Beta 5

Discussion of the new series of beta test releases of this game.
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twobitcoder
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:38 pm

Beta 5

Post by twobitcoder »

Hi. I'm one of the developers. Beta 5 will be released soon. This has been such a long delay... I don't even remember when beta 4 came out, sometime in late 2009? Well we were kind of "done" at that point, but this game has been nagging at me for a long time, not satisfied with it being still somewhat unfinished. I mean, it's fully playable and I believe you can get to the end now, but there are those nagging bugs and feature requests... I remember a couple of volunteer programmers, wabbity and Vincent, don't know if they're still around or not.. But it looks like I'm the only programmer left fixing bugs and Steve is done with all the scripts now I believe?

If you are a member of the google group, you'll have noticed a ton of "Issue" messages this week. that was some updates from Steve, and my work on the sources. So, we should be ready for beta 5 now. I dunno, what else do you want to do Steve? I'm thinking, just get the danged thing out so people can play it, and who cares, if we need to do a beta 6, so be it.

I'm glad this board is here now, since the google group was kind of difficult to use--it's a mailing list, not a threaded system. Some new information has been put up, go ahead and check it out: http://groups.google.com/group/starflighttlc. In the old days we had a dedicated site but then the project went open source, and I dunno if that was such a great idea or not, but here we are..

Here's a pair of short youtube videos of combat in beta 5. I don't even recall what combat looked like in beta 4 now but I think it's changed a bit. VIDEO1. VIDEO2. (btw that's with all class 6 equipment).
Alvarin
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Mar 04, 2010 5:04 am

Re: Beta 5

Post by Alvarin »

Awesone news about the new beta!
Not so much about the team... Sorry I can't be much of help, other than just trying for feedback...
fireball176
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Nov 26, 2010 4:58 pm

Re: Beta 5

Post by fireball176 »

Hello, I've been following this project since before beta 1 debuted on the other site. I am dying to play this game. I tried beta 1 and saw the potential. I have not played any newer betas opting to wait until the game is finished.
Is this as finished as the game is going to get? I remember the groups site said to expect beta 5 mid-September, and then on the forums you said expect it soon. There's been no updates since.
I am a bit alarmed by the fact that you said you "believe it is possible to finish now". I don't want to play it unfinished. I am willing to wait, I just wanted to know if work continues or if you've moved on to other projects.
Thanks for all the hard work you've done already.
toyotaed
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:51 am

Re: Beta 5

Post by toyotaed »

Just downloaded the latest beta and am now hopelessy addicted. Yes, there are still a few minor issues to be resolved; I am willing to provide some input if you are interested.
twobitcoder
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:38 pm

StarflightGame.com domain

Post by twobitcoder »

First of all, I am sorry for being MIA for so long. I never gave up on TLC, it's just that real life gets in the way and I've been ridiculously busy since last summer when we actually finished beta 5. Every so often I have a free afternoon and stumble upon an email or something that leads me to the game again. I want to help get this game "out there" for good. We've done a great job, imo, with the game, but a terrible job marketing it. Mostly my fault, no time. Let me recall what's happened in the past year...

The old Google Groups page has lost all information about the game when Google changed groups to be a mailing list only service, so now when someone visits the link they'll just be greeted with a bunch of old issue tracking notices, no web site or information at all about the game. That has now been forwarded to THIS FORUM. So, we need to work on the game's final release I think.

Steve, can you create categories and make it possible for members to create their own new topics? I wanted to create a new topic here instead of posting inside Beta 5.

There is now no information ANYWHERE on where to get the game since the group page was removed with download links. Can we get them posted here?

I was going to set up a Joomla board or SMF or something on the parked domain but this site will work won't it? Is there any way we can add some header information about the game? Would it be better to set up even a simple front page that links to the forum here?

I'm really sad about the way this game was literally FINISHED like a year ago but everyone was just so busy none of us had time to market the game, get the word out, etc. I think the reason is because this game was supposed to be done by 2007. Then the student group got involved and changed everything, which at the time seemed really cool, but that cost us at least a year--first of all, cleaning up the gigantic messes they made in the sources, and secondly, to get the scripted quest system under control. That put us into late 2008. Around mid-2009 we had beta 4 up & running, and released on the google group site, and then submitted it to IGF. After that, the few of us left on the team were idle for about 9 months, and finally I think it was mid-2010 that Steve and I (unless I'm forgetting someone) picked it up again and resolved the remaining bugs, and had a finished Beta 5, which was linked somewhere and I don't know where the file is at this point. We have all the sources, the beta 5 build, everything, but there's no web presence for the game now except for this forum.

If you look at other open-source projects like The Ur-Quan Masters, there's hosting on SourceForge. Our sources are up at google code here. But if you go straight to the Google Group pages, they're missing... Somehow, you can link directly to them, but you won't see them from the front of the group page. But if you link directly to it, the pages are still there: Group download page.

Google dumped site editing features from their Groups to encourage users to adopt a Google Site for that content. So, long story short, there's now a Google Site set up here: http://sites.google.com/site/starflighttlc/, with full access to all Google resources, like images, videos, etc. I'm going to re-direct the domain to this location, and add a link to this FORUM from that page. I would really appreciate some help setting up the site with all the info from the old group pages and we need to set up new links to beta 5 (we don't need the old betas anymore).

Oh, do we really need to keep calling it beta 5? The game is done. If any new bugs are found, lets report them here and someone will look into it. No new features, please, just bug reports. The huge plot around the alien encounters may have some bugs since it's so huge no one has fully tested it yet. Player quests have also not been fully tested yet. There's SO MUCH HUGE POTENTIAL in this engine that's partially why things were delayed for so long.. every time we discovered a new capability between the script code and engine, we added it. It was fun, but led to new unforeseen bugs. Long story short, the game should be fully playable, but we just need to play it and find out!
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