An Empire is Born - Introducing Alpha Release 3

Tuesday, September 28, 2010
To some of you, this release must have seemed like a long time coming.  To us, its been steady effort for nearly 4 weeks with a clear cut goal in mind:  to make this release "playable" in some way.  Does this mean we are ready to start running full fledged Alpha games yet?  Unfortunately, no.  What it does mean is that you can now perform almost all the basic actions in a VGA Planets game and you can compete amongst each other in the completion of our first training scenario "Eco Burst".  

So, we are proud to announce the first "playable" version of VGA Planets Nu: Alpha Release 3 entitled "An Empire is Born". 

This version is a very large step up from the previous two versions in terms of actual game functionality.  As stated above, you can now perform nearly all of the basic game functions including building starbases, building ships, flying your ships from place to place, colonizing planets and moving resources around.  What it does not include is multi-player support and all the "special" features for each race or ship.  So you still can't go to war and blow up your friend's home world with your Gorbie.  That will come soon commander.  

Testing


We have done quite a lot of testing on this release so far, however, we know there are many, many bugs still in the system.  In addition, its become clear that there are a lot of usability issues that need to be resolved as well.  Some things just aren't as easy to do as they should/need to be.  Rest assured, it will get better and better as time goes on and we welcome all your feedback into exactly how to make it better.  This release was focused on getting the functionality "roughed in" and not on perfect design.  

I encourage all of you to try playing the "Eco Burst" scenario and see how many turns it takes you to complete it.  While you are doing that, please note any bugs you find in the Bugs forum.  Please note the web browser you are using when you encounter a bug.  

Complete release notes for this release can be found here:  Release-Notes

Important note:  All training games for Alpha Release 2 have been deleted.

Next Steps


During the next week or two we plan only on fixing bugs and making minor enhancements to the current release to bring it into a more stable state.  So as you identify bugs we'll be fixing them and releasing the fixes immediately.  We also expect to add one or two more training scenarios.  

Have fun!