The Glade 4.0

Starting up shortly. I'll be in the Void Rangers chat channel while I watch...

And the stream is live, quality looks acceptable. No sound yet, but it's just a room shoot so far of the crowd.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Okay, that was fun to watch.

For those who didn't watch it live, when they post it to YouTube or whatever...

It's very much in an alpha state, despite the public reveal. Expect crashes and some awkward talking from Chris about to kill time and apologizing that it was working better yesterday. This is exactly what we were promised -- to see stuff (and even get our hands on stuff) long before any traditional publishing model would let it see the light of day. This is an alpha in that it's buggy and nowhere near feature-complete, not in the sense that some publisher is pitching a 90's era playable demo as an expensive early access program.

Expect some uneven production quality. They've been upping their game on some of the banner screens and whatnot, but as I was telling Rori -- I don't envy them as running any mix of yours/theirs in an A/V setup at somebody else's venue always sucks, and my experiences in the matter didn't even approach the complexity level of livestreaming a multi-camera production. That part is still a bit rough around the edges; it's not like we're approaching live sporting event broadcasting standards or anything.

When stuff is up and working, though... it's impressive, and worth the 45 minute watch. The PBR is looking gorgeous; the lighting was way better than I had braced myself for (I was worried they'd cop out and go too heavily ambient on the lighting, robbing us of deep shadows in the black of space); the backdrops are utterly breathtaking. The physics are coming along, and the responsiveness of the maneuvering thrusters looks (as well as one can tell when not behind the stick) to be right where I'd want it -- the thrusters have appreciable traversal times rather than instantaneous positioning, but it didn't look like it was significant enough to make the craft itself feel onerously unresponsive. The weapons have come a LONG way since that demo video towards the end of the original 42-day campaign. The UI is a mixed bag -- the radar's exactly what I was hoping they wouldn't be lured into doing and there're a lot of displays going on with no indications on what you can turn off independently yet (or in the future), BUT the targeting and reticle aspects look pretty solid.


If you don't have the time, patience, and/or inclination to bear with the stream itself, there are some facts we learned (or got elaboration on) that I can easily pass on:

* The initial version will be made available "soon," with the indicated target being between week after next and the beginning of May, depending on debugging progress.

* The initial drop will feature the Hornet, 300i, and Aurora in their base models (? though the Hornet shown had the ball turret -- perhaps it's an exception since Foundry 42 needs the military variant for their work?). If you don't have one of those 3 ships (or if you have a variant), you'll have "loaner" access to an "appropriate" ship based on -- it sounded like -- which ship you had a variant of, or which of the 3 was most similar to your pledge level. The example given was a Freelancer owner would have access to a Hornet until the Freelancer makes it in.

* The Cutlass and Avenger are the next ships on the list for inclusion in major feature update 2. Variants and multi-crewed ships like the Freelancer and Constellation will follow in the 3rd major feature update.

The dogfighting module is being pitched in-universe as a high-end simulator, Arena Commander, made and distributed by Original Systems. This was info revealed in last month's Jump Point magazine.

* Arena Commander will feature 5 game modes: Free Flight (a single player exhibition mode), Free-For-All (8-player FFA), Squadron Dogfight (4v4), Capture the Core (Capture the Flag), and Vanduul Assault (a horde mode vs. Scythes). I'm not clear on whether or not all 5 will be available in the first version.

* Co-op AI (so AI on your team or crewing other stations on your ship) is planned for v3.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I wonder if there will be a helmet cult now? I'm not normally one to fixate on graphics, but the pbr hornet was beautiful. Im excited to see the other ships so treated. Other than that I don't have anything else to add.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Well looks like Im going minimum on my car loan and getting my rig bought.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

All in-game scenes. I really hope they announce a nice HOTAS setup for this game in the near future.

There seems to be much ado about the idea of a staggered release, and who gets in first. I'm kinda had the wind taken out of my sails by the whole thing, because we've been delayed 5 months already. I'm about to the point where I just don't care and I'll check back on it in a year or two. maybe that's the point or maybe I just need more sleep.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

It does seem like 5 months is quite a significant delay. Still, it looks like it's coming together nicely, so I guess I'll keep the ***** to a minimum.

They've done staggered releases on stuff before.. like the organizations beta, which went to a hand selected testing pool, then to subscribers for a week, then to everybody for a weekend before going live simultaneously in its "for real" state...

The alternatives are too either crash the servers for days or waste money overbuilding the architecture to satisfy the maximum theoretical demand. A staggered release keys them build out over a few days or a week so they can gauge usage patterns instead of building for max possible capacity. You know, like every other multiplayer product in beta does.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah I know. I'm just gonna try and be more chill about it. I've got other things to play on.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Wait, are you saying every other product in beta staggers so as to guage potential load, or builds for maximum theoretical demand?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Staggers. Observing usage patterns to optimize cost to performance for server stuff is a big part of beta for online titles, and is one of the reasons you get waves of beta invites progressively increasing the size of the beta pool.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So last Friday's Jump Point had an in-depth article explaining HUD UI elements. It appears they've already tweaked beyond what we saw in the PAX reveal and show floor. Interesting implications for target management and scanning were fairly safely inferrable. It talked about how the UI would display active targets, missile locks, progress on scanning unidentified contacts, implied that different target management packages will be able to track and store information on different numbers of targets, picked apart the crosshairs and all the related elements there (how computed lead indicators work, how the UI communicates orientation and direction of travel of the target, etc)...

Also, they're doubling down on the monthly reports to do weekly reports on studio activity working towards the DFM. That was a good read, last week, too.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I liked the update too, except for the implication that we are weeks away from the v1 launch

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Well, when they said "later this month or early May" I kind of expected that. Considering that v1 will include the Vanduul fighter AI and 3 ships that weren't even ready for the reveal, I figure they're at least making good use of the time. Most folks were figuring v1 would just have the Hornet AND be late.

The weekly report professes that they're making good strides in the meantime. The nature of these sorts of things tends also to be that progress is slow then suddenly starts coming together much more quickly. So we might only see another 1 or maybe 2 weekly updates, and have it in-hand mid-May.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I haven't watched yet, but the scuttlebutt is 10ftc says the current schedule is rollout starting in two with full implimenation hoped in three. That's hardly "early" may, but what hey whatever. I'll be at Drums at Fort Meigs the weekend of 17th, so that would be a mixed bag. on one hand I won't get to play, on the other if it's jammed packed full, buggy, or delayed, I'll be too busy to care. I may however have to schedule a full blackout for the weekend after.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

The weekly updates keep rolling in.

The big standout news, this time, is that when the rollout does happen, it will provide all DFM-eligible (alpha accounts or DFM pass-holding accounts) backers with the Vanduul Swarm mode, and then multiplayer will be rolled out to players in waves, starting with the lowest UEE citizen IDs, which correspond to site registration date.

This particularly amuses me, because the community's whining about Golden Tickets has come full circle -- it used to be that Golden Tickets were controversial and considered favoritist by anybody who didn't have them, but now it seems the majority are simply glad that priority isn't being given to subscribers or big-spenders so "first come" is considered equitable. Lolz @ internet communities.

In any event, it seems like they want to roll out multiplayer as fast as their server stability will permit; they're doing the cloud server thing so they should be able to scale quickly as far as server deployment goes, it'll just be a matter of whether their infrastructure code can keep up with the scale.

Go ahead and read the weekly report to get details on updates and completed work on the power distribution system, shields, and new tweaks to the flight computer options, among other things.

The ship specs page also got an update late last week, including some first pass information about the most recently (30mils? I forget) added stretch goal ships from late last year. That said, the damn thing is still riddled with obvious typos and errors and/or version mismatches. Some of the most interesting updates I found were the addition of hardpoint size stats, and some first pass info on stock component quality and performance (HO = High Output, LE = Low Emissions, etc), as well as some shield details to go with the shield system balancing... some ships have Front/Rear shields, some have Bubble shields (the consensus on that is Bubbles have no ability to redistribute coverage strength unevenly about the ship), and others have Quadrant and Box (6 sectors, adding Dorsal and Ventral to Quadrant?) configurations.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I just want to see if the PBR aurora is as sexy as that hornet was.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Do we have a release date yet?

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Holy shitsnacks!

No. I'll make sure it's obvious when we do/when we see release.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm getting disheartened that this will ever release.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I'm Not.

You shouldn't be. have you seen the footage? It's looking good, and the updates make it clear that it's making steady, even relatively brisk progress.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

We will get something, someday. When and what remains to be seen.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I haven't been following this too closely, but from my cursory attention paying, its still beta with a bunch of pie in the sky stuff. But eh.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It is. But that doesn't mean we won't get there. Doesn't mean we will. I'm still optimistically cautious.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"