Hey everyone! Long time to no post. We duly apologize for our lack of attention to the website. We’ve been busily making changes to the game for our upcoming closed-beta testing as well as managing the lucky beta-testers who supported us on Kickstarter! Holy crap, $35000!! You all are great. Everyone in the team deeply appreciates the gesture. Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten our promise to our backers in opening up beta testing. Trust me when I say we’re really close!
The most exciting news is that Alex, Brian, Jess, Tim, and Howard are at the annual Games Developer Conference in San Francisco right now. We’ve had many great demos with too many people to name from friends, fans, publishers, and more. With that said, I’d like to reveal new screenshots from that our pre-beta GDC demo! Click the link to hit the full gallery, but here’s a preview:
[singlepic id=123 w=320 h=240 float=center][singlepic id=124 w=320 h=240 float=center]
As GDC wraps up, we’ll be back in the office and chugging full steam ahead on getting all the final pieces together for PvP closed-beta release. To give everyone a head’s up, we’ll be doing a staggered opening. This is the norm for beta testing to ensure that our servers don’t get destroyed when we allow too many players in. Better to have some playing than have everyone try at the same time and break everything—meaning no one plays.
We ask for your continued support and patience in these matters. Rest assured in that progress is being made every day. We’ll have a lot of new things included a new website and features in the game.
Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve been working on in preparation for closed-beta:
– Overall game performance optimizations
– Server performance optimizations
– Gameplay tweaks and changes
+ Spotting mechanic now spots individual components to allow for strategic destruction of components
+ Ship flight model is realistic and based on position and power of engines
+ Velocity transfer from ship to gun projectiles drastically improved, leading targets works as expected
+ Integration of basic skills
+ Better diagetic feedback on repair mini-game
+ UI overhaul
+ Making new maps and polishing old maps
– Stream Integration
– New website for beta with new information
– New gameplay trailer when our visuals (color gradient, skybox, in-game camera effects, UI feedback, explosions etc…) are working and performant
All this for… CLOSED BETA TESTING!!! WooOOoOOOOOo!!~~
As for our other Kickstarter prizes, here are some updates:
– We’re waiting for the physical mock-ups for the USB bullets 😀 There was a delay since our sales rep was out sick and they’re working with an overseas supplier. Currently, it’s at the overseas pressing facility so once that’s done we’ll get it and snap some photos
– We’ve received the bulk of the log books, photos below, and all the artists will be doodling and drawing on some of the inside pages. Each book will be unique! Awesome!
– We’ve selected our poster manufacturer and are waiting for proofs
– For t-shirts, we want to wait a little longer for some more survey responses to come in so please fill those out if you are waiting for a t-shirt so we can make appropriately sized orders. There are significant cost differences with the numbers.
And most importantly of all. Thank you all so much for supporting us. We know you are all waiting eagerly to play the game. We’re working as hard and as quickly as possible to put out a streamlined and enjoyable experience for beta—extremely close! Please feel free to communicate with us through our Forums, Facebook, Twitter, or emailing us (feedback at musegames dot com).