As promised, BETA 2 is going out today. Users who have pre-ordered it will soon have access to it as well.
That said, I want to make sure you guys are aware of some issues. Real life (TM) has inserted itself into our beta process as Seattle (where GPG is located) is experiencing a bit of a snow storm which is reducing their manpower and there's a blizzard on the way to Michigan as well.
As a result, this beta is a lot rougher than we had intended it to be so let me walk you through some of the issues:
UPDATES
The internal build number of what you're getting is 825. We will be updating it to 826 later today. That's right, there will be an update today. There will also probably be an update tomorrow depending on the weather.
Build 825 does not filter out games in progress from the Internet Games list which, as you can imagine, means that trying to join those games would be futile resulting in an infinite wait to connect. That's what 826 will correct.
BUGS
Don't bother reporting bugs for this build. There's a tonof them. We just didn't have time to put this through QA to nail down the zillions of bugs. Here are some of the more serious ones:
- The list of Internet games is crashing the game for some people. This is pretty bad since you have to get to this screen to play (even single player against bots). It's intermittant which means it won't always happen to you so you can keep trying. It hasn't happened to me but it has happened CariElf a few times and it usually happens to Zoomba.
- Because we've focused our attention on #1, we don't yet know just how good the multiplayer connectivity works. You'll note that there are no ports to open here. As long as you aren't behind some nasty firewall, it is supposed to "just work". Whether that is the case or not will be something we'll learn from you guys.
- There are numerous UI issues we're still working through.
BALANCE
Go ahead and report on balance issues. This build has NOT been balanced. Let me stress what that means: It won't be nearly as fun as we had hoped it would be because we didn't have time to set the numbers up.
What does balance mean? Imagine Total Annihilation if building a solar plant took 1 minute instead of 5 seconds. That one change might have ruined all of TA. Demigod has many of these kinds of things including:
- Stun. Lots of times you will get stunned by other players. I personally found that very frustrating and we're working on balancing that.
- The power of the flags (which aren't labeled correctly yet).
- The power/expense of citadel upgrades.
- The # of creeps you start out with.
- Whether you should start out with any flags captured or not.
- The effectiveness of items and artifacts and such.
Those are just a few things right now that can drive people crazy in the game. We went through this with Sins of a Solar Empire when trying to figure out how powerful siege frigates should be.
OTHER SOURCES OF PAIN
We have not finished implementing our system of making sure people have the right versions and such. It'll get straightened out shortly but it will likely result in some pain for this beta.
Getting games going with people on-line. Painful in most release games, particularly painful here. We're working on this. Both teams are very familiar with this stuff so we will be working to resolve all those annoying multiplayer issues.
As the guy who helped pioneer com-napping and putting a flash tank to die into my opponent's vehicle plant and giving my opponents metal makers in TA, I can assure you that I'm all over working with GPG and the rest of Stardock to get code in for quitters and look for exploits.
Stay tuned
