Eder
Mr. Standoff
So, I've updated the website again today to officially show off all the progress that's been made in the past couple weeks, and to let you all know that we are very close to a release date.
This is also the formal announcement of who the new beta testers are (adding two new names to the credits will delay Ep 4's release by about 30 seconds, but I'm hoping that the extra testing time will pay off
).
The starfield shown in the Broadsword screenshots has also become final (or as final as anything gets until we decide to improve it again!) and the Arrow cockpit has been updated... you can check out all of this and more at the screenshots section as usual.
Here's the full text:
This is also the formal announcement of who the new beta testers are (adding two new names to the credits will delay Ep 4's release by about 30 seconds, but I'm hoping that the extra testing time will pay off
).The starfield shown in the Broadsword screenshots has also become final (or as final as anything gets until we decide to improve it again!) and the Arrow cockpit has been updated... you can check out all of this and more at the screenshots section as usual.
Here's the full text:
As you can tell from the increasing frequency of the updates, things are heating up over here. In fact - fingers crossed - we'll most likely be announcing an imminent (and I really do mean imminent) release date for Episode 4 in the next update.
In the meantime, we have finally selected the new testers that we recently asked for at the CZ. The unlucky (believe me, testing a game with me and Quarto breathing down your neck, constantly demanding more feedback, is not exactly what I'd call a good time ;-) ) pair are Dundradal and QuailPilot. Now, depending on how things go, we may still ask another one or two people to participate as well - after all, if we want to finish both remaining episodes this year, we'll need to step things up quite a bit, and that means more intensive testing, too.
Now, as far as actual progress is concerned, we now (finally!) have all missions on both paths. Those last two missions from the losing path took a while because of the minefields mentioned last update, but it's all working now, and apart from a few briefings, the episode is now only missing music and voiceovers.
...In fact, my to-do list has gotten so short, that I've made three new cockpits in the last few days - the Arrow, the Hornet, and the Broadsword (all of which can be seen in the latest batch of screenshots - in fact, the Arrow cockpit can be seen in two versions, because after I took the first screenshots of it, I went back and added some stuff to the VDU and other displays in the cockpit, to make it less empty). And hey, if I get bored, there may be one or two others, before this episode is done.
In other, also very important, news, progress on Pedro's OpenGL patch continues. We uploaded some screenshots showing this patch in action last update... now we've got a few more to show. In particular, these latest shots show off the new starfields, which replace the little random dots WCP/SO used to draw. The result is extraordinary, especially when you combine it with high resolution and anti-aliasing. Just look at that 1280x1024 shot of the Guadalcanal from the Episode 1 intro - it's just plain magnificent.
