Anyone know when the next version comes out and what will be there?

Hi,



The next beta will be out once a lot of the core issues are addressed, *Edit* - Currently there is no fixed date for the next beta.



SC

You cant rush these things and this is the main problem that TGC feel they have to push out betas to keep everyone happy.



I think these beta's are too early and give bad light on the product.





best s4real

I agree 100%, when it's done, it's done

yes and no, while i agree that some issues do give bad press, anyone with the sense to check the updates will see those issues are being addressed.. it takes time.

imo so long as there's no major bugs it's not really an issue to release a "beta"... the main point of beta is to test for bugs and performance etc... it's not about features or some such but people expect too much from beta's nowadays



The devs have said over and over that the current betas are nothing like where they want the finished product.. if people can't understand that then that's not TGC's fault

It's not really about fault or blame and don't think for a minute that these releases, or at least levels made with them (since they insisted on adding the build game feature), are not going out into the general public.



PROBLEM: In this business (any business really), if you put something out that isn't finished or doesn't work well, you get bad press. No excuses once you put it out there. It's harder to recover from bad press than no press.



SOLUTION: Don't put it out there until it works well.



This is normally common (and good business) sense. I really don't know why it isn't in this case. Let the internal testers say when it's ready to actually go to beta, because it's not ATM.



Brian.

Well said xplosys , I understand that they doing a pledge system and need to keep these people happy but I feel that fpscr is not even at a beta stage to test but more at a alpha level.



best s4real

As far as Alpha vs Beta, there are variances in the definitions, but very basically...



Alpha testing is internal tests done when a title is near completion to find remaining issues.

Beta testing is external testing done when a title is complete to make sure it works as expected before release.



That's just semantics and isn't really important. What TGC is doing is releasing pre-alpha software to the general public. It's an interesting concept. Who knows, maybe it'll take off and become the next great thing. I hope so.



Brian.

For me it's not about bugs, it's about the engine itself.



Edit* (not addressing the quote above)

I know it's a 'Beta/Alpha', I know it's going to have problems throughout development and I know if those who are the most vocal in requesting 'features' continue to have their way then this project will fall apart. So I know I need to be loud and clear when it comes to being heard on what I consider to be important.



What I don't want to hear any more is "it's in Beta so be more patient and stop whining", I already get that and being a big girlie, telling me not to do something just makes me worse.



It all seems to be going they way it should now, with a balance between core and features, so we can drop it. If your now impatient about waiting, I can only say "be patient it's a Beta and not ready for release yet". Which to me is far better than receiving it and it doesn't work as it should at the most basic level.



Its like being given a car with flat tires from your favorite uncle..... your forced not to show your disappointment, ungrateful, whiny little bitch that I am



TGC already had a 'team' of Alpha testers, these were called 'Gold Pledgers' the fact seemed to be missed because ,although they did send Alpha cascades out the last time there was no time between it happening and the promised release of the Beta to others. Still it makes sense to have a team to test, then send out to the other team to test before sending out to others...something like that



Just kidding, a core internal team who will report issues and bugs and going through it with a fine tooth comb makes a lot of sense. But still, as it's part of the offer for Gold Pledgers y'all might want to clear things up a little regarding Alpha cascades, I find people to be more understanding and accommodating if they are kept in the loop.

Perhaps the "Beta/Alpha" programs being released need a new designation.



Maybe the product we receive should just be referenced as "DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS REVIEWS", DPR for short, with the stipulated intent being review only not game creation. Please no feature requests until Lee has determined the core is complete.

I'd rather wait 6 months for a mega update than have these small updates, because the way I see it is, we bought a pre-release access beta, everyone keeps saying performance is very bad, well in all honesty most people don't have the specs to design games, and even tho there working on making performance work on multiple rigs its almost impossible for the core to give 100% satisfaction on every rig.

I paid $400 and built a cheap gaming computer, and FPSC:R runs perfectly. I'm on an intel build. anyways I think we should just wait a few months that way they can fix alot of issues and add more features, in all honesty we shouldn't have a say in anything until they get it to a more advanced stage. just let them get there work done first, hell they may not be out of beta stage for at least another year, we need to be patient

No it doesn't, you think it does because you can only throw so much in there, with memory issues preventing you putting too many entities and no AI running properly and all that happy stuff that makes it more than a mere walkthrough, you don't know how it would perform. I can take a guess though.



Hindsight is easy (and too late), foresight is where it's really at



How many more times do you need to hear "my rig can run blah blah on high settings" before the point get's across. Ignoring this would be commercial suicide. Telling these people they need to 'upgrade' their rigs to play your, or even their own, game won't wash with them and just an aside but you don't really need a better spec machine to develop than you do to play these games.



If 'most' users around here don't have the specs to develop games then TGC are aiming at the wrong market, you know....gamers that want to create their own games. I don't know if you realise how contradictory it sounds to say this and then say your "cheap gaming rig works perfectly" unless you believe we all got really low end machines, play pong and aspire to making the next MOH.



If it all works fine for you then that's great, but your not really who TGC need to hear from, it's the ones who have problems who can say their piece without feeling intimidated to do so that will make this project work. Not saying your doing that personally but to be honest your in a minority who seem happy with performance and too quick to fault the users themselves or their specs, which really doesn't fix issues. Working on it privately for six months wont help anything at this point and defeats the purpose of the project.



We can only be thankful that TGC themselves seem to realise this and continue to keep it all community driven.

if we would wait 6months or a year without testing it inbetween it would result in a x10.... See what we have now is a chance to voice our concerns and to directly give feedback and help tgc make this a better product for us all.

So no at least i cant see a reason why not to continue the way we are moving towards.



The Betas help and the closed bugfix betas ensure that more polished betas see the light so that the community can lean back and work on their games.

Sure we are not yet there but if we are honest if you want to make a game, you have to make your own media as you cant possibly rely only on stock or bought packs (thats how i see it).



Anyways Reloaded next Beta mid march - madness might return

I think it would be a disaster if Beta 6 still have problems with performance, memory, simple AI. So it would be better they work calm and we drink some tea =)

I actually don't agree with this statement. As current systems you buy today are more than enough. The issue with performance is within the engine itself at this point.







Any possibility you can upload a stress-test video with the FPS visible for us? Also your specs?

We aren't making final games with this yet so I do not see any reason why we cannot have some sort of monthly or weekly release. I feel that it would be beneficial to everyone if we all had access to trying the latest features so we can give advice or suggestions as its being programmed and made. Anyway that is just my opinion on how it should be. Otherwise I am very much looking forward to March.

I think there are some very valid points made here, and it's important to repeat TGC's commitment to Reloaded. The need to cross as wide a spectrum of PC's as possible is not only important to the end users but to us as well.



As for the whole alpha/beta conversation, maybe I can shed some light here.



Pre-Alpha/Alpha versions will ONLY go to the internal team of testers. These versions will often have features disabled, be bugged or contain experimental code/features. The team then accesses the version, comments via an internal system and the feedback is acted upon to help improve the product.



Alpha Cascades - Will go out to Gold pledgers upon release. These are more or less the same version as the next beta, but released early. There will always be tweaks to the engine between an Alpha Cascade and the next Beta, but in general they shouldn't have to be major unless something unexpected happens during the testing period.



Beta - These go out to all pledgers, and aim to address all previously reported issues from the last beta. This is where all testers get to express their concerns and hopefully happiness with current progress.



I hope that's a little clearer.



SC

Thanks SC, nice job clearing that one up.

Of course its important to keep development progress and Beta releases running smoothly and regularly especially in this instance when there are a lot of people who have already pledged their money and additionally Reloaded looks to the wider world in asking further support from people who may be interested in finding a game engine to work with and invest their money and time in it. Reloaded effectively is asking everyone to fund it upfront.



Fewer pledgers means less progress.

Less progress means fewer pledgers.



Any engine that hangs in the doldrums for extensive periods with little real progress being apparent (physically) and Beta progress updates being few and far between clearly does have an adverse affect on an engine.



Of course the reverse is that release Betas too early with little progress or serious flaws can also have an obvious seriously bad impact.



Both can have a detrimental affect to sales and a products reputation over a wide sphere of influence affecting in an engine as a serious development as said both in generating Sales and interest both internally in a community of users and externally in the wider sense.



Its all been seen before.



Thus the state of play at any time is important.



Point being in this reality situation is that theres absolutely no point in releasing a Beta where there is clearly no or little progress and certainly no point or benefit to releasing one that is worse than previous versions and or has serious major and or show stopping issues as that simply means that the end users and the product is worse off than previously and best to stick with any current Beta in general release until and if something better is forward developed.



Thats where we are now except that the current release to pledgers is poor to say the least and has already reached the worse than previous version situation so obviously pledgers would be looking for something to improve that situation already having received two quite poor updates.



Agreed that that should not be repeated and therefore there is certainly no option for anyone concerned other than to wait for a new and much improved and stable Beta release.



Again as to how long that new Beta update may be and what it will contain is not known is it.



That will depend upon TGC to getting it there when and if.

I agree as well, but not without some form of control. I don't think the addition of "build game" was necessary and it certainly puts unfinished, poorly-working levels out in the public without any explanation or control.



Brian.

Clearly a level of quality control is vital to any product development.



Now there is stage testing system in place (3 tier) then that should be of some help in maintaining the Quality of whats put out.



No doubt testing by the widest possible user base is a valuable and necessary part of that and even with stringent if you like tier testing end users will always find a range of either differences in actual real time use and or issues and bugs whichever way you want to describe them - its matters not if they are seen as issues and bugs officially or not in the slightest. Its the end result on the end actual users that matter and how it allows or prevents them from making a a game. If they cant make a game then that's an issue for an end user no matter what anyone thinks or says.



Inevitably the end users and the games they make and the end game players are the final test for the product. Of course unless one can actually get to see users making some real games proper, testing them and deploying them to end users then one will never know the full results of whether the product meets the need or not. Can you have more than one level - we don't know, how many? will it work and can it be deployed successfully and to the satisfaction of end game players and how many and what specs will they need in reality? Even then end users may well find issues and bugs missed or bypassed and skipped, left out along the way because its just too difficult or not fixed for another reason (financial, technical, engine core limitations and more) and the less of all those kinds of things the better. All that is a long way off.



As has been pointed out I can see some benefits to including a make game .exe feature. This is also vital in testing both in the short and long term. One cannot just accept that what you get in editor test level is what you will get in final publish and in fact both these two different versions need thorough testing throughout extensively and equally to see that there is a match between the two. No point in perfecting the editor and test level running if the final game output from it is full of issues some of which may be serious and show stoppers which may well rely of the engine/editor development being adjusted, re-worked or potentially re-written in a small or seriously large way.



I have no idea really but it would be a bad idea to develop the engine/editor side of things and overlook the published game affect and results as you develop only to eventually find there are major issues crop up in there for end games from not doing so. Such could seriously threaten the product and its success. At the end of the day its the published end game that matters and more so than the developer side of the product. The end games are what it is all about and it will be judged upon by both devs and end user game players so you ignore the game.exe along the way at your peril.



Ideally all Testers at all levels and stages should be testing both and checking progress of both is representative one of the other - good or bad.

I understand what your saying uman, but if it doesn't run on the users machine it's pretty much a given it won't run on anyone else s and won't help the user even if it did, therefore a little early to be testing it.

Put a disclaimer splash screen in the exported exe. Something like, Created with FPSCR beta test version blah blah.... Graphics, AI, Physics, and Gameplay are not representative of Final Product.



Put it in there and keep it there with no way to disable it until it actually is the final product or close to it.

I think we are in for a big shock in the next Beta....In a good way !!

So much looks to have been rectified and so much added..

I think I can hold out if it takes longer.. But not much



And if you want more money...I would be in for an upgrade to "Gold Plus" Or "platinum" if you could come up with something tempting

Lee wrote on his blog tonight that he will now have two solid weeks of FPSC:R performance work. He will be testing against a GeForce 9600 GT which is definitely one of the lower end and older video card models out there. This is because he wants FPSC:R to be running well enough on a mobile Ultrabook for GDC to present it. I guess if Lee can get the app to run at usable speeds on such low specs, we will be in great shape! He also writes:

Hi,



Internally we decided it's best we get the performance much better and to also fix many of the core issues. There's not much point sending out versions that just cause more issues. Hopefully later in March we'll have a vastly improved build. No dates are set due to uncertain nature of development!



Rick

Just to follow up on what Rick has said, remember you can keep up with progress on Lee's Blog here.



I think you'll all agree that some great strides are being made.



SC

It's great we have an agreement that I be allowed to finish the performance and memory work to a point where it does what it needs to do, rather than to an arbitrary deadline set in stone. I know it can be frustrating to sit on your hands and wait an indeterminate amount of time when you know there are good things to be had, but it shows a lot of maturity in the community when you pretty much unanimously agree to wait until we get to 'done' before a release. I will have a carefully scripted 'fast' version running at GDC on the Intel booth if you want a sneak peek before the alpha cascade, but as soon as our internal testers have stopped doing somersaults I will be making sure you get hold of this new version. I also want to resume a schedule where I can tell you release dates, but this will be when we work on the little features that make your game creation life easier. With substantial performance and memory issues, it was apparent we could not predict a timeline for the solution. I am pretty happy that I have found the path now and it's just a case of following it to it's logical conclusion. As a sneak peek, I am NOW getting over 90 fps on my river demo where I was only getting 24 fps on my aging 9600 GT card, and there are more improvements to go. It could well be that I be asked to stop increasing the speed when we get to the point that the frame rates on offer are acceptable to most, and that the new highest priority is some much needed editing and game play features.



P.S. The memory issue is solved for the moment - it's just performance now

I hope this takes into account a full playing field, and not just acceptable frame rates in a very small level like "Get to the River". We don't want to quickly run out of "acceptable" as we fill a proper level.



Brian.

Work has been done on Occlusion while I was at GDC, which should solve the issue of very large level of content troubling the renderer. I can confirm good speed improvements of medium size levels, and once we have established these improvements can be repeated on many systems (yours), we can then target the speed issues that directly result from a super-massive number of entities.

this all sounds promising lee m8, hopefully your time with performance is coming to a close for a time cant wait for the next beta have been keeping up with blogs and by the sounds of it we have something abit special to test out soon .. cant wait but will of course...

The only reason I would like incremental updates here is because I keep losing interest because I cannot do much with the current engine. I am not trying to complete a game I am just trying to be familiar with messing around in a game environment and in the first month I was doing everything I could in the current version. I do not mind if I spend time messing with something that you take out ultimately its really just me wanting to have something to do related to making games so I can be really familiar as you guys add and remove features.

As an update to this, I've been testing a pre-alpha and can confirm that some massive steps forward have been made in performance, stability and memory usage and the Development team are still working hard to improve things further.



We hope to have a version out to our Alpha testers before the end of the week, and once they've given it the thumbs up, out to you guys.



Don't forget you can keep up with all of the every day highs and lows of developement via Lee's blog here



SC