Alpha 4

[Pirx Danford]

Also bear in mind that if I put out A4 before my holiday, that just means A5 will be delayed the two weeks instead. In the long run there is no avoiding that delay.

Are you planning to bring on additional developers for Rimworld?

I believe that is a matter of who is showing up on his doorstep to apply :-)

http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=1703.0

Yes, it's a matter of finding someone. I'm afraid I haven't been putting a ton of time into recruiting. It's really a new kind of challenge for me and I don't have a repeatable methodology set up for it.

It's also kind of scary. I have issues trusting people with creative or intellectual work. I want to maintain very high quality standards for Ludeon. I want a strong generalist or someone with potential to become one. It's hard to find people in the top 1%. Hiring employee #2 at a company is very risky. All together, there is a significant wall to get over before someone can be brought on.

Its good to be not too trusting, but its much more important to be ready to act appropriately and do the tough call of letting someone go.
In our company we were a small team of three coders and we ignored the signs about the third of us having quite some troubles.
Finally he had to leave, but we took well over a year to recover the project he was working on from the shambles it was in and we are still having "fun" with it. Its a shame because if it would be in a better state it would be quite interesting for our customers.

So... be ready to trust someone early on, but check the work results and be ready to draw consequences without much delay.
Its harsh, but losing money and recovering bad work is harsher.

[CountJeffrey]

I would rather wait longer and get an alpha 4 that has more features to test/look for bugs than get a rushed alpha that is littered with bugs and has half finished features. I think one of the things people are forgetting here is that this game is still in alpha and that we have bought the game to support Tynan as he develops the game and to test it for bugs. This game hasn't even been released yet and it may seem as if you are playing the game but not only that we are also testing it and its barriers, if we go for a rushed alpha it just negates the point if there are numerous bugs that could have been ironed out easily if given more time. The releases need to come out as they are ready and when Tynan decides so we don't spend 3/4 of our play time on the bug reports forum complaining about broken game mechanics.

[niteruner]

Considering Star Citizen's delays, what does a month count?

[Geeves]

I do not think that we can compare Star Citizen's 44MILLION dollar budget to Rimworlds budget.

[niteruner]

It's not the budget, what i want to compare. I just wanted to show, that 'we' are waiting for SC for more than a year now and only got the Hangar module and several promises.
With rimworld 'we' got a fully playable game, which is moddable and regularly updated, so why bothering when alpha xy comes out?

[Bodog999]

yeah... guys be patient for a release... we don't want to see a rushed update that is very Buggy... we don't want the Alpha 3 Incident happening again do we?

Alpha 3 incident?

[Bodog999]

Tynan if I could I would help you with programming. And you do need to take your rest so that you later on can work at 100% speed to get the Alpha 4 safe'n sound to the rimworld players

[Neone]

Alpha 3 incident:
APRIL 15 UPDATE: Silently updated to Alpha3f.
APRIL 13 UPDATE: Silently updated to Alpha3e.
APRIL 12 UPDATE: Silently updated to Alpha3d.
April 11: Alpha 3a, 3b and 3c
April 10: Public build 408 - Alpha 3

[Bodog999]

So the alpha 3 incident is just some silent updates?

[Celthric Aysen]

yeah... guys be patient for a release... we don't want to see a rushed update that is very Buggy... we don't want the Alpha 3 Incident happening again do we?

Alpha 3 incident?

Where were you the time Alpha 3 came out?
anyway here's the Alpha 3 Incident

Alpha 3 incident:
APRIL 15 UPDATE: Silently updated to Alpha3f.
APRIL 13 UPDATE: Silently updated to Alpha3e.
APRIL 12 UPDATE: Silently updated to Alpha3d.
April 11: Alpha 3a, 3b and 3c
April 10: Public build 408 - Alpha 3

So the alpha 3 incident is just some silent updates?

No they were buggy silent updates until Alpha3F came out,
Alpha3F still has some bugs in it but its not major.