On July 28 2014, NCG-19: Gravitus will enter it's next phase of development. The first players will be able to log in to our newly commissioned live server. This will be a limited alpha test with more players being allowed to sign up as we are comfortable with stability, performance and quality of the game experience.
Players will be able to sign up for an account immediately on July 28 2014, if they were in attendance at the first closed alpha test. We will initially only be making a small number of keys available to limit server load and allow for a better testing/debugging environment. Periodically as this test phase progresses we will release additional batches of keys through various channels allowing more people to access the game. It is important to note that people taking part in this limited alpha are doing so as testers on a voluntary basis, and are encouraged to report any issues, anomalies or even frustrations to us through our official forum at ncg19.com. If you are a reviewer or lets-player that wishes to have a key for review/recording purposes please email contact@ncg19.com as there will also be a limited number of press keys made available throughout the alpha.
If you do not manage to obtain a key through the length of this alpha test, the game will be made freely available to all players wishing to play it by the end of October as we will be entering our open beta stage of development. We wish we could make the game fully available sooner but to ensure the best possible game we need to have control over the player volume during testing.
The initial alpha client will require Microsoft Windows 7 or later. Other operating system support will be released at a later date.
In gearing up for the alpha we have completed a number of major performance improvements to both the client and server software packages. We have also commissioned the server that the game will be running on through iWeb Technologies and have already began testing for the live environment. We have also implemented the first phase of our security hardening including client side encryption of server communications and encoding of user passwords. The server software has also passed a one month stability test on our local test environment and we are confident will preform similarly in the live environment
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We have also completed the implementation of the command mechanic into the game. Command is the limit of ships a player is capable of having in their fleet at any given time. Each player starts with 5 command being granted by their home world and each colony by default grants an additional command point. In addition to these command points certain buildings and other yet undisclosed mechanics will grant the player additional command points, allowing them to command a larger fleet of ships.
Finally we have improved the diplomacy system to allow better indication of what players are allies or enemies at a glance. This should improve the ability of players to make tactical decisions without having to pour over all of the planet data in their surrounding systems. The markers that appear above stars are now color coded the the diplomatic relationship based on colony ownership.
We will have another update on July 28 to coincide with the start of our second phase of alpha testing.
