on this again under the banner of In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor 2.
In other words, that new project would not affect this one, and this one would stay free and untouched. Essentially I guess you could consider this one a demo for the theoretical sequel that we would potentially do a year, two, or three from now.
A sequel is in no way being announced, and I have no immediate plans to work on one. It's something I would like to do, but that's about it.
Should You Request A Refund?
If you want one, then absolutely: yes! I don't want to take your money if you don't want to give it to us. If you like the game and want us to keep the $4.50 or so you spent on it, then we're obviously grateful. But please in no way feel guilted into it or anything like that.
If you get the F2P version of the game and want to throw some change our way, we do have a tip jar, but we'd be just as happy to see you try out one of our other titles.
Possible Monetization?
I created some trading cards for the game, and they look really cool I think, but games with absolutely no monetization cannot have them. Some folks have suggested that they want a hat or something anyhow, so I guess we could do something like provide one or two of those at the minimum possible price. Then the trading cards could come out, and so on.
I'm a little wary of doing that, though, because then I feel like that creates some degree of obligation for support. For now, I've included the images for some of the cards in this post.
What's Next?
We're going to be putting all our efforts into AI War 2: Rise from Ashes, which will be a kickstarter project that then comes over to Steam. If you want to be emailed about that when the time comes, then feel free to email us at arcengames at gmail dot com noting that you'd like to get a notice when that project goes live.
Thank you very much to everyone for your support (of so many kinds) during this trying time. It means a lot to myself and the rest of the team.
Best,
Chris
Time for some straight talk: Release Raptor is being pulled and refunded.
First up: as promised, Alpha 16 is now out. This includes fixes, improved and extended AI, a new robot, and a minimap.
In A Nutshell, What's Up?
I'm going to give all the customers of In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor a full refund and let them keep the game, then take the game off sale. The game is selling extremely poorly, even below what happened with Starward Rogue.
Isn't Part Of Early Access "Don't Make A Game You Rely On EA Sales For?"
Yes, this is very true. However, I stated upfront that our reason for doing EA with this game was partly as a market survey of sorts. I felt like that would be a way of determining how big this game could get. With Starward Rogue, and indeed some of our other past commercial failures, we put in everything and the kitchen sink and then there wasn't a market there.
I never expected that one option even on the table with this one would be "actually don't do it at all," because the premise is incredibly exciting to me and seemed like something other people would also be very interested in. But just from the concept alone, we have a lot of pushback from press; and despite some quite positive coverage from some reasonably biggish youtubers, that isn't moving the needle at all.
We don't need Release Raptor to be our sole source of income, or even our largest one. However, if it's going to be our largest expense it also has to vaguely earn its keep or at least show the promise that it will someday do so. That's what is missing here.
Why Not Just Build Out A Stripped-Down Version 1.0 That Is Worth $5?
I honestly don't think there's any way that a lot of people wouldn't be left grumbling at that. I personally will also lose far more money trying to do that than I already am, and probably some of what little staff we have left would have to be released. It's just far, far too risky. I'd rather be known for honorably pulling a game than slapping a 1.0 sticker on something -- whether or not that experience is worth $5 or not, we both know the perception would be there.
So Are You Untrustworthy, Or What?
The immediate idea is probably to think "wow they delayed it a ton and then are possibly canceling it right after it comes into EA?"
My response to that is that this is exactly how you want a game company to comport itself. I held back the game while I didn't feel like there was enough there for other people to catch the vision I have for what it would turn into. I'm not going to take anybody's money and run; in fact, I'm going to eat a big fat loss out of it and you get a free game if you bought it.
You can certainly argue that I have overreached or have at least misjudged the market in several instances, but I'm not going to sell you a turd and call it ice cream.
Is Release Raptor A Bad Game?
I certainly don't think so, in any form. I play it, and it gives me a feeling of joy. I just love going through and doing things with the raptor. It has an elemental fun factor to it that myself and a number of other people have reacted well to. I thought that it would be enough to provide this, and then the promise of more enemies and tactics and whatnot (sheesh that's what we're known for, people ought to have some faith in THAT bit if nothing else).
That said, people have different degrees of warm feelings toward the controls. That doesn't help. People have different reactions to the environments. Etc.
Was This Just Youtuber Bait?
No. This is a project that I freaking love, and that is based around my favorite animal (velociraptors). It's something I very, very much wanted to see happen.
That said, I won't deny that the idea of a game that appealed to a larger audience and more easily picked up video views was an attractive one. I even considered calling this "Raptor Simulator," to the dismay of my staff.
This was never intended to be like Goat Simulator (which I've never played, but my understanding is that it's a silly bug-fest just centered around messing about and not doing anything). I figured we might be able to pick up some of the Goat Simulator crowd since you CAN come in here and just mess about, but what I didn't realize was that this would create a stigma that would lead people to then to think it's more vapid than it is.
Which, launching with less content in terms of enemies and tactical situations than I would like, only reinforced that perception I suppose. "There's not enough to do" is probably the number one complaint, and I thought I had made that clear enough from the start. And we've been managing daily updates with substantial new content, which I think is pretty darn impressive.
Then plan was to put out more content in a month than most other EA games put out in a year, and just keep on trucking with it. We've done it before with other games, multiple times, and it's something we were well geared-up to do this time, too.
What Went Wrong?
I... am not entirely sure, honestly. People's perception of this was not matching up to what it was, partly. Also I suppose I should have made more grandiose claims and been mysterious and vague instead of transparent and clear. It's way more exciting when you don't know what's going on and "it could be anything -- it could be EVERYTHING!!"
I'm all for enthusiasm, but hype is not something I really like. We had a lot of hype for A Valley Without Wind, and that burned the company and myself in some fairly profound ways. So I'm really wary of hype; that was our one game that had it, and it was distinctly unpleasant. Well, okay: I guess there's also hype around Stars Beyond Reach at the moment, which is another project of ours that I refuse to release yet because I don't think it's good enough yet.
Ultimately I don't think it can be blamed on any one thing. I do know that in the past -- going back to 2014 with the release of The Last Federation, and then everything before it -- we made almost all of our sales via Steam and people finding our stuff on Steam. We'd see a bump in sales for a few hours after a Kotaku piece or a Total Biscuit video, and literally no other website or youtuber made any bump that we could discern.
Being on the front page of Steam was the big thing. We've had one title in the past that have reached the #6 top seller spot on Steam as a whole (IIRC it was The Last Federation), and multiple titles that have hit the top 10 sellers on Steam as a whole (even A Valley Without Wind).
It used to be super concerning if we weren't in the top 20 bestsellers on Steam for at least a day or two, and when we dropped down into the 60s on overall game sales it was basically game over until the next discount promotion. Discount promotions, even as recently as 2015, had more weight behind them, too. The lack of gamification of recent seasonal sales has been bad for the small developers, in my opinion.
Overall the market is more crowded now, and gaining visibility is harder. We tried advertising this time, but we literally spent more money today on advertising than the game made. Win!! So this is some sort of New Market now, anyhow, with something approaching the App Store effect that we've seen on Apple devices. I was incredibly paranoid that would happen going all the way back to 2009, and then I gradually got less worried about it, and now here we are. How many indie developers do you know of who have made more than one or two games at this point? That's a bit scary to think about.
It's not all doom and gloom in the market, obviously: in some ways, opportunities are larger now than they ever were. And it's certainly a better market now than in mid-2009 when I first started out with AI War. So it's certainly not all market forces, and I don't mean to imply that.
At the end of the day, for whatever combination of reasons, this doesn't seem to be the right game at the right time. Might we pick this project back up in the future? I'd like to think so. As I said, this is a personal passion of mine (raptors), not some Goat Simulator knockoff to me. But such is life.
What Next, Then?
One of my core conclusions from this, despite how much I have tried to defy this my entire career as a game developer, is that folks pretty much just want strategy games from me/us. This is not all I want to do! I want to make games where you shoot things, and games where you're a raptor, and all sorts of other things! I have varied interests and tastes, and I don't want to do one thing for the rest of my life.
That said, given the choice between leaving the industry and making strategy games, the choice there is freaking obvious. I absolutely love making games, despite the many negative sides to it. So that's what we'll do: we'll make you another strategy game.
Specifically, we'll go back to the game that is still our top seller, AI War: Fleet Command, and we're going to do a proper updated sequel. But at this point I can't afford to do half a year or a year of development "on spec" to then find out if you're interested or not. So we'll likely run a Kickstarter for this, as much as I've avoided Kickstarters and never wanted to do one. And if that doesn't work out in a way that feels financially safe, then there are some other options on the table, too.
At any rate, people have been clamoring for this for years: an AI War sequel with a better UI, better performance, better networking, better graphics, moddability, and so on. We're now in a position where we know how to do all those things, and goodness knows we know how to make AI War better than we know how to make anything else under the sun. That's our freaking bread and butter right there.
I suppose there will be some people who are thinking "yay, end of the stupid raptor game, and we get the AI War sequel that has been quietly talked about for a year or so now!" And if that's how you feel, fine. But you were going to get that anyway, and I just wish that I also got to make this raptor game to go along with it.
Be Wary Of Knee-Jerk Reactions
It's very tempting for me to blame the state of the market, or whatever other external forces. Really it was a combination of things. So I have to be pretty careful of not giving in to negative emotions on my side.
On the other end, as an outside observer I hope that you also look at this for what it really is, and not the knee-jerk reaction that you might have. I am the Anti-Sean (cough). I will treat you fairly, communicate clearly and often, release frequent substantial updates (just look at our history), and try to over-deliver. This is what you want.
In an ideal world nobody ever makes a mistake. In the actual world, we have to think about how we want people to behave when mistakes inevitably do happen. I am sorry this had to happen, though. I wish it would magically change, but we're well past that point I think. I want to take a moment to thank everyone that did support the project, though -- it really meant a heck of a lot to me.
Okay, so first of all I want to apologize for not having the minimap in here or any new robots, which were things I'd said I was going to do today. We do have some new rooms for you, though, and some various tweaks and fixes to a number of other rooms.
The bulk of today's coding time was instead spent on refining the controls for the raptor and giving you some more options on tuning things there. This was probably the largest complaint about the content that is actually in the game at the moment. Some folks had some really good points about specific issues on reddit and the Steam forums, so I decided to switch gears and focus on those elements today rather than the minimap et al. Those will be tomorrow instead!
There are also some bugfixes in here, and some updates to add new goodies into the level editor. You can use those if you like (the level editor is part of the game), but mainly those are for Blue so that she can create some new goodies for you coming up. Cinth added some really awesome arches for ceilings that he modeled and got to a reasonable polycount with painstaking effort, so we're all quite pleased about these getting in there. He actually had those done late last week, and I just ran out of time to actually get them into the level editor palette.
Anyhow, so that's Day 1 of us actually having the game out. There will be another build tomorrow, and then most likely one on Sunday. Saturday is my son's 6th birthday party, so I'm going to be completely absent that day. In case you ever run into problems with a new build, I always put up a beta build calls "lastknowngood" in steam, so you can revert to that if a new build is temporarily causing you problems and I'm unavailable to fix it for whatever reason.
Thanks to everyone for their support and suggestions!
In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor... well, released (Early Access).
https://youtu.be/2l4XISfQFbU
So... many... puns possible. I look forward to seeing what the press come up with (as long as it's not along the lines of No Man Buy, heh).
At any rate, today has been really hectic and I had to push the release back by one hour so that I could finish getting the video and screenshots up and everything. And that was even with Cinth doing basically everyone on the screenshots.
I really want to give a huge thanks to everyone who has been such a big help on this game: Blue, Keith, Cinth, Craig, Pablo, and Misery in particular. But there have been so many other people as well, including in particular garpu and jerith, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some folks, for which I apologize. And that's not even mentioning the recent raft of testers, who are all thanked on the release notes page.
All righty. Speaking of release notes, I'm calling this first build for EA "Alpha 14," because it follows 13 pre-EA demos. That's on a new release notes page for during EA, since the pre-EA page was pretty darn huge by now.
Suffice it to say, the release notes for Alpha 14 itself are pretty pathetically thin. It's just been one of those days where a ton of other stuff sucked up the time; that shouldn't be the case tomorrow or the next day, since the big time-sinks today were store-related things and creating the above trailer and so on.
I was up super late last night, so I'm going to actually take off at 5pm today rather than working into the night. My son really really wants me to push him on the swings in about 10 minutes, too, so there's also that. He's really excited that this is out now, and that hopefully I won't need to be working weekends constantly again for a while. :)
Anyhow, I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone, and I hope you enjoy the game. And I'll have more updates for you tomorrow!
Pre-EA Demo 13 Out Now; EA Starts Tomorrow; Plus a Let’s Play!
Release Raptor Pre-EA Demo 13 is now out for testers! Demo 12 came out earlier today, so we've been busy.
Tomorrow is our release into Early Access, and while we haven't been able to do everything I had hoped by this point, we have done a lot of things that I hadn't expected to get to, so I guess it balances out. I'm really proud of the current state of the game, and it's going to grow rapidly over the next days -- not to mention weeks.
The performance of the procedurally generated levels is just on a whole other level compared to even earlier today, and I'm very excited about that. Visually I think it looks better, too, and that's only going to get better as I get more IES-based light cookies in there. Right now there are still some cases where we can get some ugly light bleed through walls thanks to changes made today, but that's relatively minor and something that we'll fix as we find them. I think all the most obvious cases have already been found, but we shall see.
In other news, I thought I'd share a series of screenshots from one of my test runs today. Note that I wasn't exactly playing strategically, I was more having a fun rampage, heh -- so I took a looot of hits.
I didn't take a screenshot from very early in my run, when I was at the airdrop site in the alley. However, this was the first hall in the first building I went into:
I continued around for a while and explored a few apartments, then went out into an alley between this building and the next. Cicadabots were... everywhere. RUN, FOOL!
I leapt up one fire escape and then wound my way up the other one using it as cover from their scouring attacks. I didn't bother destroying them much, because they don't shield Father Brain by being alerted. I think I did stop to leap off the fire escape and kill a couple of easy targets in them just because, though. ;)
In the next building I broke a lot of stuff and just kind of took out some aggression on a pair of apartments. There was a hole in the floor of one leading down into another, and what you see below is a lot of the wreckage left from my passage. Well, a little of it. ;)
Next up was another building on, getting into an industrial section next to these two apartment buildings. This giant room is meant to be a miniboss room, but we don't have any minibosses yet (sheepish grin). I was hoping to get one in today, but didn't have time because of all the other stuff that you see in those two release note lists.
THAT said, holy smokes the Cicadabots made it so that no miniboss was needed. That was unexpectedly intense (there were more than you can see in this one shot).
Unlike a regular miniboss, I didn't have to actually fight these (well, if I didn't sneak past the miniboss). But I chose to, just for fun (or spite?).
I can't express how badass I felt at the moment there looking around the room. I felt like a raptor had wandered into Portal and just wrecked everything.
I went through a few more industrial areas (no sewers in this particular run, it turned out), and then came into the lab at the end of the level. I was careless coming into the atrium of it, and a couple of Cicadabots jumped me.
I only took one hit, though! I freaked myself out a little bit, though, because after killing them their bodies were still there and kind of propped up, and I was paranoid that they were still alive. So I jumped on one and it kind of rolled around lifelessly, and I couldn't help but giggle a bit.
This is what Father Brain looks like when his shields are up. And I'm about to get blasted in the face trying to take a screenshot of it, naturally. There were turrets and yet more Cicadabots all up in here; fortunately no Beetleclefts hiding in the corner, though (or as Misery termed them, "those abominable green things.")
The shield is a really fun thing, because you can actually use it as a defense for yourself, too, heh. You can run up and down the big dome of it, and it blocks enemy shots. So you can hide on one side of the bubble, then pop over and get the enemies, etc. Father Brain taunts you mercilessly if you mess with his bubble too much, but still.
Yeah, so I got shot a LOT there. It was my own stupid fault, mostly from doing screenshots and not playing smart in general. I should have used the bubble more to my advantage. But now everyone else is dead except Father Brain and myself, and he's utterly defenseless.
You have to destroy the various parts of him in sequence (the five blue wires, then the five red wires, then the outer ring riser, then the outer glass, then the inner glass, then the core and you win). I made it extremely fun to do it quickly if you learn the sequence and run and smash as you go. I can get him down in under ten seconds, which just feels awesome because of all the explosions from him.
If you take it more slowly and everything isn't fire and death, then you can hear him call for help, beg, and try and trick you into leaving. I wrote those lines, but I remember when Ben and I were recording them I hit a point where we were both laughing with it and going "man that's DARK."
Actually the poor shield generator (not yet in the game) is way darker, but hey. When Craig was working on some of the audio for the shield generator, he said "is there a way I can not kill that guy and just have him be my buddy or something?" He won't be your buddy, but if you can avoid him and the things he's shielding, then you can at least spare him. (He never ASKED to be a shield generator. He's on your side! Etc. Those aren't the dark ones, obviously.)
Needless to say, this particular time I went for the kill with speed and couldn't even hear what Father Brain manged to get out before he went permanently offline. Another area secure! :D
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And with that I'm going to close it out for the night, given that it's 2:30am.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to have to focus on getting a new trailer up as soon as possible, but Cinth is helping with taking new screenshots for the store, which I really appreciate. I want to get the minimap in there if at all possible after that, and then whatever other bugs pop up overnight, if they are blocking.
And then, aside from whatever new reports, it's on to more good stuff -- more enemies and locales and so on! I've enjoyed this polish pass, but we've had a lot of such passes (as the release notes show), and getting to focus on content more will be a nice change of pace. Fortunately Blue has been cranking out the locations to play in. She has this cool new rooftop scene that hopefully will be fully ready tomorrow; it's almost there as it is.
All right, goodnight. As you can tell, I'm in a good mood. :)
More coming tonight. Thanks to all the testers who are helping us with this! :)
Release Raptor Build For Testers Is Now Out!
Just a brief note now, to let folks that we are (roughly) on schedule for once. It took me about 8 hours longer than I expected, but it didn't push back into a further day, so that's good. ;)
If you're curious about the release notes, those are here.
Father Brain and procedural generation (procedural assembly?) are now in place, and that's the big news. Then lots of little annoying things were fixed up prior to putting in new testers, based on my own experiences and those of some of our other testers we already had.
And with that I'm going to close it out for the night. I'm going to be focusing tomorrow on getting the marketing materials and getting any release-blocker issues taken care of, plus getting a few quality of life things in there.
Then on Wednesday if the building isn't on fire then I can focus on more content. Blue will be focusing on more content tomorrow anyhow between fixing a few things anyway, so there will be new places to explore either way. :)
Enjoy a few more screenshots from a run of mine tonight. :)
Tomorrow: Day of the Testers; Wednesday: Day of the Release
We have been very busy. That said, another minor delay. But! This time there is a huuuge silver lining if you just can't wait to get your hands on the game: you CAN get it tomorrow.
Wat?
The current delay is caused by a couple of things, but the need for adequate testing (even for an early access launch) is one of them. There were some severe performance issues in procgen-levels-only that I've ironed out in the past day, and that set me back. It also made me really antsy about wanting more eyeballs on this before we start selling it.
You Can Get A Copy, Tomorrow
So! If you're interested in testing the game, please send an email to arcengames at gmail dot com, and we'll provide a limited number of people copies of the game based on our best guess as to who will give us actual testing feedback based on how they present themselves.
This does mean that you'll get a free copy of the game that will continue to work after we release it. Free stuff, yay!
But, as we've done in the past with testers on other games of ours, our one request is that you do a good-faith effort to actually not just play the game, but also report any bugs or issues you find. Instructions one how to do that will be provided via email, but it's basically just mantis bugtracker reports.
Despite one person having a crash in a video today, I'm pretty confident in the demo levels at this point (they are limited in scope and have been beat to heck and back by press and a few testers we do have and of course our staff). The procgen stuff is a lot more voluminous and has had far fewer eyeballs on it, which is my core concern.
Streamers Get A Copy Tomorrow, Too
We've been hesitating on reaching out to twitch streamers until the procgen stuff is in place, because that's what is needed for them to really be able to do longer-term streaming. That will be ready enough tomorrow, although I shudder to think that some of them may run into some issues like being able to find a hole in a room and jump out of the level and get infinite falling death, or find some other issue that we just need to spend 5 minutes on to fix once we (or someone else) find it.
Having press/streamers and QA running simultaneously is not the ideal, but doing that AND having a launch at the same time is straight-up stupid if you have any alternative. So if you're a streamer and you run into a problem, please let us know if you will, and give us a little extra slack for just two days. ;)
Full Release Into EA On Wednesday The 21st
This last delay will give us a few things:
I'll have time to do a last trailer and screenshot set that best represent the game on the storefronts.
We'll have time for more press and streamers to get in there and do previews so that potential customers can be more informed on launch.
We'll be able to run an intensive last cycle of pre-EA testing with more testers than we currently have, and thus have a smoother launch from that angle, too.
If I happen to have spare time on my hands (haha), then I can throw in a few extra goodies for the launch. Otherwise those can come the day after launch.
Last Note
I know that all these delays have been really frustrating to folks, and may have looked unprofessional in some respects. I've spoken on the Arcen forums on this subject at some length, but basically I've been caught between competing "challenges" for a while now.
Ultimately I've chosen to continue to do what is in the best interest of the launch of the game, even if that means a later launch, and I think that you'll appreciate that when you get the launch version. And then hopefully that will transition well into us making more content very quickly after launch, too, to further reinforce the forward momentum we're picking up at this point.
Anyway, so I apologize about the rollercoaster this has been. Hopefully if you're invested enough into the idea of this game that this has been a big frustration for you, you won't mind getting a free copy in exchange for some early testing. We can't give out a thousand copies of the game in that way, but having a few dozen extra sets of eyeballs would be a really good thing as a last sanity-check.
Thanks as always for reading, and for your support!
