Dynamight Studios has joined Improbable’s Game Innovation Program. Pre-Alpha is now behind the corner. Come find out all the October news!

Hi, fellow gamer and MMO enthusiast!

October is almost gone, and we’ve been a little silent while we sprint towards the upcoming launch of the Fractured Pre-Alpha, which we are now glad to announce is really behind the corner.

That’s not the only great news this month has brought, however. Let’s cover them all!

Games Innovation Program

It’s happened! Dynamight Studios has officially joined Improbable‘s Games Innovation Program!

What is it about? In the words of Improbable:

Thanks to our partnership with Google Cloud, any games that are built upon the SpatialOS platform by members of the SpatialOS Games Innovation Program will receive subsidies that will substantially or completely cover the costs of cloud-based online development. The program awards SpatialOS credits that will cover SpatialOS and Google Cloud usage costs, including underlying server fees, during development. This is the largest development subsidy of its kind.

We find that really cool for two reasons:

We can run large scale deployments of our world, featuring thousands of creature AIs and simulated players, to test the scalability and stability of our backend. We can use all the CPU, memory, storage and bandwidth needed without paying for it – which, given our tight budget, is truly a blessing. Thanks to the Games Innovation Program, we can make sure Fractured will be ready to sustain the (hopefully) large influx of players at the start of Alpha 1 and beyond!

of our world, featuring thousands of creature AIs and simulated players, to test the and of our backend. We can use all the CPU, memory, storage and bandwidth needed without paying for it – which, given our tight budget, is truly a blessing. Thanks to the Games Innovation Program, we can make sure Fractured will be ready to sustain the (hopefully) large influx of players at the start of Alpha 1 and beyond! As the name suggests, projects included in the Games Innovation Program are ones the people at Improbable find innovative and think have a strong potential. A much welcomed sign of trust and appreciation!

Want to find out more about Improbable and SpatialOS? Check out their website! 🙂

Pre-Alpha Launch

For all of you who don’t know about it yet, the Fractured Pre-Alpha is a time-limited testing phase to be run before the start of Alpha 1.

Access to the Pre-Alpha will be granted to the players with the best ranking in The Foundation, specifically those who sit in the TOP 100 Leaderboard, plus a few others selected among those who have won one or more weekly drawings. Access to the Pre-Alpha is limited to that testing phase, unlike access to Alpha 1 and beyond, which is permanent and can be purchased on our store.

The are a couple significant news about the Pre-Alpha which you should really know about, so here we go!

First of all, the Pre-Alpha was set to start 1-2 months before Alpha 1, as explained in our Playtesting FAQ. Since Alpha 1 is planned for December this year, the Pre-Alpha should have been October/November. However, in our development roadmap we’ve been a little too optimistic and announced specifically October as the launch month, while right now it’s pretty clear we won’t make it. Apologies for the confusion and the false hopes. We can confirm now that November is the month!

Secondly, while we’re planning to let over 100 players in the Pre-Alpha, invites won’t be sent out all at once but gradually over the course of a couple weeks or longer. The selection order won’t be based on ranking but on our own discretion.

To conclude, I know some of you are now asking yourselves “will this delay on the Pre-Alpha have an impact on the launch date of Alpha 1?”. The answer is: we’re not sure yet. As of today, Alpha 1 is still planned for December, but a 1-month delay or so on that too is not to be ruled out. Only the Pre-Alpha will tell!

Other Updates

Lich Transformation

The unlocking of our stretch goals is moving on at a steady pace. This month, the Lich Transformation has been reached! Like Beastmen and Demons, Humans will also have the chance to evolve their race – in their case, without being locked into an Evil or Good alignment.

Want to find out more about what it means to be a Lich? Check out this wiki entry, an extract of the info we released during our Kickstarter campaign!

Content Pills

In the last few weeks, we’ve had some internal discussions on how to keep you all up to date with the development of Fractured now that the team is 100% focused on the production of Alpha 1.

Writing news posts like this one has proven not to be a feasible route – it takes way too long, also considering each article is coupled to a press release and a newsletter, which makes it even more time-consuming. It’s something we can do once a month, not once a week or more as you deserve.

The solution we came up with is to open a channel on our Discord and a series of forum threads labeled Content Pills, where we’re going to post screenshots and short videos on a regular basis, with a brief caption explaining what you’re seeing (if needed). There are separate threads for discussion, and we’ll try to reply to as many questions as we can there!

State Of The Community

A new milestone has been achieved: Fractured now has over 40,000 registered users!

At the time of the last update on the matter in June, our community members came from 128 different countries, with the TOP 10 being claimed by the United States, Brazil, Germany, Russia, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Poland and Vietnam.

Today, our followers come from 150 different countries – that’s over 3/4 of the countries of the whole world! The TOP 10 is pretty much identical, the only difference being Vietnam that lost the 10th spot in favor of Spain.

That’s it for today.

See you soon and, as always, don’t forget to let us hear your voice on our community boards and social media!

DISCUSS