Slitherine

Is the October release date still valid or is it only wishful thinking...this game has been in production and hyped over a year...just like Team Assault....when SPECIFICALLY will it be released?

Do you know that even AAA titles are postpone. Now imagine small studios, with less resources, trying to perfect a product.
You know that most of the games released by Matrix/Slitherine don't bring, when released, with too many bugs, and surely with no breaking ones. And that's not the policy of most studios, nowadays.
You should praise that, here at least, they respect the consumer as far as it goes that.

I'm trying to expose a trend I as a consumer have been monitoring...purely from a gamers perspective...I've been purchasing titles since the 80s on floppy disks...and I possess or have in the past possessed many incomplete titles..from "fly by night" developers and marketers...I'm trying to provide constructive crtiticism and also want the developers to feel my frustration at CONSTANTLY observing mistakes and inconsistencies on websites and forums...it just seems to me that the attitude now is "It will be ready when its ready...but let me show you my awesome work...earning praise and raising expectations before theyre earned".... It appears that Slitherine is falling into that same funk thats ruining soooo many other companies...I've always respected Matrix quality and am here as direct result of that...Just feel that you all forgetting that success is measured differently by different people...Although you all may believe your doing a good job others...that transfer their money to you...might disagree. Respectfully.

We made a mistake announcing this game too early, we are a young company so this will not happen again. Our apologies, progress is good and steady and the game is almost ready for official Beta, but we have no intend to release it in a pity state, so will take the time needed to make it is top product.

We work hard behind the scene, building a new engine and AI from ground up has proven harder and more time consuming as expected and we gave Panzer Corps priority as that game was well ahead.

Now we have the situation the game is already announced a year ago, something we sadly cannot recall. All we can say is be patient, and in the future we will make sure we only announce a new title a few months before we know absolutely sure it will be ready.

Slitherine nor Matrix have any fault in this, it is purely a developers problem on our side, it all just takes a lot longer than we had initially planned and yes we are indeed a small team.

Producing a game and bringing it to market is a very complex and time consuming process, there are multiple factors that can ruin your release plans.

We hope to make it up to you all by making the game fun, stable and worth the long wait and again in the future plan our release announcements much better.


Cheers,

Tim aka LZ

Tim,

Sir, I and I'm sure the rest of us who eagerly await the release of this title greatly appreciate your quick responses, but the question, needing an answer has not been answered....What is the expected release DATE ?.... Is it still scheduled for October 15?
Also, Is there anything we "grunts" can do to expedite this process?

Thanks !

Gary

Definitely not October. Rest assured, we don't like it either

As Tim already said we made a big mistake announcing the game so early, something we'll have to learn from for the future. Aside from poor estimations the game engine has become much more advanced and flexible - which doesn't do much for this first title, but will make it much easier to adapt it to different settings (ww2, napoleonic, ...) in the future. And in addition we ended up making some game features far more advanced than the original game, such as diplomacy, research and AI. Which is payed for by a longer development period.

Once we enter beta testing I'm sure we can restart the game marketing which would include next screenshots and probably the continuation of the dev diaries.

"Once we enter beta testing I'm sure we can restart the game marketing which would include next screenshots and probably the continuation of the dev diaries."

Unfortunately this isn't very reassuring. With a quote like this my estimation for a release date will not be until 2012......

Restart game marketing? Continuation of Dev Diaries? -----> This equals the game is NO WHERE near release date huh? That's a shame.........I remember reading about this game back in May of 2010 and I got soooo pumped for what?......

I guess I'll be stuck playing Strategic Command WWI 1914-1918 for now, the graphics are below par in that game, but it's all we WWI gamer buff's have for now (AGEODs WWI and GoA just didn't cut it for me)

Thanks for an Update

Gary

What about a Game Demo in the near future???? (meaning within a month or so)

The difficulty with this game is that the campaign is one seemless experience. Unlike Panzer Corps for example it's not split into smaller scenarios. So while in PzC the first beta version had only 4 or so scenarios, we can't do that with CTGW. Every feature, every unit, every design change affects the whole thing. So until all features are working as desired, and everything is reasonably balanced we can't really start public beta testing. Basically the whole game must be finished before we can start the beta. Hopefully the actual test phase will be shorter than PzC's - but we don't want to stick any official dates on anything right now.

no apologies needed. Do what you do best... make great games that are bug free.

geozero wrote:no apologies needed. Do what you do best... make great games that are bug free.

Absolutely.

And those that are complaining and refusing to even try to understand the situation will complain about something else anyhow no matter what the answer to release date is.

geozero wrote:no apologies needed. Do what you do best... make great games that are bug free.

Couldn't agree more. I would rather wait another year and receive a polished, bug-freeish game. I'm really looking forward to it.

You obviously don't know much about software testing, do you? There is no such thing as 'bug free' commercial software. The best you can achieve is to have a product that is 'fit for purpose' and that meets the requirements. You will find bugs even in the most thoroughly tested software.

The only type software that is tested to be 'bug free' is the one that controls the launch of nuclear missiles and similar highly critical applications. And the cost of testing to this level is extraordinarily high.

As long as the game is playable, has no high severity bugs and meets all the specified rules requirements then it's ready to be released.

No worries. I'm ready to make the purchase when it's available. Take your time.

news????

will it be first quarter of 2012?

If we have news, be sure we will post it, for now we are working hard behind the scene... in silence.