f13.net

Greetings, prospective test subjects!

For the last few months I've been working on building a little turn-based space strategy game as a one-man project. It contains influences by several classic games like Master of Orion 2 (ship design and tactical combat), the strategic portion of X-Com (having to keep those who fund you happy) and Hearts of Iron (mostly the semi-realtime turn system and officer management).

Although it is still very much in Pre-Alpha condition, I'd like to get a few testers in to find out if the game even starts successfully on a few different system configurations. I had already noticed a few problems with the pixel shaders when trying it on other systems (depending on gfx card and driver version), so I'd like to learn about any other basic compatibility stuff early.

Exciting, right?

So, what do you need:
 - A Windows machine would be great, Mac might work too but that's a secondary priority at the moment
 - Must have a current version of Java (6 or newer) installed. If you are running Minecraft you're fine, since that uses mostly the same tech as my game
 - Must have enough technical skill to download and extract a ZIP without detailed instructions, then launch a .bat file in there
 - Tolerance toward incomplete or missing gameplay elements, placeholder graphics, buttons that do nothing, general lack of balance and related "fun"

What do you get out of it:
 - You'll be among the first to mess around with this
 - You'll receive a place of honor on my list of spam targets beta candidates

If you're interested, just send me a message with your rough system specs (mostly OS, graphics card and driver version) here or a mail me a rating@snipefish.de . If you send a mail, be sure to include your forum name so I know who you are!

I'll give it a shot if you like. Windows 7. 4670 raedon thingos. Latest catalyst drivers.

You mention some very deep trigger-titles there.

I can test it at home. Here's my hardware:

Processor: Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66GHz
Memory: 8GB Corsair XMS2 RAM
Video Card: 2 GB HIS IceQ X Turbo Radeon HD 6950
Monitor: HP Compaq LA2405 LCD (1920x1200)
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Elite Pro
Operating System: Vista-64 Home Premium
Motherboard: ASUS P5E Workstation Professional

I can run DX11. I'm running some beta sound card drivers from Creative that resolve a long-standing BSOD issue in LotRO.

Is a PM here acceptable?

Yeah, just send anything.

Sure, why not.

I've put the current Alpha version of my game up for public testing. It's still far from done, but quite fun in parts. If you would like to take a look at it, just head to http://snipefish.de (http://snipefish.de) and register a new account. When you sign in, you should automatically have access to the game.

If you want to look at not-so-pretty screenshots and stuff first, I've posted some stuff at http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=23939.0 (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=23939.0) in the past.

edit: Oops, people are still signing up. That was supposed to be a time-limited thingy for a week. It's back to closed testing for now. Communication fail. Mailed regular tester registration keys to the late signups to make up for it.

<shameless self-promotion>
So I've started selling the Alpha of my game, because all the cool kids are doing it these days.

Check here: http://www.desura.com/games/solar-war (http://www.desura.com/games/solar-war)

So people who are interested can get an (unfinished) game right away instead of just pushing money into a Kickstarter bucket for a vague promise of stuff whenever. (Yeah, there's also games doing the instant access thing on KS, but games which are that far along kind of feel out of place there in my opinion)

I'm also working on a special "get your name into the game" bonus for people buying at this early stage, where they can design a recruitable NPC. That kind of deal always seems to be popular for some reason. :grin:

How has Desura been treating you? I did some stuff with them awhile back as a test for that market and the way their internal sytem work. Was able to get surprisingly large amounts feedback with little effort. The one thing Desura seems to have right is the entire community aspect of things.

So far, I'm happy with it. I did barely any real marketing during this first month (only a few forum posts and such for now) since I was busy getting release bugs fixed, but still got some useful feedback and a few sales. I'll probably be focusing more on PR this month and see where that goes.

On the technical side, releasing patches is needlessly complicated if you have multiple builds (Windows/Linux, Demo/Full game), but still manageable. Otherwise, it does what it is supposed to, especially on the user end, and it even allows me to easily link customers to my site for the Alpha promo stuff I have there. There's some oddities, such as the official binary Linux client being really outdated and buggy; Linux users are expected to compile the latest version from source, but that's not mentioned anywhere unless you search their forums.

Is it online? If so, I'll create a server-emulator for it, and call it.... Solar Wars eXperiment. :grin:

That would be quite a feat for a single-player offline game. Or it would be trivially easy, depending on how you look at it.

The game is highly moddable though, if you want to fiddle with it. (hint, hint)

Oh hey. Space Sector has a review of the alpha. (http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2012/11/solar-war-its-like-x-com-meets-master-of-orion-but-not/)

Thanks, hadn't seen that one yet.

Congrats on that! Your in the big times now!

Here's an early christmas gift for the few people who actually check this board on a regular basis. (You know you're way cooler than the rest of f13, but don't let them know!)

Use one of these keys at http://solarwar.net and get a free copy of the game. Hooray!

TBWR-W8S8-BUUB-VFUU-44L9
72A6-2X9F-CV3S-CE54-A8RE
WBM4-NE5T-X7MT-2LHH-S2YV

Are the keys one-use?  I don't want to take one from someone else if so, but I would be interested in giving this a go at some nebulous time in the future.

Yeah, one use each. Your call really, I also posted a few other keys to Twitter if you want to leave these here untouched.

There's also the demo, which should last a beginner 2 or 3 hours before you hit the demo limitations.

Well well, look who's in Paradox's Gamersgate store.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-SOLARWAR/solar-war-beta

EDIT: And in my Steam Greenlight queue.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=125445146

Sooo, this has taken a bit longer than expected but I'm now on Steam. :drill:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/340880

Grats!

Grats!

Awesome!

Hey you got one review and the guy liked it, so there's something!

Nice one, well done.