USA Games News June 2011
Greetings gamers, Welcome to another edition of the USA Games news letter. At the time of this writing we have some late breaking news we thought you should know about as well as our short term and long term plans for Mysteries of the Ancients and our other products. The USA Games website and web server may be inaccessible between Friday June 17 and Friday June 24 as our web host, Skynet Communications, performs some upgrades to their web servers, moves web accounts from one server to another, and USA Games performs some updates to our website. We apologize for any disruption of service this may cause as we perform some necessary upgrades and make changes to better serve the audio gaming community. Last month on May 24 USA Games released Mysteries of the Ancients beta 19, using an early beta of our cross-platform Genesis Engine, which caused some confusion and discontent with our customers as we did not make it clear as to the objectives or purpose of this recent beta. We knew that the audio wasn’t up to our usual standards using DirectX, and we had to temporarily remove joystick and mouse support because those devices were not yet fully supported in the cross-platform engine. Our actual aim or goal beta 19 was to see how well the cross-platform engine ran on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 as well as various Linux distributions based on a common engine and cross-platform APIs like SDL. Unfortunately, as we did not identify exactly what we were looking for the community at large began sending in bug reports on the obvious issues such as substandard audio, no analog jumping, lack of joystick support, etc. In hindsight we should have been upfront with the community that these issues existed, and that we already had plans to fix them in a later cross-platform beta. That way the community could have reported any potential problems with the cross-platform game and engine besides the ones we already knew about. That isn’t the communities fault, but ours for not stating upfront what we were actually trying to test. As a result we have decided to give you a clear idea of what you can expect regarding Mysteries of the Ancients as we wind down development and approach 1.0 final. For the short term we have decided to shelve the cross-platform engine and game until we get the Windows release of Mysteries of the Ancients finished. As we write this news letter we will be recompiling Mysteries of the Ancients beta 19 using the Windows version of the Genesis Engine, and will restore the audio, joystick/mouse support, and the analog jumping to the way it was in beta 18. Since the Windows version of the engine, built on Windows technologies like DirectX, is very stable this is the ideal way to produce a stable 1.0 release for our Windows customers. This build will be released as beta 20, and will be the final beta for the game before 1.0 is released. Following beta 20 we will finish adding the registration system, add the trophy case, and finish adding the levels for Mysteries of the Ancients release candidate 1. Once we release Mysteries of the Ancients release candidate 1we will be able to begin shipping keys to our prepaid customers, and they will be able to unlock and test the game before we move to 1.0 final. In the event there are any bugs or problems that need to be fixed we will put out a second release candidate to correct and address any bugs or problems with the game before we make any kind of official final 1.0 release. Once we have released Mysteries of the Ancients 1.0 for Windows that will free us up to work on other projects. One of those projects will be for us to upgrade and develop the Linux version of the Genesis Engine so we can port Mysteries of the Ancients to Linux and perhaps at some point to Mac OS X as well. Since the majority of our customers are Windows only users it does make sense to finish the game for Windows first, sell it, raise some cash, and then use the money to invest in a MacBook to do Mac OS ports of our titles. Another project on our agenda is Mysteries of the Ancients 3D. As has been stated before it is the same game as classic Mysteries of the Ancients, but from a full 3d first-person perspective. It will have larger levels, 3d movement, and we will be adding in some other extras to set it apart from classic Mysteries of the Ancients. The one game we have not talked much about here is USA Raceway. Have no fear we have plans to take care of that game as well. Like Mysteries of the Ancients we have decided to complete the game using the Windows Genesis Engine first to speed up the process as well as add superior input device support. One of our goals from the beginning was to support devices such as racing wheels, rumblepads, and joysticks which offers a far superior gaming experience than keyboards. To date DirectX is the only API that really handles these devices really well, and that is what we will be using for the initial release of the game for Windows users. As for Mac and Linux users we will have to investigate what APIs are available for force feedback devices like racing wheels, rumblepads, and so on which will take additional time for those ports. As far as timing and a release schedule goes USA Raceway is being rewritten from scratch using the Genesis Engine and it will take considerable time to convert it from the older .Net Engine to the newer C++ based engine. For that reason we don’t expect to release any sort of betas or playable demos until at least 2012. We apologize for the long wait, but it’s going to take us a while to get everything up to spec, and ready for public release. For information about our products visit us on the web at: http://www.usagamesinteractive.com To join a USA Games mailing list visit: http://www.usagamesinteractive.com/lists.php For technical support e-mail: [email protected] --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
