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[Kaje]

Really tempted to jump in on the Earliest Access...could someone try and convince me?

Also, how long away is the next substantial update?

[Darkmere]

Really tempted to jump in on the Earliest Access...could someone try and convince me?

Also, how long away is the next substantial update?

Right now it's a fun cult-themed cabbage simulator. There's not much (yet!) in the way of long-term gameplay goals and the save function doesn't exist...though it is the top priority as I understand. The building creator is fun to mess with, and there's some things you can do in the Wacky Hi-jinx area.

If you enjoy poking at things to see how they work, seeing the game take shape over the next few months, and providing feedback/bug reports (it's really easy, just zip up 2 or 3 files and upload them to the gaslamp forums), then definitely give it a shot.

Updates: There's a stability hotfix scheduled for today and a "more content-y" one for Friday. Note that "more content-y" is the full extent of what's been said, as far as I know. Gaslamp's really big on not making promises, but I think the hope is once things are stable content updates should be fairly regular.

There's also apparently a lot of stuff in the raws that only needs to be turned back on and cleaned up a bit, coming from the modding thread. I haven't looked into that myself, though.

[GiglameshDespair]

To be honest, the idea of people effectively paying to playtest gives me a vague sense of disapproval, though I couldn't really place it on anything. I kinda want to say why not just have people be able to pay from the very start of development? It's effectively a kickstarter - paying to support an greatly unfinished product. Why didn't you use kickstarter, if you wanted guaranteed purchases before 1.0 release, and release the alpha to them to test and enjoy, when a successful kickstarter may spread the word more?

I have a feeling you talked about this before, but a cursory search via keywords on the weblog found no results.

Don't want to sound belligerent here, but words are not my forte.

[dennislp3]

I think it's a matter of perspective...last time I checked I payed for a game...it is unfinished and I am allowed to play it before it is finished. This gives me a better understanding of where development is and allows me to offer better feedback and suggestions. By no means am I required to play it now and I did not pay for early access...I bought it because I want the end product...not because I want to play the unfinished buggy mess it may be at any given point of development.

[Darkmere]

Eh, I'm having a lot of fun playtesting and watching things shape up. Other people may not, so they should skip it. I think GLG has gone pretty far out of their way to stress how incomplete the game is right now and to say that if you don't want to do that, you shouldn't buy it now at all. I tried to get that point across in my post as well, but I don't know how I could say it any more plainly than I already have.

If you want to "get in on the ground floor" and offer input/bugfixes to help the game shape up faster or better, then this is a nice opportunity to do so with a very open and receptive group of developers. I'm assuming that's what current enthusiasm is, though I could be misreading.

If you aren't a fan of early access, by all means don't buy early access. It's not to everyone's taste, even if in my opinion this particular case is one of the few I've run across that does it well (so far).

[Retropunch]

To be honest, the idea of people effectively paying to playtest gives me a vague sense of disapproval, though I couldn't really place it on anything. I kinda want to say why not just have people be able to pay from the very start of development? It's effectively a kickstarter - paying to support an greatly unfinished product. Why didn't you use kickstarter, if you wanted guaranteed purchases before 1.0 release, and release the alpha to them to test and enjoy, when a successful kickstarter may spread the word more?

I have a feeling you talked about this before, but a cursory search via keywords on the weblog found no results.

Don't want to sound belligerent here, but words are not my forte.

I have to agree that I'm mostly against these early access things. In some cases (what shall be known as the Starbound-syndrome) it leads to a perpetual beta where nothing is ever really finished. I believe this mainly comes about because the early access release gets a big bulk of the 'hype-buys' and also very dedicated people, leaving a much smaller audience (if any) who are really waiting for that 1.0, so the impetus to finish just isn't there. This isn't the case here, but it seems to happen a lot, especially when players are really pushing for new content all the time within the early access cycle. This hurts consumers because the game stays perpetually unfinished, and any broken features/bugs are attributed to 'early access', but it also hurts developers in terms of people burning out before it's actually fully ready (or being disappointed.). Starbound for instance has been in early access for eight months now, and I doubt it'll get finished before a year is up. That to me isn't early access at all.

The difference however is that the guys at Gaslamp have a rock solid development plan and a proven track record with the phenomenal Dungeons of Dredmore, so the threat is strongly reduced. Kickstarter also has it's problems, and I dislike that just as much. Similarly, early access DOES have benefits to the development cycle as bugs can be reported and glaring errors that slip through can be sorted. That can be construed as 'paying them to test' but I don't believe that's a big deal, as it's certainly not mandatory.

I'd prefer to live in a world where we could wait for finished products, but I don't mind it in this case.

[dennislp3]

Early access in general has led to a major decline in the quality of games upon release sadly...I remember back when games came out and patching them on console was impossible and very difficult on PC regardless...I seem to recall games being much more stable and bug free in lots of cases...or at least not the same monsterous disasters they are these days when they launch...

[Retropunch]

Early access in general has led to a major decline in the quality of games upon release sadly...I remember back when games came out and patching them on console was impossible and very difficult on PC regardless...I seem to recall games being much more stable and bug free in lots of cases...or at least not the same monsterous disasters they are these days when they launch...

Agreed, I think this is why I'm fundamentally against it. I have no doubt in my mind that Clockwork Empires will turn out to be fantastic, but it's just so many other games take the early access model as a way to launch a game early without having to make it properly playable. 

I understand there's a need to make money though, and it does keep the ball rolling.

[The_Fool76]

Early access in general has led to a major decline in the quality of games upon release sadly...I remember back when games came out and patching them on console was impossible and very difficult on PC regardless...I seem to recall games being much more stable and bug free in lots of cases...or at least not the same monsterous disasters they are these days when they launch...

That has more to do with how much more complex games and computers are now than it does with anything else. When your entire game fits on a 1.4 floppy with room to spare it is a LOT easier to debug and test. 

[Tilla]

To be honest, the idea of people effectively paying to playtest gives me a vague sense of disapproval, though I couldn't really place it on anything. I kinda want to say why not just have people be able to pay from the very start of development? It's effectively a kickstarter - paying to support an greatly unfinished product. Why didn't you use kickstarter, if you wanted guaranteed purchases before 1.0 release, and release the alpha to them to test and enjoy, when a successful kickstarter may spread the word more?

I have a feeling you talked about this before, but a cursory search via keywords on the weblog found no results.

Don't want to sound belligerent here, but words are not my forte.

My understanding its less wanting playtesters or money (they have PLENTY of free playtesters I can assure you, across many forums - Something Awful basically made Dredmor's polish possible) and more that people have been consistently begging them to release an early version to play. People are hyped up, so they are giving people access.

[dennislp3]

Early access in general has led to a major decline in the quality of games upon release sadly...I remember back when games came out and patching them on console was impossible and very difficult on PC regardless...I seem to recall games being much more stable and bug free in lots of cases...or at least not the same monsterous disasters they are these days when they launch...

That has more to do with how much more complex games and computers are now than it does with anything else. When your entire game fits on a 1.4 floppy with room to spare it is a LOT easier to debug and test.

I wasn't exactly referencing games on 1.4" floppies....How complex something is is a poor excuse for how buggy it is. It is merely them releasing it early as they deem it playable to start raking in revenue because they know they can now work on it over the next X months while making money at the same time. It's more of a time = money type thing especially when it comes to larger studios

[jhxmt]

Early access in general has led to a major decline in the quality of games upon release sadly...I remember back when games came out and patching them on console was impossible and very difficult on PC regardless...I seem to recall games being much more stable and bug free in lots of cases...or at least not the same monsterous disasters they are these days when they launch...

I agree with your general point about the decline in quality upon release (although I think we've not seen a great many of those poor-quality games truly 'released', since they tend to enter perpetual beta or simply get abandoned, from most of the ones I've seen).  However, I'd be wary of perhaps viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses - there were definitely games in the past that have been released in an absolutely shocking state, with some truly mindnumbing bugs and glitches.  The one that springs to mind is Myth II, which (if I'm remembering correctly) shipped with the potential to delete your hard drive's contents if you installed it into a non-standard location and then attempted to uninstall it.  Fortunately Bungie caught it before it hit the shelves, but only by virtue of actually going to the outlet locations and retrieving the stacks of shipped games themselves (and then issuing a new, fixed edition later on).  It wasn't exactly a polished release programme. 

Games being released with bugs and without good quality control is not new.  Games being visible prior to release, and then stagnating there, with commensurately more of those bugs/content problems, is new.  Which I think is basically what you were saying anyway, so this entire post may be somewhat redundant.   

Edit: oh, wait, and the Terror From The Deep research bug - if you research things in the wrong order (with no clues as to what the 'right' order is), you dead-end and basically lock yourself out of the endgame.  But without any indications as to having done so.  Welcome to never-ending watery doom! 

[motorbitch]

personally i dont have any problem with early access and i dont think its always bad.
there are good games and bad games, and this was true before early acess became a thing and it still is.

however, i decided for myself not to participate in it anymore simply because i just can spend so much time on a single game, before it becomes borring.
i dont want to spoil the fun for me. i rather wait for the cookies instad of eating all the dough

[Willfor]

i rather wait for the cookies instad of eating all the dough

I'm sorry, but you can't convince me that cookie dough isn't one of the seventh wonders of the world.

. . . also a salmonella vector, but a TASTY salmonella vector . . .

. . . Yes this is a complete aside.

[Darkmere]

Is there any chance this can be steered back in the direction of the thread topic, instead of general treatises on the state of the industry at large?