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[hemmingjay]

Thanks Knave! It's a labor of love for the team. If the game sells well, we will offer highly detailed, rotating 3d models to replace the 2d versions you see. The price would be just enough to cover our costs based on projected sales +15% to be safe. If the game sells really well by some miracle, then the DLC will be free. 100,000 units is the threshold for free content post launch.

Kaje, welcome to the testing team! I will contact you early next week. No NDA, feel free to talk about it, share screenshots, whatever. All we ask is that you don't share the game itself. For testing you will receive a free copy upon release, another key for a friend and your name will be in the credits as a "Tier One Tester". Thanks for stepping up!

I guess I should also mention that I have posted a entry level position on the internet for a community representative/forum manager for an individual with some experience serving as a moderator or setting up forums but is now looking to enter the game industry. The position does not pay but will serve as a professional reference and experience for a legitimate game development studio. Further, as a consultant in the industry, I have helped place a half dozen candidates in full time positions already. There will be a one time bonus payment for a job well done, based on the individuals performance as well as sales of the game.

The ideal candidate will be familiar with setting up modern forum software and be capable of objectively serving as a moderator on a game forum in an environment rich with aggressive personalities that are actively trying to engage in arguments. Duties will include reading all new forum posts at least twice a day, managing users needs as well as handing out punishment only when absolutely necessary. The position also requires the individual to reach out to other game communities to introduce Arms Dealer to gamers of similar interests at least once a week. Required hours will not exceed 10/week but extra work is greatly appreciated and will be rewarded. This position may be filled at any point without further notice.

If you know of anyone from B12 who might fit this role and be interested, please let them know. I prefer to work with someone that I know is of "good" character and that is familiar with my general disposition and goodwill.

[stabbymcstabstab]

If you need another tester I having nothing to do for the next few weeks, love the map but maybe make the border lines a little bolder there a little hard to see in a few spots.

[Anvilfolk]

The map looked a little bit too rugged and "noisy" to me. For instance, the Sahara looks almost mountanous because of it - that's the only thing that shocked me. The rest of it appears to be A-OK!

[Kaje]

Woo! Thanks, Hemmingjay! Totally psyched for this one and I can't wait to get stuck in to bug hunting and play testing! 

As a soon-to-be third year law student, I can also likely get you out of jail when your thing with that clown and the turnip becomes public knowledge. 

[Glloyd]

No, Canada isn't that snowy. At least, not in July. June on the other hand...

Game's looking pretty awesome though, can't wait until it comes out. I'd have to agree with stabby about the border lines though.

Also, I'd totally be interested in doing some testing, as long as you don't mind me sending you the writeups on the weekend, as that's when I have the most time. I'm the head developer for our SS13 server, so I've got a fair amount of experience testing games and bug-hunting. I've been following the project since you first posted here, and I love what I'm seeing so far. When I'm not playing SS13, I typically play strategy games. Currently I'm working my way through the old Close Combat games. What you were saying about how you wanted a short strategy game really caught me. CC is a series of short battles in an overarching campaign, but the battles are the core of the game and they wouldn't be as fun if they took 20+ hours to play. On the other hand, you have games like Crusader Kings 2 which take eons to do a full run unless you sit there on 5x speed for a while, but that's pointless. I get tired of Paradox games because of the length and rarely finish them, so a short fast paced strategy/simulation game really appeals to me, especially with the lack of free time I have at the moment.

I'd also be interested in that community manager position if I wasn't working a full time job right now. Sadly, even 10 hours a week is a bit too much at the moment. If anything similar pops up in 4 weeks or later though, I would absolutely toss my hat in the ring.

[The13thRonin]

If you need anymore testers then sign me up... I already tried to buy the game and then realized it wasn't released yet .

[gigaraptor487]

Likewise If you need testers I can test the game, I have some programming experience if that is any utility diagnosing bugs.

[TheDarkStar]

If you need someone, I can also test it. I also have a bit of programming experience. I've played some other simulation-type games, although this one is a bit different from what I'm used to. I will be unavailable for most of next week (outdoor traveling), but I'll be available after that.

[Fikes]

I like the look, particularly the logo, but I don't like the flow at all. The first paragraph is

Thrust into a fascinating and dangerous word of international intrigue, massive wealth, power weapons, bigger than life personalities and the ever present looming possibility of prison or death. Your inheritance consists of $10 mill dollars.

This seems to be fighting between explaining a game to a buyer and explaining an in game situation to a player character. For example, a strategy game would explain to a buyer "control one of 7 armies" when in game the intro would explain to the player character "you are in control of an army and fighting against 6 others."

If you wanted to sell the game to a buyer I think it would be better to say "Enter a world of international intrigue, massive wealth, powerful weapons, bigger than life personalities and the ever present looming possibility of prison or death in your quest to rebuild or parent's arms trading empire"

Whereas a new game splash screen or intro mission would say, "Your parents used to run an empire. A successful underground venture dealing with political intrigue and powerful weapons. But now they are gone and along with them, most of the wealth and influence of that empire. Now all that remains is $10 million dollars, a handful of industry contacts, and you, the sole heir to the throne.

The competition is looking to fill the vacuum and ITHE is looking to crush any new players before they can get their feet under them.

But those concerns can wait.

For now, the world is your playground."

I am also not exactly sure what you meant by UI UX so I could be giving really different feed back than what you are looking for. The UI is really hard to evaluate from some screen shots. I will say that one really old school UI feature I remember loving from a really old game was that in Master of Orion II every menu could be accessed by pressing the letter of the name of the button. "Planets" was p, "Diplomacy" was d, and so on.

[hemmingjay]

Thank you for all of the feedback, the country lines keep switching, when they are thicker, we lose the definition in areas like Europe, the Middle East and Indonesia where small countries are often close together. It's been a tradeoff.

Fikes, I appreciate the content feedback. It's very useful.

A big thanks to those volunteers for testing. We will decide for sure this coming week. We only need a few testers for this initial business systems test, but once we add in AI and the RPG elements we will need a full battery of testers so we can make the most of our short term test schedule. . Thanks1

[The13thRonin]

Any reason you chose to make Sudan one country rather than separating it into Sudan and South Sudan?

The Republic of South Sudan is its own country.

[hemmingjay]

Any reason you chose to make Sudan one country rather than separating it into Sudan and South Sudan?

The Republic of South Sudan is its own country.

If you look close you will see roughly a dozen unified borders on the map as the world has been in flux during the @10 years of violent history that has passed in the game world. The few missing islands are an error and will be corrected.

The reason for the Sudanese reunification here was that in 2016 Bashir and Sudan worked with the Nuers and Riek Machar to overthrow President Kiir in response to the 2013 massacre of Nuer men women and children as well as various other crimes. Due to the poor economic climate the citizens of South Sudan, who had voted for independence just a few years before, welcomed the reunification of Sudan and the stability it would bring.

Does that satisfy?

[The13thRonin]

Any reason you chose to make Sudan one country rather than separating it into Sudan and South Sudan?

The Republic of South Sudan is its own country.

If you look close you will see roughly a dozen unified borders on the map as the world has been in flux during the @10 years of violent history that has passed in the game world. The few missing islands are an error and will be corrected.

The reason for the Sudanese reunification here was that in 2016 Bashir and Sudan worked with the Nuers and Riek Machar to overthrow President Kiir in response to the 2013 massacre of Nuer men women and children as well as various other crimes. Due to the poor economic climate the citizens of South Sudan, who had voted for independence just a few years before, welcomed the reunification of Sudan and the stability it would bring.

Does that satisfy?

Sure but in a game about gun running isn't stability the enemy? I would have thought you'd want as many hot-spots as you could get.

I can't wait to get a look at the 300+ guns that you've got in-game... Variety is the spice of life .

[hemmingjay]

Unifying them creates as more instability than keeping them separate for us, as a revolt is much more likely, as well as the increased chance for combat with Egypt and Libya who both are unhappy about the reunification.

The weapons are a lot of fun to add to the game. Gamers typically know about 80 of the most popular and about another 100 will be familiar in design or perhaps from memory/movies/tv/etc. Then I have almost 150 that should be new to most players and that kind of discovery can be really fun. Especially since we are making three tiers of weapons, common, rare and mythological. The last category includes some very limited production weapons or weapons that didn't really make it out of prototype stage. When weapons are in the prototype and testing phase they build a few hundred to a couple thousand, many with slight variations and improvements. For the sake of gameplay, we turn this into a couple of pallets of available weapons(10 in a crate, 10 crates in a pallet, 100 weapons in a pallet). There are a few countries/collectors that will pay a premium for these rare weapons should you gain access and your reputation will greatly improve with the alliance that you supply with special weapons. There are about 40 of those ultra rare weapons and we are changing the game to now be that if you make it to the #1 most wanted level, which is one stage before winning the game, you will gain access to one of the 40 mythological weapons. This is a reward since otherwise there is no guarantee that you will unlock one of these during a normal game. As I have mentioned before, your game profile has a weapon collection screen where every weapon you have found is displayed. Once on Steam I will make that an achievement.

[Fikes]

Shouldn't country lines just be a factor of zoom level? On the highest zoom level you can smash together all central American countries.  Then when the player selects that blob it could zoom 8 close enough to see each country or just pop up a list of the country names.