Open Beta Status & Expectations news

Development Status Update

We are now about a month into Summer and we are still progressing nicely and with Independence Day (in the US) about to kick in, I thought I should leave you guys with some fresh media. We have been developing the game daily and testing the game every week to make sure we are moving in the right direction with the gameplay and making sure our art is as immersive as possible without breaking functionality. I'll make a separate blog post about how we have been balancing immersion and functionality as I feel its something that gamers will all have a different opinion on and is bound to spark conversation. As of recently, the things that we have been focusing on before we kick into the Open Beta are our player animations overhaul, user interface re-design, dressing up our new maps, tweaking muzzleflash particles, and finishing up the remaining weapon sounds. The two biggest hurdles for us at the moment are coding in the new animation system, and bringing in the new user interface. However, it looks like we will have something to show for both in a few weeks.

Open Beta Expectations

One of the biggest questions that may be on your mind is: What should the community expect from our FAS 2.0 Open Beta? You can expect a fairly complete game that will lack a bit of polish. What that means is that the gameplay will be very much complete, save for balance changes, and most of the art and content will be finished. The reason we are releasing the game sooner with the potential for bugs, is so that we can do the finishing touches (bug fixes and content tweaks) while you help us tailor the game based on your feedback. There will be bugs and game crashes during the Open Beta, but that is when we are going to need your help the most. Along with the standard servers that people will be able to host themselves, we will also have a couple experimental servers where the community can help us test bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, and anything else we want to double check before releasing officially. The period between Open Beta and the Steam release could be as long as 3 months or more. We really need to see how stable our game is upon release and how much content we feel is lacking before we make our big Steam debut. We are really excited to get the Open Beta out to you all so that you can enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Summer Expectations

Over the Summer, as development continues, we will bring you all some more videos of the FAS gameplay. The reason why we have always been a bit slow with pushing out videos is because we rather spend that production time on pushing the game out sooner. Now that the game is more stable and our maps are finally getting their art passes, we feel comfortable putting a few testers and developers on making some new frag videos. A couple months ago, we also experimented with live streaming one of our testing sessions, which was really fun despite the hiccups. I'd like to also explore live streaming Firearms: Source a bit more as we get closer to the Open Beta because it actually requires less production. I can simply turn on the live stream as we test. I also plan to get more game specific information on the website in regards to weapon statistics so that you all can start building loadouts on your free time or making complex algorithms in order to figure out what the best gun is in the game. Keep your eyes peeled as we have one of our developers currently working on a frag video that we will try to release in a couple weeks. I sincerely appreciate all of your patience and I hope that we don't disappoint you.