Alpha release date - 26 July.

2009.

Meh, tried the alpha again since the last few updates. Good news is I can turn all the way around now, and I'm getting about 120fps (capped by my refresh rate - for my eyes fallout without the vsync). Bad news is now I get all these bizzare floating polys and various strange graphical glitches... And after about 4 minutes or so of wandering about, my graphics driver crashed, forcing me to reboot the whole system. ><

Meh, WIP... Be nice if when they opted for their own engine, they woulda started from one that was tried and tested, rather build one from scratch that was just barely capable of reading some Source based materials.
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"Last week I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister . . . and now wish to withdraw that statement." - Mark Twain
Thothie

Indeed, I'm afraid they were a little overambitious in their undertaking. As a result I fear that when the game does go retail, it will be extremely buggy and end up being a flop.

this is disheartening -_-

hai guise my name is negative nelly, I scapegoat and find a reason to be less than satisfied with sweet news




slapdicks



it's a 3 man team, with 1 man full time coding. You know you loved ns just stfu and when it's done

okay thanks bye

I think its actually 4 guys, but regardless, that's probably exactly the reason they shouldn't have attempted to write their own engine. I loved NS sure, but there's a huge difference between modding an existing engine and writing your own. I understand their reasoning behind it, but you have to understand there have been far larger, better funded studios who have failed attempting less than what unknown worlds is doing. I'm still excited for the alpha, but my faith glass is half empty.

Doc, you should read "The Mythical Man-Month". It talks a lot about large scale software engineering projects, and basically spells out exactly why a 4-man team of geniuses is far, far better than a 1200 man team lead by geniuses.

I wouldn't have bought it if i didn't think it was going to be good. I'm sure the NS fanbase will be behind it regardless of bugs/balance/etc. It just wont' do well retail if its really buggy.

It will take sometime just like the first NS. Probably even longer seeing how it is a new engine they designed themselves....

Indeed, much longer. Though... they've already been working on it for much longer than the did the original ns prior to release. Hopefully the alpha is at least playable by a wide range of machines. It would do a lot to assuage my fears if thothie can run it on his frankenmachine or whatever he's running these days.

The issues with the first NS were not so much bugs as they were balance issues. Sure there was the occasional bug they'd add in to the game when they added new content (teleporters), and the original fade blink was buggy, but at least they had a solid engine to back up the gameplay mechanics, even if they claimed they were "fighting it every step of the way." If their new engine runs like a turd, doesn't matter how good the concept of the game is, it's going to fail. I know when I downloaded the engine test, it only worked half the time on my machine, and Thoth seemed to have more trouble than I did.

The other problem is the NS guys have never been known for churning out updates quickly. Best case scenario, the alpha goes well and the game is ready for retail a year from now. Worst case scenario, the alpha is unplayable by a large number of people, and it either takes another 2 years for them to turn it into a retail game, or they release it a year from now unfinished and buggy and gives the team a bad reputation. I'm hoping for the former, but I wouldn't be extremely surprised for the latter.

Maybe i just need to have more faith in people.

You are correct sir. I will be playing gaylien swarm or anything else but that laggy POS. Gotta wait till they set their shi- straight in say, 2 years?

Did anyone else catch that the aliens now have a commander? I'm actually a little bit disappointed in that. Maybe it will make it easier to balance, but i always liked how the dichotomy of the 2 races made them feel so different from one another.

Alien commander, seriously? I agree, I liked how they were different.

@cake
I also just downloaded Alien Swarm the other day, while it was free. Its fun but needs some work. And since they released the SDK, hopefully some fun mods pop up on it soon.

Yeah, agreed. :/

wellp, tonight is the night.