It's just the beginning!

Well folks, the day (and hour) have finally come - the "Gold Master" for Supreme Ruler 2010 is being sent off to our publisher as I type this. And the last few weeks have seemed longer than all the combined time since the project was first started (on February 15th, 2000!)

Through an incredible effort by our core team (Chris, Dax, David and myself) we have pulled off finishing up our first release version of SR2010. And now starts the debates among our long-time supporters and testers about what made it in, what didn't, and what's still to come. (Actually, the debate has already started, but I'm sure it will get even more intense!) While not everything came out of the oven according to the original recipe, I'm very proud of the result, and I think it is certainly time for the public to get their hands on what I believe is a landmark strategy title.

But there's more work to be done - not counting the demo version, which should be coming out shortly, we are also planning additional content to come soon as a free upgrade (more missions, future equipment types, feature upgrades). We have a lot of excitement about the future potential for the Supreme Ruler 2010 "engine", there are a lot of capabilities that we've only just started to scratch the surface of in the initial release.

And the biggest challenge may be getting the word out on this product - a lot of resellers and distributors consider serious strategy as a very small "niche" and are not willing to invest their shelf space in titles of this type. So if you don't see it on the shelf at your favorite software-o-matic store, make sure to bug them to get it in!

Keep a lookout - street date mid-May in North America!

So close that we can smell it...

Or is that maybe due to the fact that we’ve been neglecting personal hygiene? Hard to tell... In any case, we’re getting very close. Still working on some issues regarding running the largest maps (ie the world) on systems that are close to our “minimum spec” – the huge number of units, facilities, types of units, and such at this level are certainly a challenge. As mentioned before, our World Scenario is BIG. Not recommended as the first thing you try! In fact, some people simply will not like the World scenario for a few reasons, including its huge scope, massive number of units, and ‘overwhelmingness’. The continents also create a situation where you have to use invasion landings and airdrops much more. Of course, for these exact same reasons some people will love the World scenario.

We’re also being delayed a bit by not yet receiving some items required for our GameSpy matchmaking services. Hopefully that will be resolved soon, we’re know that everyone is waiting to hear the magic words “Supreme Ruler 2010 has gone Gold” ... Soon, real soon!

(PS – The World Scenario contains a total (for all players) of 13,600 units and facilities. Compare that to the “unit limit” imposed by many other games, and you’ll understand the technical challenges we had to overcome – and it all has to run in real time!)

Stress? Pressure? Nah....

But I wouldn't recommend coming near BattleGoat's offices unless you want to be caught up in a caffine-induce whirlwind of work, debates, and last-minute to-do lists. Well, except for Chris, he doesn't drink coffee. (He does occasionally drink Mountain Dew, but that's a different story...)

As discussed on our forum and in recent blog entries, not every feature is falling into place exactly as hoped for, either for technical or time reasons. All the "big" features are in. But we all have our favourites on the backlist... David wants future-scheduling in, Chris wants biological covert attacks, Dax doesn't like the fact that as the campaign progresses you could get caught being attacked with your units in reserve (they get reserved between campaign scenarios), and I don't like the fact that our big-map performance is below expectations on low-end systems. So we debate a lot...

But even given all that, things are moving along briskly. Good thing, though, that our "countdown to gold" whiteboard supports negative numbers :-) But soon, soon........

40,000 tasks done, 100 left to do

I wrote a blog here yesterday, but the blog system ate it – I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. So I’ll try again, but time is short so I gotta be quick – lots of work to do…

As you can probably tell from our recent blog entries, a lot of discussion and debate is spent around here on the topic of just what really needs to be in Supreme Ruler 2010 in order for us to be ready to “go gold”. Not really sure if 40,000 is the accurate number for the features “in”, but we are certainly down to less than 100 tasks that “must” be done to finish up (some more difficult than others). We’ll probably be debating the final feature list right up to the point at which we press record on the CD Burner.

By however you measure it, SR2010 is an epic-sized project with a huge amount of effort put in to making things accurate, and then just as huge an effort into making it all playable and fun.

One disappointment for our upcoming release is that it will be English-only at first launch. The huge amount of data that requires translation (“localization” it’s called in the business) is enough to scare off all the foreign distributors for now. To those in other regions, our apologies that you won’t be able to get SR2010 in your language at day 1, but hopefully we can get the localizations rolling soon after the initial release.

One last thing for today, in case you didn’t catch our press release, we were very pleased to announce this past week that bestselling author Larry Bond has worked with us to provide a foreword for our manual. It was terrific to have Larry on board for this, and he seemed quite enthusiastic about SR2010 as well… to quote,

“This simulation is the most detailed and realistic model of a country that has ever been commercially produced . . .. Supreme Ruler 2010 is a great game”

Time flies (like a missile?)

I was just reminded today that the clocks get set forward this weekend in this time zone - a real pity, since I'm going to miss that extra hour of programming time...

The release date is now "official" at May 10th, 2005. (Give or take a few days, of course.) Which means that our 'Gold Master' date for wrapping up development is very close. The manual goes to press early next week (over 150 pages!). The box art is done. The ads are being assembled. And nobody's made coffee yet this morning...

I've posted a few comments recently on our forum about the 'features versus finish' issues - ie what (may) get sacrificed to actually get things out on the shelves. As we've said all along, we will not release a buggy product. We think we have that element wrapped up - no crash issues, no stability issues, no serious operational bugs that we know of.

But what about features? There's always more we can do, but things have shaped up pretty good with all the important features getting in. Some lesser features are on the borderline and may not get in for our '1.0' version - for example, assassinating cabinet ministers is the one I just looked at a few minutes ago. However, we have also made a commitment to continue working on SR2010 after the initial release - we think of this as an epic title that people will continue to play, not a "throwaway" that gathers dust after the game is "solved". We'll continue to listen to players on the forum and look at ways we can improve what we've done.

And in case you missed it, a great preview was just posted on WorthPlaying.com:
http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=24371&mode=thread&order=0

"...here I was with an incomplete preview build of a game from a company I've never heard of that gripped me with the steely claw of game addiction not felt since the last installment in the Civ series."