Hey there!
Some more exciting news here! We've set a point to aim for with our first Alpha release! It's set at the 1st of July. This isn't a final date yet. It might be earlier, it might be later. But it will be around this time that the first public Alpha will be released. This Alpha will already be playable, although it is quite basic.
At our current speeds of coding, we output about 1000 lines of code every day with 2 people, making that about 75 lines of code per hour per person. This is quite a lot (an average project only gets up to 15 lines of code per hour per person). And we complete about 1 feature every day. This speed it reachable, due to us focussing on making the code which we write very flexible and aimed at the future. I'm currently working on the mission system, and next task up will be the map display. Once that's done, the only tasks which remain are the Base and Events systems. ZeroSeconds has mainly been working on the resource system, market, GUI, faction system and a basic setup of the research system.
We expect to need to spend 1 week testing after we finish the features, in order to make sure that everything works correctly and is crash-free. Once that's ready, the game is released!
So our current time of release seems quite within reach! Once the first release is done, we'll be focussing on implementing more gameplay elements and expanding gameplay content. These will be the features of the first Alpha release:
- Designing spacecraft.
- Selling and buying resources on the market.
- Setting up missions.
- Basic base building.
- Fully simulated universe, containing 1000's of objects to explore and approx 500 systems full with stellar objects (the 500 systems mainly to test memory load and performance).
- Basic research.
We expect pricing to be as the following:
- Alpha: Between €3,- and €5,-
- Beta: Between €7,50 and €10,-
- Full: Between €12,50 and €15,-
Buying during Alpha and Beta will give you access to all upcoming updates without further costs. So if, for example, you buy during Alpha, you will also get all the updates of the Beta and Full releases.
So that's what I wanted to tell you. Feel free to comment, discuss, etc!
-- Darkmatter Development
Can't wait for you to go alpha always love playing these type of games
Don't expect too much from the first Alpha version though. But we'll rapidly expand the featureset as time progresses. It's great working in a team with ZeroSeconds :)