Thursday BETA DAY

A Jack Daniels Day

It is days like this I feel entirely justified to buy myself a little treat by way of a small celebration drink (Bottle -Ed). Call it dutch courage for the ordeal ahead of me, known only to those souls who have released software into the world and bracing themselves for the whirlwind.  Despite my repeated disclaimers, notes and warnings, I will still get feedback of the most vehement nature. But that's fine too, it means people are passionate about their game creation, and quite rightly too!

The Launch

The official BETA1 launch occurred just before 9AM Thursday morning GMT and gave Brits and Euro types a few hours head start on any Americans not pulling an all-nighter. Such advantage is now the stuff of history as the downloads are proceeding at full kilter, and slowly melting our two file servers :)  The great news is that despite a few trips and stumbles, the server is holding up well and has braved the worst of the day one weather. My compliments to our server guy, Paul.

The Video

It was always my intention to create a whistle stop tour of the software once the beta was out the door, and so I have spent some of the day creating just that. As I write this, I have handed the raw footage over to Rick who will process it into something more presentable and should be with you soon. It's not comprehensive, but it does address questions put to us at this early stage in the beta testing process. Hopefully it will be a nice intro to what it is you've been downloading all day.

The Remainder

As I have a few hours of today left, I plan to take a tour through the blog comments, you tube commands, forum comments, twitter comments, Facebook comments and intermittent emails that constitute the reactions so far. I may also find time to fix one or two small bugs that have been squarely placed in front of me.

The First Patch

I have absolutely no doubt I will be releasing some sort of patch to BETA1 users before too long, so I have set my stall up to prepare for it. I am keeping away from adding new media, and focusing on producing a better executable. Tweaks, bugs, stability, compatibility, usability will all be under the spot light for the next few days. We'll deal with fancy new assets and features once we've absorbed the early bumps associated with any substantial release.

Signing Off

All in all, we're quite pleased with the launch so far, and we also know full well that the work has really only just started. On receiving the beta you are now enrolled into the official development team and your comments and feedback will now shape the future direction of this project. Of course we have ideas of our own, but as far as possible we want the community to decide the order in which these happen. We have some ideas how to organised that and you will know more once we've investigated and created the framework we have in mind (watch this space as it's going to be cool). In the meantime, tinker and play, create and destroy, get a feel for the current version and get those blue sky minds working to imagine what amazing new features you want to see in what has now become YOUR game creator.

We have a good start, and a LONG journey ahead of us. As they say, it's not the destination but the journey that's important. If that is indeed the case, let us never reach or final destination and continue on into the infinite horizons of possibility. Before such grand adventures though, let's make sure we have everything we need and most importantly, not leave anyone behind. This is your software now, so please let us know if it does not do what you need it to do. We'll take care of the rest ;)