PAX and nearing beta 1

By Draginol on August 25, 2008 1:25:22 AM from

I write this from the plane on the way to Redmond which is where Gas Powered Games is located.

Normally, publishers and developers have very explicit division of labor on projects. The developer makes the game, the publisher takes that game and markets, distributes is, and supports it.

As people observed with Sins of a Solar Empire, you can get tremendous results when the developer and publisher combine their teams together into a single "big" team.

That means Gas Powered Games will be intimately involved in the marketing of Demigod and it means Stardock will be very involved during development. At GPG, I'll be sitting in the "bull pen" with the development team working on the game itself. And together, we will be able to tap into the combined team's resources to get things done much more quickly.

Of course, the crucial element that can't be forgotten is the public beta program. Here's how it works:

We get the first beta out to you sometime in the first week of September. The goal here is to just see how well the thing works on people's computers. It won't be anywhere nearly fully functional. But we'll rapidly be enabling features and getting feedback which we'll be able to address.

AI needs help? AI developers at Stardock (including myself) can help. Need more map elements? Let us know and we'll see who is available to help on that too.

Similarly, advertisements and promotions for the game will get posted here before they go live typically. Art work, ideas and concepts won't be from Stardock's marketing team alone but rather the Gas Powered Games development team as well as anyone else.

One of the reasons why the Sins of a Solar Empire ads came out so well is because Ironclad (the developer) was so involved in the actual creation of the ads. It also didn't hurt that we put out the ads on the forums before they went to print where fans could make suggestions on how the ads could be improved.

Right now, we're playing the internal beta. The part that we're most challenged by at present is how quickly we can implement the Hamachi-like multiplayer system so that players who don't know what router ports are and such won't have to worry about them anymore. The first beta won't have that in there (I'm not sure as yet how much, if any, multiplayer will be in the initial beta 1 engine test portion).

One other thing players may find interesting is that GPG and Stardock have nearly a full year of free updates planned for Demigod. While the single player portion of the game is very important, our hope is to make Demigod the preeminent multiplayer strategy game for tournaments and such since the actual game-play is supports a lot more team mechanics than the traditional Starcraft or even Supreme Commander model would.

We'll have a pre-beta 1 showing at PAX in Seattle this weekend. If you're in the Washington area, be sure to stop by the Penny Arcade Expo. Chris Taylor and I will be giving live demos.

-Brad Wardell = Frogboy = Draginol

+83 Karma | 40 Replies

Check out the warcraft series, they are RTS, don't need as much lore, yet the games start 10k years after a series of events!

Warcraft has also been accumulating said lore for nearly 15 years (most of it only having been released in the WC3-WoW period).

I can't deny that, maybe it was a poor example. But that's the taste DS left to me, a 15 year old, 6 years ago. That is, that things weren't binding together 100%, but were there just for the sake of progress throughout the game.
In all other aspects, DS was a 10, don't get me wrong.

$5 each per Demigod is a maybe..
Depends on the number of choices. I'd like to buy just which ones I like.

And if they are IMBA to get people to buy them so they can play the overpowered imba hero and pwn everyone, I'll boycott the DLC. :/
New Demigod's should be released free as Beta to balance them at first and then taken away and have to be paid for.. After the free updates of course.

No paying for new maps though. ~_~ Those should be free otherwise you can only play the game with people that bought them.
Just use all the Demigod DLC money to fund making the free maps.
Just like Nexon has 5-10% of people paying to keep the game up for everything. You sell the most appealing thing for people that'd buy them in order to keep patching up and running the game. New Demigods are probably more appealing than new maps to people that are going to pay for em.

hmm... I know this thread is about DLC, but on a side, it'd be a fun option to be able to unlock demigods. As innociv said, they wouldn't be better then the default ones, it would just give you something to work towards.

I'd prefer unlocking be based on accomplishments rather than money (or some of both). Set up some challenges (single player and/or multiplayer) something like, winning 10 multiplayer matches unlocks Demigod X. Win 50 matches unlocks Demigod Z. Get 1,000 Demigod kills and unlock Demigod Y etc etc...

That way if you see X, Y, or Z demigod, you know that that player has completed that challenge to be able to play that demigod.

Again, the demigods should still be balanced even if you have to work to unlock them.

it'd be a fun option to be able to unlock demigods.

It would be interesting as long as they're balanced like you said.

I personally prefer larger expansion packs rather than small pieces of material bought one at a time.

But what I really want, me being me, is some kind of fox in the game.

Well, Unclean Beast has 4 legs, so kind of fox-like. Um, close enough?

Didn't look like fur to me.

You have to use your imagination on that one.

I think it should use a point system, what if some one doesn't like multiplayer, or likes playing a support demigods (and therefore getting few kills). With points for each achievement then you know how experienced the player is, and they can choose which demigod appeals more to them.

Also unclean beast has fur! if you count bone as fur... and spikey metal as bone...

This I really like. In most games, I work best as a supporting unit.

Also unclean beast has fur! if you count bone as fur... and spikey metal as bone...

I'd love to see someone pet a cat or dog with fur like that.

All this sounds good. Looking forward to testing the Beta

i also support the point/unlock system like how Cod4 was or universe at war :earth assault
but mostly like cod4 just with unlocking heroes and items that cant be bought otherwise

<@kryo> [21:57:07] timmyfred> so SD and GPG are combined to do Demigod...anyone know what the division of labor is like?

we're doing the impulse reactor stuff and publishy things

That seems in direct contrast to what your stating Draginol=Frogboy. Could we maybe get some more answers regarding this issue. As someone who tried making suggestion on Sins, but it felt like not being the loudest child in a playpen. Honestly I didn't think Sins turned out that well. The AI is a joke on any difficulty setting and the online community fell apart after only a small time. It wouldn't surprise me if Ironclad declared bankruptcy after their next release.

The information of post release support is nice to hear as most Supcom players felt abandoned by GPG after 3-4 months and much faster with the release of Forged Alliance.

Sortof jumping ahead in the discussion about free updates, given that beta hasn't begun for the public preorders yet.

Looking forward to testing with everyone in a week or two.

That seems in direct contrast to what your stating Draginol=Frogboy.

Mentioning a couple things we are doing doesn't preclude us from doing other things

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PAX and nearing beta 1