“Alpha”, “Beta”… what’s the difference, right? One little Greek letter?
I’ve included a few screen shots below to commemorate this non-event.
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Fresh Ideas in Gaming
This means release is closing in!
Is there any way to get notified when release goes live?
I follow knucklecracker on facebook, you can go to settings on the page to make sure that news from it comes first into your newsfeed 🙂
Alternatively, this very blog has an RSS feed up on top there. That’s how I know when stuff happens.
Now I have plenty of images for my desktop backround!
On this note any chance we could get a button that removes the HUD for screenshots and whatnot?
Hurrah!
One small step for a particle one giant leap for all the rest of the particles.
Is there any way of being a part of the beta!
I will be expanding the beta program in the coming few weeks (that’s the plan)…. slightly. I can’t let in a thundering herd of hundreds, else I’ll get crushed. But I will take in a few handfuls. The purpose will be to test variations in platforms and operating systems and all that sort of stuff that is always a killer for desktop games.
But, the general game release won’t be too much longer. I also might (that’s a big ‘might’) release a demo as a final “beta test” prior to the general game release. I’ve not decided for sure on that and am weighing the advantages and disadvantages.
Demo – yeah, additional work to setup, additional work to distribute, additional work to gather feedback, a lot additional work to find the actual helpful feedback… 😉
Something i have thought about for some time by now: Extented or collectors edition?
Maybe combined with preorder.
Throw in some goodies to justify 25-33% higher price.
Soundtrack as MP3, wallpapers like old menu background and one of all ships, characters and/or doppels, an exclusive audio commentary why you use text only and didn’t speak your characters (including you doing some funny attempts of speaking first mission with different voices)…and for preorder collectors: beta demo.
Just thinking aloud… 🙂
The new way to demo is to release the game to popular let’s players, such as Arumba.
Having said that, I will graciously accept any betademos sent my way.
That all sounds perfect thank you for the good work.
are you looking for beta testers? 🙂
Yea, if you need french beta tester for ….. uhm…….. cause you are marvelouse guy, i’am ok 😀
As the creeper matched into your computer, so will the particle. Yay!
I’m sure Virgil will tell us if he needs beta testers, no need to push him for what looks to be an awesome game.
If you need Mac beta testers, I can help.
I mostly use Linux, so I can help test there.
One VERY important letter change! Great to hear it’s getting closer.
And just when I was feeling confident about my productivity.
I can’t wait to play!!!
Oh wait. Yes, I can. But I don’t want to.
The spike in activity signals that we will have about two months to six months left of waiting, assuming nothing devastating occurs.
5 campaign missions more or less finished! Finally a progress report! I was about to ask you for one, so thank you! Yeah, between Beta and Demo taking more time from working on the release, and seeing it is unlikely I will get picked, I would urge you to cut all unnecessary work. If push comes to shove, you can just update the game after release, like with CW3. Also, are you planning to make a bonus level pack online? Obviously after release, when you got free time.
Maybe… probably… somewhere in between 🙂
The way things will happen is I’ll soon (like 2-3 weeks) put up a “Coming Soon” store page at steam. I’ll then ask people far and wide to add the game to their wishlist on steam. I can see how many people have it in their wishlist on steam, so that becomes a good indicator of the level of interest and how many CW customers I’ve managed to reach with the news of “New Game Coming”.
Post launch, I can of course judge sales and wishlist conversions on steam. The game will also be available for direct sale (non-steam version) so I’ll see sales from that.
I’m also likely to have a low priced “Extra Thing” (TM) for sale along with the game. That’s another way to judge interest and how well I’m reaching people.
All of that helps me determine where to focus my efforts and when (marketing, support, extras, etc).
Just so we’re clear, by bonus pack I meant like the things you have on kongregate, the CW2:Academy, CW3:Abraxis, and CW1:Evermore/User Space/Training Sim
I will be a “Direct sale”
Am very eager to give you my money, but not seeking to be a beta tester, as once I have a copy nobody will hear from me for a few weeks so I would be useless for feedback.
Thank you for letting us know about the different formats for purchase (Direct/Steam). Is one “better” for you than another?
IIRC steam takes a (large) percentage of each sale, and I doubt V would make it cheaper to buy direct. So direct probably gives more money to V, but then you don’t get that sweet steam integration…
Can I buy like a bonus pack to make up for the percentage steam took? Doesn’t even have to be anything in this pack, just to say “I like this dev”.
That should be a thing for most games…
I get 70% of a sale on steam and 91.1% of a direct sale. Just like with cw3, PF will come with a steam key if you purchase direct. That said, I always tell people to just purchase how they feel most comfortable and whatever is convenient for them. I’m happy and appreciative however the games are purchased.
The plan is to also have an extras pack for a small amount of money that will come with the music, some other production assets, and a twist on “name in the game”.
If we get a steam key from buying direct…and you get a bigger cut then that’s what I’ll plan to do for sure!
I’ve felt comfortable buying every game as a direct sale so if I get a steam key with it as well I don’t see why I wouldn’t do it that way again. Especially since you take a bigger cut.
Will the steam key be in the conformation email or will that come days after?
I like to play at lunchtimes at work ( as i still do with CW 1,2 and 3 daily)
and use steam at night, steam at work is a no-go.
I would happily have purchased the new game twice to keep up this tradition.
I appreciate the value you are adding giving away the steam key from direct purchases.
Consider me sold, direct purchase it will be!
on another note, what are the chances of selling the CW collection as a whole on steam or does the adobe air element kinda stop that? I for one would like to have all 3 games as one on there, maybe including all the (highest rated)user created maps as part of the install?
Hey, I’m a bit confused, so I’m hoping you’d be able to share some insight.
If you get less of a cut from steam, but are able to provide a steam key outside of steam taking a cut of the purchase… does steam only charge for purchases through their site because of the advertising it gives you?
Thats the only reason why i can imagine it would work that way..
I would also like to know this. If you get more money from a direct sale then a steam sale i would gladly buy direct as i have in the past.
Now the real waiting game begins.
I’ll just be floating over here, happily drifting towards the void until it can finally consume me.
I was about to go to sleep when I saw that this was up, I can sleep later
then I saw there was no video and was disappointed
screen shots are cool though, but I still want a new video
that one where you fight in the middle seems awesome
eeeeee, yay! Closer to release!
I would ask if I could help with the beta but I have too much else to do.
Is there anything better than playing this game?
This is great news, can’t wait to be able to try this game and hope for it’s near release!
its* I got a bit excited and spelt “its” wrong
You know, it looks great! I always say this to you…
But I find really really strange to find that bar on the left… I mean, every RTS or so game I’ve played has that bar on the right!
Just a detail, but everytime I see it I feel strange…
Any chance to choose on the options which side you want it?
For some reason I read this in the Trumpster’s voice.
Sorry for the irrelevant comment.
I’m not from USA, are you referring to Trump? Hahahaha
If you’re looking for a fan to test on Windows10 / Windows 7 I will gladly spend many hours!
Feature Request: This applies to CW3 and to what I’ve seen of the new game. The “text” field when searching for custom maps needs boolean, or at least negative filtering. For example in CW3 I never enjoyed the #PAC maps, but all of the highest rated maps that I haven’t already played are #PAC, so it’s difficult to search for new highly-rated maps to play. If I could filter by text: -#PAC (or whatever else someone might want to filter out) it’d be much easier.
Do you have prices in mind yet? I would like to know what I should save up for, since I want both the extras and the game now 😀
Oh boy, I can’t wait to purchase this one.
Only problem is, is my toaster of a computer going to be able to handle it?
If you need anyone to betatest on mac, I would be more than happy to do that :).
Hey Virgil,
Are you looking for anyone to help test versions of PF yet?
I asked about helping you test a few months back, and said to keep my eye out for a post about it. I was wondering if this was that post.
Looking forward to your reply Virgil.
Connor D.
In the coming few weeks I’ll send out an email to a _small_ number of additional folks that I’ll add to the beta. Some will be from the forums, some from the blog, some from other places. If you have posted a message about joining the beta, make sure you have used a valid email address I can contact you on (in the email field on the blog when you post). If you get chosen and your email doesn’t work… I can’t contact you. Also, If you have already posted a message about beta access, don’t post again.
Consider this my official request to be in the beta. Also I remember before you said that along with the release of PF on steam, CW 1 and 2 will come out at the same time. Is this still going to be true? And if I already own one of them, will I be able to activate it on steam?
Yes, most people will be able to activate their existing copy of cw1/cw2 on steam. The only exceptions were a few bundle sales of CW1/CW2 since they didn’t have unique keys. But that is a tiny proportion of the total CW1/CW2 population.
If we get in touch with you and provide proof of purchase, will you give us steam keys for CW1/2? I’d love to be able to play them again, since I refuse to go through the shenanigans with Air. Last time I tried to get Air working I had to restore from a backup….
I would love to help out with the beta! You have a lot of people to choose from for the email xD
I guess then this is my request to get into beta.
me also for the beta. will even pre purchase the game 🙂
We can maybe get a beta access? Nice, I have to take this chance!
I play and work with computer since I’m a child, create small programms in C++ as a hobby and have some experience as beta tester with the game Rimworld and custom maps of the game Stranded II. If you want to add translations to the game I could also help with the german one.
I will officially volunteer myself as tribute for the beta. I have a Arch VM, and an Ubuntu/Windows dualboot setup, if it matters.
I WANT TO BE PART OF TESTING BETA TOO <3 🙂
Same, my PC is a windows 10 Inspiron gaming computer.
I’d love to beta test, although I’m fine with someone else getting picked. Just to clarify, I’m still going to have to pay for this or the full game, right? And what exactly will beta testing involve?
Well, now that you mentioned it, I would like to ask for access to that beta.
I want to try this game in beta, too!
I’ll put my hand up for a beta.
While I’d love to try it early I don’t know how good I would be at providing feedback, so it would be nice to play it although if you’re looking for feedback only then I would recommend picking someone else
Beta access would be epic. I have played the CW games and I am very much excited for this new squeal to that series. Not only is the CW game play good, but it has a great story to go with it. I also have a suggestion (LONG SUGGESTION, stop now if you don’t want input) ,The particles only have a maximum of 3 health. While I’m watching, it seems like it doesn’t matter much the size of these particles, with the exception of the emergence, you simply send in whatever would damage them, missiles, cannons, blue pieces or lasers. The only difference seems to be there range and speed. Maybe there’d be a bit more potential for variety in maps and strategy if there was the potential of more health but the ships have potential for AoE, and a strategy one could use is AoE for masses of particles or several weapons for massive particles. There’s potential for different types of AoE weapons too, bombs, penetrating lasers or other heavy object (oh wait, you have that), or even a chargeable device that every so often electrifies or burns particles in a nearby area. This would be a bit over powered but you can make it expensive by requiring one or more gems to operate it.
Just watching it as it’s developed, I can tell it’s going to be among the best games I’ve ever played.
BTW that was my beta request… Will there be video posts during Beta like there was during Alpha and pre-Alpha?
Also (another suggestion), super weapons. These could require amp gems to work properly if at all. Several mechanics could be put into this, greater enemy particle attraction range making it more vulnerable, you could find them and have them needing to be rebuilt since it was ancient technology (like the totems) and they can’t be rebuilt, or they could be found as plans and you can use your more advanced technology to build what they could not because they were older. They could also be immobile and help only with control a portion of the map. Lots of possibilities, but it would also take a lot of time to implement.
Have another suggestion. When your ships are destroyed, what happens to them?, their hulls explode and you can recreate them anywhere with a power source. Does the materials used in making ship teleport back to the command ship or are they made of pure energy (as that is the only resource)? Keeping ships would be more of a priority if ores (or other materials) were used to build ships with energy still required fuse the parts together and power them, or else ship wreckage was to be re-harvested (like you need to collect the hulls to build the ship in the first place) . Perhaps metal could even be used to make repairs…
IT’S HAPPENING!
Can I just buy it now and play the beta, and then the release when it’s out? =P
(kinda serious here)
I post this at least once per game… now is as good a time as any 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSs6DcA6dFI
I’ve thought about it… I just can never completely cotton to the idea. I like the idea of the game being “a complete product” before I take money for it. I will still put time and additions in after the release, but I like the initial paid release to be a fully formed product.
Might change my tune by the next game, though (I think I said that for CW3 as well 🙂 )
Oh yeah, just had an idea. Hope you’re not getting annoyed with the amount of them. I hope that people will be able to build “Space Stations”. They would be similar to the enemy’s, and to build it you just need a ship with no thrusters. I think they could make interesting maps, so please implement this, as I guess it shouldn’t be too hard?
Couldn’t you just… make a ship with no thrusters?
It’s difficult to tell if the ship editor allows you to take the thrusters off (I doubt it does because then each ship would require it’s own speed calculation depending on the size of the ship and the quantity of thrusters, compared to just having a set speed per ship type) but I don’t see why you’d want to. The ship would still be the same size but you just can’t move it anywhere.
You can leave engines off of a ship. It will still be able to move… just very slowly. Every ship has basic “impulse” capability that allows it to move even if all engines get destroyed. It really creeps, though, but it would be enough to slowly re-position a ‘station’ or get a severely damaged and out of energy ship to safety.
Ships do real time calculations if their hull size, module loadout, engines, presence of any enemy plasma under the hull, and direction of travel in order to determine how fast they move.
Mainly for maps, such as prebuilt stations for early defense. That will be possible, right? To place ships when creating a map? It just seems like something a space game ought to have. Also, I’m not sure how the ship designer will work, but maybe “stations” can have more maximum size?
Two questions:
Can you sneak this onto your steam account?
I imagine you’ve got an internal REPL/script system in place, have you made any changes or were you happy with the original (professional curiosity, I am a retired programmer).
The game is definitely coming to steam, along with CW1 and CW2. I’ve already got store slots for all three. A coming soon page will go up for PF soon (weeks).
Yep, there is PRPL (Particle Reverse Polish Language). Very similar to CRPL but with different platform APIs naturally. It works mostly the same. I’ve added some list and accessor syntax that can be used… all just compiler candy. But “<-MyList[42]" and "true ->MyUnit.UnitIsEnemy” are examples of things that can now work. It all results in the same underlying RPL code that might have otherwise been typed in manually, but makes coding a tad more convenient here and there.
I went out and got a job so i can buy this game the moment it’s released… Really wish you did the early access stuff people do on steam because id be enjoying my time off on the weekend a lot more if i could sink 20 hours into this game lol
Beta me! Loved playing all iterations of the CW series
Long time fan checking in.
Keep up the good work. I have 2-3 people with me that will be likely be buying direct as soon as it’s available, since we still get a Steam key and you get more %% of the sale.
If you need anyone to see what happens in this game when a 5+-year-old Windows 7 Laptop with a grossly outdated video driver is factored in, I am the go-to guy.
Would buy this game in a heartbeat, would love to test it out as well. Was and still am a huge fan of Creeper World 3. This looks like the next evolution of that game concept. Looks fantastic.
Played your previous games loved them would certainly be interested in beta testing it for you and i will be buying direct once the game is released.
Hey virgilw, it’s been 2 weeks since your last update. You ok in there? Did your desktop fall on you? Any sort of update, even a simple photo, please?
I heard that you’re doing a beta test in the coming weeks, and I’m a huge fan, I’d love to get in on the beta. I’m running both a win 8 dell laptop with onboard everything, and a customized win 10 AMD desktop with a bunch of crazy things. I’ve been playing since CW1, and you make great games.
I hesitated to request for beta, because I have historically never been great at giving feedback for these things, but if you just need people to look for bugs, I would love to help. I’ve been checking your site petty much weekly since cw2 was announced, and daily for most of the last year. I have to say, I Iove everything I’ve seen about Particle Fleet, which I’m pretty happy about since a lot of my favorite developers seem to be drifting away from the types of things that I enjoy about a game. It’s great to see after 4 very different titles that you can vary your games while continuing to still have the same priorities about what makes a good game. Keep up the good work.
I’m curious, it says that it’s a Creeper World chronicle. Does that mean its cannon to the rest of the story? (CW1,2 &3) If so, is it set before the events of CW 3 (during the millennia that no-one knows about) or after (In continuation of one of the endings).
Also, looks like a great game. I’m curious about the ship design and how it works. Can you place any weapon on a ship if it fits, regardless of whether that ship was meant to have those weapons on them.
As a ever so slight request, and, i know i have no right to ask this, but, if you have any timed levels, can you not make them too difficult, and maybe have it so that even if you fail the timer entirely, you can still win, even though its just insanely difficult.
Also, if you did need a Beta tester, i would be more than happy to help. I’m assuming its a random selection method, so i won’t go into why I should be a Beta tester.
Finally, another few suggestion, for whatever this game’s equivalent of Loki is, maybe he could (like in CW), spawn emitters but make it so each one can re spawn him meaning you have to win truly, instead of just doing max damage to it and stalling everywhere else.
Also, Is PvP a possibility on a larger map? or maybe Co-op.
Thank you
Waterwalker
Yes, it falls in the CW story universe. It takes place a very long time after the events of CW2 and a very long time before the events of CW3.
Yep, if there is space you can place any weapon on any ship hull.
No, I don’t plan on having any timed story levels 🙂