Important BETA RELEASE DISCUSSION - DECEMBER 4TH (*ALL* beta discussion goes here. Other threads deleted)

Yes, they said it would be released in 2013 and while it's still 2013 they came out at i49 and stated that the release was no longer expected for 2013. When you have a track record of missing previous estimates to the point that you set the next estimate 1 year in advance instead of a 3 or 4 month bump, proclaim in several ways on several mediums that the game will hit that release, and have 1+ million for a large majority of the extended release time, you have to stop and wonder what CF has been doing. There's only two explanations: they seriously underestimated the development or had serious feature creep.

If you pre-ordered, you didn't buy the game, beta access, the soundtrack, or even all the other things. What you did was donate money to the dev team to work on the game, and in return they will recognize that contribution. Some of that recognition is immediate with the soundtrack and others come later... much later: beta access, release, etc.

Everyone is anxious, including me, but no matter how much you defend or attack CF... there are certain undeniable truths, see above, but despite those truths... we just need to wait. All will work out in the end.

 

it's funny, because there's alot of people complaining that the game is taking long to be released, but everyone is going to forget that when te game is actually released.

You see, this game have a really complex coding, not because of the language, but because of it's features. The devs are doing a great job, and the "release dates" that they post is really when they think the game is going to be released, but with all the features that the game have, it is expected that some bugs might appear, and sometimes it really delays the game launch process. So please, be cool, don't come here pointing fingers because you don't really know what's happening on the development.

If you really wan't the game to come fast, don't come here acting like a child saying: i wan't the game now!!!, you need to be supportive, so the devs don't work on pressure, don't get stressed. Imagine that you work all day, developing a game that have such an incredible proposal. When you go home an check the forums all you see is a bunch of people posting: the devs have to launch the game now, they're lying to us, the game is already playable. Man that gotta be stressful. (sorry if i have a bad english, im brazilian, and no, im not that kind of brazilian that post huehuehue brbr Brazil!!!)

 

Dude wake up!
The devs don't give a poo monster on what we say beacuse, no matter what, they will release the beta only when they will be ready.

So... let the people speak their minds. They won't kill anyone by just talking

 

They already gaved us a po monster.
Is that a good thing?

 

It was just a figure of speech... aaah
I'm going to bed

 

relax dude, i'm just impressed how people are agressive in these forums just because they are impatient, besides, i believe that they do care to what we say, a good exemple is this thread, they saw people asking for the beta release so much that they made this thread to regulate the exagerated number of "i want beta now" threads.

Edit: oh, and nice picture by the way, S2 Cortex Command S2

 

Im probably gonna just ignore the forums till november or a beta announcement then xD

 

There's a lot of selective reading in these last few posts...

The preorder page says Beta will be released in 2013. Not the full game.

And guess what...the devs still say the beta will be out in 2013, and it's still 2013...so where's the problem?

 

yeah, im kinda of considering doing that too.

 

I loved Terraria and I will love Starbound even more (Tiy, and now the team as a whole, have a great vision), but people have to get their facts straight and stop defending the devs just for the heck of it. It is still 2013 but the worriers which sometimes include me, worry because we hear things like "Beta after Tier 3" and then no more updates on Tier progress unlike when they were updating about Tier 1 for awhile before I49.

If there aren't going to be any roadmaps for awhile, just say so in a daily. Daily updates a little too much for the dev team to handle at the moment, switch to weekly. Above all, be straight with the community. If they are making new music for the game but not including it in the humble bundle music download, remove the blurb about adding music as it "becomes available" or give a reason for it (maybe it's complicated/time-consuming to add to a humble bundle).

If you do the math and assume that a tier will take a month to produce with the included quests, and bosses we are looking at a full release in May 2014. I know it is supposed to be easier to add tiers with each one they complete but I'm sure each one gets more and more content that they haven't spoiled yet and new boss behaviors/mechanics which could present some programming challenges/rethinking.

I just hope they are focused behind the scenes at finishing up tier 2 and 3 and are working up to a surprise beta announcement sometime before the end of October which would give most of us plenty of content to pacify our desire to get our hands on any tiny part of the game.

Q. What if you don't get enough preorders, will the game be unfinished?

A. No, the Starbound is going to make it out in 2013 no matter what. But by preordering you help it get here even faster.

​

1x Copy of Starbound + Steam key​

Estimated Release: 2013​

* Edited formatting

 

Legris made a post about tier progress what not more then two weeks back? Sure some more info would be good but is not exactly necessary. Wanting more specific info or not getting info you want is not misleading or "not being straight with the community". Just people not getting info they want to know about.

Really I have yet to see a dev team give the potential customers and prepaid customers who give so much info on what they are doing. I can agree though if it is better for them to do condensed updates weekly rather then daily it would be better for them to switch back to it and focus on work. Even then they have mentioned being busy has made it more difficult for them to update in general.

They have been pretty straight with the community. Where have they not been straight with or tried to mislead us? No really I am dead serious. Where has that happened?

The notes straight off the FAQ page for the sound track.
Q. How many tracks are included in the Soundtrack?

A. The preorder includes two soundtracks, the Starbound Soundtrack that contains 22 tracks and the Starbound Experimental Soundtrack that contains an additional 40. We will be adding additional tracks over time!

It says overtime not as they become available. Bit of a difference and pretty much means as they get around to it. So they are free to write as much music during development as they please without having to fiddle with the bundle packs. Said the same thing the day I pre-ordered.

We have no mathematical formula to predict progress and it is a bit of a stretch to say anyone knows for sure what the progress is for all the tiers. Short of the dev team themselves none of us can really say anything about it with any real accuracy. Tier 1 was all the frame work, base mechanics, all the various in game content generators, and general addition of the key features that make it generally playable. It is pretty much expected that portion of a game takes a long time to work on. Looking at the Legris post I linked earlier it looks like they are pretty much done with Tier one and already moving on to the other tiers.

They have the rest of September, all of October, and even all of November to get Beta out. I would be wary of a End of Year release depending how late into November or possibly even December beta comes out and how polished the Beta product is. If they honestly think they will overshoot the release date they will very likely let us know.

The latest posts have shown us assorted bits of info like what they are working on without spoiling too much information but giving us a peek at some stuff via the screen shots. They are doing a lot of dungeon and unique NPC work as well as work on other features like the mobility stuff.

 

Also straight off of the preorder page.

"In the mean time, the soundtrack is available now and we'll continue to add to it as new tracks become available."

I edited my previous post formatting to make it more clear. Being straight with the community refers to the roadmap mostly (I'm sure there are other examples), some people (not me) are freaking out about it not getting an update in months and it being promised. State in a daily update that it A. will not get an update for awhile, B. is being updated soon, or C. is dead. I don't have a problem with either option. I know that it has been promised for the 14th but that promise came very recently.

The May timeframe was just speculation, but I haven't seen anything to convince me that it is on track to come out full release by the end of the year and am reasonably okay with that given that beta comes out before the very last minute of 2013.

 

Honestly, I'm all for holding people accountable to what they've said. If it hits January 1st, 2014, and there's no beta, I'll be the first person on these forums saying 'hey guys, what gives?"

I'd say the other side of the coin is fair too though. People have to get their facts straight, and stop attacking the devs just for the heck of it. That's been going on for months now though, so can't really see it stopping any time soon.

I probably just have a soft spot for people with public time constraints though. The company I work for now has to deal with customers that constantly say they've been waiting 3-4 times as long as they really have. (I'm sorry sir...I guess our database just decided to lie all of a sudden...I'm sure your gut feeling is more accurate than the system we've developed over the last six years...it's just weird that our written and electronic records agree like that )

 

Legato: They have nearly 3 and a half months or roughly 110 days to make a finished product by years end. Still a bit early to say they aren't going to make it. That is a lot of time to do a lot of work. Too early yet to count the year end goal out.

If the post from Legris is accurate and their statements about increased production speed once tier 1 was polished off are reasonable, it is also reasonable to assume they will make the end of the year deadline. Now if we roll two weeks into December and still no beta then I would be thinking they might not make it. They are probably going need a week or two, minimum, after beta is released to chase down all the new bugs people find because of all our different rigs and players doing things the team didn't think of to break the game.

We don't have any good reason to doubt they will reach release by end of the year just yet. From where I sit they are making good progress and stand a decent chance of hitting end of year deadline. Might be a bit tight but they can likely make it.

The beta will very likely be seen this year and there is still a pretty good still that they will complete the game by years end.

Gotta wait and see if they are working on the road map. They could be doing just that who knows. Personally I could care less about the road map. The updates give us better more consistent information. If people are wigging out about the road map that is not exactly reasonable for them to do so.

There is a difference between simply defending the dev team and being reasonable. The bulk of what I just shared is still very reasonable. If we get some reliable info that says otherwise that is what I will go with.

Show: Ahh the joys of trying to make a software product for a client. I hear a lot of the same stuff from the software and code guys where I work. Even if they nail the software to the specs the client will still complain. Bit of related humour for you.

 

Please read this whole Message...


Please...

Give us a Beta or at least a Beta Release date! and think about it, if you fix the major bugs, you can give us the beta! and instead of holding the beta back to add new things, just add them as you need to!

What i mean is this... and ill add 4 more pros to releasing the Beta right now! (After the Major Game Breaking bugs are Squashed)

Best Point i have! And its good! V

1: If were there helping you guys test new stuff to see whats OP/UP and look for bugs, the Development will go so much faster! Rather then JUST you guys doing both that AND adding stuff to the game all at once, let us look for Bugs and Test stuff, then you add stuff, fix the bugs, and Change any OP/UP things! hey, 2 million heads is better then 10 (or how ever many Devs you have!)

Best Point i have! And its good! ^

2: this will calm everyone down (The main reason everyone hating is that the beta is not out yet, and the FULL release is set for 2013...but wheres the beta? (2013 almost over!)

3: you can still add what ever you want when you want to! (add things, remove them, change, etc)

4: I someone complains of a "Buggy beta" (For one betas are suppost to be buggy! Thats why its a BETA) Just say "You guys wanted it so badly, there you go!"

5: this will stop the spam asking for a beta

so please take this into Consideration, since it would fix alot of problems, more then the 5 i listed (the 5 are probably the biggest) and hopefully you will just release the beta, and use the Tips i just gave you!

Keep making the awesome game guys! (No hate in any of this message BTW!)

Btw guys? Did you forget there fixing things like the Crash that would delete your saves?! Do you want a Beta with those kind of bug in it?! No!

Someone asked, "If Pre ordering Stabound helps speed up the processes, how on earth would it be done by 2013 with no pre orders? you have 2 million dollars in pre orders but yet its September and not even a release date for the BETA?" I kinda agree, but not really...

but if they fix the major bugs like the Save Deletion one, i think the game is ready for Beta! The beta is suppost to be a "crappy" version of the game! The full release is the good version, we get to test how things work, look for bugs, and help get the Full Version perfect as can be, look at minecraft! Its Alfa release was told to be the best game of its time, and look at it! its so bad! same goes for its beta! but look at it now! its such a great game in its full release! and it got there by letting the community help them get it to where it is...

-Force

 

I'll just answer this part, because you state that it's your main point and I don't have time for everything else. If you watched both videos of them presenting Starbound at i49, they mention why they aren't in beta yet. It's because the game sometimes crashes with a fatal error, not saving your character or world, and forcing you to start over. They don't want to give about 1-2 million players beta which has a tendency to crash every 10 minutes or so.

Of course, in the other video Yogcast played it for half an hour without anything going wrong at all through the whole video, but they don't want half of a million of frustrated customers for whom the game crashes. You think any of them will listen to reason or remember that it's only beta then?

 

I'll just add to this that the devs disabled a lot of things because they weren't yet working properly. The version which was demo'd at i49 was a highly restricted version, because they were attempting to showcase the small part of the game which actually works!

Kudos to ForceablePlace for phrasing the post in a non-negative way though. Too many posts here sound like 5 year olds blaming Santa for not giving them presents when they want them.

 

Well thank you! Nice to see there more nice people here! Enough spam and garbage, why not give suggestions to help speed up things, not slow them down my making them read your Spam! lol
Just thought id give some really useful points of releasing the Beta soon, and it will help everyone in the process! (Us and the Devs!)

 

Always loved that picture...so much true in it : )

(Although a lot of times customers will describe the roller coaster, then when you talk budget you realize it's a tire swing )

The best panel to me is the project documentation one. I think we spent more time playing with different documentation software and setups then we ever spent documenting anything.