Dear Backers,

Once again it is time to share some news on the progress of Jagged Alliance: Flashback. As always it’s been a really busy month and we’re happy that we now have some of the artists from our team totally devoted to JAF. There’s been a lot of planning and research going on, keeping our concept artist busy. As inspiration we even set up a weekly movie night for research and social purposes - Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first in line.

We have a lot to share, so lets get to it.

New Site is live

The New site is finally live and we apologize for the delays on that account, setting up took a lot longer than we anticipated. It’s a site that’s been built from the ground up and therefore doesn't have all the fancy features and fluff that one may be used to from other forums. We chose this approach because we needed a system that would fit with the Kickstarter setup, which simply wasn't available anywhere else.

Please register with the email you used for Kickstarter (Or PayPal)

If you run into any issues with the site, please send a mail to support@fullcontrol.dk

Behind the scenes Forum and Badges

To make it easier for us to administrate we made it so that anyone who pledged $100+ will have access to the behind the scenes forum, which means it’s not tier specific. However, we have placed people in tiers because of the Kickstarter badges, but since we’re not able to do all of the surveys at this time, we won’t be able to place all people in the correct spot from the get go. We will be updating once we have the final details along the way.

Content for the Behind the Scenes Forum

The idea with the behind the scenes forum is that you will be able to communicate and discuss elements directly with the people, who are responsible for a specific part of the game. e.g. Game art, sound and animation. We also see the behind the scene forum as an opportunity for us to discuss certain elements of the game, in more detail, before making any decisions on the topic and implementing it in the game. Additionally, we want to share a bit more content here than on the regular forum and host small unique competitions.

Kickstarter Survey Clarifications

Following the GOG and Humble Bundle mess up I, Andreas, made with the Kickstarter surveys I wanted to make everything perfectly clear.

SO, here goes. You can get a DRM-free version of Linux through Humble Bundle and at the moment we’re counting people’s GOG answer as Humble Bundle, but if you chose Steam instead because there was no DRM-free Linux version in the survey, then send an email to support@fullcontrol.dk and I’ll make changes in the database.

I baked a cake and bought some beer for the team to make up for my “minor” mistake :) 

There’s a few thing we’d like to mention about the Kickstarter surveys.

1: The system is very limited and also very inflexible, so we can only send out 1 survey and you have to answer all questions in there even though it doesn't apply to you. 
2: Add-ons are something you add on top of your initial pledge, so if you didn't pay for anything extra during the kickstarter you can’t get it now and it’s not something you get for free. 
3: There are other survey options for us out there like “BackerKit” but that would mean that a % of the money you backed JAF with would be spent on that instead of the game, which if why we chose not to use such programs. 

Remaining surveys

We’d like to get more of the surveys sent out, which is why we’re looking at some alternatives e.g. some easy way of getting people’s shipping details without having to micromanage every little detail, but until that’s possible they won’t be going out.

Art Concepts

Since the artists joined the JAF team the office has been buzzing and we’ve had several meetings, discussions and looked over loads of research material. Together with the design team, we’ve agreed on the overall art style, tile and sector sizes and what sort of environment we plan to have in the game. As you know our first focus will be the vertical slice so the first concepts have been targeted at that, see below: 

The plan so far is to create a sector that contains a worn down gas station with a connecting junkyard out back. 

Gas Station Concepts: 

 Click for a bigger image

Click for a bigger image

Prop for the Junkyard: 

Click for a bigger image

A Concept Overview of the full Sector: 

Click for a bigger image

That’s all for this time! 

We look forward to bringing you even more details on the vertical slice and features in the game. 

Until next time 

The JAF Full Control Team

Waheyyy, am i the first non-admin to post on the new site? :)

Petrol station looks great... love the raggedy, thrown together look of the building itself! Some nice sniper positions as well to cover an attack!

Good to hear things are progressing!

EDIT loving the user badge ;)

Welcome, and congrats to being the first!!11!111

Grats on the site. Looking forward to getting my hands on this game :)

Sweet!

(testing badge ;)

Hey there, I want to play this game now please... 

WTF, no hand grenades for €750 !?  ;P lol

Hehe, I guess you can photoshop 1 in if you make it your profile picture :D 

Will you unlock the community suggestion forum soon?

You mean the Community Wishlist? It's not locked...it's just the first thread in there that's locked. You can make new threads in there :)

Awesome idea, because I'm pretty good with photoshop :P ..

Thanks for the new forum! :)

Hehe there's a slight size difference in the badge and the profile pic 160x160 vs 80x80

Looks spiffy. The "Behind the Scenes" forum is actually up yet?

Very excited to see the new site and forums!

Looking forward to hear more news about this exciting JA game.

Keep up the great work.

Jazz

It's up!

Right now there is a thread about some game mechanics under General. And a thread about level design pre-production under Story/Level Design

Yeah, it is if you've pledged enough :) 

If the Bearpit account was a gift then I need to set it up in the database first before you have access. 

I would need the email of this account to see (send to support@fullcontrol.dk) 

Men, can´t wait for the game. 

Hmm you people actually seeing a list of avatars you can pick in your forum profile? Cause my Chrome sees nothing.

Just chiming in to say hello to the dev team and wish them godspeed with this project! :)

There is no list, you can just upload..But I think there's issues for people who are not on the pledge list..an issue that occured after we updated the server yesterday. I can't add you right now...so I'm guess the 2 issues are related. 

Apparently using Mozz instead of Chrome and frantically pressing "Select Picture" button works. On 3rd or 4th try.

There's no delicate coding issue in this world that's not solved by good old button smashin' .. rofl.

On a more serious note, you do need to add error messages to the code. Like "You mofo, your image is too big"... stuff like that. Silent fails kinda dont help.

testing, testing, 123

cant wait for this game!

Not sure that type of messages would fly too well...will see what I can do about adding more error messages. Not first on the list though :P 

My badge didnt have a hampster on it... So I had to grab the Kickstarter Hampster and bring it here.

Tsk tsk tsk :P

I see a badge magically appeared under my nick, probably magical hamsters put it there. But still no "pledger" status and no access to backer forums.

Uh that took quite some time until this website was there. :)

Should be fixed now Shanga

Congrats on getting the Forums up and running.

Hi to all.

Just confirming it's fixed now, I see the hidden forums

Finally :)  Been longing for the new site to open up. I'm really looking forward to see this game being developed with the community drawn in. That was one hell of an idea to put JAF on Kickstarter!

LOVE the backer badges. Mine suits me perfectly. Airborne color beret, and sergeant stripes...both match my real life US Army service! Woot!

Hm, I read something about surveys in the OP, but AFAIK I didn't get one?! Does that mean I fall under the "remaining surveyes" or did my spam filter (or the NSA) eat that e-mail. In that case: could you please resend that e-mail to me? Thanks!
 

Last update we said that we would snd out surveys to people in tiers up to $42. I didn't add that info to this update as we assumed people remembered. are you in one of those Tiers? 

No I'm not, I was quite a bit above 42 USD) and I didn't remember that... damn it. Sorry for the noise then.

Good job getting the website up and running!
And I like the idea with the badges, too. 

Now, get back to coding the actual game, fellows! :-P

Yeah :) It's good to see you back in action again guys. I wish You all the best.

Its good to be back. Taking Badge out for a stroll. 

Great work JAFteam!  But where is my behind the scenes access please :p

Apparently they're setting them up by hand guys, gotta wait till tomorrow and they'll get sorted out.

Great update guys and glad to see the new site live.

Although all the text seems to be transparent and thus hard to read. But that may be a problem with the Citrix environment at work :)

It's true that we are making corrections manually, but that's just because there's a few bugs in the automation process. You have the correct badge as I added you correctly to that part, but the amount pledged doesn't show properly in the database *Constant poke coder protocol initiated* :)

Thanks :)

Good Job Full Control. Congratulations on the new website. ;)

Would it be possible to support You by money even after kickstarter campaign and get access to this hidden place in the forum, or this was only possible when kickstarter campaign was open?

If not, so would it be possible to support You, just for support?

Gas station is nice and it is the JA style.

Right now the plan is to have the digital copy, physical copy and collector's edition (will give access to the behind the scenes)

We also plan to have a donate with paypal button. 

looking good. Keep up the great work Full Control!

Looking forward to more info as the game progresses.

The best game coming ... :)

Are there any news, when the game will be released?

2014 or 2015?

Soka, Faramir

Well it's set for Nov 2014, but it depends how much the total budget for the game ends up being. More money = a bigger game, which will take longer to make. (Unless we can hire enough to cope with that :) ) 

The gas is a great idea. I am liking the road network. In JA2 it was so difficult to get around anywhere. Although you could pick up cars eventually. I hope you can repair abandoned cars (with high mechanical skill merc) and get them in working order again. And the ability to use cars like some kind of drive by turn base perhaps?

Well keep the great ideas coming. I am loving them so far.