Post by DonnieDarko on Dec 10, 2008 1:49:35 GMT -5
Originally posted by AndoSky on the Turf Battles forum at:
forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?t=197961
Update #1:
Thank you for all of the responses so far everyone. We will be speaking to the development team to discuss all the great feedback we've received.
Update #2:
We are learning more as we go. It turns out that the previous publisher made a lot of custom changes to Turf Battles. These were all done on their end, so the developer can not give us the exact same version that existed before. The good news is that we will be working with both the developer and the community over time to try and make many of these same types of changes. This will be a fun and rewarding experience for all of us as we work together to shape the game into a version that we can all be proud of.
Update #3:
We now have a small team of volunteer players who are helping us greatly improve the localization of Turf Battles, and so far we are making steady progress on this. Also the website is now starting to be developed!
Update #4:
Website design is coming along fairly well. We are also gathering content for the website.
Design team is supposed to reveal the new TB logo to our team on Monday. It's a modification of one of the logos submitted by the community. If our team approves it, we should be announcing the winner of the contest soon.
GMs and volunteers are almost done with the first 1/3rd of localization and are now starting on the 2nd third.
Our engineering team is starting to setup a test server for us to use (a few hiccups with this, but things are progressing).
Update #5:
The logo has been announced here!
Update #6:
I got to see the website today for the first time in a few days. It seems to be coming along pretty well. I expect that sometime next week we'll begin adding content to it and start testing.
Update #7
In regards to the website, the design is being finalized as we speak. Valk and I got to see it tonight and were happy overall with how it looks. So what comes next? The designer wraps up her work this week then hands and then hands it off to an engineer to work on integrating it into our portal. Meanwhile several of us start adding the bulk of the content to the website (which is why we needed the wallpapers as was mentioned above). We are fortunate to have such a great volunteer team (who is helping us with the localization) working with us on the website content as well. We will also be doing testing and bug fixing on the site next week, so it should be a busy time for us. Shortly after that the site should be ready to release Smile
We continue to make a lot of progress on localization. I believe part 2 of 3 should be wrapped up before long.
The test server isn't quite as far along as we had hoped by this stage, but we're making progress. I won't get into the details, but it's a high priority for everyone working on it.
Thanks to the help from the community, we have sent a bug report with screenshots to the developers about issues that still exist in the Japanese version. We are waiting to hear back from this about this now.
Finally we sent our first 3 proposals of changes to make the game feel more like the original Turf Battles. Those changes relate to the starting locations for new players (which is different in Sephiroth), potion balancing, and changes to the islands to make them more like how the original TB was. The early feedback I'm hearing is they will be willing to work with us, however things will take time (especially since they're in the middle of launching Japan's beta right now). Once we know which changes they have approved we will update you with more information.
Update #8
We have picked our winners for the wallpaper contest. Thank you to everyone who submitted an entry, we plan to use the work that many of you created on the website.
The designers are polishing up the website and fixing a few bugs they had with it, while our web engineering team has nearly finished the site integration. Now we've been given the green light to start adding the content to it. I expect the site to roll out early next week assuming things go smoothly. Once the site is up players will be able to sign up for closed beta and we will be sending out a press release shortly after!
Our engineering team has finished setting up the test server to the best of their ability and have now handed it over to the development team to get TB running on it. This is expected to take a couple days, meanwhile they've given us a big manual of tech info to read over Razz
We are still plugging away at the 2nd part of the localization files, though we have now received the 3rd and final section. Since this is taking a little longer than we had hoped, our initial test client will more than likely be only partially localized until everything is finished.
We got feedback from the developers on the changes we proposed making to the game. Now we are taking their feedback and making some revisions, mainly to simplify things a little bit.
Also we are in the process of following up with them on the bugs that you folks helped us report to them. My understanding is that (in theory) the map bugs shouldn't be too difficult to fix, but they wanted some more information before they proceeded. So no ETA on this just yet, but once we know more we will let you know.
Update #9
The website is scheduled to be released sometime on Wednesday, assuming no last minute issues surface! The website URL will look something like this:
turfbattes.aeriagames.com
We now have our test server setup and have also just received our very first internal test client! This is very exciting for us, however it also means we have a lot more to do since there are a lot of little things that need to be fixed as you might imagine, especially since there is still a fair amount of localization improvements left to make. This is a process that will take a little time, but we're moving down the right path Smile
Also we heard back more on the bugs that were reported. Further clarification on a few issues was requested, but overall it was a very positive response and even wanted us to thank the community for helping to collect the information. (Thank you!)
Update #10
The website is now live!
turfbattles.aeriagames.com/
There is still more to be done with the content on the site. The development team has only sent us a portion of what they had because most of their resources have been going into translating the in-game text, so for the mean time we had to make do with what we could.
A big THANK YOU to those of you who helped write the game guide and other sections Smile
Meanwhile sign up for closed beta if you haven't done it already!
turfbattles.aeriagames.com/signup
Update #11
As I mentioned last week, we have just finished getting our internal test server setup and were delivered our first partially localized test client. Now our biggest task that we are focusing on at the moment is to spend a good portion of time inside of the game and looking for issues. We are now compiling two separate lists, one of bugs we are finding (basically things that don't work the way they should) and second a list of concerns of changes that have been made to the game that we want to bring up to the developer, which will then probably require a discussion with the developer followed by some changes being made to the code. This will probably be an ongoing process that will take some time (as has been mentioned before), but the good news is we are seeing some content that appears to be fairly new, so we are excited about that.
While we do this, we are also trying to wrap up the localization. We have just submitted part 3 of 3 of the text, and now we need to go back and finish off part 2 (this is a really long part). We hope to have this wrapped up before too long.
Also in regards to the website, the developers have just finally sent us the translated content that we can add. There seems to be some pretty good stuff in there, but it will take a lot of time to sort through everything and prepare it for our website. At the moment this is a lower priority task for us compared to all the other things we have going on. But stay tuned, we will try to make improvements in the future using this material.
Finally we are happy to see so many of you have signed up for closed beta already. Now we'd like to see many more of the previous Turf Battle players sign up with us. That is why we are now sending out a press release to several major gaming sites. We are also hoping the community can help us by posting a short blurb about closed beta on other sites for us. Check out this page if you haven't seen it already:
forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?p=1817929
Update #12
Word is getting out about the Turf Battles closed beta. Our press release has been seen on several major gaming websites and we expect to see it on more soon to come. Also we appreciate everyone who has already helped spread the word for us. If you haven't done this yet, don't hesitate, we'll give you free AP in return!
We heard back from the developers on the old exploits that many of you reported to us. They have fixed what they consider are the worst ones, and the fixes are now supposedly on the Korean server. We've been told we will get these fixes once Closed Beta has begun.
Our internal testing has been productive. Last night we sent our first batch of bugs to the developers. We're also working on some feedback for them based on balance changes to drop rates and other things that we feel should be made to make the game feel more like the original. We still need to collect and send them more information, but we're happy that progress has been made Smile
We are happy to report that the first round of localization is nearly complete! We are now about 80% done with the final section. We did notice that once we got the internal test client that improvements would need to be made, but over time the text should continue to improve!
Finally here are a couple screenshots from our test server to show you all a little of what's to come!
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/kentauros.jpg
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/Yuba.jpg
Update #13
We were told we should be hearing back from the Developers early this week about the bugs and feedback we sent them, so still waiting on that.
Meanwhile we are happy to report that we have now finished and submitted our first round of our first pass on the localization. This means the developers can now create a fully localized client for us. Once we get this and as we progress through beta, we will continue to submit revisions to the localization. However now that the first round of localization is done, we now have a little more free time to become more familiar with the game's administrator tools and such Smile
I have been informed that we have ordered our Live servers now and expect them to arrive by the end of the month or early January. Keep in mind once we get them it will take a little while to set them up before we can hand them over to the Developers to work on.
Also we are working on a large interview with RPG Vault (IGN). My guess is this interview may get published on their website in early January, so keep an eye out for that.
Finally this is week contains a major holiday for most US citizens. Therefore some of us will be out of the office for a few days while we enjoy time with our families.
Update #14
The development team has responded to our email about the bugs we sent them from our internal testing. They have agreed to fix most of the bugs we reported. We are still waiting to hear back from them about the feedback next.
We have also been informed by the development team that they should have a new build for us that includes our localization changes by the end of this week. Once we get this we will need to re-test everything in-game to make sure there are no problems with it.
I have been informed by my team that we should be getting the live servers delivered as early as next week. Keep in mind though it will take some time to set these up. Also our team has been working on test server integration with our test website. This is an important step towards eventually integrating the live game with our live website which will be needed for beta.
Finally we are making good progress with the interview and hope to submit it to RPG Vault by the end of the week. It will probably take a little time for them to publish it, but expect to see it before long!
Update #15
Test server login integration is now complete (other than a small bug we are discussing with the developers).
Our new beta server machines have arrived and our engineering team has begun preparing them so that next week we can give them to the development team to install TB for us.
We have received our first patch from the developer. This includes the full localization and a few bug fixes. We are now going to spend a few days looking it over and letting the developers know if it's OK. So far we are finding a few problems, which was to be expected on the first version, but we hope to get these issues resolved before long.
Also a lot of other miscellaneous tasks are now being worked on, such as preparing our email that we will be sending out to players who get invited into closed beta and talking to a website that we hope will be hosting our closed beta client and granting closed beta keys to its members (more details about this to come!)
Finally, here is a look at the re-skinned Turf Battles launcher that our team is working on. It has been designed to look like the TB website:
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/turfbattleslauncher.jpg
Update #16
Have you voted on your pick for server name yet?
forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?t=264209&start=40
We will be launching Closed Beta with 1 server initially, as mentioned before. We are currently discussing with the developer how to setup 2 channels on the server since this is needed for some events. Not 100% sure if it will start out that way in Closed Beta, but sooner or later that's what we'll have.
So speaking of Closed Beta, we have discussed with the Developer to begin this in early February! At the moment we are trying to finish some things on our end and hand everything off to the Development team as soon as we can. They will then scramble to get closed beta ready for us before they leave for a week at the end of the month (which is a holiday for them). During that time we will perform our final testing before CB and finish making preparations with the website FileFront, who has agreed to host the client for us and hand out closed beta keys. We have selected them because they did a good job doing this recently with MegaTen.
So... because so much is going on, Valk and I have now officially departed from Twelve Sky. This was sort of a sad departure for both of us because that is the game we both joined Aeria to work on. However this is good news for Turf Battles because it frees up more of our time.
Here is a new screenshot to keep you all occupied.
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/newcontent.jpg
Update #17
The biggest news for us is that we have finished setting up machines on our end that will be used for the beta server. They have now been handed off to the development team who will be setting up the game on them and then giving us a new client that connects to that server. This will probably take them several days (and don't forget they have a holiday coming up). After that we'd need to create an installer, do testing, and perform login integration with our live website. So still a few very important steps left, however as far as I can tell we still appear to be on schedule to launch closed beta in early Feb.
We are also currently requesting a new build that should contain more fixes for issues we reported. By the way once closed beta begins it our goal to try and get everyone who signed up for CB in fairly quickly so we can start collecting feedback & bugs from the community.
In other news, we have also now submitted our interview answers & screenshots to RPG Vault (finally, yay!). So look forward to seeing that go up within the next couple weeks or so I believe. We have also finished a few other things like the prepared the closed beta invite email and we've requested that our future Game Sages can be identified more easily similar to how GMs can be. We believe they will do this for us, however it will probably not be ready until Open Beta.
Also for those of you who didn't notice, players have voted on the name for the first server and Mystic has been chosen as the winner!
Update #18
I hope you've all had a chance to read the RPG Vault interview, part 2 is supposed to be posted sometime next week.
Last week was a very productive week because our team was working with the Development Team to get the beta server machines setup. However this week due to a big holiday (Happy Lunar New Year) the Development Team is off, as I mentioned before would be happening.
In their absence we are continuing to move forward, but we have a lot of questions that we are waiting to ask them when they return. For instance, there are some instructions we need in order to test what we hope will be the final patch before CB (this patch includes some fixes to issues we reported).
Currently we have a designer working on the artwork that will be used in the installer. We also just released a new Aeria Games TB profile skin that everyone is encouraged to use if they don't have a custom one they are fond of using already.
Update #19
This has been a busy week for us as we try and work with the developers, who are back from their holiday time, to finish setting up the servers. It's been difficult at times because they are often on at different times than we are due to timezone differences. This can prove to be an issue when they have a question for us or we have a question for them during a time when one or the other is sleeping. So far we are nearly done setting up the database and we've made progress on login integration with our live website.
So here's the plan going forward. Once the servers are totally done being setup, we'll get the final client build that connects to them. Once that has been checked to make sure it's working ok, we'll send it off to FileFront who says they need a week getting things ready on their end. MEANWHILE we'll go ahead and start closed beta around that time (hopefully by the end of next week) by inviting a few select individuals (Game Sages and such) onto the server to help us make sure things seem stable and working correctly. I suppose you could consider this to be the start of closed beta, though it will be very limited. After that once the client is up on FileFront, we'll essentially open up the game to the masses! Once FileFront receives the CB client from us we will announce the official dates.
If you haven't checked out part 2 of the RPG Vault interview, take a look, it just went up!
Update #20
Our Closed Beta server is now setup! We have also received the Closed Beta client which (after some slight modifications) lets us connect to the closed beta server! We've also received some admin tools to help us run the beta. Finally we also got a small patch that fixes a few other issues we reported, such as the level cap changing unexpectedly (don't worry that should be fixed now!)
The Closed Beta client currently does not allow patching. This is an issue because you can't simply patch a client that doesn't allow patching! We are working with the developers to get this last issue taken care of. Meanwhile we are verifying that the new Closed Beta client and server are working the way they are supposed to, and we should eventually be able to invite some of the game sages to take a look at it as well.
Update #21:
We've built the installer and are now giving it to the Turf Battles Game Sages tonight so they can access the CB server. Yay! Soon we'll also get some of the game sages from other games and the forum mods to hop in and take a look to ensure things seem stable.
Tonight we're also sending everything to FileFront. Since it's going to take them a week to get things ready on their end, I'm going to see if there's a way for us to get some members who signed up for beta in before that, more details to come on that!
We believe we got patching to work, but we're trying to find ways to optimize it better, so more investigation is needed.
We're also looking at how we can clean up a little more of the localization since we noticed some issues with this build, but I'm not sure how soon we can get to that.
Finally we're also hoping to get more tools setup so the GMs have access to do more on the server, but if that takes a little while I think what we have now should be fine (for example chance to get good drops).
forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?t=197961
Update #1:
Thank you for all of the responses so far everyone. We will be speaking to the development team to discuss all the great feedback we've received.
Update #2:
We are learning more as we go. It turns out that the previous publisher made a lot of custom changes to Turf Battles. These were all done on their end, so the developer can not give us the exact same version that existed before. The good news is that we will be working with both the developer and the community over time to try and make many of these same types of changes. This will be a fun and rewarding experience for all of us as we work together to shape the game into a version that we can all be proud of.
Update #3:
We now have a small team of volunteer players who are helping us greatly improve the localization of Turf Battles, and so far we are making steady progress on this. Also the website is now starting to be developed!
Update #4:
Website design is coming along fairly well. We are also gathering content for the website.
Design team is supposed to reveal the new TB logo to our team on Monday. It's a modification of one of the logos submitted by the community. If our team approves it, we should be announcing the winner of the contest soon.
GMs and volunteers are almost done with the first 1/3rd of localization and are now starting on the 2nd third.
Our engineering team is starting to setup a test server for us to use (a few hiccups with this, but things are progressing).
Update #5:
The logo has been announced here!
Update #6:
I got to see the website today for the first time in a few days. It seems to be coming along pretty well. I expect that sometime next week we'll begin adding content to it and start testing.
Update #7
In regards to the website, the design is being finalized as we speak. Valk and I got to see it tonight and were happy overall with how it looks. So what comes next? The designer wraps up her work this week then hands and then hands it off to an engineer to work on integrating it into our portal. Meanwhile several of us start adding the bulk of the content to the website (which is why we needed the wallpapers as was mentioned above). We are fortunate to have such a great volunteer team (who is helping us with the localization) working with us on the website content as well. We will also be doing testing and bug fixing on the site next week, so it should be a busy time for us. Shortly after that the site should be ready to release Smile
We continue to make a lot of progress on localization. I believe part 2 of 3 should be wrapped up before long.
The test server isn't quite as far along as we had hoped by this stage, but we're making progress. I won't get into the details, but it's a high priority for everyone working on it.
Thanks to the help from the community, we have sent a bug report with screenshots to the developers about issues that still exist in the Japanese version. We are waiting to hear back from this about this now.
Finally we sent our first 3 proposals of changes to make the game feel more like the original Turf Battles. Those changes relate to the starting locations for new players (which is different in Sephiroth), potion balancing, and changes to the islands to make them more like how the original TB was. The early feedback I'm hearing is they will be willing to work with us, however things will take time (especially since they're in the middle of launching Japan's beta right now). Once we know which changes they have approved we will update you with more information.
Update #8
We have picked our winners for the wallpaper contest. Thank you to everyone who submitted an entry, we plan to use the work that many of you created on the website.
The designers are polishing up the website and fixing a few bugs they had with it, while our web engineering team has nearly finished the site integration. Now we've been given the green light to start adding the content to it. I expect the site to roll out early next week assuming things go smoothly. Once the site is up players will be able to sign up for closed beta and we will be sending out a press release shortly after!
Our engineering team has finished setting up the test server to the best of their ability and have now handed it over to the development team to get TB running on it. This is expected to take a couple days, meanwhile they've given us a big manual of tech info to read over Razz
We are still plugging away at the 2nd part of the localization files, though we have now received the 3rd and final section. Since this is taking a little longer than we had hoped, our initial test client will more than likely be only partially localized until everything is finished.
We got feedback from the developers on the changes we proposed making to the game. Now we are taking their feedback and making some revisions, mainly to simplify things a little bit.
Also we are in the process of following up with them on the bugs that you folks helped us report to them. My understanding is that (in theory) the map bugs shouldn't be too difficult to fix, but they wanted some more information before they proceeded. So no ETA on this just yet, but once we know more we will let you know.
Update #9
The website is scheduled to be released sometime on Wednesday, assuming no last minute issues surface! The website URL will look something like this:
turfbattes.aeriagames.com
We now have our test server setup and have also just received our very first internal test client! This is very exciting for us, however it also means we have a lot more to do since there are a lot of little things that need to be fixed as you might imagine, especially since there is still a fair amount of localization improvements left to make. This is a process that will take a little time, but we're moving down the right path Smile
Also we heard back more on the bugs that were reported. Further clarification on a few issues was requested, but overall it was a very positive response and even wanted us to thank the community for helping to collect the information. (Thank you!)
Update #10
The website is now live!
turfbattles.aeriagames.com/
There is still more to be done with the content on the site. The development team has only sent us a portion of what they had because most of their resources have been going into translating the in-game text, so for the mean time we had to make do with what we could.
A big THANK YOU to those of you who helped write the game guide and other sections Smile
Meanwhile sign up for closed beta if you haven't done it already!
turfbattles.aeriagames.com/signup
Update #11
As I mentioned last week, we have just finished getting our internal test server setup and were delivered our first partially localized test client. Now our biggest task that we are focusing on at the moment is to spend a good portion of time inside of the game and looking for issues. We are now compiling two separate lists, one of bugs we are finding (basically things that don't work the way they should) and second a list of concerns of changes that have been made to the game that we want to bring up to the developer, which will then probably require a discussion with the developer followed by some changes being made to the code. This will probably be an ongoing process that will take some time (as has been mentioned before), but the good news is we are seeing some content that appears to be fairly new, so we are excited about that.
While we do this, we are also trying to wrap up the localization. We have just submitted part 3 of 3 of the text, and now we need to go back and finish off part 2 (this is a really long part). We hope to have this wrapped up before too long.
Also in regards to the website, the developers have just finally sent us the translated content that we can add. There seems to be some pretty good stuff in there, but it will take a lot of time to sort through everything and prepare it for our website. At the moment this is a lower priority task for us compared to all the other things we have going on. But stay tuned, we will try to make improvements in the future using this material.
Finally we are happy to see so many of you have signed up for closed beta already. Now we'd like to see many more of the previous Turf Battle players sign up with us. That is why we are now sending out a press release to several major gaming sites. We are also hoping the community can help us by posting a short blurb about closed beta on other sites for us. Check out this page if you haven't seen it already:
forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?p=1817929
Update #12
Word is getting out about the Turf Battles closed beta. Our press release has been seen on several major gaming websites and we expect to see it on more soon to come. Also we appreciate everyone who has already helped spread the word for us. If you haven't done this yet, don't hesitate, we'll give you free AP in return!
We heard back from the developers on the old exploits that many of you reported to us. They have fixed what they consider are the worst ones, and the fixes are now supposedly on the Korean server. We've been told we will get these fixes once Closed Beta has begun.
Our internal testing has been productive. Last night we sent our first batch of bugs to the developers. We're also working on some feedback for them based on balance changes to drop rates and other things that we feel should be made to make the game feel more like the original. We still need to collect and send them more information, but we're happy that progress has been made Smile
We are happy to report that the first round of localization is nearly complete! We are now about 80% done with the final section. We did notice that once we got the internal test client that improvements would need to be made, but over time the text should continue to improve!
Finally here are a couple screenshots from our test server to show you all a little of what's to come!
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/kentauros.jpg
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/Yuba.jpg
Update #13
We were told we should be hearing back from the Developers early this week about the bugs and feedback we sent them, so still waiting on that.
Meanwhile we are happy to report that we have now finished and submitted our first round of our first pass on the localization. This means the developers can now create a fully localized client for us. Once we get this and as we progress through beta, we will continue to submit revisions to the localization. However now that the first round of localization is done, we now have a little more free time to become more familiar with the game's administrator tools and such Smile
I have been informed that we have ordered our Live servers now and expect them to arrive by the end of the month or early January. Keep in mind once we get them it will take a little while to set them up before we can hand them over to the Developers to work on.
Also we are working on a large interview with RPG Vault (IGN). My guess is this interview may get published on their website in early January, so keep an eye out for that.
Finally this is week contains a major holiday for most US citizens. Therefore some of us will be out of the office for a few days while we enjoy time with our families.
Update #14
The development team has responded to our email about the bugs we sent them from our internal testing. They have agreed to fix most of the bugs we reported. We are still waiting to hear back from them about the feedback next.
We have also been informed by the development team that they should have a new build for us that includes our localization changes by the end of this week. Once we get this we will need to re-test everything in-game to make sure there are no problems with it.
I have been informed by my team that we should be getting the live servers delivered as early as next week. Keep in mind though it will take some time to set these up. Also our team has been working on test server integration with our test website. This is an important step towards eventually integrating the live game with our live website which will be needed for beta.
Finally we are making good progress with the interview and hope to submit it to RPG Vault by the end of the week. It will probably take a little time for them to publish it, but expect to see it before long!
Update #15
Test server login integration is now complete (other than a small bug we are discussing with the developers).
Our new beta server machines have arrived and our engineering team has begun preparing them so that next week we can give them to the development team to install TB for us.
We have received our first patch from the developer. This includes the full localization and a few bug fixes. We are now going to spend a few days looking it over and letting the developers know if it's OK. So far we are finding a few problems, which was to be expected on the first version, but we hope to get these issues resolved before long.
Also a lot of other miscellaneous tasks are now being worked on, such as preparing our email that we will be sending out to players who get invited into closed beta and talking to a website that we hope will be hosting our closed beta client and granting closed beta keys to its members (more details about this to come!)
Finally, here is a look at the re-skinned Turf Battles launcher that our team is working on. It has been designed to look like the TB website:
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/turfbattleslauncher.jpg
Update #16
Have you voted on your pick for server name yet?
forums.aeriagames.com/viewtopic.php?t=264209&start=40
We will be launching Closed Beta with 1 server initially, as mentioned before. We are currently discussing with the developer how to setup 2 channels on the server since this is needed for some events. Not 100% sure if it will start out that way in Closed Beta, but sooner or later that's what we'll have.
So speaking of Closed Beta, we have discussed with the Developer to begin this in early February! At the moment we are trying to finish some things on our end and hand everything off to the Development team as soon as we can. They will then scramble to get closed beta ready for us before they leave for a week at the end of the month (which is a holiday for them). During that time we will perform our final testing before CB and finish making preparations with the website FileFront, who has agreed to host the client for us and hand out closed beta keys. We have selected them because they did a good job doing this recently with MegaTen.
So... because so much is going on, Valk and I have now officially departed from Twelve Sky. This was sort of a sad departure for both of us because that is the game we both joined Aeria to work on. However this is good news for Turf Battles because it frees up more of our time.
Here is a new screenshot to keep you all occupied.
i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff202/andosky/newcontent.jpg
Update #17
The biggest news for us is that we have finished setting up machines on our end that will be used for the beta server. They have now been handed off to the development team who will be setting up the game on them and then giving us a new client that connects to that server. This will probably take them several days (and don't forget they have a holiday coming up). After that we'd need to create an installer, do testing, and perform login integration with our live website. So still a few very important steps left, however as far as I can tell we still appear to be on schedule to launch closed beta in early Feb.
We are also currently requesting a new build that should contain more fixes for issues we reported. By the way once closed beta begins it our goal to try and get everyone who signed up for CB in fairly quickly so we can start collecting feedback & bugs from the community.
In other news, we have also now submitted our interview answers & screenshots to RPG Vault (finally, yay!). So look forward to seeing that go up within the next couple weeks or so I believe. We have also finished a few other things like the prepared the closed beta invite email and we've requested that our future Game Sages can be identified more easily similar to how GMs can be. We believe they will do this for us, however it will probably not be ready until Open Beta.
Also for those of you who didn't notice, players have voted on the name for the first server and Mystic has been chosen as the winner!
Update #18
I hope you've all had a chance to read the RPG Vault interview, part 2 is supposed to be posted sometime next week.
Last week was a very productive week because our team was working with the Development Team to get the beta server machines setup. However this week due to a big holiday (Happy Lunar New Year) the Development Team is off, as I mentioned before would be happening.
In their absence we are continuing to move forward, but we have a lot of questions that we are waiting to ask them when they return. For instance, there are some instructions we need in order to test what we hope will be the final patch before CB (this patch includes some fixes to issues we reported).
Currently we have a designer working on the artwork that will be used in the installer. We also just released a new Aeria Games TB profile skin that everyone is encouraged to use if they don't have a custom one they are fond of using already.
Update #19
This has been a busy week for us as we try and work with the developers, who are back from their holiday time, to finish setting up the servers. It's been difficult at times because they are often on at different times than we are due to timezone differences. This can prove to be an issue when they have a question for us or we have a question for them during a time when one or the other is sleeping. So far we are nearly done setting up the database and we've made progress on login integration with our live website.
So here's the plan going forward. Once the servers are totally done being setup, we'll get the final client build that connects to them. Once that has been checked to make sure it's working ok, we'll send it off to FileFront who says they need a week getting things ready on their end. MEANWHILE we'll go ahead and start closed beta around that time (hopefully by the end of next week) by inviting a few select individuals (Game Sages and such) onto the server to help us make sure things seem stable and working correctly. I suppose you could consider this to be the start of closed beta, though it will be very limited. After that once the client is up on FileFront, we'll essentially open up the game to the masses! Once FileFront receives the CB client from us we will announce the official dates.
If you haven't checked out part 2 of the RPG Vault interview, take a look, it just went up!
Update #20
Our Closed Beta server is now setup! We have also received the Closed Beta client which (after some slight modifications) lets us connect to the closed beta server! We've also received some admin tools to help us run the beta. Finally we also got a small patch that fixes a few other issues we reported, such as the level cap changing unexpectedly (don't worry that should be fixed now!)
The Closed Beta client currently does not allow patching. This is an issue because you can't simply patch a client that doesn't allow patching! We are working with the developers to get this last issue taken care of. Meanwhile we are verifying that the new Closed Beta client and server are working the way they are supposed to, and we should eventually be able to invite some of the game sages to take a look at it as well.
Update #21:
We've built the installer and are now giving it to the Turf Battles Game Sages tonight so they can access the CB server. Yay! Soon we'll also get some of the game sages from other games and the forum mods to hop in and take a look to ensure things seem stable.
Tonight we're also sending everything to FileFront. Since it's going to take them a week to get things ready on their end, I'm going to see if there's a way for us to get some members who signed up for beta in before that, more details to come on that!
We believe we got patching to work, but we're trying to find ways to optimize it better, so more investigation is needed.
We're also looking at how we can clean up a little more of the localization since we noticed some issues with this build, but I'm not sure how soon we can get to that.
Finally we're also hoping to get more tools setup so the GMs have access to do more on the server, but if that takes a little while I think what we have now should be fine (for example chance to get good drops).
