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Welcome to the official Jagged Alliance: Flashback site!
On the site you’ll be be able to find various news about the game, discuss certain aspects of the game in the forums and see video clips like dev diaries and trailers, following the game from start to launch.
As the game has launched we've created a website credit list for all of the people who backed Jagged Alliance: Flashback :)
For all non-backers, here is the latest news that went out today to Kickstarter backers:
Dear backers,
First up sorry for the long "no news" situation. There hasn't been anything to report, so that's why.
Mixed bag of news today, so here we go! Not everyone will like this, but so be it.
Physical Goods
Most of you are awaiting this, and there is no big change here. We have some of the things produced as you can see on the attached photo (there is more than this, I just didnt want to move boxes around). Primarily lots of t-shirts, posters, dog tags. There is still lots of stuff being produced and still todo.
So no real news here. We need to have everything ready, produced, shipped to us and then package it all. Doing it in pieces is way too cumbersome and expensive. We might be able to get the DVDs out to DVD only backers (especially in the US), but lets see.
No real ETA here, and I'll let you know about it when we are ready to package the goods and ship out. But its not around the corner. Will still take weeks.
Team Disbanded / Slow Communication
Big part of the slow communication and lack of progress is, that the JAF team is no more. Everyone is gone and there is me left to handle it all. Both taking over tasks from the guys who left as well as running the rest of the company.
And people have not just been moved over to other projects as some people say. They are gone gone, not to return. Very sad, but that's just the financial reality of JAF.
I try to answer all emails sent directly to me, but I simply cannot find time in the day to read+answer posts on the forums. Sorry - but that's just how it is.
Future Development on JAF
Without a team, there is also no further development on the game.
We would have liked nothing more than to continue on for ages, but no salaries lead to no people lead to no development.
We will work on a quick bug fix release in the upcoming weeks in between other work, and then that is the final version from our hands no matter what.
That bugfix will take care of (right now at least) 2 known issues that we want to fix
female mercs in prone after loading
a crash bug in the pathfinder
In my spare time sometime in the future I will send over as much of the requested modding stuff to Shanga. But my priority lies with physical goods first.
From the start of this project we wanted to get the modding part of the community running with as many possibilities as possible. And that is still everyone's goal to see the awesome stuff that can be done in the future by the talent out there.
Best
Thomas Lund
Sole survivor of the JAF team, signing off
Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to you all!
In this update we will wrap up what have been going on during the last few months, and celebrate the new 1.1 release. But I also want to take some of your time to give you a status from me personally.
As we mentioned back at release time, we wanted to pledge towards adding some new features. This grew fast into a “lets give everyone a small xmas gift as well”.
Our level designers took it upon themselves to create some new sectors, more story and more quests. Russian and Polish localization has been added, and the public level editor is updated with the latest content. They also added the new lighthouse mechanics which is pretty cool.
To show our good will and commitment, we decided to give this all away for free to all of you. So not only did we add all the pledged new content and features, but also more cool gameplay.
Take a look at the changelog here to see all the features, content and other details of what has been added since launch:
Enjoy!
As most of you by now have discovered, JAF launched end of October. The reception has been all over the board ranging from “Absolutely love it” to extreme hatred by a small rabid core group.
While we do love the positive feedback, it is the negative one that has taken up most bandwidth online and internally at our end.
The entire situation simply makes me sad beyond words. Not only for us and our own future, but also for you and the future of Jagged Alliance.
Besides some rough edges in the game where most of those have been fixed by now, the major feedback issue really stems from expectations. And I think expectations from “outsiders” that have not been following JAF development as a Kickstarter project on a small budget, but expectations from hardcore JA fans expecting JAF to be the next JA3.
As you and we know, this project was never meant to be a replacement for JA2. It was a project where we as a fan community could in unity get JA back to its core roots of great TBS combat, modding and create a foundation for keeping the brand alive. It was deliberately set as a prequel, but it is measured as a sequel.
Stepping back and looking at JAF as a game, I think it’s a great little JA game. Its not a 9/10 – not a 8/10 either. But it has a good solid combat system that screams JA, and an ok story that has good elements. Modding wise it is miles ahead of where JA2 was when it was released. From a full blown level editor to external accessible dialogs, quests, access to LUA scripting etc we really think there is a great basis for lots of content updates in the future through community efforts.
But – we failed to do expectation management towards people expecting JA3. And there is nothing we can do at this point to please those guys.
What we can do and what we have done over the last months since release is to do our best to address whatever else has been coming up as negative feedback.
There is now improved stealth, more weapons, weapon attachments, better initial levels, a nice shop interface, improved AI and lots of smaller bugfixes and improvements.
Looking down the list of issues brought up and improvement suggestions, we have been able to improve on almost everything in the last months.
But at the same time, the gamers or even you as backers have not yet given us credit for this work by revising your reviews on Steam. We still have user reviews that are at this point hurting sales – and thus the possibility of doing future updates. Things hang in a thin thread due to bad sales with bad user review. Heck – I would not buy a game myself that has 40% positive on Steam.
If you really think JAF is only worth 40% positive, then so be it. I cannot change your mind then, and we will be forced to stop here. But with only a few changed reviews or a good handful of more positive reviews, the new gamer perception would improve a lot and possibly gamers will give the game another chance. And with improved sales, we can again do more updates and features.
So please!
Give the game a fresh look and a positive review if you like it!
The rewards are the next thing on our list now.
For digital we will get those up for you on Humble as they get produced and finalized. That will happen ASAP.
Physical is as always more tricky. Read on.
As we are getting ready to put in the remaining orders for the manufacturing, we have been working hard on the logistics of quantities, production of goods, getting quotes and finding cheapest shipping options.
Let me just say, that this is utter nightmare to go through. And if we ever do another Kickstarter, we will keep it extremely simple and preferably digital only.
As mentioned in the last newsletter/update, we have to lock down production of goods and shipping.
This means that the 81 people NOT having responded yet with their address, and who were given a deadline back a month ago for this, will forfeit their physical rewards if they don’t reply NOW. We cannot produce and ship stuff individually in the future no matter your backer level or the reason for you not responding!
Together with this update we are turning off the option to change physical address. This means there is now a 48 hour window to still give us your address. We have tried contacting you through these updates, through emails and now this final message.
We also give a 48 hour notice for credit list updates in the game or on the website. If you haven’t responded there to the last deadline, here is the last call also for you! See how to enter that in update 48
Don't mind the deadline set, if you follow the link for the credit list sign-up form.
With production of the goods starting up, we plan to start shipping early this new year. Due to shipping costs, everything has to be produced first before we can package and ship, and it will still take weeks of producing the last items before we are at that point.
December 3rd bC filed for insolvency procedure and that is very unfortunate. For JAF as a game it has no immediate consequences, as our license agreement covers this scenario. JAF will live on and be available for sale.
What happens with the Jagged Alliance IP itself is up in the air, and we have no idea ourselves.
On the physical rewards side it puts us in a bit of a troubled spot, as we had a deal with them helping on the merchandise production. They have much more experience in DVD production etc, and thus it made sense to have them help us do it.
That part now falls on us, but as written above we are trucking along on a early 2015 manufacturing/shipping. It all just takes more time to process, finding vendors, making orders, collecting it all, shipping it etc. So thank you for your patience!
On the development side of JAF, we are forced into a skeleton crew situation for now until we hopefully see improved user ratings of the game on Steam. Will the last months effort pay off in better reviews or not? If not, then we cannot commit to anything. If yes, then we can take another look at plans.
Short term though we are fixing some bugs and updating some of the documentation. Version 1.1 will also be put on Humble in DRM free version.
Best
Thomas
CEO, Full Control
Hey all,
I wanted to take the opportunity to tell you a bit about our current status, and where we are heading within the few next weeks.
As you know, we just released 1.0.5 in little over a week ago. With this update, we introduced ammo types, shotguns and a new questline, beside other bugfixes and features (see full changelog here: http://www.jaggedallianceflashback.com/forum/27/6082#post_6176).
Since then, we have worked on the new Shop interface, which is now in the stage of testing and quality assurance. Furthermore, we have given the Stealth formulas a critical look, and have changed a few things based on the feedback from here in the forum - there was definitely something fishy going on, that we did not catch before release - but still, it will need some more work until we are happy with it.
As these are both quite substantial changes to gameplay and balancing, we do not want to rush things out - meaning I cannot promise any release date on the next Update 1.0.6, which will include those things. We are also working on getting the modding menu back in the game, to share all the cool mods I have seen popup here already. Obviously, there are also still bugs - like the save / load and freezing issues - we are trying to hunt it down, and thanks for everyone giving us their input on this - it is much appreciated! Keep it coming.
Reaching further than the next immediate update, there are weapon attachments coming up, a feature which I am personally looking forward to a lot, and our content team has secretely hatched some plans to extend the game with a handful of sectors and - yet again - a new questline, and ofc the promised additional weapons pack.
As always, we are working on it as fast as we can, and I hope you like what we are doing!
Cheers,
Roman
Dear Backers,
We’re happy to announce that Jagged Alliance: Flashback is now live on Steam, info on DRM-free below. The team has pushed forward these last weeks to polish, fix bugs and balance the game. This last week we've made major leaps and with the help of the very dedicated community testers, we have been able to crush some of the nastier bugs. BIG THANK YOU!!, we needed your support.
We thought the game deserved a proper trailer for the release, it turned out pretty damn awesome, so let’s kick off this update with a bang.
Jagged Alliance Flashback: Release Trailer
A lot of people have asked us what happens on the other side of the release. The answer is "it depends". It depends on sales really. We have to feed our families and pay the bills like everyone else, and only if the game sells will we be able to do bigger expansions.
BUT - we have a track record of post-launch support, and we are dedicated to that for JAF as well. So coming up in some weeks from now will be a free upgrade with some of the content that didn’t get into the 1.0 release.
Read on!
The first 2 things are features we really really would have loved to have in 1.0, but that didn't make the deadline.
- Weapon attachments
Scopes, silencers, ammo extenders and more!!
- Ammo types
Armor piercing, hollowpoint and other nasty pieces of lead
Additionally we want to add more content to the game. So
- Soviet weapon pack
As pointed out by the community, we added a lot of western weapons to the game. Its time to look at the old Soviet weapons and get a batch of them into the drop tables.
And lastly 2 features that didn’t turn out as great as they could have. So we will fix them up and polish:
- Shotguns:
Making shotguns look and feel more "blasty" - make them shoot multiple projectiles at once, so you get that great “buckshot” feel.
- Better shop interface:
A proper shop with images, stats and also ability to sell your items again
What is on the horizon past that is a big unknown. Bugfixes are a given, but content wise we don’t want to promise something we can’t deliver. So let’s see what happens over the next weeks.
Skin packs + Special Merc
We’ve had to move some elements such as the skin packs and the special Merc from the Dog Tag to post release. We need to set up a proper system for them to unlock, so once that’s in place, we’ll be able make them available. We may have to make some changes to the various packs and possibly bundle them up, but more on that later.
Modding
Modding button has been grayed out because we need to hook in the new UI to support it, but don’t worry it will be added to the game, once we get past initial issues that spawn from release.
Simply letting you know now so you don’t think it won’t be part of JAF :)
Digital Rewards and Humble Bundle Info
For release day you’ll only have access to the digital version of the game. All other digital rewards will be uploaded to Humble Bundle once they’re ready and we’ll let you know through Kickstarter Updates. Most should be available at the same time we have produced the physical goods.
We’re still getting a few reports about people not being in the right tier. The spreadsheet Humble Bundle had set up needed to be completely redone, but it is a lot better now. There could be some issues when people change their email address and such, we don’t get any information about that unless you tell us or if we re-export the tiers.
On Humble Bundle we’ve used the email you pledged with, be it on PayPal or via Kickstarter. If you create an account on HB with that email and claim past purchases you should be able to see what you have access to.
Otherwise try to use the resender that we posted about in the last update.
If everything fails, contact us via kickstarter (please send us messages directly, it’s easy to miss comments.) or support@fullcontrol.dk and we will sort it out. Mostly been $25 backers having this issue.
DRM-Free Version
We are creating and uploading the DRM-free version to Humble Bundle now, but please keep in mind that Humble Bundle are based in the US, so the DRM-free version most likely won’t be available before sometime later today or tomorrow.
Linux Version issues
We’ll have wait to send out the Linux version as we’re working on clearing up some issues that are only specific to Linux. We will do our best to get the Linux version out either later today or sometime tomorrow.
The team has been running on full steam the last month or so, with a programmer clocking in 80 hours last week. We are a passionate bunch and will continue to do our best to support you and Jagged Alliance: Flashback. What the future holds, is still not set in stone, but for now we’ll have a piece of cake and a glass of champagne and then get back to work :)
Until next time!
The Full Control JAF Team
Jagged Alliance: Flashback is now live on Steam
For more info check out the Steam Store Page
Jagged Alliance Wikia (German)
Send us any question, feedback or suggestions and we'll do our best to answer. You can also make a thread in our forum to have your topic discussed.
To reach us, send a mail to support at fullcontrol dot dk