Weekly update #87: Alpha playtest week-end

Alpha playtest week-end starts tomorrow !

Hey everybody. As mentionned last week, we’re about to enter the alpha playtest week-end. If you are an alpha backer and wish to participate, make sure to follow instructions provided in last week’s update:

Access will be granted tomorrow around 20:00 GMT ( 21:00 CET // 15:00 EST )

Please keep in mind that the game is still technically in pre-alpha, therefore we ask everybody to be patient with technical issues and manager their expectations: the game is still pretty bare bones (no objectives you can attack, only one weapon available…), assets are a work-in-progress (none of the ships are textured yet, the cruiser and carrier’s assets are still simplistic placeholders, same for particle effects… ).

If you like what you see during this play-test, make sure to spread the word and let your friends know about us. And more importantly: we hope that you enjoy your time and have fun ! Any feedback is welcome, and we’re hoping to see lots of cool screenshots, videos and streams this week-end ! Make sure to post all your feedback in our forums:

https://forums.inovaestudios.com/

Patch 0.2.2.0

Last week we’ve released a new patch which amongst other things, adds military land bases to the game. See these pictures:

Bases (and other points of interests like space stations) are currently just static assets and you can’t interact with them. After the playtest week-end, we’re going to focus on these and add static defenses, which players can destroy. We’re also going to have a pass at destroying individual buildings (like the nuclear reactor providing energy) which is going to affect how the base works.

We’re also pretty soon going to introduce new weapons (with placeholder assets) and continue iterating on the gameplay. There’s still a lot before the game shapes up and is ready for the full alpha release.

Top-right corner: can you spot the land base as seen from this space station ?

On individual development news, between doing technical support and answering e-mails/PMs, Keith has found some time to fix the issue we encountered with patch 0.2 with our upload admin portal which failed for files over 2 GB. He’s also been working on various bug fixes for the installer and patcher, which should be made available right before the alpha test week-end starts.

On my side, a new patch is actually planned later today which should include the latest hotfix for crashes, reduce the bots AI difficulty and address some server side performance issues. Another patch will be released tomorrow, containing mostly polishing, bug fixing and balance adjustments (especially related to the AI and weapons).

On the art side, Jan went on a trip for a couple days, while Kristian is busy reworking some textures and adding more buildings for the factories and land bases. Jan should be back today and will be focusing on factories, however we are not sure they’ll be ready in time for tomorrow. I guess we’ll find out soon :slight_smile:

-Flavien

28 Likes

And work decides to take our Saturday’s from us and make us work. Looks like I’ll be streaming Sunday.

3 Likes

Didn’t notice the factory but yep it’s there - AWESOME! Everything is looking great and smooth as silk, except on approach. Hope there is a fix for that this weekend but pre-Alpha so…

2 Likes

So insane that you can actually see the buildings from space.

3 Likes

That’s only the very biggest ones, almost a kilometer tall. The smaller details are actually not visible at this distance :wink:

3 Likes

Why is it so white though?

I think having plenty of human scale buildings and details is important.
I expect some will see the buildings and think they are normal size buildings and therefore toy planets.

2 Likes

I don’t think that’s a problem because they are quite hard to see.

People will most probably travel to them and realize their size. Or see screenshots from close first.

It’s hard to find bases on planets without the hud… You don’t just “see” them.

1 Like

Yeah, Kristian is working on more smaller buildings and details. That being said, we’re no Star citizen, and we definitely don’t have the budget to add details you’d find in a FPS if you see what I mean :wink:

If you look at the pictures you’ll already see a lot of details. There are railings / fences everywhere, doors, windows and various human scaled details.

14 Likes

How many Gb to download tomorow, anyone?

Around 3.1 GB.

4 Likes

proc-gen for the win! In other games this would be easily 20GB…

does it have a big performance hit if the game is installed on a normal HDD instead of a SSD?
i mean, obviously it would start slower… but once i’m in game…?
i have 32gb physical ram and 4gb VRAM, if that matters…

Nope, a normal HDD ( as long as it’s not a relic ) shouldn’t influence the in-game framerate. As for loading times, a good part of these come from compiling render materials, and not reading data from the disk. But loading times are long overall, even on an SSD :slight_smile: Until we optimize all that stuff…

4 Likes

great, thanks :slight_smile:

Thanks! Tbh, OMG so many years has passed away!
Should we have captain helmsman gunners and marines As a teen in a big one, the future?
Hundreds of dollars is worth thinking about, for one second:smirk: as a Chinese Sci-Fi Fan :wink: But I will let some money go, IndieGoGo, more or less.
At last, I have to say you are heros! especially the SCers have got the countless dollars:money_mouth_face:
Fighting!:fist:

1 Like