blog: developer blog #8

Apr 17, 2009 Derek Smart

The State Of Play

Whoa!! Time flies when you’re having fun. It has been almost two months since my last dev blog update. A lot has changed during that time. As you can see from our game’s dev changelog, we’ve been very busy indeed.

A lot has gone into bug fixes, tweaks, interface revisions etc and we now have the game where we want it to be in terms of tech, feature set, gameplay etc. We were originally planning a first week May launch, but have moved it to first week June instead in order to have additional time needed for polishing, more tweaks and content completion.

Speaking of content; we underestimated the time it would take to complete the game’s massive number of assets. Most of the setback was due to using largely unreliable contractors who we had outsourced some critical assets to. Couple that with the sudden change of schedules for some of our contractors back in Feb and the result is that the content never caught up with the coding effort. So now Joerg, Alexis et al are all playing catch up. It is a massive amount of content for this game and even almost a year and half wasn’t enough to get it all done on time. It also didn’t help that we had to keep scrapping submitted works and redoing them over because the quality we were looking for just wasn’t there.

As it stands, most of the legacy assets (art, audio, models etc) used as placeholders have been replaced with their finished and final counterparts. The only major assets waiting to be signed-off and integrated now are the six character models. So yeah, those Orange guys you see running around in the movies and shots thus far released, are all going to be gone within the next few weeks.

So from here on it is basically content integration, tweaks, bug fixes polishing etc.

Meet The Bastards

This AAW game takes place within our established Battlecruiser/Universal Combat franchise mythos. So, of course you would expect the Gammulans to be a part of this game. The thing is, they’ve never – ever – been portrayed in any 3D form in any of the games in the BC/UC series created back in 1989. Until now.

Meet one (of three) the bastards and he went from badass to the final absolute badass.

Vanguard Assault Marine1
Vanguard Assault Marine2
Vanguard Assault Marine3
Vanguard Assault Marine4
Vanguard Assault Marine5
Vanguard Assault Marine6

The new Terran guys are also getting a major workover and are just as impressive.

Closed Beta Focus Testing

Though we have a lot of experience in doing massive games, since this is our first game of this kind, we wanted to have focus testing from others out there who are interested in this sort of game. To this end, we joined forces with IGN, our long time digital distribution partner, to do an invite (10K people max) only, first come first serve focus testing of the game.

That effort launches today at 3pm EDT and will run from 04-17 to 05-17. If you are an IGN subscriber, then you should probably have already received your Beta invite and a key. You also were given links to the download as well as instructions on how to activate the game. After you have downloaded and activated the game, the first thing you should do is use the game’s “Check For Updates” link to grab the latest 1.16.09 BETA patch which was pushed to the update servers late last night and you will have the latest game build (see the changelog above).

You will also have links to our Beta testing forum where you can post your experiences, bug reports and such. In other words, you will have direct contact with us during this test.

We will also be giving keys to media sites who were promised such keys. So if you were part of the Adrenaline Vault Episode 18 podcast, then you should be receiving your Beta key from them shortly. Also, those of you over at local watering hole, RPS who were promised keys during this interview, should also be receiving them shortly from those folks. Since keys are limited, don’t get your hopes up too high.

If all else fails and you can’t get a key but would like to help us test our game, you can always hit me (betaprogram -at -3000ad.com) for a BETA key. If I have any left, I’ll distribute them on a first come, first serve basis.

Today I have released over a hundred shots taken from some of the scenarios included in the Beta build. The air combat shots are from IA0101 while the fps ones are from IA0104 – a scenario I fondly call “From Hell”. Seriously, play it. It is a lot of fun. Though the first time one of your team mates fumbles and drops a grenade closeby instead of lobbing it farther – thus injuring everyone – you’d want to put a cap in his head yourself. Watch out for Burke. Thats all I’m saying. :)

btw, for those of you not keeping track, we exclusively use Byteshield DRM which IMO is the next gen in gamer friendly DRM. You would be hard pressed to find any complaints with this choice. But as gamers some of you have this penchant for complaining – loudly – about everything and anything to do with DRM. Go ahead.

The End Game

As I mentioned earlier, we’re shooting for an early to mid June launch of the PC game.

There won’t be a demo. Why?

Well, for one thing, the game is just too huge to do a targeted demo without having to do code revisions. Also, after burning so much time on this game, the last thing we want to do is mess around with a demo when we should be taking time off to relax, observe the release feedback etc.

Plus, demos are the first line of attack for pirates. You can’t release a demo of a game and not expect it to be cracked. We all know this. And given the state of PC gaming, the last thing we want right now is to have our game cracked.

Finally, since we use Byteshield, I can’t imagine releasing a DRM protected demo and requiring people to register to play it. For one thing, we’d need to issue DRM keys to every site hosting the demo. And given the nature of demos, thats a whole lotta keys.

Derivative Works

Seeing the disappointment (well at least for an air combat grognard like me) that was H.A.W.X (I’m sure you can exchange it for Ace Combat 6 I think) and the clamouring for good “pick up and play” aerial combat PC games, we will be releasing a spin off based on AAW later this year.

This would be a pure aerial combat game with a campaign and instant action scenarios. Missions would range from ground strikes and combat air support to all out air skirmishes over hostile territory. Unlike AAW, it will only feature four (instead of twelve) aircrafts and only support [team] deathmatch multiplayer.

The target price point is $19.99.

The good thing about it is that if you like it and want to extend your experience, you will be able to upgrade it to the full All Aspect Warfare game for an additional $19.99. All you would need is a small client update. This plan is similar to [casual] games which allow you to try certain levels, then you can buy the rest. In this case, you get to buy a dedicate aerial combat game if thats your thing.

Until next time!!

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2 Comments »

  1. Freyar says:

    “Finally, since we use Byteshield, I can’t imagine releasing a DRM protected demo and requiring people to register to play it.”

    After reading how Byteshield works, and the terms that it looks like are involved, I must admit that Byteshield is a much more gamer-friendly method of securing the content. After the fiasco that was Digital River (I’m out $40.00 after the activations ran out due to my laptop’s audio card), I’m glad to see this is the direction your going.

    I’m excited to see if I can break the client. (That’s what testing is after all, right?) Can’t wait for it to hit retail too!

    Posted on April 18, 2009 @ 8:12 pm

  2. Derek Smart says:

    This is what someone in the BETA posted earlier today

    “On a side note (know its not relevant) this DRM is cool :) don’t know why anyone hasn’t thought about this before I mean I can have AAW installed on my games pc, my laptop, the media pc and depending on where I want to play it just activate it with my username/password.”

    Posted on April 19, 2009 @ 10:26 am

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