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[pluckyporcupine]

Awesome! Good luck with the KS!

I still haven't tried this out though I keep meaning to. Is the Mac version available yet? And I remember seeing it mentioned that multiplayer was hitting an alpha that was close number-wise but can't seem to find where I saw that, so is that implemented yet?

[zede05]

Thanks! 

The Mac version will start with a0.6. I'm crossing my fingers here and hoping everything just works as we haven' tested it yet. But this is Unity, so it should go well enough.

[zede05]

Here's a video showing off what people have created so far in the Planet Explorers alpha. Some of them are really good.



I think we made the correct decision in including this creations editor, even though it took a lot of programming and design time, since it's extending the life of the alpha by a lot. The alpha story mode probably only needs 3-4 hours to complete so far, but we have had a bunch of people putting in anywhere from 20-60 hours.  

The Kickstarter is now at around 32% after 6 days...so it looks like we'll make it, barely. It's still frustrating that very few of the gaming sites picked up our game. I'll probably need to email all of them again after GDC. 

[gimymblert]

Is there a creature editor a la spore? If yes it's a win!

[zede05]

Once we figure out how to do animated voxels...

 

We'd probably need a couple of PhDs for that, haha. But I do have a workaround idea, but it'll be a while. 

[gimymblert]

Voxel = edition
mesh = animation

 

But no need to go that far, a blob body with member and part(voxel) parent to  it

Na nevermind it's feature creeps 

[zede05]

Yay, we hit our Kickstarter goal of $100,000 with a few days to spare! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1757963851/planet-explorers

For people considering Kickstarters, the things that helped out us the most were Rockpapershotgun, Kickstarter itself, reddit, and surprisingly (for us anyway), Youtube and the playthroughs from a few more famous gamer Youtubers. Of the bigger sites, we were covered by rps, kotaku, game informer, cinemablend, indiegame mag (small small blip), gametrailers (trailers only, no coverage), and destructoid. We were not covered (so far) by indiegames.com (very surprised), ign, pcgamer, joystiq, eurogamer, gamespot, and polygon, even after multiple emails.

PE is now at #22 on Greenlight, the KS campaign did help the game a bit on GL, probably anywhere from 20-50% more people per day during the campaign. So I would definitely recommend going at it on both at the same time.

I posted a huge update on what we've been working on for the next build here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1757963851/planet-explorers/posts/454715

as well as a vid of flying mechanics here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1757963851/planet-explorers/posts/452528

[Schrompf]

Gratulation on the kickstarter success. Make the most of it!

[Quarry]

wohoo!

[pluckyporcupine]

Nice! Congrats on the Kickstarter success! I wish I could contribute, myself, as I really want to try multiplayer out, but I don't have the cash. Any chance there'll be a Paypal option after the KS?

[mono]

Congrats! This project seems really neat from what I have seen.

[moi]

For people considering Kickstarters, the things that helped out us the most were Rockpapershotgun, Kickstarter itself, reddit, and surprisingly (for us anyway), Youtube and the playthroughs from a few more famous gamer Youtubers.

Having a game that doesn't suck also helps a lot

[zede05]

Thanks everyone! 

For people considering Kickstarters, the things that helped out us the most were Rockpapershotgun, Kickstarter itself, reddit, and surprisingly (for us anyway), Youtube and the playthroughs from a few more famous gamer Youtubers.

Having a game that doesn't suck also helps a lot

Oh yeah, having a playable alpha really helped as well. And the ones who gave probably gave more because they liked the game itself after playing it. So I'd definitely recommend having something playable before the KS.

[zede05]

Yay, we've been Greenlit! What an awesome couple of days. http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/announcements/detail/1569777813150191807 

I'll post the numbers a bit later for the Greenlighters interested.

[Quarry]

Finally getting what you deserve after all this hard work!

[zede05]

Thanks!

Here are our numbers for people interested.



We had no name recognition from the start, so PE's initial numbers were relatively low compared to other games, the free alpha build helped us maintain a very steady climb, with the lowest day still bringing in over 350 yes votes. We launched the Kickstarter in the middle of the Greenlight curve, and you can see that caused a large acceleration. Our KS graph looks very similar to this graph actually.

Overall, we were very pleasantly surprised by the Greenlight reaction. I thought the curve would flatten out overtime like most other games, but it just kept going and going. From the result, I think the game hit a very sweet spot between hardcore and casual gamers, at least in perceptions and expectations.

[zede05]

We've been so busy since the Kickstarter. There are still a bunch of tech hurdles, especially with multiplayer, but most of them have been overcome. Now it's just to add content until the next build.

And since we've got paid customers now, the build deadlines seem a lot more real. Haha.

We've been working on VTOL creations for a bit, it's quite fun.

[paulsoaresjr]

Been playing this on and off for about a week when I can find a half hour or so before bed. Making slow progress but so far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. One suggestion from a VERY casual player's standpoint: when I dig/mine I'd like to get *something* each time. Even if it's not specifically what I'm trying for (eg iron, copper) I feel like I should have something added to my inventory for the time spent on the action.

It seems like a little thing, but for someone that has only 30 minutes or so to play at a time, not getting anything feels like a waste of precious time. It makes me feel like I don't even want to try or play when I know I have to fetch a resource and spend 15-20 minutes to get 10 iron, for example. But again, if I'm getting at least 1 iron (or even some stone/dirt) with each action, it feels like i've accomplished something...

Anyway, looking forward to updates! Also plan on making a video for my youtube channel.  thanks!

[CasePortman]

I didn't even notice, but congrats on the Greenlight! This game, man, very awesome!

[zede05]

Ah, haven't posted here for a while. Been real busy once we started to actually sell preorders. Suddenly, the game not working on someone's machine matters a lot more. And we're being a lot quicker with our schedule as well.

We just recently released a0.62, here's a trailer for it:



After working on this game for almost 2 years now, all I can say is, man, making an openworld 3d rpg is hard, haha.