Alpha Version - is it already available?

[matthewfarmery]

yeah agreed with what you say there, I'm also a pretty decent beta tester and know how to sniff out bugs, so can't wait until it starts, as hopefully the game will be bug free by the end, or very near that, as its nature to see a bug or two slip, as long as they aren't game breaking

[eisprinzessin]

Good luck with finding bugs.

Originally Posted by medierra

I'd say this has easily been the least buggy game during development of any project I've worked on.

[medierra]

That doesn't mean we won't be able to create some before alpha!

There are actually several known bugs atm but they're just not nearly as numerous or serious as what is typical at this stage in development.

[Zgore]

Originally Posted by medierra

That doesn't mean we won't be able to create some before alpha!

There are actually several known bugs atm but they're just not nearly as numerous or serious as what is typical at this stage in development.

This is very good news!!! This means less work and less time to make an alpha build for us!! Not to mention the fact that you have some good programmers.

[Llama8]

Originally Posted by medierra

There are actually several known bugs atm but they're just not nearly as numerous or serious as what is typical at this stage in development.

Due to the relative maturity of the engine & your experience with it?

[medierra]

Both of those things along with the fact that we're a small team. The more people you have working on the same game, especially programmers, there more bugs you tend to create. There is just a lot of potential, especially with programming, for different people's work to interact badly. For example, someone makes a change to a line of code, database file, renames a piece of art, etc and doesn't realize other work that someone else did was dependent upon it, thus breaking something. The other problem is that the more people you have changing things in the game, the harder it is to track to down major problems when they occur since you may not be sure which person's changes caused it.

Also, we're fairly proactive about fixing bugs as they appear whereas some companies tend to try to plow through tasks and meet scheduled deadlines without doing much bug-fixing as they go. The idea is that they'll tackle bugs toward the end of the project. I like to tackle bugs, at least significant ones, as they arise and keep the game in good working order. I think this works better because it tends to be easier to track down bugs and figure out why they're happening if you address them right when they appear. You often remember something you did that may have caused it whereas 6 months down the road you'll have no idea why the bug originally appeared. Plus, you can schedule time for bug-fixing at the end but you don't really know how long it may take and, if it starts looking like it may take much longer than you scheduled for, you're screwed because you're at the end of the project and it isn't like you can retroactively cut features and magically regain time to compensate.

[shawnmck]

I for one, am willing to wait however long it takes to get the game right and satisfactory to the Developing team.
Even if that means 2012.
I understand that Crate is made up of a small team, many of them having other jobs, and it is a very difficult & stressfull undertaking.
I hope others realise that they are putting the team under more stress by trying to speed things up. Give them a break.

If I could, I would help out myself (in any way possible), but I know that I would just get in the way.
So instead I will just sit quietly in the corner and wait patiently.

My sincerest heartfelt sympothies go out to all of you at Crate Entertainment working your @$$'s off to get this game finished for our amusement.
I know the game will get done eventually, and it will be well worth the wait.

[tnoyce]

I never really liked the idea of the 'fix everything at the end' philosophy. I think you are right on track with the 'fix major issues as you find them'.

Programming is a creative, not a purely logical process regardless of what some may think. Even when a problem seems self-evident, finding it's exact cause can be elusive.

I applaud all of your efforts to make this a solid title, and will gladly wait until your development team is comfortable with allowing me to have it in my hot little hands.

Do what you can, I'll be patient.

[mjkittredge]

Originally Posted by medierra

While I know at least a couple people on the Blizz team are aware of us, I don't think they see us as a threat at all and doubt the name Grim Dawn has even come up at a company meeting. I think we're really too small to be on their radar.

As I've said before too, we're not trying to compete with Blizzard either. A strategy that was dependent on that would be ludicrous for us. We think the market is big enough to feed the giant, D3, and still support other smaller companies like Runic and Crate that are trying to offer something a little different. I think some people will buy two, maybe all three, and some may just buy Grim Dawn, not necessarily because it is absolutely better but because the style and gameplay suit their own personal tastes a little better.

I remember back when Everquest was at it's peak with around 500,000 users, everyone thought the MMO market was saturated and any new MMO would just take users away from the existing ones. Then Dark Age of Camelot came out and all of the most popular MMOs actually gained subscriptions after its release, including Ultima Online, which was like 6 years old at the time. Then the voices were saying "oh, the market is definitely saturated now, for realz". Then WoW came out and the MMO market grew vastly larger. However, despite all that incredible growth, you then had people saying no one could compete with WoW. While competition has perhaps gotten tougher, there are still many other MMOs on the market and more in development. One of the smaller ones, that has just gradually grown from humble beginnings to be quite successful, is Eve Online. I'd like to think Grim Dawn can become sort of the Eve Online of ARPGs, which is to say, a more narrowly targeted niche game that can better appeal to at least one segment of a large market.

THIS ^

I like to play them all. Playing just one would get boring after a while. Unless you're super-broke, why not try them all? If you know you love the genre, you really can't go wrong here. Torchlight 2, Diablo 3, Grim Dawn. It's all good. Sometimes I just wish there were more hours in the day.

[hooby]

Originally Posted by tnoyce

I never really liked the idea of the 'fix everything at the end' philosophy. I think you are right on track with the 'fix major issues as you find them'.

Programming is a creative, not a purely logical process regardless of what some may think. Even when a problem seems self-evident, finding it's exact cause can be elusive.

I applaud all of your efforts to make this a solid title, and will gladly wait until your development team is comfortable with allowing me to have it in my hot little hands.

Do what you can, I'll be patient.

You're talking waterfall model vs. incrementive iterative model here.

I believe that rapid prototyping has more or less become the norm in software development, so the "fix everything at the end" philosophy has lost most of it's ground... It was big in the eighties, but not anymore.