SITREP - Week 027

It seems like you have better progression using these sprints. That's a good thing, really. I'm kind of missing presentations of your awesome work, though. On the other hand, the time it takes to make a demo can also be spent on productive work... hard one to figure out...

Anyways, have a nice weekend everybody!

Love the SITREP, and have a jolly good weekend guys!

Good sitrep guys! (not to mention good group picture...!)

*pokes the team and remind them about open door developmen*
You really should consider doing a "Sprint status" or something similar whenever you end a sprint, not like you need to put in a ton of work, it could simply be an extended sitrep every 7 week. Anyway...might not be a problem once we actually get our hands on deadlock as I can imagine it will be easier for everyone to actually see the progress by then.


Ps. it always feels like someone poking me in the stomach when people make it sound like the Duke said "It is time to kick ass and chew bubble gum - and I'm all out of gum" first, when in fact it is a very very epic quote from a movie by John Carpenter called "They live" and is said by Roddy Piper ;)

forgefire was faster than me with the quotation :D

First of all, great photo :D in sherlock holmes style!
and very informative sitrep and have nice weekend peoplezzzzzz!

Great team picture and good sitrep. I hope soon means a few weeks not a few months ;)

Here's a question for my favorite devs. Are you cooking up something special for christmas? maybe even a Deadlock release? I hope so; it would be the best christmas present ever.

hey zps team how far are you in making firstcontact REALLY in percentage please!

Sould like one of the best christmas presents is well on it's way :-) I can't wait to test the character movement and shoot all those guns on the new map :-)

Umm, Claymore... are you on Steam? Just asking.

That group picture just made my day :D

@ZPSHicks: RAAAAIIIINNN!! :D Can't wait to see that. Sorry didn't mean to shout. :P


-Leowolf-

So, developers... Please tell marine your, er, progress in First Contact or he'll never believe it :D

YAYER!! Piber! I've loved those since i was 5 or so i think :-D

@Gortos Trying to wheedle information out of the devs?

Killin' time and making comments on your sitreps.

I (!) know that they'll propably start development on First Contact's campaign after the fifth playable slice^^

your probably right they really should develop it after that but i think in the past 3 years they have been working on the mechanics, AI some levels and there about 25% done

Ok enough is enough about this silly question.

Here goes:
http://www.interstellarmarines.com/forum/th
reads/id/1228/?page=1#snap_post32126

Read that. And understand that after the switch to unity the focus has been on creating the slices we have all seen so far. Back in the old days they were 20 guys, right now they are 6 and their time is spent on deadlock. So no - 25% is just plain wrong considering all the content needs to be moved (or even recreated/coded)

Of couse the development of deadlock will eventually make it easier to develop first contact.

No more of this...lets move on :)

Ooohh, first contact and we can probably blast some alien butt.

righto good man!

but they are working on first contact you know

i have no idea how to ask them there progress on unity but can someone please do that or eplain how to ask the devolpers thingy i dont know!

Kendzi: Yes, but not very often these days.

Alright, there are like 500 Claymores on steam O.O

Lol.

@marine565_spred: Estimating the development progress on any software product is not an easy task and in most cases are more guesswork than verifiable fact... If you ask every person on the ZPS team about the progress on 'First Contact' you'll probably get percentages that could deviate as much as 80% or more!

What I can tell you is that we're currently working on our next slice which is called 'Deadlock'. Unless Kim has started some secret project on the other side, unbeknownst to me or the rest of the team, there is no _active_ development on 'First Contact' at this point in time.

As has been noted on many occasions - most recently by forgefire in the above comment - the development of the game slices will make the development of the trilogy easier - and thus faster - for us as we'll have assets, code, proof of concept and (perhaps most importantly) an active and engaging community who believe in our way of developing games!

@Kendzi and @forgefire: We'd love to present our sprint releases and in fact have talked about this for some time now but as you've guessed we don't want to spend too much time on doing this (since it would take away from development time). We're very open for suggestions.

As I mentioned some sort of extended Sitrep might do it - more or less a summery of what people have created the last sprint. Add a few extra screenshots or music bits something similar.
Any sort of "release" would most likely take to much time as you mention yourself.

But yeah... I am guessing it wont be an issue when we get to see deadlock and whatever iterations happen on it after launch - and hopefully after the public release of deadlock we will be so busy playing the damn thing that we wont hardly miss the news ;)

i cant wait to hear what the next slice is!

You want suggestions?

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-imag
es/827/developementvisual.png/

This would not necessarily lead to more prototypes, but you won't have to wonder after each sprint, whether to actually show something or not. Because it's planned beforehand.
Also, the audience would roughly know if a demo is close by or weeks away and one could see, if the controller in a demo is the current state of developement, or how old the used map is (and so on).

I'm loving that picture! Great news as always, guys!

With deadlock is it going to be another in browser or will it be standalone?

@forgefire

Like Heks mentioned, we've been talking about a lot of ways to show our progress and make development even more open to you guys, even going as far as to make a suggestion on having open chat sessions along with the SITREP's or podcasts where we'd answer questions that are sent in...but its incredibly difficult to settle on something that adds to the way we can communicate progress.

Honestly i would love to just show you guys updates all the time, and make everything as transparent as possible - the guys here are working extremely hard to push out content, but updating takes time.
It pretty much all boils down to "do we want to push out deadlock to ya'll as fast as possible or do we want to have that the development speed is hindered by constant updating"...so its a case of having the cake and eating it too i guess :)

Y'all are giving me enough to live with, I don't get the complaints. Maybe instead of everyone suggesting big giant updates, they could just suggest sending out tidbits when you've got a moment. Hint hint, wink wink, builds up to a full update after a bit to everyone that wants more updates.

Yes, what you give us now is enough, don't worry.

Dingo, do you suggest something like a Twitter feed? Could be a good idea, if it doesn't take too much time...

I think the infos are sufficient, but like with every thing else if you get a little bit you want to have even more and more.

Looks like I am the only one who thinks we are bit low on the info end? :)

Maybe it was simply me who had expected more info when I first read about approch to the development of deadlock (http://www.interstellarmarines.com/articles/news/
log-entry-018/) zps wanted to take. I can totally understand and respect that working on the actual game is important - but 9 months ago we were told "you will soon be able to test the initial ideas we have" and besides the two maps (where espcially the latest was very impressive!) and some early sound prototypes I honestly feel this isnt as much "open door development" as it is simply normal development with a close connection to the community :)

I dont mind "normal development with a close connection to the community", but to call it "open door development" is a bit of a strech in my opinion:)

Now back to work ZPS - dont mind me...get deadlock finished instead :D

Normal development with close connections to the community is just "Hey, aren't you excited it's coming soon? Here's some vague screenshots of things exploding so you can say OMG can't wait!"

ZPS is being really straight forward and open about everything. "This is what we're working, this is what we've got done, tell you more about it once we get some free time, but right now we're busy doing this this this and this." I mean what more could you need. If they're here updating every five minutes, they'll just keep updating about the same stuff and never finish it. Their current updates are great. I feel incredibly in touch with where the development is at this point in time. It'd drive me nuts if they popped on to update about every little thing. "Heck yeah, finished a fourth line of code!" "Alright, the standard marine model's left pinkie finger is slightly straighter now!" Cut them some slack, dude.

hey guys at zps do you mind if i send you a IM demo i made with unity?

I don't really want to get between the lines of Forge and Dingo (would probably end up bad), but they both have valid points.
I'm with Forge, because I feel there could be more demos. I mean, every times I read "we got this and that done." I'm like "Cool, show me!" and I also think there are significantly less demos recently than there were some months ago, while the progress now seems to be much more of the visible type (maps and models).
On the other hand, Dingo has a killer-argument when she says there is already a huge amount of written progress-description. The weekly SITREPS couldn't be much better. I mean, every single developer writes about what he has achieved. That's the most personal experience I have ever made with game developement.
So yeah, maybe it's just me being silken (couldn't find a better word) by all the presentations that used to be delivered. If I had to choose between a soon release or weekly demos, I'd take the game for sure! Though, my inner craving for news and updates makes me think one unity prototype in 1-2 months wouldn't hurt. And there is also a helping aspect from the community. You can only expect feedback, if you actually show something and I remember you guys being very eager for feedback.
So yeah, I won't stop supporting or anything as long as you don't stop posting ALL kinds of updates. After all, you are the professionalists and we are the fanboys/-girls.

My regards, Kendzi

very well written Kendzi. i think that we get more info that you can ask for. it may not be as open as we/they want it to be. but we sure get to know the project and the peoplebehind them very well.
i can agree though, that it's been a while since their last "demo" of some sort ;) wink, wink.
but isn't it more important to get deadlock done than we get almost daily updates about this, this, and that.
I think that the sitrep/picture of the week has a good amount of info about what has been done this week.


QUESTION TO THE COMMUNITY
would you rather have?
A: small updates with a tiny bit of info at a daily pace?
B: a rather big update once a week with lot's of info?

i personally chose option B because i think that the sitrep/PotW has lots of info and you sort of have something to look forward too every friday. which is nice.
but that's just my thoughts. i'm sure that you'll agree/disagree with me a lot.
so feel free to tell me wrong/right ?B;-D

FtLotCatG

For The Love Of The CommUNITY & The Game

With regards from, Kasper V. H. Smidt

And remember, they are "only" 6 or so guys working on this at the moment. patience is a deed. ;)

You could try some livesteaming, like a livesteam of someone making an art asset. I'm certain some people would love that; I'd be interested in watching someone create some concept art myself :).

@JerreyRough: +9001

Pssst.... ZPS today sorta proves my point :)

Granted there are still a few hours left of today but hopefully you guys arent working this late hehe.
Dont promise and say things you cant keep please. Lukily you have never done this in regards to slice/game content (quite the opposite!) which would be way worse ;)