Sword of the Stars II

[Murgos]

Not really much information available at this point, I wouldn't expect it to be released any time soon (2011 may be too early, even) but here is some stuff from E3:

Screenshots:
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/swordofthestarsii/screenshots.html

Interview:
http://www.strategyinformer.com/editorials/8340/e3-2010-sword-of-the-stars-2

Cheesy Trailer:
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/07/07/sword-of-the-stars-2-trailer-spreads-space-doom.aspx

[Stormwaltz]

Screenshots:
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/swordofthestarsii/screenshots.html

If the intention was to make the ships look less like ships in space and more like cheap plastic toys lit by flashlights, mission accomplished.

[Murgos]

Graphics weren't the reason to play the first one, it's unlikely that they'll be part of the reason to play the second one.

edit:  Also, I'm not sure why they decided on super-closeups of their ship models, you will never be that zoomed in on them while playing.

[Ingmar]

Graphics weren't the reason to play the first one, it's unlikely that they'll be part of the reason to play the second one.

edit:  Also, I'm not sure why they decided on super-closeups of their ship models, you will never be that zoomed in on them while playing.

For the same reason that Eve screenshots typically aren't of a field of little red + signs I assume.

[Quinton]

I'd actually prefer some kind of super-slick tactical display showing marker glyphs for classes of ships or groups thereof,  with annotations running alongside, etc.  Don't need me any miniature models if I can have a giant tactical holo-pit!

[Yegolev]

I'd actually prefer some kind of super-slick tactical display showing marker glyphs for classes of ships or groups thereof,  with annotations running alongside, etc.  Don't need me any miniature models if I can have a giant tactical holo-pit!

You and I think alike but I believe most people are not excited by such things, as Ingmar mentioned.

[Stormwaltz]

I'd actually prefer some kind of super-slick tactical display showing marker glyphs for classes of ships or groups thereof,  with annotations running alongside, etc.

That hasn't been done for a long time.

[Sky]

Wow, I had forgotten that one. Did anyone ever use the IGS with Breach? Seemed like such a great concept...if you could board the Normandy and enter into tactical mode, a giant TBS game.

[Lum]

One of my "back pocket ideas" (ie everyone in the game industry has game ideas, in their back pocket metaphorically, ready to go) is a hard core tactical space strategy sim. With lots of lines and symbols and things. And invasions. And rebellions. And many Bothans that died to bring us this information. And and and... well, like this.

[Ingmar]

Proudft totally has that game, but we haven't played it yet.

[Lum]

It's playable, but you'll think "um, this would be a lot better on a PC" a lot.

Plus, it really doesn't have Bothans, which is a shame.

[proudft]

Haha, yeah I bought that for like $20 on ebay a while ago.  I assume it is going to be the game Ingmar & me play in the retirement home when our 3D neural implants stop working.   Someone uploaded countersheets to boardgamegeek so I did check that I have all the pieces for our game in 2075.

[Lantyssa]

Poor Bothans. 

[Sir T]

Gamersgate just sent me an email saying this is going to be released on the 28th of October.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-SOTS2LW/sword-of-the-stars-ii-lords-of-winter

[Murgos]

Gamersgate just sent me an email saying this is going to be released on the 28th of October.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-SOTS2LW/sword-of-the-stars-ii-lords-of-winter

They are just now starting a wider beta test outside their internal testers.  I would stay away for a couple of patches.

I do plan to get it though, I've spent waaaay too much time with the original to not support them.

[Ironwood]

Poor Bothans. 

You know, once you start reading the EU, you realise one important thing :

Fuck Bothans.

[Mrbloodworth]

I would rather have another homeworld.

[Sir T]

Poor Bothans. 

You know, once you start reading the EU, you realise one important thing :

Fuck Bothans.

I think the proper response when you start reading the EU is :

Fuck the EU. And Mandalorians.

[Merusk]

No, the proper response when you start reading the EU this late in life is:

"Have I *really* run out of other material to read? It's come down to this?"

[Lantyssa]

Yeah.  I don't care about EU Bothans.

Once upon a time I lived in a city of them.

[Sir T]

Well its release day, and I just found out is a Direct X 10 game, which means my Win XP system cant run it. More fool me, eh? Ah well, I'm sure it will be finally right patched next June when I might be able to afford an upgrade to windows 7 to play the game I bought 2 weeks ago. 

[bhodi]

I'd actually prefer some kind of super-slick tactical display showing marker glyphs for classes of ships or groups thereof,  with annotations running alongside, etc.

That hasn't been done for a long time.

AI War is sort of close...

I, for one, am excited about this game. I really enjoyed SOTS 1. I hope they kept the overbudget humor.

[Murgos]

Considering that Mecron (the lead developer/president of the Kerebos) was debating what non-working 'features' to cut at 2am last night I am probably going to stay away for a bit.  I have too many other things to play with what little time I have than to spend it grinding my teeth with something that 'mostly' works.

Even better was that then he has the gall to be offended that people on his forum are worried about the release because he didn't lock down features for launch 2 months ago.  Yeah, this isn't going to be a buggy mess at all.  Commenting out blocks of code 12 hours before release can't possibly have any noticeable side-effects on stability or quality of game play.

[bhodi]

To be honest, that was exactly what SOTS 1 was. It really didn't get good until the 2nd expansion.

[Sir T]

Yeah, I thought SOTS was dreck when I bought it first right after release, and only tried it again after AMOC on the strong recommendation of some friends of mine. And I thought some features of Argos naval Yard ware very badly thought out (Hi there Railguns!)

Thats said I dont remember SOTS being buggy on release as such, I just thought it was very uninteresting and clunky.

[bhodi]

Well, the game is live on steam. If you got it on gamersgate or whatever, don't d/l it, just put the serial in steam and d/l it from there. Otherwise you'll be downloading it twice.

From a few scattered reports, the game clearly feels unfinished. Kind of disappointing. No tutorial, laggy menus, random crashes. Boo.

[bhodi]

from Rorschach on the Quarter to Three Forums:

Just got confirmation that the current version on steam is an older build and the latest is uploading to Steam now. Everyone should get an update soon.

[kildorn]

The lead dev was discussing features to include at launch two days before launch, and somehow we're shocked that they have shitty enough release management that they sent the wrong build? 

I really liked Sword of the Stars. I really feel like I enjoyed it BECAUSE I only entered the game when ANY was already out. This build at least feels like a massive leap backwards in terms of UI and usability in exchange for locational damage. Here's hoping the build's fixes are all UI functionality.

[Simond]

Looks like my plan of "Wait until the first expansion" was a smart one.

[bhodi]

This is the build Mec was discussing in his state of the union post - had things gone as intended, we'd have spent today listening to you all and address bugs for an update tomorrow. We're still going to target for that update, thanks to Steam taking the time on a Saturday to go live with the update. Then we'll be plowing through Sunday towards a Monday update. There will be more beyond, some of it relating to a couple of key things Mec brought up, but we are going to be working hard for the weekend to crush wild bugs as fast as we can.

Thanks everyone for your support and patience. We've never applied the Kerberos support model to something of this scale before, but we're not going to let that stop us. We have a lot of game in store for you, a lot of the usual update goodies being hatched, and a lot of expansion materials planned.

This was not the launch we have in mind, but it's the only launch we've got and we're going to do our usual and make the most of it.

To paraphrase:

-this is the build we intended to send
-the build we intended to send was largely just a build where we remembered to put the dlc in
-other 60% of the features we said we'd put in the game forthcoming


If you buy this game, you're going to have serious buyer's remorse. People are joking that "At least the options screen works" is going to become the new "It's not that bad" because at least Dungeon Siege 3's menu system worked and it's the worst game ever.

[Reg]

Is it as bad as Elemental? It couldn't possibly be that bad...

[bhodi]

Worse, or at the very least the same. The best people can say is that it doesn't delete your boot.ini file. The most fun about this game is watching the ships fight on the title screen. Some gems from the SA Thread:

So me and a friend managed to finish 10 whole turns after dealing with crashes, sound bug, and missing UI elements over the course of 2 hours, bear in mind all we did was colonize a single world each select research and hit END TURN. This thing really makes you hustle for your game time.

Whatever the reality may be, I haven't gotten the game working long enough to patrol more than once, and then it caused a combat and that's when the game hung itself. The combat screen came up and said "you lost" but the system update never happened, the end turn button stayed grayed out, and I couldn't do anything in the engine even though the UI was still working.

I've been trying to play this for a couple of hours. First game after a few turns an AI faction's "battle" against a Protean popped up after every turn, which added like 30 seconds to every turn. Then a few turns later another AI battle against something else started popping up. So every end of turn processing took like a minute and it kept doing it for the 20ish turns I tried. Fuck that.

It goes on and on. Devs are in full damage control mode at this point and are posting stuff like this:

Hiya - all of use were annoyed at the double download today, and a few of you, we realize, don't have speedy or deep connections, so we apologize for that. The good news is that updates are intended to be incremental - and update that is replace-the-entirety-of-that-previous-thing is a giant, pain in the ass anomaly. Rest assured - you're not going to have to do this every time we fix a typo.

Moving ahead on the weekend, there will be some small fixes, and we will be watching your tech posts as they come in (hence the new forum). As mentioned, it was never planned that we'd slam gigs and gigs into more gigs, so we're going keep an eye that Friday's error doesn't continue to bite us in the ass in odd ways, and work towards another upload on Monday.

We'll be around as much as we can, though I will be honest, Saturday will be some sleep catch up before we all return to the office Sunday, so please bear that in mind.

- must. close. eyes...

Small fixes indeed.

[Strazos]

I would rather have another homeworld.

Speaking of which, why does neither GOG or Steam have Homeworld 1 or 2 for sale?

Granted, I still actually have an original Homeworld disc, but I never had the chance to play 2 or anything.

[kildorn]

This build is a total disaster. Really. The beta release they screwed up was bad. The replacement build that took 8 hours to put out was.. the same build, except the non functional options screen was now greyed out. Woo!

I want to love and play this game. But uh, I don't know how to nicely say "the entire management staff at kerberos should probably never be given management positions again if this is their idea of "ready""

[Ingmar]

Re: Elemental comparisons, the question I would ask is, once they fix the functional problems will the game be fun? Because with Elemental the real core problem was the game itself was shit, even when it was working.