friendly wrote:
How about this: XpAdmin ships a 2.2 *ALPHA*. We all get our ya-yas finding and reporting bugs on the understanding that this is strictly alpha quality stuff, not to be taken seriously ... er, whatever that means ... but so that we don't all just keel over and die of blue balls before 3.0!
Back when "Alpha" and "Beta" meant something entirely different than what they mean in modern development, you wouldn't want to play an Alpha as they generally had "Programmer Art". XMP doesn't rely on 8-bit graphics and pixel art (not knocking 2D but 3D takes a bit longer to make in such detail) and the engine doesn't generate millions of procedural kilometers or planets for you to sandbox in. It's a different creature. XMP is an anatomical sex physics toy with high detail models. They have to contend with weird psychological things like the "Uncanny Valley", social behavior, and the chemicals released changing your scope of mind and game play during sexual activity. I'll leave it at that because I feel a tangent coming on.
I'm a producer and a developer and I hate when people see a project before it's done unless they are part of my team. Another thing to consider is that they don't have an adult "Steam" (Steamy?) service that helps developers promote a Green-light/early access version. The team/person working on this isn't getting their/his hand held. Also, in my experience, you have to write your engine with the modern "frequent snapshot" thing in mind to give that update or snapshot every week feel. That's probably beyond the scope of the project at this time. Perhaps when they solidify the engine you'll see more frequent updates and less frequent heartburn.
On a side note, I'm still not sure if I'm comfy with how I'm paying people to play test their games. I mean people used to get paid to do that! But I kinda think it feels right, maybe? Usually the final version costs more so in a way I'm getting paid by discount.
