So this is a pretty simple and short question - what do you think has lead to the sudden change in developmental update behaviour, we’re seeing weekly if not daily up-dates and it does make me wonder well, what’s changed?
When I think on it I come to some different conclusions-
With the release of battle born it leaves the developers more time and resources for this game, and given we’re seeing this much time and energy being put into it, more so then pre-battle born development, we’re now seeing the rewards of the merge between these guys and the corporate head.
The developers are gearing up to actually push this product out of the doors, as it’s been a long development now in some sense given the scope and audience of the game so sooner it’s out, the more profit from backers (Not that I think they’re like this, but with Towns, we’ve seen this done with this genre of game.)
They changed their development release strategy from bi-weekly / monthly updates to - as soon as something’s ready, I think this is the most likely and the better way of doing it as it means people are always keeping their eye on it, rather than that big list of updates that drones on and on.
Hope this is taken in the manner it’s meant as simple curiosity and none of you internet people get triggered.
You have mistaken the stable with unstable release.
They always (at least since a year ago when I started following the game) had this schedule.
They release a lot of unstable (not ready, for testing only) versions, mostly weekly. And the final product in its stable form, called an alpha version, once every 2 months.
actually i have to agree with @Battlewrath, they have seemed to sped up the last couple months, with 2-3 unstable releases per week instead of one unstable release per week…
which very well could be that rather then “saving up” little fixes for one release a week, they’ve decided to just start making a release when “enough” stuff has changed for a release to be feasible…
then there’s also the fact they’ve hired a some more people awhile ago which will speed things up…
i’m really tired, so don’t expect my post to make sense…
Uhm, it didn’t feel faster for me before putting some thought into it. The game is more polished so it is easier to work with it I guess, and bug fixes are super fast now.
To me it seems that while unstable branches are coming out a lot faster than when I first picked up the game - way back in Alpha 5 - but to me there are still some slower alphas and faster ones. I think it’s partially due to the focus of the current alpha. Bugfixes can be pushed as fast as possible, but features need to be at least somewhat complete and need a lot more balancing to be released.
well i think its a good thing they speed it up. Sinds A16 we see allot more small time errors. I just hope they spent sometime improving performance instead of just adding stuff.
There’s really not been a huge change in our update behavior. We’ve tried to release a new stable Alpha every 8 weeks, though in some circumstances we’ve been able to go a bit faster. The team is pretty much the same size it’s been for a while (though we’ve been fortunate to add a new team member and summer interns in the last month…). I certainly wouldn’t read too much into it (especially that we’re somehow on the cusp of releasing a finished product; there’s still much to do!).
If anything is different, it’s that we’re trying to focus each Alpha more than in the past. Previously, each Alpha contained a number of very different features, and we tended to have a shorter bug-fixing period following release. And we actually didn’t have an unstable-then-stable release cadence until we launched on Steam, so it may seem in retrospect that Alphas used to take much longer.
Anyway, with the focused Alphas we concentrate on a smaller number of features and additions; our goal is to work on those for 3-4 weeks, then release to unstable, get your feedback, iterate and bug fix, then release to stable in another 3 or 4 weeks. The objective is that the stable Alpha will be a higher-quality product (which we believe we have achieved).
This focused Alpha process began with Alpha 14, so it’s still a somewhat newer development. Part of the process is to communicate more frequently and release interim builds, particularly during the bug-fixing phase, so this also may make things seem as if they’re moving more quickly.
We think the focused Alpha process is better both for us as a development team, and for you as players.
