Sorry but as a programmer of some thirty years I fail to understand why it has been decided that despite paying to be part of a Beta participation scheme it now transpires that a select number of people will test the Beta releases before they are released to us. Come on we paid for the Betas as they are released not after they have been tested by other third parties. Sorry guys but thirty years in this business, I was the lead programmer for Edutech Systems Ltd that supplied education software to over forty countries, I have to say this is a little stupid.



Please supply the Betas as agreed warts and all. We're all grown ups here so we can take it.



Ken Long

Now i understand that frustration but there is a reason why the Devs

picked some ppl from the community to testdrive sensible things.



The main reason is/ was to ensure that features can be tested in a controlled

environment without the fear of loosing reputation.



However you should not confuse the Closed Beta testers with the Pledgers, the Pledgers are still going to receive regular Builds - and the next one is around the corner.



Anyways i know its sometimes hard to watch this project as its shapeshifting but

the wait will be rewarded - sooner or later.

J0linar



Thanks for the quick reply. Very impressive.



Yes I agree with a lot that you say but my fear is that we will gradually see a longer and longer lead time between Betas as this inner circle of testers looks at things. Controlled testing should take place during development in any case. Its the problems thrown up by peoples hardware configurations and interference by badly written third party software that will make or break and program. That is only available usually post release, hence what we used to call bug fix releases but now call updates. The Game Creators are in a good position of not only avoiding that by having a large number of people willing to take that on pre-release but those same people are willing to put up money on the spec.



So I come back to my previous point in my comment above. I hope this does not offend anyone here but I am confident that we are all grown ups here. Not like a few years ago when you took your life in your hands writing on these forums.

It took the community some time to make Lee & Co.

go hunt the issues we all had (still have) with performance,

now if you have followed Lee`s Blog you might see some light at the end of the tunnel.



We are almost there/ climbing over the brick wall - performance.

After this stage we, at least am sure, will receive more regular builds like at the beginning. Currently lets be honest the latest Beta for example was a leg shot but it was important - you have to fail to prevail and with that being said

the devs are currently at the GDC and presenting the latest of Reloaded and

that is what we will receive as next build, performance boosts and other stuff.



See TGC cant even ignore us, they dont want to ignore their customers, they have learned from the past and they have understood what the community wants.

Sure they want to get more pledgers but to get those they have to show of improvements and this is happening right now.

No need to fear but concerns are always you should expres, especially since the reloaded community is just starting to shape up. We need more active ppl and more users that share and take care.

It's all just a glitch in the matrix and you shouldn't worry too much about it



As someone who also wants to create and sell media for Reloaded I understand the frustration you feel, but that is in fact a totally different issue. To be honest if this software was to have continued down line of development it was in the past, there would have been a sharp drop off of users which does no one any good, and a reputation to match Classic FPSC at this point would be a disaster.



All TGC are doing for now is taking a little longer to get the next Beta out, and ensuring it really comes up to users expectations by using a small testing team before doing so. You will likely find as a Gold pledger you will still receive an Alpha cadence version before the next Beta is released in general so still have your benefits as promised, just a little later with this one



After this Beta is released I expect things will settle down more and releases will become more frequent again, I don't think it's a bad thing for now but can see your point if it all were to continue as it is, but see it getting better personally.

@grobyken you may have missed it but lee did say after this beta they are going to try and get it back to the way it was with sooner releases.



Sorry i cant remember where he said it but it was in a post.

Hi,



There are in effect four versions, a pre-alpha release, that is only going to 2-3 in-house (tgc) employees - These a very raw versions, that are often bugged, or showing very WIP features and are not suitable of public release.



It will then move to an Alpha version (not a Beta Class 1) which will go out to our selected Alpha testers. These testers will more often than not, break the alpha and it will need tweaking. However once they confirm there are no major deal-breakers, there are two options.



1) A version may be released as a Alpha Cascade. This will more or less be an early release of the Beta, although the final Beta may have minor fixes and/or tweaks. Alpha Cascades go out ONLY to gold pledgers. We apprecitate that there hasn't been as many of these as we'd planned, but early Betas have shown that a little delay in Beta releases, will produce a much better product in the end.



2) The version will go straight to Beta and to all users. This version will then become the next official beta.



I'm sure all users understand the need to avoid flawed/broken Betas. It's important for all companies to ensure that their products are seen in the best light and TGC are no exception. Sometimes this takes longer than expected.



I thank everyone for their patience and promise you the next Beta will have the wow factor you've all been waiting for.



SC

Yep. I think there were some very helpful and constructed replies there so thanks guys.

I am sure your concerns are shared by many users who visit but never post around here, so it's good that you raise these points



As a Gold pledger I have no issues with this, but not so certain others feel the same way. I am sure many paid for all the extra models and the right to sell their games foremost, aside from support for this project. But still as you say there has been a lack of Alpha cadence releases and these will find bugs before full release. At the least it makes Gold pledgers feel useful so should not be ignored.

Maybe you could release a pre alpha and after 2 weeks of tweak and errors if ok release to gold pledgers. alpha cadence seems a bit too near to beta release but I am not too bothered by it all really as long as it improves and is going in the right direction.

Had the kickstarter been successfully funded then Lee would have all the funding and could release warts and all but as its reputation ( as Rolfy states ) that now brings in pledgers to fund the project I can understand a little more caution as we found out in the last build..



Many were not happy and I had a little moan as well but I was pretty new and really had not thought the process through......Apologies for that ..



The next beta should be well worth the extra wait

Not to nitpick; but for clarity. If choice 2 is proceeded with, wouldn't that circumvent (and possibly make irate) the Gold Pledgers who paid more to get version earlier than other pledgers? Unless I'm mistaken in what people get now.

@KeithC



I think it's fair to say we would like to get back to providing all Gold pledgers with an alpha cascade ahead of other pledgers, it is after all one of the bonuses of backing Gold. I'm fairly certain that once the next beta is out the door, i

I would not be surprised if the next Beta went straight to everyone and reckon that would be understandable to most, but TGC need to be careful of making this the norm when using an internal testing team and forgetting the Gold pledger deal. As I said above this may not go down too well if it were to continue.



I only remember this happening once so far and in that case the Alpha cadence worked better than the Beta.

I can understand in this instance, if option 2 is enacted. But; as Rolfy has stated, making this a regular (or even semi-regular) thing will start to sour the waters. I would also wager that future pledgers will look at this and think twice about going the Gold route.



I myself have uninstalled the last Beta/Alpha, as I didn't want to take the time to do the fix needed to be able to even run the demo level; so as to avoid the crashing issue previously laid out. I did this some time ago now, thinking the next Beta release for the gold pledger was around the corner. So between the release of the last beta and now, I haven't opened up nor touched ReLoaded at all. It would have been nice to at least have that fix uploaded as a replacement beta all that time ago; even without everything that is going into the one slated to be released at some point in the future. I'm starting to lose interest in it altogether.

It's the same for me, though my reasons are different, it's simply unusable and frustrating to do anything much with it. The novelty of terrain editing wore off long ago and creating media for it is all that's left for me. Which is frustrating too since I have to use an older beta which doesn't have the features I need to test them in....ironically.



Maybe TGC need to stop trying to cram too much into it and have more frequent releases with less features so users can at least feel it is advancing in some form, not all seek new features all the time and are happy to see any kind of improvement.



I know advances have been made in performance, but when Lee and co are off to GDC it all goes silent, which to be honest is going to lead to even more posts asking when is the next Beta. A simple announcement around here of why development was coming to an abrupt halt for at least a week (again) would have been more polite as not everyone reads Lee's blog. Personally I understand what's going on but many wouldn't have a clue unless they keep up with things on their own,this forum is the front line, not Facebook or the blog. A postcard would be nice



This can already be seen starting and customer care are left giving out generic responses to these questions where it's obvious no one is at the wheel right now.

its the same for me with beta 5, not really used it past the 1st day of release.. so unusable for me aswell, which is sad to see tbh.

im also alittle surprised there is no blog or posts about gdc event yet from either rick or lee. maybe we are in for a mega blog when their back or something?, but it is very quiet and alittle worrisome.



the next beta promises to be a great 1 and im sure a lot of people are expecting great things from it, but haven't we heard that before and it flopped?! I do hope a lot of the bugs and everything core performance related is solved and given a good increase in usability. 2 flopped betas in a row would defo kill the mood for game making here I feel, for some at least. after gdc is done I hope to see some real meaty blogs and posts here from tgc explaining and showing off some great stuff, but like rolfy said a postcard would of been nice.

It is a bit disappointing. Lee is at the Intel booths all week going over both AGK and FPSC:R but there hasn't been so much as a tweet about any of the developments or what he has shown off. I was hoping to see videos of the booth and his presentations. He mentioned on his blog earlier that he had a "secret sauce" with FPSC:R to be revealed at GDC, something relating to depth maps I believe. I've been hunting for any news about this but have seen virtually nothing. Lee tweeted that FPSC:R would be on demo at 4-6 last night and today a pic of him discussing AGK surfaced, but nothing more than that.

so true, it is kinda sad that the community is being left in the dark - with a simple promise of reloaded being better in the next release.



Other Companys are currently shocking the world with their stuff and all we heard from FPSCR is well - nothing.



I have pointed out in another thread that Epic and Crytek have set a new business plan for their engines, one that would almost make FPSCR obsolote - so i dont really get the stae of silence that TGC is playing, wake up! seriously this has to change.

Hi Guys,



Sorry for the black-out. GDC is a crazy time and getting back into the UK time zone and pouring through email backlog can take a while. Pretty much sorted out now and my office once again hums with activity. I mainly used Twitter to post the events of the week (@leebambertgc) as blogs are usually drawn out affairs and not much to report 'dev-wise'. I also did not want to turn myself into a 'what happened at GDC' as there is already plenty of that from far better journalists than me. I will me posting a blog later tonight on what I felt was relevant to Reloaded at GDC and the stuff I was personally excited about.



The 'secret sauce' was in fact the addition of some experimental 'lean-detection' and 'voice-control' in the main editor and test game (a module created for Reloaded by a non-Lee coder) and using the Intel RealSense technology. I also demonstrated the performance of the engine on the Iris-Pro technology, Intel's latest integrated graphics solution for Ultrabooks and other larger-mobile devices.



Deciding when to release a version can be very tricky, and more so when you throw out an arbitrary date and stick to it (as demonstrated by the last beta). The version we used for GDC was nice and fast for us, and my hope was to get this version out to you before GDC, but a decision was made to postpone this release as there was no time to test it thoroughly, and no time to respond to issues given GDC week was upon us. It is also not a question of 'fewer features' and 'faster updates' as I have only been working one thing 'performance' and so it's pretty tough to reduce a list of one item Performance remains my one and only item until told otherwise, and once we have something better than the last beta we will release this to you guys as soon as it's been thoroughly tested. I do accept that Gold pledgers should get priority access to all good versions, but it's also a good idea to make sure those versions provide a better experience than it's predecessors, and this can sometimes take time to confirm.



I often say 'welcome to the world of development', and it's not always a positive statement. For me coding is very often an exercise in R&D, and predicting final states and durations is near impossible. I would release versions constantly if it was universally agreed that it's okay for the software to crash, eat files, gobble memory and generally break everything you've done up to that point, but it's an agreement that only works in fantasy land. You want to install, run and have a positive experience, and that requires someone between us testing the version and ensuring it's good to go.



The good news is that while I was enjoying myself at GDC, Reloaded work continued in the form of the 'vegetation system' which now operates without hitting the GPU too much (avoiding that annoying grass generation stall which hurt frame rate) and also operates faster than the original thanks to it's place inside a C++ module. This module will be added to the next version on top of the performance gains already made. For more information on this work, check out the latest post-GDC News item.

Thanks for taking the time,

well tbh i havent expected any special news from the GDC - only a tweet like

hey guys we showed the world what we got cooking... and they liked it but hey

the Free AGK Promo was a nice tweet, on that way thanks for the gift

I'm sure Paul won't thank me for sending hundreds more developers to his inbox