NS2 Alpha

[Macca]

I'm sure all of you that have pre-ordered NS2 have recieved the email, however I thought I'd post it here for those that maybe don't read all of their emails, or anyone who hasn't purchased it but wants to:

Hello NS(2)Players!

This has been a big week for us.

We set the date for the NS2 Alpha for Monday, July 26th (11 days). If you've pre-ordered the Special Edition already, THANK YOU. Otherwise, if you want to be playing on Day 1, you'll need to order it before then:

http://www.naturalselection2.com/buy

NOTE: After July 26th, we are discontinuing the Special Edition and black marine armor and will be increasing the price on the Standard Edition. We want to make sure our early adopters retain this distinction.

We also released some new screenshots and information about what to expect in the alpha:

http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2010/7/ns2_alpha_date_set

Some of you played NS on Halloween night of 2002 and can remember how many changes the game went through in the weeks following. Day 1 of the NS2 Alpha will probably be a wild ride as well and we're looking forward to getting your feedback and improving it quickly. NS had over 20 versions over many years and we expect to support NS2 for years as well.

As many of you know, we've been working hard for many years to get to this point and we hope you join us. We wouldn't be here without your support - nor would we want to be.

-Charlie "Flayra" Cleveland and the NS2 Team
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I'm sure it'll still be rather buggish, but It'll be interesting to get a feel for the new NS .

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Wait a minute, so that couple of levels we were running through a while ago weren't the Alpha?

 

[Traxata]

That was a tech demo tets

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

There's a difference?

Wait, hang on. Looking back now I realise that it was an 'engine test' and indeed I referred to it as 'pre-alpha' in my post on it. Still, how many of these things do we need to go through? Pre Alpha, Alpha, Post-Alpha, Pre-Beta, Pre-Jurassic, Mesozoic, Cretaceous ...

 

[Kasatka]

Alpha's are quite often internal only and represent initial ideas and designs, Beta's are the big public affair and whilst still subject to change are much closer to the finished deal.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Alpha are also usually the first point where a game (or piece of software) is considered usable to some extent.

Pre-Alpha, you've clearly got all sorts of features but there's not necessarily "the game", so to speak. At beta, you're declaring that you are converging on a release and that your game's feature list is probably fixed at what you see in the beta.

Beta, as Kateryne says, is usually the first time a non-developer or non-in-house-tester touches the game. This may or may not be public, depending on the software house. That distinguishes it from Public Beta, where you're claiming that the game is mostly done but that you need to test a much wider set of configurations than you can possibly do in-house.

But it's all variable and they're just tags, really.

 

[Kasatka]

Another thing to add is that a lot of lazy developers nowadays use Open Public Betas as a replacement for what used to be considered a demo. I've played a couple of games in recent years where absolutely nothing has changed between the final Beta and launch, despite users submitting plenty of feedback into the beta. You can usually spot these as the beta runs up to launch day, and disks have already long been printed so there's no way changes could have been amended.

 

[DocBot]

So, the beta is now accessible for everyone who's preordered.. has anyone tried it yet?