I noticed that the current downloadable version is alpha 8e. I'm guessing this went throught a-b-c-d-e in the past, but I have no idea where to find the info about these releases. I'm interested in what exactly changed in these, and also where am I supposed to learn about a new release?
It's clear that i get a notification email when a new alpha releases, but not for hotfixes.
Also, in the past in the official changelog page, I read something about a launcher. Is there a downloadable launcher - autoupdater somewhere? It would be nice if my game would update on its own like steam games.
EDIT: Also if it really went throught a-b-c-d-e then some ppl would already reached the limit of 5 downlaods / alpha. This was only my 2nd download so it aint effecting me, but is there a way to reset this counter?
You can look at the blog (http://ludeon.com/blog/) to learn about hotfixes and sometimes other interesting things about the game.
There isn't an a. (I guess the original A8 would be considered "a"?)
As you can read there, Alpha8b fixed a gamebreaking bug with floor smoothing, A8c fixed a variety of issues and broke hydroponics, d fixed hydroponics, and e is a little change that doesn't actually require a download.
I didn't find out about the hotfixes until 'd', and just saw 'e' today. But I don't play every day (sadly), or the game itself would have altered me to the fact that my build was out of date.
c, d, and e came out on the same day :p hence the lack of fanfare.
Besides, I think Alpha 4 had f, so we're not even up to the hotfix record yet :D