So now that some of you guys are playing Alpha...
zex
Join Date: 2009-10-07 Member: 68978Members
Join Date: 2009-10-07 Member: 68978Members
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Based on Alpha content, what percentage of the game do you think is done and how long would you guess it's going to take to be content-complete?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's hard to say at the moment with the horrible latency issues and players DDoSing the servers. This is because they can't see whether or not it's full, and there isn't anything in place to tell the player the server is full.
If the above was fixed I'd say the game is around half way complete.
If you want a percentage based on how complete the game is, 30%.
If you want to know where I got these percentages from, 100%.
I guess what i'm trying to ask is 'what is missing, how much of the total quantity is missing, how does the missing quantity compare in size to the not-missing quantity' - the kind of questions that could give readers an idea of how "done" the game is from your insiders perspective, since UWE doesn't comment on that kind of subject.
Playing the alpha is a unique opportunity to judge how much has been accomplished so far, as this information is commonly obfuscated by developers. We've been speculating about this subject for months and years, and now we can finally stop speculating because we (those of you with Alpha access) have concrete facts about how complete the game is right now.
The game hasn't been out for 24 hours yet... AND its an alpha.
let the guys work.
the flayra abides
Playing the alpha is a unique opportunity to judge how much has been accomplished so far, as this information is commonly obfuscated by developers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Considering the size of the development team and the fact they've gone ahead and made everything themselves they have completed an absolutely astonishing amount. This is slightly more than what I'd call an alpha; as I said earlier if there wasn't connection issues then it'd be amazing.
This isn't a thread about how good or bad the Alpha is, son - there's already plenty of threads about that subject - it's about measuring progress between users since the developers don't want to reveal the official status.
So what is missing is:
engine stuff (bugfixing, optimizing)
game code (the basics are there, but a lot is missing, but if the engine works well, that should be quite fast i suppose)
God, that movie is awful.
His awfulness abides.
You ARE OUT of YOUR ELEMENT!
If the above was fixed I'd say the game is around half way complete.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would have to agree with this post pretty much.
I've not been able to play with people online yet because of the issue with not being able to see full servers but I have had a good look around on a LAN server and it looks good so far. Some stuff is missing which we were told about but I was able to run round shooting at the walls, use my flash light to light up the dark corners, jump in the Command Chair and order a Robot to go off and build a rez tower.
Once the bugs are removed and tonned down then will be moving towards beta very quickly. Don't expect everything to be added while game is in Alpha, will be balance and other tweeks to be made all the way through there.
For now you've got things like the hit detection and server instability to fix, if they were perfected then you could easily play this game and have an enjoyable round I've even managed to have a few games of 4v4 which were great fun for what we have. I expect the game to evolve very quickly and get into a much more playable state soon with a beta not too far off.
Can't wait to get my new computer later on and when more patches start to land, then I believe it's going to be a fun ride to see how the game grows.
Son?
You should probably take that patronising tone elsewhere it's completely unwelcome here.
It only takes one idiot to turn what was otherwise a friendly thread giving praise to UWE and discuss the current development of the game into a flame thread doesn't it.
However with the lag it's really hard to tell what needs fixing and what doesn't. Once they resolve that I'm sure we can all get a better taste of what's wrong.
I'd say the offical status is "<b>ALPHA</b>".
It's the first release of the alpha client.
Quite frankly, you should just be happy the damn thing even starts.
<!--quoteo(post=1786772:date=Jul 27 2010, 05:03 PM:name=Rehnquist)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Rehnquist @ Jul 27 2010, 05:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1786772"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->God, that movie is awful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
how can you say that?!?! that movie is a classic!
So the answer is "who knows"? It is still too early to make an educated guess.
yeah, it does, and niggling pointlessly over someone's word choices will certainly get us there more quickly than otherwise. also, this thread is not for "giving praise to UWE" (LOL) it's for specifying progress.
I guess based on some of these replies I should say that we can totally ignore "bugs" for the sake of this discussion. A "bug" is a game system not working correctly, whereas I think it's more relevant to focus on game systems which are either "there" or "not there," regardless of whether they are working 100%. There are still going to be bugs in Beta, the difference is all game systems will be present - our current distance from that milestone is what i'm trying to determine.
<!--quoteo(post=1786864:date=Jul 27 2010, 10:06 PM:name=Bigtoy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bigtoy @ Jul 27 2010, 10:06 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1786864"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It is an interesting question, the only problem is that we have no idea how much "stuff" the developers held back in the Alpha<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't believe they "held back" anything that wasn't in a playable state. Of course they wouldn't release content which wasn't associated with completed systems (i.e. the Onos art is complete but it isn't game-ready, therefore it's not in the Alpha). But I think for all intents and purposes, what you see (in the Alpha) is what you get - it's representative of the current gamestate.
simply put, the large amount of SE preorders allowed them to add content to the game that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to ie. dynamic infestation
All the base systems are in.
Artwork is in and working...
Now its bug squashing, performance fixing and game play tweaking...
The majority of the work is complete.
<!--quoteo(post=1790581:date=Aug 2 2010, 07:08 AM:name=)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ( @ Aug 2 2010, 07:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1790581"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->simply put, the large amount of SE preorders allowed them to add content to the game that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to ie. dynamic infestation<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think he's referring to the fact that 8-9 months after the release date we still haven't got to the point where the game could handle the basic functionalities that would have been required for any kind of multiplayer FPS, extra content or not.
I don't want to go further on that one, since I've got no clue on game developing process. Still, I can see the point zex is making. From layman's viewpoint it sometimes looks like a sizeable mismatch.
That being said, I think it's slowly coming together now. As far as I've understood, most of the vital stuff is in the code, it's just bugged up. I'm somewhat hoping to see nice progress withing the next few months.