Zyl wrote:
Dev team have not confirmed this date but spacesector is relatively serious for this news of space game. And steam release game at seem hour generally ( 18h in France but not fixe)

And Steph'nie tease in FAQ thread today : "very soon" XD

Zyl, behave yourself - i've got work to do and can't spend all day monitoring these forums...

Hahaha XD

Me too but I'm a time to waste before and my smartphone go out of battery =/

Endless Space - Alpha release: tonight.



source twitter

Is tonight soon enough for you? =)

Smight wrote:
Endless Space - Alpha release: tonight.



source twitter

I confirm this.

Yeah! It's good for me! Time to go home =D

so we can preorder tonight?

Yes except is an invasion of space ninja before =D

This is great news. Can you not give a rough time though? I hope it isn't too late though since i'd definitely like to get testing the game tonight to work on finding bugs or giving feedback as soon as possible. Usually when companies say "tonight" they mean u.s time which for a majority of other nations means really late or even early morning.

Zyl wrote:
Yes except is an invasion of space ninja before =D

I'll fight all space ninja and I'll win



edit : 1 doubt : in steam I cant see anything of ES ( except the forum and the group ). Is Normal?

MT4K wrote:
This is great news. Can you not give a rough time though? I hope it isn't too late though since i'd definitely like to get testing the game tonight to work on finding bugs or giving feedback as soon as possible. Usually when companies say "tonight" they mean u.s time which for a majority of other nations means really late or even early morning.

The devs are french. GMT +1.

DannyD wrote:
I'll fight all space ninja and I'll win



edit : 1 doubt : in steam I cant see anything of ES ( except the forum and the group ). Is Normal?

Same here ! I expect a daily refresh, so tomorrow I guess.



You can pre-order the game though.

I fully agree with the thread!!! Buy it buy it!! Thousand hours of fun... awesome combats!!

Definitely will buy a pre order pack.

Am definitely thinking Emperor, just have to wait for the price (exchange rate to Yen).

But I think it is a great idea to have an open Alpha.

Indeed in many strategy games the A.I. ruins the experience.

But having an open Alpha will improve it I think.

Have as many players test the game and dev's will have ample opportunity to tweak and improve.

So if you have the money and time, buy it!

Will make for a great experiment, maybe one day it will become the standard for games.

True games made by gamers for gamers!

Hi Raptor. I think it is great that you are enthusiastic about Endless Space. I am very excited to see more of what Amplitude has been developing as well. At the present time, I do feel like I am going to pre-order once the option becomes available as this game does seem like it is going to be something special. However... I am not willing to throw my endorsement or urge others to contribute based on what we know right now. As of now, for instance, I don't know if the AI will be worthless or not. Many strategy games have seemed extremely promising only to contain absolutely atrocious AI that ruined the entire experience. I have no desire to play multiplayer in a 4x game, so this is critical to some of us.



Once I have played the game and seen that it meets expectations (pre-release status withstanding, of course), I will be right there with you throwing my endorsement behind the game. I hope you are right!

A big thank you for your blind support Raptor, it feels really nice

What you underline is very true, the more you can support us the more we'll be able to be ambitious in improving Endless Space. The game release will be just one step in the life of a breathing game like Endless Space.



Regarding AI, I definitely get your point aReclusiveMind, rest assured that we don't take it lightly with 2 programmers full time on it.

Right now our AI could be compared to a baby: it has a complex brain, but does not know how to use it well. It needs to be educated in order to be a full grown adult.

That education will come from you guys as much as us. The more of you can tell us in what situation the AI needs to be improved, the more behaviors can be implemented to teach the AI to react to player's tactics.



SpaceTroll

Buy This Game!!!

Let me be a realist...

How many times I heard these words from different developers (not only indy). And when I had trusted and bought a game I found that game was not so high-level as devs said. I wrote that, because I didn't watch long, detailed gameplay videos of Endless space. 25 second video of gameplay from main page is not considered...

TRUST NO ONE DEVS BEFORE TRYING DEMO OR WATCHING NUMEROUS VIDEO AND READING REVIEWS.

My gaming budget isn't tight at the moment. I'm going to support this by getting the Emperor pre-order package because I really think i'll enjoy this.



I can however afford to lose my £35 investment (will it be £35? How does the exchange rate thing work on Steam?) although i'd be very sad if I don't enjoy the game. £35 for a one off investment is a drop in the ocean (for me). I've probably spent hundreds and hundreds on the lotto without anywhere near as much of a return.



I'm willing to take the risk in this instance and help to shape the game durng the alpha/ beta. without doing this there is a greater (see: small) risk that the game won't be to my liking. I want to make my voice heard



I won't however advocate a particular course of action to others. It's a choice we all have to make at the end of the day. Depends on what you are comfortable doing!

SpaceTroll wrote:
A big thank you for your blind support Raptor, it feels really nice

What you underline is very true, the more you can support us the more we'll be able to be ambitious in improving Endless Space. The game release will be just one step in the life of a breathing game like Endless Space.



Regarding AI, I definitely get your point aReclusiveMind, rest assured that we don't take it lightly with 2 programmers full time on it.

Right now our AI could be compared to a baby: it has a complex brain, but does not know how to use it well. It needs to be educated in order to be a full grown adult.

That education will come from you guys as much as us. The more of you can tell us in what situation the AI needs to be improved, the more behaviors can be implemented to teach the AI to react to player's tactics.



SpaceTroll

I will be honored to educate your baby AI next week



@WiZz : Raptor is not a dev, he's a fan fully commited to ES. He's speaking with his heart and because he seems to love the work done so far he wants to support Amplitude Studio, that's all.



And because I'm like Raptor, I will support Amplitude by buying the Emperor Edition (the fact that I'm french skews my judgment a little )

WiZz wrote:
Let me be a realist...

How many times I heard these words from different developers (not only indy). And when I had trusted and bought a game I found that game was not so high-level as devs said. I wrote that, because I didn't watch long, detailed gameplay videos of Endless space. 25 second video of gameplay from main page is not considered...

TRUST NO ONE DEVS BEFORE TRYING DEMO OR WATCHING NUMEROUS VIDEO AND READING REVIEWS.

Well I'm sure there will be a lot of info, including videos and previews, released before May 31. By that time if you are still not convinced to buy the game there's nothing bad in waiting till it gets released and starts receiving top scores on various game sites. Buy it then if what you've seen and read so far is not enough, I personally can't wait to try the Alpha so I'm going for pre-ordering

Belhoriann wrote:
@WiZz : Raptor is not a dev, he's a fan fully commited to ES. He's speaking with his heart and because he seems to love the work done so far he wants to support Amplitude Studio, that's all.



And because I'm like Raptor, I will support Amplitude by buying the Emperor Edition (the fact that I'm french skews my judgment a little )

thumbs up brother

Thanks for commenting SpaceTroll. I am glad to see that you realize that AI is important and that the playerbase will be a good source for information. I hate to be skeptical, but I was burned rather badly by a 4x space game last year. I think we all know which one... but let's just say it was a sequel to another game by the same company and that it was released quite unfinished.



In the end, I'm right on board with all of you. The biggest decision left for me is which edition to get. I have been supporting so many kickstarter projects and other smaller titles lately that it is getting kind of expensive. I'd still like to go with the more expensive pre-order option though.



Will there be any videos detailing for example a battle from beginning to end? I'm very interested to know how the phases and mechanics play out.