Get ready for Beta 5

Jonathan Harbour

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Sep 17, 2010, 1:12:30 PM9/17/10

to starfl...@googlegroups.com

Hey all. Let's get the word out about Starflight - The Lost Colony beta 5, soon to be released. We need to generate some fan interest in this game. After IGF last year, it just kind of died down, but let's pick it up again. Maybe we need to set up a new web site with a real forum? The Google Group is really more of a development board than a fan discussion forum, and it's primarily e-mail based, not threaded, so it's not very interactive. This beta has been a long time coming.... We've removed obstacles to the gameplay wherever we found them, taking out a lot of the "geek" components of the game, and just trying to make it more fun.

There have already been about 15 major issues fixed this summer, addressing some old gameplay problems, and more work continues to make the training missions more reasonable, less difficult for the new player to get into. A lot of annoying things have been fixed, like the ship configuration which has been rewritten--now you can repair individual ship components, and buying/selling works correctly, taking into account damage.

The download link for beta 5 will be posted soon, even if not every issue has been addressed, because I want you to see the improvements already made and comment on them. Meanwhile, we'll look into setting up a proper forum. I think Steve set one up on his starflt.com web site but I haven't followed up on that. Steve, can we use your forum for fan discussions going forward instead of creating a new one?

Also, it would be great to spruce up the google group pages. If anyone has good design skills and wants to work on the web site, let me know... Or as an option we could push starflightgame.com to a new URL as a front page.. I was thinking about creating a new Wordpress site for it, just hosting off of my personal site, unless someone else wants to host it. Any thoughts on that? We won't need the google group much longer if development work is finished.

Jonathan

Donald Hill Sr.

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Sep 17, 2010, 1:14:04 PM9/17/10

to Starflight Lost Colony

Jonathan,

How do i incorporate the fixed issues into Beta 4?

Thanks

Don Hill

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:12:30 -0700
Subject: [starflighttlc:835] Get ready for Beta 5
From: jsha...@gmail.com
To: starfl...@googlegroups.com

--
[Starflight - The Lost Colony = http://groups.google.com/group/starflighttlc]

Jonathan Harbour

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Sep 17, 2010, 1:41:06 PM9/17/10

to starfl...@googlegroups.com

Hi Don. A lot of changes have been made since beta 4, so I don't know what you would need for an incremental patch. It would be great to have your help testing the new improvements.

Have you ever used Subversion before? If you install TortoiseSVN then you can get the latest up-to-the-minute updates with all assets. Install Tortoise, then right-click a new folder and select "SVN Checkout...". When prompted, enter this URL: http://starflighttlc.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/. That will download the whole project into that folder. You could then build it yourself if you have Visual C++, or I can send you the latest starflighttlc.exe file. We don't send the exe up to the svn server because it changes every 5 minutes.

Lmk what you're comfortable doing... If you don't want to get this deep into it I could just put beta 5 up now and go from there... it just hasn't been tested very well yet, and we still have a few things to do. If you look at the Issues list, there are a few things to do today. If you don't already have access to the Issues list, lets get you added so you can enter bug reports! I'm eager for some input after so many months! Lmk what I can do to make this easier, I'm not sure what this all looks like to a non-programmer.

Jonathan

Donald Hill Sr.

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Sep 17, 2010, 2:29:24 PM9/17/10

to Starflight Lost Colony

Jonathan,

yeah, if you just send me the starflightttlc.exe file, that would be great. I haven't programmed in a while and not familiar at all with TortoiseSVN.

So far I really like Beta 4, but hung up on gathering minerals.

Thanks

-Don

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:41:06 -0700
Subject: Re: [starflighttlc:838] Get ready for Beta 5

From: jsha...@gmail.com
To: starfl...@googlegroups.com

Hi Don. A lot of changes have been made since beta 4, so I don't know what you would need for an incremental patch. It would be great to have your help testing the new improvements.

Have you ever used Subversion before? If you install TortoiseSVN then you can get the latest up-to-the-minute updates with all assets. Install Tortoise, then right-click a new folder and select "SVN Checkout...". When prompted, enter this URL: http://starflighttlc.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/. That will download the whole project into that folder. You could then build it yourself if you have Visual C++, or I can send you the latest starflighttlc.exe file. We don't send the exe up to the svn server because it changes every 5 minutes.

Lmk what you're comfortable doing... If you don't want to get this deep into it I could just put beta 5 up now and go from there... it just hasn't been tested very well yet, and we still have a few things to do. If you look at the Issues list, there are a few things to do today. If you don't already have access to the Issues list, lets get you added so you can enter bug reports! I'm eager for some input after so many months! Lmk what I can do to make this easier, I'm not sure what this all looks like to a non-programmer.

Jonathan

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Donald Hill Sr. <dhi...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Jonathan,

How do i incorporate the fixed issues into Beta 4?

Thanks

Don Hill

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:12:30 -0700
Subject: [starflighttlc:835] Get ready for Beta 5
From: jsha...@gmail.com
To: starfl...@googlegroups.com

Hey all. Let's get the word out about Starflight - The Lost Colony beta 5, soon to be released. We need to generate some fan interest in this game. After IGF last year, it just kind of died down, but let's pick it up again. Maybe we need to set up a new web site with a real forum? The Google Group is really more of a development board than a fan discussion forum, and it's primarily e-mail based, not threaded, so it's not very interactive. This beta has been a long time coming.... We've removed obstacles to the gameplay wherever we found them, taking out a lot of the "geek" components of the game, and just trying to make it more fun.

There have already been about 15 major issues fixed this summer, addressing some old gameplay problems, and more work continues to make the training missions more reasonable, less difficult for the new player to get into. A lot of annoying things have been fixed, like the ship configuration which has been rewritten--now you can repair individual ship components, and buying/selling works correctly, taking into account damage.

The download link for beta 5 will be posted soon, even if not every issue has been addressed, because I want you to see the improvements already made and comment on them. Meanwhile, we'll look into setting up a proper forum. I think Steve set one up on his starflt.com web site but I haven't followed up on that. Steve, can we use your forum for fan discussions going forward instead of creating a new one?

Also, it would be great to spruce up the google group pages. If anyone has good design skills and wants to work on the web site, let me know... Or as an option we could push starflightgame.com to a new URL as a front page.. I was thinking about creating a new Wordpress site for it, just hosting off of my personal site, unless someone else wants to host it. Any thoughts on that? We won't need the google group much longer if development work is finished.

Jonathan

--
[Starflight - The Lost Colony = http://groups.google.com/group/starflighttlc]

Jimmie Chessher

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Sep 26, 2010, 10:12:33 AM9/26/10

to starfl...@googlegroups.com

Sir I have just tried your lost colony game again to see if I still get the screen split into twelve parts and I do. You said it was my Raetheon ATI Video card that was causing the problem. So if your not going to fix the problem then you can remove me from your list. Its too frustrating to Not be able to play your game. Thanks Jim Chessher

-----Original Message-----
From: starfl...@googlegroups.com [mailto:starfl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jonathan Harbour
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 12:13 PM
To: starfl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [starflighttlc:835] Get ready for Beta 5

Hey all. Let's get the word out about Starflight - The Lost Colony beta 5, soon to be released. We need to generate some fan interest in this game. After IGF last year, it just kind of died down, but let's pick it up again. Maybe we need to set up a new web site with a real forum? The Google Group is really more of a development board than a fan discussion forum, and it's primarily e-mail based, not threaded, so it's not very interactive. This beta has been a long time coming.... We've removed obstacles to the gameplay wherever we found them, taking out a lot of the "geek" components of the game, and just trying to make it more fun.

--
[Starflight - The Lost Colony = http://groups.google.com/group/starflighttlc]

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