!IMPORTANT! Release early with bugs, or release later with polish?

My (infallible) opinion:

Push to release now

Do virtually ZERO PR other than an update in the steamgroup saying "hey, the game can be started again", forums and a similar thing on modDB.

Use current version as a testbed, update it weekly, monthly, whatever. No-one plays Empires now anyway except the testers.

Once we hit a place we're pretty happy with (depending on timescale, this might be AFTER the new GUI is done), we go craycray on the PR and basically include everything done in the changelog since the current version. For the few people actually playing the current version, they'll know that we're just bloating out the changelog. For most people, it'll be either the first time they've played Empires, or the first time they've played since the release that's currently out now, so it'll make no difference to them.




I see any other course of action as entirely illogical.

EDIT: It's also worth making it clear to people who are playing the game on this new testbed version that we're developing it constantly and it'll be clusterfucked with bugs and that it's not an "official" release per se. We don't even have to give it a specific version number, we could just call it 2.5 RC1, RC2, etc.

 

Helloooo I Want To Test!!! Da Fuk!

 

Are you implying that tickster can actually see through those super thick sun glasses or that he would even do manual labor like that when he could hire an Iraq slave laborer to do it for him?

 

How canI test???
where to download???

 

Trickster should have gave you access to the testing forum since you posted in the other thread.


I don't know whats wrong, but for once I 100% agree with trickster lol

 

I keep getting the event pop up from the early days

 

I'm going to start putting the things in place for release then. I would recommend that no one update their SVN in the meantime because you'll run the risk of having to download several gigabytes of data for nothing. Because of how Source Mod distribution works now, we need to pretty much distribute all of Source 2013 with Empires. On one hand, this makes the download size something like 6GB. On the other hand though, this is actually less than before because you won't need to download Empires and Source separately. So I'm still working out a good way to merge everything in.

 

um... make a batch file that decompresses the vpks that we already have into empires dir?

 

I'm talking about for people that haven't downloaded Source 2013. I can post instructions on where to copy files for people that already have Source 2013 installed.

 

Praise Jehovah for He has spoken.

 

I'm wanting to push the map descriptions DDD has written so far with this patch. I'll do it tomorrow UK time if thats ok? (Presumably data on svnpires will get copied to the release version when you push it out?)

 

Anything that's in SVN before release will get pushed out to live. I'm intending to pull out ViroMan's jeeps and the shotguns too before then. I'll be spending my week making sure all the scripts are right and we haven't left anything extra in there. Assuming that we encounter no more major problems, then I'll be pushing it out sometime during the last week of the month.

 

...and commenting out the aircraft weapons because ove:

 

i'd like to see one large player test before releasing it publicly

 

Yeah, I feel like getting it out sooner but with a large disclaimer in the form of an alpha tag on the versioning or RC like Trickster said would be ideal. Sorry I haven't been able to test, I'm like in Japan, yo!

 

Get it out there.
So long as it is playable you'll get more feedback anyway.
I know the fix right now is easy enough, but plenty of people don't read the forum and have probably just given up.

get it out there, post that it has been ported into alpha on sdk2013 and we can start trying to repopulate and get atleast decent sized games happening on a weekly basis again.

 

Empires 2013 is ready for release as far as running and distribution is concerned; the entire download is 2.9GB and does not require any other programs installed to run. If you opt into the Beta branch, then use the "Source 2013 launch test" option, it should run without any problems; I just tested it by wiping my Empires install and doing it from scratch.

The earliest that this will be released is Saturday evening PST, by request of Lazybum who asked if I could hold off until after his pug. That, of course, assumes that everything is fixed.

EDIT: But, it seems that it's not getting sent to anyone else but me. I'll need to dig further into it.