Machine World 2
Welcome to the first week of Early Access!
First of all a big Thank You to all of you who purchased Machine World 2! We really appreciate it. We are also pleased to learn that you enjoy the concept and the possibilities in the game!
We are also very thankful for all the feedback we have received over the weekend, both positive and negative!
We are now hard at work fixing the reported issues in order of importance. First priority is fixing a few problems which have caused a few (<5 that we know of) who have encountered crashes or freezes at startup.
After that we are fixing a few control issues, primarily related to mouse / keyboard input and a few problems with control remapping for multiple joysticks.
Next in order after this are tweaks to the excavator and bulldozer, along with a few physics fixes.
These fixes will be rolled out continuously and immediately, in the main branch. However, we will create a "legacy" branch available to you in Steam properties. This is useful *if* a new fix build should somehow make something worse for you. You will then be able to select the last build and get on playing.
We will be posting patch notes as announcements along with daily major builds.
As always, any questions or comments; post them here, or better yet in our forums. :)
Best regards,
Daniel
Machine World 2 is released!
Greetings,
I have now pushed the big Release Button. (Well it's not that big, but it felt huge to press it :-) ).
I hope this means the game releases instantly, but if not the timing is now out of our hands.
We are very happy that you will finally be able to play MW2, and we look forward to your feedback and impressions! We built this game for you, machine fans such as ourselves.
With your help we can shape and tune this game into something even more awesome!
A few notes on this first Early Access release
First of all, Early Access, what is that to us? In my opinion, Early Access is a preorder at lower price with access to development builds.
We have made sure not to enter EA before we thought the game was stable, relatively tuned and problem free.
Does that mean that it is perfect? No, absolutely not.
That is what the Early Access process is about. We will tune, optimise and extend the game, with your input.
So if you have any problems, regardless of whether it is that something weird happens, or that you have a controller we do not support, or you have worse FPS than you would like, let us know in our forums.
Many thanks in advance!
What happens now?
Honestly, I will personally take a day or two off from coding. We will rest a bit. However, we will monitor the forums and other social media channels, and if something urgent pops up, we will fix it immediately. But do not expect more features during this weekend. :)
The coming week will be focused on these things:
- Ground deformation tuning. The bulldozer and wheel loader needs tuning to more properly push material. This is also why the wheel loader is currently locked.
- FPS optimisation. This is an ongoing process.
- Furniture. We will add a bit more, and rig chairs etc. so they are possible to sit in.
- Work on the mission structure.
(And obviously, fixes to small things that may be discovered during the week).
Updates
As I elaborated on earlier, these will come in two flavours:
- Weekly or bi-weekly updates that land in the "default branch", ie. the one you get when you purchase the game.
- Daily dev. builds will land in the "iterative" beta branch. You can select this in game properties -> beta -> opt in.
So, you get to choose if you want the bigger, more tested updates, or if you want to be on the cutting edge with us and test things as they happen.
Last but not least...
Thank you for your interest in the game! We really appreciate it!
We hope you will enjoy it!
Best regards,
Daniel
12:00 - A little more than one hour to go...Maybe?
However - the release date says in 9 hours and we cannot actually change that indication. Having not done a Steam release before, I am not entirely sure what will happen when we press release.
I hope it relates instantly (as it does on a few other stores). But it may be the case that Valve has to do manual processing at release, and if so we may have to wait until they get into the office.
We will see. But regardless, I will hit the release button at 12:00 CET! :)
The first Early Access build is being compiled as I type this and will be uploaded shortly.
At release I will follow up with release notes and plans for the following week. :)
//Daniel
The day before release...!
Hello everyone,
This is a surreal post to write. It is now the end of the day before release. In less than 24 hours Machine World 2 will be available. After about 3 years in development.
We hope everyone is as excited as we are, and will enjoy the game as much as we have enjoyed making it. In many ways the development has been harder than we thought, but even so it has been a really pleasant journey and we are very proud of how the game has turned out.
What you will play is our vision. Even though we are not done yet and the journey is far from complete, we feel we have accomplished much of what we set out to create.
A game where you have total freedom in a detailed and immersive environment. Waves on the ocean, trees swaying in the wind, day turning into night and with that the sounds change as darkness falls.
This environment is yours to explore and to develop as you choose, with the help of machines we have spent a lot of time trying to get right, to deliver the feel of the real thing.
We will release the game around 12:00 Central European Time.
That marks the end of these three years of closed development, and the start of an interesting journey with you! We can't wait to see what you think about Machine World 2, what you do with it, and how you help us shape the future of the game.
Until tomorrow!
Best regards,
Daniel
5 days to go! Furniture and potatoes...!
Greetings all,
With only 5 days to go, I thought I would end the weekend by addressing two quite common questions:
1. Will there be furniture?
Since you can build almost anything in MW2, and houses are especially fun to build, we made sure you can add everything needed to make a house cosy. Like doors of various types, windows, lights...and yes, furniture. We have a lot of furniture modelled and will be adding that along with other things in a steady stream.
2. Will the game run on my potato?
(Potato = internet slang for inferior piece of equipment)
Yes, if your computer meets or exceeds the system requirements then it will run, and likely run relatively well if you lower the graphics settings. The settings for graphics are quite aggressive and with most things turned off and down it will run on my quite old laptop and still be playable.
As always though, the better the machine, the more settings you can crank up and still maintain a good frame rate.
As the week progresses we will try to post a few more updates. If you have any questions, or things you want us to elaborate more on, just let us know.
Best regards,
Daniel, Lead Developer
Machine World 2 is arriving in 7 days
With only one week to go I want to take the opportunity to elaborate a bit on what we are doing until release, what the pricing will look like, and what will happen after Early Access release next week.
The next 7 days
First things first. We are currently working really hard with preparing more documentation and ironing out the last few wrinkles before release. Among other things we are adding more in-game tutorials and missions focused on getting to know controls and procedures.
Pricing
We have received a lot of questions regarding pricing, and pricing is now set:
Machine World 2 will launch with a price of $24.99 / €22.99 (with Valve’s recommended conversions to other currencies). It will have a launch discount of 10% as a reward to those who have waited patiently and want to get it immediately.
Our pricing strategy going forward is basically that we will stick to that price until we exit Early Access. At or around that point, we will raise the price to account for everything that has been done during Early Access. Also, this rewards those that got in early and participated in EA.
Sales
This is how we think about them. We will not be participating in sales in the near future. It is possible there might be sales when the game has exited Early Access and is *much* further along its life time, but that is hopefully very far off.
However with that said, should we receive a marketing offer we simply cannot refuse (ie. "Hello, we will feature you with a huge banner on the Steam front page for a week if you do a discount"), then we will most likely consider it. But we will not participate in normal Steam sales or bundles.
(Why? Simple: We have too often bought a game at full price only to find it in a 50% sale hours/days later. That is not fun.)
After July 28...
Lats but not least: What happens after Friday next week?
We will probably work even harder.
Updates will come in two flavours, and you will be able to chose which ones you use:
- Larger, well tested updates. We expect one of these every couple of weeks or so. These will have many things incorporated in them and will have been very well tested.
- Iterative updates. These are released very soon after a new feature or fix. Sometimes daily. They will have been tested internally, but not for very long. So these give you access to new things immediately, but they may not be as stable as the large updates.
We will of course keep you updated regularly on what we are doing, and also ask for your input regarding our direction of development.
Last but not least: Thank you for your patience. I know many of you have waited for us for a long time by now. We really appreciate it.
Best regards,
Daniel
PS. Any questions? Just let us know via any of the forums or our social media channels!