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Post-Steam Development Process

Chris

By Chris
in Monthly Development Updates

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Chris

Chris

Posted
Posted

There have been some questions over the upcoming Steam Early Access launch (31 May 2013) and how this is going to affect development and people buying the game. Here is the key information:

STEAM KEYS FOR EXISTING USERS:

  • If you have ever pre-ordered Xenonauts at any point prior to the Steam launch, you are entitled to a Steam key for your copy of the game.
  • This key will be sent (even if you have never activated the Desura key) within a few days of the Steam release
    • If you activated your Desura key, you can claim your Xenonauts Steam key immediately via this method.
    • If you did not activate your Desura key for whatever reason, we have your email address on record and will be emailing you a key direct in the next few days. We're just trying to work out the best way to do this.
    • If you have pre-ordered the game and have still not received a Steam key by the 3rd June 2013, email me at chris@xenonauts.com with proof of purchase and I'll get you sent a key. Please check your spam filter and old email addresses first though!

    [*]Mac and Linux versions will be arriving on Steam shortly, we've just gotta go through the porting process first.

PREMIUM / STANDARD PRE-ORDERS:

  • With the Steam launch, we are discontinuing the Premium Pre-Orders. All copies of the game will now be sold at $19.99 until official release, when the price will climb to $24.99.
  • If you are an existing Premium Pre-Orderer, we are working on something to say thankyou for the extra $10 donation, but it's currently a secret.
  • Forum medals will be discontinued tomorrow:
    • This is because they are integrated with Desura, who will likely only make up a small section of our sales from now on.
    • Those with forum medals already will not lose them, but the graphics are likely to be shrunk a little bit and the wording will be changed to read "Founder" (or something to that effect) rather than pre-orderer.
    • If you have not already claimed a forum model, post in this thread in the next 24 hours and I'll give you on manually.

FUTURE SALES:

  • We will be doing direct sales on our website through the Humble Store in future, as we'll get a much larger cut of revenue from them than our current arrangement with Desura.
  • You will still be able to buy our game on the Desura site if you so wish.
  • Both Desura and the Humble Store will continue to be updated as development continues, but only with the Stable releases (explained in more detail below).
  • All future purchases of the game from either our website's Humble Store or Desura should also come with a Steam key.
  • The Humble Store is DRM-free, and the DRM-free option will remain on Desura too.

So that's a summary of exactly how things will change as of the Steam release, but there will also be changes moving forwards with development. Good ones.

STABLE VS. EXPERIMENTAL BUILDS:

I have created a new build today called V18 STABLE. This is the same as V18.51 Hotfix 3 and marks the point where we have implemented all the features we wanted to implement in the V18 series of releases, and also fixed all the major stability issues. It is the "finished" version of the V18 builds.

V18 Stable will be the default release build on Steam and will be the build you receive if you buy a copy on the Humble Store. It will also be uploaded to Desura, and we are about to send it off to the porter to port the build to Mac / Linux.

The next build that we upload to any of these places, or port to Mac / Linux, will be V19 Stable. So the vast majority of users won't see any updates for a couple of months but then will get another stable, polished release appear with a bunch of new features.

However, Steam allows users to opt-in to different branches for a game that they own. We will allow users to opt-in to our Experimental branch, which will contain the newer releases that have more features but will be less stable. We can upload, patch and mess around with builds on that branch without ever affecting the stable branch. This is where we will go through the numerous iterations to reach V19 Stable.

This will be the best of both worlds - people who just want to play the game don't have to put up with crashes, and those who want to help us test can access the new features as soon as we release them.

The only disadvantage is that you will need to be on Steam to get access to the experimental builds...but there's no way around that, I'm afraid...

V19 PREVIEW:

This is the key stuff we want in V19 Stable:

- New UI for the Geoscape and base screens

- Air Combat Autoresolve

- Finished final mission

Only three features, but between them they'll transform the game. No doubt we'll fix a lot of small things too, and we'll be working on the balance the entire time too, but those are the headline features we will be working towards.

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Betuor

Betuor

Posted
Posted

Both yay and cool!

Do you know wether Steam will allow you to have 2 builds? One stable so you can play the game for LP and the like and one that's experimental so you can still test it. Anyways, thanks for the news. I wish you the best of luck.

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Rhenthil

Rhenthil

Posted
Posted

I've tried to link my desura account to my forum account several times now and it just dosent work. Been this way for a week now. All i see is:

Untitled.jpg

Clicking on the box takes me to a forbidden page

Figured i should get my premium badge before it was to late but it's just not working :(

Untitled.jpg

Untitled.thumb.jpg.3a6beaed00af984f46bc0

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CaptainChuckles

CaptainChuckles

Posted
Posted

I realise this probably isn't the right place to raise this issue but I'm experiencing the same problem as Rhenthil above. Bought the game early last year and have been holding off playing it until it was done since I didn't really want to see too much of the wizard behind the curtain. But now I can't wait any longer- I had to give it a try and it really seems great. Fantastic design (one of the early selling points for me), and what I have seen of the flavor of the world through the tech tree so far I really like. I played X-Com as a kid and loved all the xenopedia descriptions so I am very happy that you've finally finished all those off. Didn't want to play too far into it before I could fully immerse myself into the world...

Anyway I would also like to claim my forum badge if possible but the link to confirm connecting desura to this brand new forum account isn't working. Feel free to direct me to the correct pace to re-post and I will happily do so.

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Moonie

Moonie

Posted
Posted

As long as the steam build has (beta build) labels slapped all over it, things should go okay. Beta builds sold of as release's really piss steam users off.

I wish Chris and his team all the luck in the world, they have earned it.

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Kaguya

Kaguya

Posted
Posted (edited)
As long as the steam build has (beta build) labels slapped all over it, things should go okay. Beta builds sold of as release's really piss steam users off.

I wish Chris and his team all the luck in the world, they have earned it.

Pretty sure it'll be sold in the Early Access section, which has "NOT FINISHED" labels all over the storefront. (says so in the OP, too.)

Also n:thing the inability to claim a badge, the button has HTML code in it and clicking it regardless throws out a 403-error.

Edited by Kaguya
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Moonie

Moonie

Posted
Posted
Pretty sure it'll be sold in the Early Access section, which has "NOT FINISHED" labels all over the storefront. (says so in the OP, too.)

Also n:thing the inability to claim a badge, the button has HTML code in it and clicking it regardless throws out a 403-error.

Not really clued up on this stuff, but have you tried a different browser?

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plastikman

plastikman

Posted
Posted (edited)

First of all I would like to thank you for creating a real X-COM remake, I'm a real fan of the series and I was really let down by X-COM:EU.

Second of all I would like to state that eventhough I already bought the game about a year ago I've hardly played and haven't been posting much on the forums yet because I still want the game to be some sort of a surprise once it's done.

I've tried connecting my desura account to my forum account for the forum badge but I get the same errors as some other people have been getting on the forum. Is their any way to fix that before tomorrow?

Anyway thanks for making this game, I'm really looking forward to my first playtrough. :)

greetz,

plastikman

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=2181&d=1369963623

Edited by plastikman
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Russonc

Russonc

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Posted

Thanks for the update. I must say I am really happy for everyone at Goldhawk Interactive (Esp. Chris) that this project is doing so well and nearing completion (so to speak). This project has really been well done and can be a great example to other Indie companies (or AAA companies for that matter) on how to do a project right. You have done a fantastic job of keeping the community/supporters updated and involved. Thanks again and I look forward to playing this game for years to come, just as I do the original it was based on.

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