Good day to you all!

[system]

Hi there everyone. Not really sure what to say. I’ve been following the development process of Grim Dawn probably since the end of last year, and noticed the option to pre-purchase early on. I’ll be honest, it was hard restraining myself from doing so right away, but I wanted to see the different developments and whether or not the game maintained and improved upon the direction on TQ. And oh boy has it done so. So now I’m a Legendary Fan.

It’s quite a novel thing, contributing to the development of a game financially (if only a small amount! :D) and for the developer to offer Alpha/Beta participation for those who do so. My hope is that those who have become Legendary/Epic fans will also contribute by getting involved with reporting bugs/issues when they come up so that we can assist in getting what is promising to be an epic (or is that Legendary! :D) Action RPG!

I’m also kinda glad that the alpha won’t be ready for a while. I wouldn’t want anything rushed through for whatever reason, though I suppose as Crate aren’t currently linked with a publisher (am I correct in saying so?) there’s no pressure in that regard to push the game out in that respect…

…and hey, it will hopefully give me some time to play Diablo III and keep my ARPG-hunger satisfied along the way!

[medierra]

Hello and thank you for supporting Grim Dawn!

It is true that we do not currently have any publisher relationship and thus are able to stick firmly to that idea of releasing when its ready. Although does that count for alpha? I think maybe we’re supposed to release the alpha before its ready?

[system]

Haha very good point!

I suppose “ready” with an Alpha/Beta is not a definitive line in the sand though. Hell, with some games released in recent years it feels like they could have done with a few more weeks/months in alpha/beta before they were “ready” to release! I find this particularly true with MMOs - it often feels like the introductory month of a P2P MMO is the last 4 weeks of a beta with the amount of bugs/issues that arise. OTOH a larger playerbase has a larger chance of spotting an as-yet undiscovered bug/niggle… but the sheer amount of issues raised often makes it seem like the game wasn’t quite ready, and that the publisher was pressuring the devs to get the game out.

Think im waffling/ranting now, so I’ll stop… but thanks for the reply!

[matthewfarmery]

Hi and welcome, good to see another member / cultist (current forum joke:D ) join the ranks

seriously welcome,
and you are right on MMO’s and many recent games getting pushed before they are ready, in fact I beta tested for a publisher held title (X3 Reunion (space trading and combat game) that it was a horrible experience, and was rushed, as were the betas. but more and more games are hitting the streets before they are ready, its a sad turn of events

one reason I support Crate and the indie scene,

but in the case of Grim Dawn’s alpha, it should be ready when its stable, as if you take a look over at Pioneer (remake of Frontier Elite 2) they are now releasing alpha every 2 Friday of every month, while at the same time, they are doing nightlys, which you can download, but far less stable then the official alpha releases

some games and programs have a similar system, and they always say that the nightly build will always be less stable, as any new code gets added to the master branch (SVN) then complied, so anyway, its a tricky question aright, when should Grim Dawn’s alpha be released? well, it should be stable, as possible, less buggy then a night build, OK no alpha will ever be truly stable, but as stable as possible, so that the code is checked, and runs well on as many systems as possible, and that there is no code that is half written and causes crashes every quarter an hour that kind of thing

but anyway, that is my take on a stable alpha, might not always be possible, but its good to know that the game isn’t rushed to begin with, and the game will mature over time and the final game will be released when its done, and not when a publisher wants it done, (and why many games are released as a buggy mess these days)

[i.n.s.a.n.e]

Welcome on board Miazma. =)

@Matt,

Well, I think what you describe applies to beta more than alpha…at least for me…

I think the GD alpha could have those issues you mentioned, even the critical ones.

Why, you ask? GD has and will have VERY large community by the time the alpha hits the release stage, why not to let the poeple find the bugs, even the big ones?

I think it could save Crate a lot of time…but it is just my thoughts being hungry bug hunting tester… Anyway, I for myself would not really be iritated if ALPHA was bugged as hell, the beta is the supposedly-stable one for me. And if Crate could create (see what I did? Hehe…ok, not that funny, but whatever…) some user-friendly bug reporting tool ingame, this could be a breeze…

[system]

The best time for a game to be “bugged as hell” is in alpha at the end of the day. You don’t want to be finding those late in development or post-release - it will put the everyday casual gamer off. Its about finding a balance between stability and completeness IMHO.

[eisprinzessin]

We’re building off a codebase that has already shipped two games and with hundreds of thousands of people playing TQ:IT, the remaining major bugs are well known. We spent some time fixing the bugs carried over from TQ:IT and, though we’ve added some new features, right now the game is pretty solid. Occasionally bugs get introduced as we make changes, but we actively fix them and I’d say this has easily been the least buggy game during development of any project I’ve worked on.

I think we will not see many bugs even in the alpha version. What we can expect are things, which require some polish, and

something playable […] that is fun to play but possibly very limited in terms of the amount of content and features.