There are about a dozen people helping me out by playing/testing Crashed Lander. This is the preview version that I'll be using for my Kickstarter campaign and the Intel Level Up contest that I'm entering in two weeks.
It's very exciting to have some other people actually playing my game after 6 months of isolation - like sending a kid off to their first day of school. (^_^) Feedback has been generally positive, and extremely useful.
Reactions to the QWOP-y controls are about what I expected. Most people are opting for the Assisted Flight mode so I spent yesterday tweaking and improving those.
I also went through and made sure that I was doing everything I could for lower-end machines. I shut off features and effects at lower quality settings. I also ditched the super-spiffy-but-too-expensive Displacement mapped shader on my terrain. The plain ol bump mapping looks great anyways. All the tweaks added up to big improvements. I went from 12 fps to 30+ on my crappy laptop. I hope the other testers see similar improvements.
Everything is cooking along nicely and I'm feeling good about the contest deadline. I really only need to add in a few more sound effects, finish the simple flight tutorials, and tidy up a few loose ends.
