Yeeaah… sorry about that. Last week it was going to be the 5th, and then late last week that shifted to the 8th. Now it’s the 11th.
So what gives?
Well, in a nutshell, I’m trying to make sure we have the strongest possible offering right at the start of Early Access. This whole early access thing (the official system, not doing betas) is new to me, so I guess I’m a bit gun-shy on that. Plus the Steam store is a really challenging place right now; we just took a beating in the summer sale, so it’s very important to me that this launch well.
Let’s look at the positive side of this, though, and what each delay has bought us:
Shifting to the 5th:
- We now have a first-person view in addition to the third-person view.
- A lot of enhancements have been made to the handling of the third-person view, too.
- The level editor is waaaay more advanced than I’d ever anticipated for this point in particular.
Shifting now to the 11th:
- The first procedural level in the EA version of the game is now going to be an apartment building, rather than an industrial area.
- This is a way more unique and interesting environment as a first experience, because it’s so innately familiar to us from real life. Seeing a raptor in someone’s bedroom is freaking cool.
- This has prompted me to come up with some new cool ways of stringing together level pieces in order to make these levels feel labyrinthine in a good way.
- This has also prompted further refinement to the feel of the raptor, so that it now can navigate these sorts of smaller spaces as well as the larger spaces like we were testing in before. The added versatility is really cool.
A bunch of sites just today and yesterday picked up the story about the game coming out on the 8th, and I apologize for that. I’m just trying to front-load things so that you can see the EA launch trailer and go “wow, a raptor inside residential buildings isn’t something I’ve seen before.” The industrial areas will still be a part of the game (along with 8ish other planned environments, ideally), but they aren’t what we should be leading with on our EA launch. It was actually a random comment on one of the news articles that made me realize this, go figure!
We’ll have updated press builds in the next few days, and video around that time, too.
Here’s a screenshot for you — bear in mind that this is in a semi-prefab room that has a variety of things wrong with it. The windows aren’t right, the ceilings are too low, the ceiling panel scale is off in this particular view, the lighting is wrong, and the list goes on. But it does give you an idea of how things are shaping up:
Click here for the official forum thread on this post.
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Would you be able to elaborate on the “took a beating” during the Summer Sale? Sadly, and perhaps true for the most of us, we already own all your games.
Does this answer your questions? https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4ri3dq/lower_average_discount_no_flashdaily_deals_yet/d52bbkx
I didn’t go into specific numbers, but it basically outlines our experience. If there was something else you wanted to know, please do let me know.
Will it be possible to buy the game directly from Arcen so that you get the full cut of money?..
We actually never get a full cut of the money no matter where you buy it from, because even with FastSpring (which is as much “from us” as one can generally do), their cut is 8%. It’s a reasonable cut, and helps protect us from things like a certain amount of fraud, and also international regulations that they comply with that we don’t have to think about. Their rate is the lowest around, which is why we use them.
Some developers use paypal directly, and thus only pay 2% I believe, but there’s a lot of legal entanglements that can cause. And technical requirements in terms of the webserver code. Credit card processing is more than that, and a merchant account for doing that would cost us more than fastspring does.
THAT said, there is another option which actually is the best of all (in terms of not just directly paypal hosting), and that is the humble widget. Believe it or not, and at least for me it was pretty hard to believe my ears, they only take 5%. That covers the paypal fees or whatever else, plus the tiniest of a sliver of of a cut for them. It’s insanely generous, actually.
In summary, after way too many words, the answer is that I will put the humble widget up there, and that’s by far the best way to get the most money our direction. Thanks for asking!