Testing STEAM version

[Excalibur]

Oh, no. Don't give me your excuses.

No, seriously though. You'd be surprised how wacky some of the games I tested in beta were. Phew, wow, some of them were just awful and riddles with bugs. I wouldn't too much about bugs and broken features at this point. It's gonna be Early Acesss anyway, yes?

[Hammish]

And I'm foaming at the mouth to see how much in the XMLs have changed, I figured I'd better hold off on updating BTC until I see what the next major revision holds since... substantial changes have been teased at.

[kyokei]

Can't you do a smaller release for the mutliplayer server browser and then still keep the content for the selected testers?

[Lurler]

Excalibur, Well, what's why we don't want to release a broken version, to keep a good track record of at least half decent releases

Hammish, To be honest there isn't a whole lot that changed. Some things here and there, but nothing really major. Most of the changes are either in code or in scripts. Not so much in xmls. However it is probably a good idea to wait, as you mentioned.

kyokei, Alas, the new version wouldn't work properly without the master server, and if we deploy the new master server it will break the current version as it relies on it for multiplayer.

[Hammish]

Hey, that works for me, Lur.  Less adaptation to do on my part when it hits.

I actually remembered a question I was going to ask some time back, though.  After the Steam version is up and going, are you still looking to have the AT launcher and will the mod selection process in there be compatible with mod subscription in Steam?  I figured at worst you could probably just have the mod subscription save the mod files in the usual VE directory or have the AT launcher check for mods in whatever directory Steam chooses to put downloaded content, but either would be a nice touch; I'm looking forward to making the use of Workshop.

[Lurler]

After the Steam version is up and going, are you still looking to have the AT launcher

Definitely! There are many people who doesn't use Steam, so we are definitely gonna keep the launcher and we plan to port it to Mac and Linux as well (hopefully).

and will the mod selection process in there be compatible with mod subscription in Steam?

That's a good question actually, we haven't really decided yet.
Most likely in case of Steam we will try to see if we can integrate the Steam Workshop, but we will see how it goes. Not sure yet.

I figured at worst you could probably just have the mod subscription save the mod files in the usual VE directory or have the AT launcher check for mods in whatever directory Steam chooses to put downloaded content, but either would be a nice touch; I'm looking forward to making the use of Workshop.

It would work either way. The only thing that's important is how users are actually gonna choose what mods to use.

[djs4000]

Everything is looking great so far! Keep it up guys! I cannot wait for the steam release!  Have you considered doing a launcher specifically for VE? I know you're current launcher is set up to work with future projects, but why not have steam just run the launcher? It would help with mod selection and news updates, etc. Perhaps and command line to enable or disable it and launch the game directly from steam.

[Hammish]

It would work either way. The only thing that's important is how users are actually gonna choose what mods to use.

If I get a vote, try to keep it in the AT launcher and just have Steam funnel downloads.  You guys actually did really awesome with the ease of mod enabling with the launcher, IMO, much better than Steam's (which makes it really easy to keep mods updated via subscription, but a bit more clunky to manage.)  So if you let Steam manage updates and the community and the player manage which are running at a given time... best of both worlds.  If dat ends up being possible.

[Hecter94]

Personally, I hate when a game forces me to open a launcher to actually launch the game.

Instead, I would suggest adding modules to the actual main game menu, with news and whatever other stuff you would normally include in a launcher including options to open the Mod Menu and log menu and etc.

This is mainly because when gaming with Steam, 90% of the games you launch can be easily and simply launched via the Steam menu, and when they open a launcher it just seems unnecessary and smells too much of blatant advertisement.

However, I wouldn't remove the launcher.
It should still be available to launch either manually or through steam.
My thinking behind this, is if someone is willing to try and mod, they'd be willing to go through that extra step, whereas someone that just wants to play the game just wants to click a button and have the game launch like almost ever other game in their library.

[Lurler]

I would like to address your concerns in a greater detail in the coming weeks, after we determine which way we would like to go, at the moment I just don't want to say anything that we wouldn't be able to deliver.

But in the mean time take a look at this and compare it to this! The same menu, but OMG, the difference is stunning. And it is only one example and that menu wasn't that bad in the first place, but all other menus look much better. We should have done that ages ago. The credit goes to our lead dev who found inspiration to redesign the UI!

[Hammish]

Personally, I hate when a game forces me to open a launcher to actually launch the game.

Instead, I would suggest adding modules to the actual main game menu, with news and whatever other stuff you would normally include in a launcher including options to open the Mod Menu and log menu and etc.

This is mainly because when gaming with Steam, 90% of the games you launch can be easily and simply launched via the Steam menu, and when they open a launcher it just seems unnecessary and smells too much of blatant advertisement.

However, I wouldn't remove the launcher.
It should still be available to launch either manually or through steam.
My thinking behind this, is if someone is willing to try and mod, they'd be willing to go through that extra step, whereas someone that just wants to play the game just wants to click a button and have the game launch like almost ever other game in their library.

I'd approve of this option as well, just figured it would require a fairly massive code reworking given how the game client seems to load.

[Lurler]

Okay, keys are out!

Please let us know what you think about this version

Now, we still have two keys left, but there are a lot of people running windows... We would prefer to give away these keys to people who can test the game on Mac or Linux, so if you are running any of these systems and would like to join to do some proper testing on these systems - please let us know.

[Hammish]

Should we leave feedback right in here, in private, or somewhere else?

Initial impressions:

1. I miss the old main menu music. 
2. Fantastic job on the UI elements rework.  The crosshairs are a big improvement and the shop/skills screens (call it the RPG screens) look phenomenal now.  Especially conversations.
3. I do seem to be getting more lag when the client's communicating with the local server, and a bit lower performance from the game itself as a whole.  I figured most of this was just from it being an experimental build and thus probably not optimized.

All in all I haven't experienced any crashes or major instabilities on my end, seems like a solid upgrade all-around.  Good job so far.

[Excalibur]

I can confirm most of the observations above. I do prefer the new music though.

1) The new crosshair is great, if a bit big.
2) No lag or anything.
3) Server browser just keeps looking for servers I'm assuming, instead of returning a "no servers found" dialog? Or is that not implemented?
4) Having giant asteroids as part of the background is distinctly bad idea.

Otherwise, no stability or performance issues on my rig. Any particular area you want us to be testing out? A changelog would kinda be helpful as well, even if it's sent to us by PM.

Anyway, great job so far with all the new content.

[Excalibur]

Oh, just as a sidenote. Autopilot is acting awfully wonky. I set waypoints and activate autopilot, only for the thing to fly off in some random direction, beeling way out of the system. Flew me into the sun a few times too. :\