Hi everyone,
Alpha patch 0.83 has just been released via Steam to all Alpha players.
There’s a lot going on in this patch: a new fleet management screen, the ability to upgrade ships, wreckage after battles and cargo containers!
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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Hello friends and welcome back to our Developer Diary.
The team’s been hard at work on new features for the next update, and I thought you might like a couple of new screenshots and images 🙂
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Hello everyone and welcome to the first installment in our new Developer Diary series (better late than never?).
These posts will be a bit of a mixed bag, maybe preview a new feature, go over something going on behind the scenes, let you know if any of our devs have thrown a laptop out the window in frustration, that sort of thing – something to keep you guys in the loop a bit more between patches.
Now let’s get down to business…
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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 😉
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 🙂
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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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…
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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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.So what’s new with the fleet context menu?
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.
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 following graphs cover a four day period with the start of the test (20:00 UTC, Aug 11) marked with a yellow line:
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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Hello Friends,
We have an interesting challenge for you regarding tonight’s server performance test and our CTO…
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Hello Friends,
We need your help!
The devs made some performance optimizations to the servers recently and really need to confirm they are working as designed in the live game.
To do this, it’s crucial that we get as many Alpha players as possible online in the galaxy at the same time! If we get enough players online to test, it’ll save the devs needing to spend time writing bots to do it, meaning they can get to more exciting items on the BD roadmap faster.
This Saturday August 11 at 20:00 UTC (click here for your local time).
Please share this with other players and remind them on the day. The more players we can get online for this test, the less chance there is of the servers turning to molten plasma when even more players join the galaxy.
If you’re not able to play, just logging in to the galaxy and leaving the game running in the background would also be appreciated.
Thanks everyone 🙂
Hi everyone,
Alpha patch 0.81 has just been released via Steam to all Alpha players.
This release includes some Bug fixes including those that were introduced with the last update.
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