Announcement: Welcome and what's coming next

[Omroth]

Hey everyone.

First, a big thanks for supporting us by purchasing the beta. We are hugely excited for this game - both as it is now and the plans we have for the full release - and we need your support to get there.

(We will shortly be making available the "staging beta", a weekly snapshot of our current development which uses a different server and is not generally polished, for anyone who wishes to help test and give feedback on our new stuff as it's being developed. The updates we release for the main beta will be fully polished and tested)

We have a big update planned for February with the following features:

- Player stats including speed, blocking, strength, evade, resilience, burst, interception, catching, throwing stats
- Edit your own team with player stats and challenge other people's teams online
- Redesigned and polished Handball mode. Handball is quite a lot different from "Endzone" as it's a longer-form mode with interceptions and turnovers and end-to-end action. There is currently an alpha version of Handball in the beta
- Easy-to-use playfield editor
- Game mode editor
- Timed turns
- Loads of new tackle and celebration animations
- Loads of bug fixes and little tweaks

(A lot of these are already in the staging beta and will be available to play with very soon).

After that, our plans for updates leading to the full release include:

- Full single player campaign with an in-depth story
- Customise your players with different armour and animations and a facial animation editor
- Customise your "home stadium" with trophies, stadium furniture, special announcer voices, scoreboard graphics
- Several more multiplayer game modes

Other platforms:

Linux and OSX in Spring next year
iPad, PS4 planned but nothing concrete yet.

Ian

[adiabatic]

I am loving the game so far! Really looking forward to multiplayer leagues and player stats when those get introduced.

Quick question, it's a small thing but any plans to make the number of draws visible for your online record? (as it is right now it only displays wins and losses)

Keep up the good work! I haven't been this excited about a game's potential in a long time.

[Omroth]

Hey adiabatic.

Yes we'll be having draws as part of your general record in the next update.

Ian

[BigBobr99]

Congrats with the long-awaited beta launch!!!! I'm glad it's finally here and it does look like an evolutionized, bigger, stronger but still very tactical frozen synapse. I'm enjoying and learning the game at the moment. Learning the game is coming along a bit harder than I would expect having played so much synapse It is different in a way and it will take time to get used to the game mechanics. I'm thrilled for all the new stuff you plan to introduce! Waiting for the full release and slowly climbing the elo rating! I hope the two-week timeout feature is already working.

[Flixxx]

I'm really excited about FE's beta release as well! After playing a couple of games it started to get fun (there is definitely a steep learning curve), and I look forward to the polished product. Just like Frozen Synapse though, the game will shine most on the iPad for me personally, because asynchronous games are just so great for the mobile platforms.

[supamanu]

And please try and sneak in some performance optimization at every release

[Kyin]

Looks really cool. Could you please try to implement timed turns so that it's possible to create a challenge with timed turns enabled from the start, and to look for a game with the timed turns enabled only ? In Frozen Synapse, being able to enable the timer after the beginning of the game only if your opponent was online and accepted it made that option a bit useless.

[BigJMoney]

Having so much fun with this. Very glad I bought the beta to help stress test and bump into bugs. Awesome deal that it came with 2 codes!

Is there a post (or will there be one) somewhere that explains how you plan for stats to work?

Is it a point buy system? Do players "level up"? What exactly do the stats do? Etc

[Gryffin]

All super exciting. Can't wait.

[Munkhi]

Will there still be a game mode, similar to the current beta, that will override/ignore the upcoming player stats in favour of a level playing field? It would be welcomed by the little group I play with to have this mode left in as an alternative.

What's coming next sounds great though

[Omroth]

Hi Munkhi. Yes absolutely - I wouldn't have launched the beta if I didn't really believe in the existing stuff being good, and it'll continue as easily selectable modes. Stats really add a lot too, but just as in FS sometimes you're in the mood for machine-gunner only Disputed, sometimes stats-free Endzone is right.

Ian

[Jythier]

To be totally off-topic, is there an option to play mg-only disputed in FS?

[TRagedy]

(We will shortly be making available the "staging beta", a weekly snapshot of our current development which uses a different server and is not generally polished, for anyone who wishes to help test and give feedback on our new stuff as it's being developed. The updates we release for the main beta will be fully polished and tested)

Did I miss the "Staging Beta" you talked about 2 months ago, or has it come out yet ?

[TRagedy]

Just was wondering about the Stage Version .

[Omroth]

Yeah we didn't manage to get that our earlier, and my apologies. There's a staging patch coming out on monday.

Ian