Release: Alpha patch [v.0.85] – New Galaxy Launch

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Hi everyone,

Alpha patch 0.85 has just been released via Steam to all Alpha players – along with the launch of the awesome new ‘Alpha 3‘ galaxy! If you didn’t catch yesterday’s announcement post we recommend you take a quick look as it also explains why the game is still in Alpha.

And if you got an email yesterday about your Steam Key arriving today – they’ve been emailed out today already so should be in your inboxes by now (or spam folders).

Updating the game client: the game should be automatically updated via Steam. Please check here if the download doesn’t automatically start when you launch Steam.

Joining the new galaxy: after logging in, players will be able to join the ‘Alpha 3’ galaxy. Players that had previously joined the ‘Alpha 2‘ galaxy will also be able to continue their game there, but it’s been closed to new players.

A New Game Galaxy – ‘Alpha 3’

A lot of what the devs have been working on lately hasn’t been seen in the game galaxy until now. Many of the new features and changes would have caused too much disruption to the existing galaxy, so we had to launch them together in this new ‘Alpha 3’ galaxy…

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New ‘Alpha 3’ Galaxy Launches Friday @ 16:00 UTC!

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Hi everyone,

We’re excited to announce that a new ‘Alpha 3’ galaxy will launch TOMORROW (Friday December 7th) at 16:00 UTC – finally!

Existing Alpha players

A new patch will be released at this time – existing Alpha players will then see the new ‘Alpha 3’ galaxy in the game selection list ready to join (in addition to the ongoing Alpha 2 galaxy).

More Steam Keys going out

Almost 2,000 players joined the last ‘Alpha 2’ galaxy but in this galaxy there will be even more players involved!

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Alpha Galaxy: Endgame and New Leaderboards!

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Hi everyone,

The current ‘Alpha 2’ galaxy has been running since December 2017 and is nearing the end of its life – we want to make sure it goes out with a bang!

Tomorrow, Wednesday November 21st at 16:00 UTC, we’re launching new leaderboards to recognise player excellence across different areas of gameplay.

The galaxy will close a few weeks later on Monday January 7th at 11:00 UTC. We’ll then publish the outright winners and overall Top 20 of each leaderboard category on the website.

If you’re wondering what Outscape is? It’s the new name for Beyond Dark. Find out more here.

View Leaderboards

New leaderboard categories

There will now be 6 leaderboard categories in the game, each recognizing player excellence in a different area of gameplay:

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Dev Diary #9 – New Gameplay for a New Galaxy

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to our Developer Diary – a little later than usual, apologies for the delay 🙂

We keep mentioning a new galaxy we’re getting ready to launch and the new gameplay to come with it (which won’t be implemented into the existing galaxy) but without going in to any details…

Now seems like a good time to change that 🙂 We won’t go into the numbers just yet though as we’re still working on balance – but by the end of this post you should have a good idea of what’s on the way.

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Roadmap to Beta

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Hi everyone,

Finally – it’s time to show you what’s coming to the game over the next 3 months as we walk you through the roadmap!

We’ve already started work on it, but hadn’t been ready to present it until now while it remained a work in progress. There’s been a ton of feedback in the forums and player surveys which we’ve had to condense into pill form, chew up, and spit back out in the shape of a coherent plan… An old adage is likely to apply 😉

When does Beta start and what’s been going on?

If you haven’t seen our post from a couple of days ago, give it a quick once-over before reading on. It lays out key dates including when Beta starts and some of what’s been going on behind the scenes (and may shed some light on parts of this roadmap). That the game was developed by just two developers (until recently) seems to have shocked a lot of you – and we guess something we should be proud of 🙂

The Roadmap

If this post is ‘too long, not gonna read’, at the end you’ll be able to find details of the chart version of the roadmap.

Please keep in mind that this is our roadmap for the next 3 months to get us to Beta – there are a gazillion features we have planned and will start on right after these. Think of the features listed here as a slice of a much grander vision – rather than the whole pie 🙂 But without any further ado:

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When does Beta start and what’s been going on?

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Hi everyone,

Wondering when you’ll be able to play Beyond Dark, what’s going on, or where the latest roadmap is? Then this post is for you. If not, ummmm, keep reading and we’ll tell you anyway… And we’ll also throw in some behind-the-scenes details for good measure!

Before we get to when Beta will start and when you’ll be able to play – there’s a couple of things we wanted to share with you first…

Growing the team

Number of developers and time available for bugs/maintenance vs gameplay and new features

Until very recently, the game was entirely built and maintained by just two developers! But over the last couple of months, we’ve added two more and are still actively hiring.

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Release: Alpha patch [v.0.82]

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Hi everyone,

Alpha patch 0.82 has just been released via Steam to all Alpha players. The fleet context menu has been updated – including how to set a fleet’s warp speed and a new button for fleet transfer.

If you’re not sure exactly what the fleet context menu is – it’s the graphic and controls that show up around a fleet when it’s selected.

Updating the game client: the game should be automatically updated via Steam. Please check here if the download doesn’t automatically start when you launch Steam.

New fleet context menu

So what’s new with the fleet context menu?

  • The fuel and HP indicators are now circular and wrap around
  • Warp selection has been replaced with a single boosted warp button (which we’ll get to in a minute)
  • A zoom to fleet button has been added (the magnifying glass icon)
  • There’s a new transfer button (see below)
  • The number of ships in the fleet is shown vs the amount that the flagship can support

View Wiki: Fleet Context Menu

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Followup: Server performance test

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Hi everyone,

Thanks to all of you that took part in Saturday’s server performance test! Although we’d have enjoyed nothing more than seeing our CTO doused in ice water, on the plus side, we’re pretty satisfied with how the test went.

About the test

One of the key challenges for the development team is to ensure the game servers can scale efficiently and at a predictable rate.

We don’t use maximum spec server instances for the current Alpha galaxy to help us achieve this, as bottlenecks and other issues are identified earlier than they would be if we were using the most powerful hardware.

Analysing server performance at higher than usual levels enables us to check that achieved performance is inline with our theoretical projections and avoid any nasty surprises!

The results…

The following graphs cover a four day period with the start of the test (20:00 UTC, Aug 11) marked with a yellow line:

Currently connected users

It was awesome to see that enough Alpha players were able to make the start of the test. As you can see in the above graph, a few minutes after the start, the number of players online was almost double other peak times!

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Release: Alpha patch [v.0.79]

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Hi everyone,

Alpha patch 0.79 has just been released via Steam to all Alpha players.

The focus of this patch was a scalability optimization – no new UI or gameplay enhancements were ready for this patch, but more improvements are on the way!

Updating the game client: the game should be automatically updated via Steam. Please check here if the download doesn’t automatically start when you launch Steam.

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