We've added a new build to the alpha brachand these are the changes. 

Game Changes 0.7.0

Features

• Energy and morale system for mercs. Watch them panic and run out of energy

• Strategic view UI and functionality (still being worked on and it is known to be buggy)

• New items system that can pick a random item from an item set

• Firing burst and full auto now sprays bullets continuously rather than single shot

• Aiming now hooked to right click cycle - also showing what aim mode you are in

• Options menu implemented - video, audio, gameplay etc

• Auto open loot containers when standing on same tile

• Squad inventory

• Enemies now have tiers of difficulty/equipment/drops

• All sectors have been polished and improved visually

• Better spawn zones for all sectors

• Character view hooked up - inventory, unit stats, unit status

• Squad inventory accessible from inventory screen

• Selecting weapon/armor now compares stats to equipped one

• Added additional armor items

• Added additional trash items

• Added brass knuckles weapon

• Added new LUA commands

• Showing more status icons

• Tutorial can now be completed

• Now display actual cost of attack event in different aim and attack modes

• Interrupt ui improved with costs and toggle button

• Out of range now visually displayed on cursor and path

• Cursor changes when hovering container objects

• Changed the view cone visually.

• Visual cleanup from old developer fonts and look

• Reload and interrupt mode keyboard shortcuts

• Ammo count on weapon icons

• Support for booster items (e.g. energy drinks)

• Environment audio implementation (work in progress)

• Start of NGUI modding menu (not done yet)

• Prepared game for localization

• Lots more weapons, units, items, story, quests, dialogs, NPCs

Bugfixes

Too many to list :-)

Have a nice testy weekend ^^

what do i have to enter again for alpha access?

Some very nasty bugs (or similar) again in the first couple of minutes in the tutorial:

- the resolution problem still exists :-(
- a group of mercs can't enter throught the same door - only one goes through, the others try to find a way around.
- can't loot any containers - can't take single items out and the "take all" button doesn't work either.
- it still shows the wrong AP when the character has to turn to shoot.
- couldn't fnish the tutorial because Marion getting bandaged did not move the 'quest' along

Still testing, but wanted to give you those right away. I'm gonna update this post later.

Not being able to loot happened after the info box popped up. Later, I could loot the container. Again, after starting the campaign, the pop-up after killing the first enemies prevents me from looting. Can't get the game to let me loot those two containers again. Reloading, restarting the game, nothing works. This is annoying as hell.

when on EA steam?

changing the language ends in blank fields and nothing doable anymore.

options menu point isnt working ingame, only on start screen.

cant start the timer when not moved with mercs before, it smpy doesnt do anything.

I think they put a new version out after the first one as we did some test and foudn some few bugs. We're also testing from the same branch, so hopefully they clear some of the one you list there in the build they're working on now. 

Hehe, Can't really share that here can I :P 

Try finding the last mail we sent regarding alpha access

The localization still isn't done, but the functionality is there..therefore blank fields. 

thanks, found it (havent tried alpha before, but now i have the time and will try to help you guys a bit...)

Good improvements so far and the crosshair is there nice guys!

Fast feedback:

- Sound necessary for the crosshair just like in JA2

- Reload-sound necessary for the reload icon (mouse)

- The cheering people sound after clearing a sector feels displaced. Just the military victory sound is enough.

- UI still is a little bit too big, generic, simple and modern. Please make it look more retro, dirty, paper dossier 80's style and place it on the bottom of the screen.

- Also the inventory, strategic layer UI looks too modern and generic not retro and oldschool. That doesn't fit the timesetting and game. There is no immersion. It doesn't fit together. You never think that your are in the 80's.

- Still animated portraits and more and better merc commentaries necessary.

- Changeing the cameras perspective while holding the right mouse button and pan to the left or right would be great. (Look at Wasteland 2)

- Right-clicking on loot in the container should put the lootobject in the backpack of the merc.

- Death animations and hit-feedback would be nice. In JA2 the enemies react on hits and blink white and they fall on the ground when they got killed. 

EDIT: (MORE FEEDBACK)

- The selected merc should have a green icon not white. The not selected mercs should be white.

- The crosshair could also flicker while aiming so it is more realistic and dynamic

- The crosshair could also change the color while switching between the aiming levels. Totally red --> highest hit chance

- Hand cursor for loot should be animated and not so comiclike.

EDIT 2:

- Bullets could fly a little bit faster in burst fire mode

- The weapon sounds could have more pressure. They don´t sound as heavy and ruff like in JA2. SMGs and UZIs sound not so good.

- The dialogue window should be placed in the middle of the screen and nothing around it. Just like in JA2. That works well and is easy to read.

- Loot should be placed in the sectors. More and random loot all over the sectors not only from enemies.

First impressions here too

Options button is not useable other than from the start screen

The Loot screen should have an option to loot everything into squad inventory

I can go into minus hiring the local mercs in the bar.. is this working as designed? 

Also the text boxes are too small for some of the texts (even in english).

+1

Really nice.

I have no music but ambient sound. This is correct?

• Now we can get rid of the calculation for chance to hit. thx! Would be even more nice if --,% is not displayed, if the option is activated.
• Love the crosshair so far. 
• The options menu does not work while in game or strategic layer
• The cursor-symbols in game do not change size, when zooming in/out. The X for example is bigger than a merc, when completely zoomed out. 
• The looting-hand-symbol is a placeholder. hmm.
• New fonts are really good to read.
• Critical hits are now possible. 
• Need tooltips (sould be activated/deactivated in options menu) for all new icons and symbols. On top of the enemy I see 3 symbols (one meens blood) - can't tell what it means. There can't be a tooltip, ok. So a help menu for beginners would be nice via option menu?
• Elodie doesn't comment on my Agent dying. OMG
• Energy bar does only update in inventory not on the portraits.
• mission goals flicker in after each turn
• As we now have lots of HUD information while fighting, there are overlay problems so name and critical hit and so on overlap. Messy to look at. Should get priorities right - that means information from crosshair should overlay other information (should be faded out quickly).
• Oh you implemented my idea with red lines indicating that you can't walk until there. Now it feels more free as I could ignore the max-walking-border. Nice job!
• Miss, critical hit etc. use different fonts than rest of game!?
• Merc names should not be displayed on top of merc but in the small portrait on the left. 
• Hope the icons in the left click menu are still placeholders? They are blurry.
• Basic animations are still off (crouch from stand) - time is running =)
• new sound when round is finished. It is the JA2 mp3 but it is sometimes stopped or overlayed by another sound. which is bad.
• "Take it All"-button should stack all stuff in my backpack AND if full, the rest in squad inventory.
• Sectory inventory with filtering is SO missing.
• EDIT BUG: Elodie has a MAC-10 in quickslot left bottom. But it is just a picture, not to be used. But that is the MAC-10 of the Agent. Do I empty the slot of the agent, Elodie doesn't see the weapon anymore. It could magically cloned without able to use it. UI bug?
• Ammo count 6/6 in UI near weapon (inventory menu) is too small and touches the borders of the slot which makes it hard to read. should be centered in to a square like the counter on how many enemies I see in the portrait.
• I still need to be able to SHOOT in Realtime mode. No right click menü. Please. this is not Jagged alliance style!
• Some menu aspect need the "apply" button. Some not. Wired even as I understand why. So anti aliasing has not been changed as I thought, it will be implemented when switching to another menu. Fix this usability nightmare pls. Only for resultion you need to apply? The put the button behind that option directly.
• Dollar symbol in strategic layer is so squeezed, can't really READ it.
• Being in strategic layer: As a JA fan I tried to get into the sector. Possible by double click. Ok. But missed the buttons on the right corner. Now it is this GO triangle. It is okay but the basic layout of the JA2 strategic layer is something, you can ask me when waking up at night.
• Capital letters in the Battle Pop up "HOSTILE SECTOR" YOU HAVE ENCOUNTERD..." Pls. change.
• When in interrupt mode, the mercs which can't be used should be grayed out or something similar. I TRIED to use one merc, didn't get that one of them is in interrupt and nothing happend other than the one in interrupt walking as I tried to click on the other merc! haha! Even in JA2 only the active  mercs for interrupt were available.
• When one merc scouts an enemy, the other one out of range should STILL be able too shoot. No X here. Just a warning that it is out or range. This was done with blinking crosshair and a sound effect.
• need to be able to load different save games.
• +Quickload, quicksave on F8 ad F10?
• BUG: crosshair at torso. Now zooming in/out the target Information Torso changes to "random" which makes no sense. Trying to shoot does not work, as the merc walks now to the enemy (where the crosshair was).
• Minute 11:40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CujpJ6fA19w --> here you see, that enemies who appear (interrupt or normal) are commented on, an red circle indicator show which one was meant/seen. So you are always informed what is going on where. This is still missing!? Thx!
• Instead of BIA military sound, just again use JA2. So we feel at home. thx.
• crosshair (3:40 to 3:50: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2cDuXieY0E This is how it should behave when out of range and afterwards, out of APs.
• Glitch: There is a small lined border (square) around the maximum circle of crosshair only visible when zooming in
• Glitch: There is a yellow grid in the background when talking to story NPCs with dialogue boxes.
• During fights I can talk to NPCs with dialogue boxes. I think in JA2 they said: "Not now - too dangerous"??? Wrong?
• Reload should be possible by drag and drop ammo on top of weapon (+ the JA2 reload sound effect).
• Can't see when I am out of range whith my weapons. Ränge of weapons Not yet implemented?
• Can we get an option in the menu to get rid of the flies on dead bodies? I know. But the crows in JA2 were also optional.
• The first time in strategic layer, when money is subtracted (after 1 day militia training) there is a long lag then it shows -24$ etc above the sectors. Give us a balance sheet and we don't need this gimmick.

Can you please explain the new white indicator which turns into a needle like a compass, when seeing an enemy.

When you look at the video above (2:25) you land with the helicopter and there is action immedialety. So much going on and being commented on, item here, enemy there, success hit, died, goal achieved after sector win. Everything is more fast paced, you know what I mean? Ok this moving through the map is not possbile yet as the AI is not smart enough at the moment. But I see you really are hearing us and you do the right thing. Few days left is still concerning as many tasks are ahead but you are the first company which really made a great game. If I compare the video above to JA:F - for me it could feel unfair how hard we are here sometimes with wanting this and that. But I love, really love the game so far. Keep on doing it right! =) 

With more time we could built a perfect balanced and polished JA:F and JA3. I can see this now.

I am quite impressed with the progress. There is a lot to test and I won't rush into this one.

But out of the box, THANK YOU for returning the old trusted JA2 cursor. It's like finding a long lost friend.  And just as a big THANK YOU for making the auto fire true auto fire. The thrill is back! Can't wait to get my first AK now!

I'm going to go through this slowly and note down everything. Then when Steam version is ready I am going rocking and rolling on Twitch with it. Hopefully the game stopping bugs will be gone, nothing is more awkard during a stream than to stop dead, try to restart, hit another bug, restart, hit another... give up in frustration.

But glad to say, Thomas hasn't lost his touch with the magic whip. :)))

I agree 100%

I really understand the benefits from a flexible simple UI, especially if you have to rearrange elements during the development.

As Shadow said, it is not retro and dirty enough. This looks like a cheap war game ish simulation UI. With the lack of merc voices and interactions, I really fear that the soul of the game will be way to simple, generic and cold(Non existent).

Jagged alliance had always, at its core this theme of painted emotions, freedom for imagination, rpg connotation and love for details ... So far i miss those layers on JAF.

Btw, Shadow 86 makes really good postings, i agree with him all the time, plz listen to him, he gets it.

Thanks for the flowers ;-) I just hope we get the best out of this game. The actual update is really good. So sad that we don´t have 6 month more with updates like that than I am sure we would get a great game. But for now we all together must push that we get the best out of the current status. 

The funny thing is that JA2 takes place in the future and the whole JA2 UI looks more retro and dirty than JAF which plays in the 80´s.

So please FC make the UI more retro, dirty 80´s like so that we get the immersion and feeling of a game that takes place in the 80´s.

In Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business when you expend additional AP to aim at the enemy, on the final click before you cycle back to no extra AP the aiming circle will turn yellow without increasing the number of AP the shot will take. For example: 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10 -> 10 (yellow) -> 6.

 Found this post. As i Play ja style without cth indicator in % i Need to know from crosshair, When it makes no sense spending more ap. so if the CTH does not change a yellow indicator should be shown and the max spend ap is limited. Now I can shoot without wasting my APs.

EDIT: I know tested it against the configuration where I see the CTH. Now I see, that I can spend 8 APs in the circle for getting 1% or no more CTH. Does this make sense to you? Did JA2 do the same or limited it by using the yellow circle. 

Example: 5 > 8 > 12 (yellow). 16 would be possible, but as 0% cTH is added, this should't  been a possibility? Guys, what it the right thingie here? =)

Another crosshair bug:

I aim at an enemy. 14 APs left. Crosshair shows (white digits) 14 APs needed to shot. I click. What happens? The merc turn (2 APs are subtracted) and nothing happens anymore. I would have needed 16 APs with the turn. So the calculation should still show 14 APs needed for the shot, but red. Red because the merc NEEDS to turn to be able to shoot, which costs 2 APs. How did JA2 solve this? Maybe I am wrong and we shouldn't have asked to automatic turning mercs when aiming? Or in this situation the calculator needs to show 16 APs for the merc.

Agreed with comiclike icon.

But a green line would be a negative. Because we use a lot of green colors (palm trees, grass) the effect would be that you don't see the line - no contrast. I think the version now, white and red beeing able to indicate a destination point outside the max border, is quite right. Let us focus on getting the crosshair and UI right, which is really important.

Another thing:

After sector is free, automatical medicine pop-up - to prevent bleeding - should be displayed. So we can decide to auto-"heal" the wounded. The bandages now, which are used completely, are a JA online feature which I don't like. Where is the small and big medicine box?

crosshair:

- yes, the gradient blinking inside the crosshair is missing. This also applies to burst modes, auto fire.

- yellow circle is missing as described above

- when aiming with a merc, who has no Line of sight to an enemy, a sound effect like in JA2 should appear. inner circle is GRAY. This also applies to burst modes, auto fire.

- when aiming with a merc, that has a weapon which is out of range, a sound effect like in JA2 must be played.  inner circle is GRAY. But you can shoot. You need much luck to hit then. This also applies to burst modes, auto fire.

The crosshair could also flicker while aiming so it is more realistic and dynamic. This also applies to burst modes, auto fire.

- hud overlay problems

EDIT new bugs

- Spoke with Nedette "Spirit". I said, no don't wanna hire now. Leave. Then she dissapeared from the screen. like magic. Same goes for other NPCs for hire. Only in the first encounter. Later on, after reloading and speaking again, nothing happend.

- After hiring Spirit, I couldn't click her in the mini portraits. Need to "activate" her first by TAB or by clicking directly on her.

- After hiring "Dirty Outs" could only select him via TAB but the portraits was not displayed. After reentering the sector, I see him, can't walk with him.Even in other sectors -now TAB does not work. Wired. Now reloading savegame and it works.

- Second dialogue line of David Mace. There is a "space character" too much between "I reveled in this for _ _ a while =)

- On the terrasse where David Mace stands, I had a savegame where every merc was glowing like behind a wall. All the time.

- Is the burst/auto fire is nothing like JA2! Compare it please again to JA2 auto fire and burst sound/animation/ etc.. 

- When fleeing out of an encounter, the moral bar should drop. Where is the moral bar? I see only a too bulky blue and red. make it smaller pls.  Will some mercs comment the decision to retreat?

- after a few good kills adrenalin pops in and the moral bar should GO up.

- the Druganov doesn't loose ammo when using it.

-

Yes Archo I also thought a white line could be enough. So lets focus on the other important features. Also I can't wait to see the animated portraits combinated with more and better merc commentaries. That worries me, because this is the soul of JA and at the moment there is no indication how good or bad this feature will be. That is for a JA title so important. 

It worries me more atm that the auto fire doesn't work right as well as the crosshair. Remember? I said we need time to iterate on the crosshair. You can't do it right the first time. Getting the commentaries in should be much easier to manage.

Also, the bullets must fly in a straight line with the same gap (in time and centimeters) out of the gun as cool as possible. Overall there are milliseconds of delays when shooting. I compare it to a car. The steering (aiming, shooting) should be direct, with immediate feedback. In JA:F it is still a bit indirect. Walking -> Turning > Aiming > Shooting must be perfectly balanced so it seems smooth.

Can anyone pls make a video of the burst mode? Could be a performance issue. Is the burst depended on the weapon and caliber? eg. burst of FA-MAS is different to AK-47?
Edit: I checked it again...it is not done right. The M16 seems like a play weapon.

Here it comes. A tiny wall of text. But first things first...

All recruitable NPCs at Spice's bar respawn and can be recruited again. I think an enemy invasion triggers the respawn. I found them again after a battle and as you can see I now proudly employ two David Maces.

I got attacked in F8, won the battle and going to the Strategic view after battle I discovered my team has been ported to Oz. Look at the dotted line out of screen. But when I issued a moving order on the map the team magically returned to F8 and moved where I told them to.

NOW A LONG LIST OF ISSUES 

Foreword: I haven't gotten very far, just a bit into second island. I start with the bad things I've noticed (some might be a repeat, I know) then I'll mention a few of the BIG pluses we've got.

- Recruit Screen, when clicking the cog in Strategic to view merc inventories, has an overlay issue with the map (icons on map show through it)

- Options and maybe other buttons don't work during battle (reproted already)

- Edge scrolling by default seems a bit too fast (might be my mouse)

INVENTORY AND LOOT ISSUES

- Take All - doesn't work properly. The proper order when clicking it would be for items to go into Squad inventory first, where from we can pick whatever we need. Which brings me to a set of annoying gripes I have with the inventory and loot system:

a) after battle I need to bloody go click 20 loot bags to get items, there's no sector inventory, no auto-loot, nothing; i have carpal syndrome already, I don't need it aggravated.

b) looted items are forced to go in various containers, not where i want them to. I hate that. If I want to drag an item into Sector, then let me, dont make me put it in soldier inventory only to drag it out of there. 

c) Sector inventory has two rows but it's filled in a very buggy way - aka only part of the first row fills, then you gotta scroll until you die of boredom. Inventory management is a bore. 

d) The Squad inventory seems infinite (?!) then some items refuse to go there. Then they go. There's no sorting, even more so the items resort themselves each time you pull one and move you to the beginning of the row. With such a small window it's hell to sort through the sector loot.

e) You can switch mercs when arranging inventory, you can't switch mercs when looting a bag 

f) quick slots in combat view have ghosting (small ones). I had a gun equipped on Ivan and it showed on Agent. But on Agent it wasn't selectable. 

- goal achievement message goes right over loot window annoyingly and stays there for a long time; frustrating and not necessary.

- there is no option to unload a gun and recover the ammo - which goes right to the "stack items" and "merge items" issues - which also lack.

 NPC BUGS

- Recruiting new mercs at Spice's bar is a nice twist, but there's no soul there. They all have the same dialogue options, click click click, you're in. That window is ugly, small and tells no story. In JA2 the dialogue window popped up on middle on the screen for a reason. And you actually had some choices when trying to recruit them, some of them wrong choices.

- there's an NPC that is supposed to have a shop in Badilla, but there's no shop button anywhere (guess not ready yet)

- there's no contextual quest dialogue; although I loved the Vicky spin on prison quest, I kinda expected her father to react differently when SHE talked to him and told him she's coming with us.

BLEEDING & FATIGUE

- bleeding is way too bleeding critical and the damn bandages are more rare than a goose teeth. Stop making more junk items, put in alternative bandages or reusable medkits. A clean shirt would do fine as a makeshift bandage (hint!). 

- fatigue is cool and all but my Agent kept fainting like a little girl. The energy should drop on certain conditions, like being severely wounded, carrying way too much weight (and knowing about it), not just walking across a street.

MILITIA & OTHER MISC BUGS

- I was able to train militia in the Miguel farm before fight. None of them showed up, despite being trained, to help me fight the bad guys. Actually militia seems to be only a virtual layer everywhere, there's no physcail presence from them in actual realtime battles.

- I too got a negative balance on recruiting NPCs 

- after you issues a squad movement order in real time during a fight, the mercs don't stop moving, despite the fact that enemy was spotted; they should all freeze.

- full autofire is impressive, but maybe when the target is dead the merc should stop firing? Not sure here, i kinda love the idea of the penalty aka an empty clip, compensates the sheer insanity...

COMBAT, SPOTTING, DEPLOYMENT ISSUES

- finding enemies is sometimes even more annoying than in JA2, especially the last one remaining, due to the triangualr view cone. I passed by an enemy 5 times before he finally decided to shoot me so I can figure out where he is. He was 5 meters from road, behind a rock, I plain sight - if my mercs would not wear horse glasses; view cone when shooting I agree with, view cone when exploring it's annoying and leads to frustration, there needs to be a middleground solution here.

- also related to the above, when you're in the middle of nowhere in no mood or shape to fight, you're trapped; there's no way to walk out of the sector, which is pretty bad. 

- and also related to movement, when you redeploy in a sector from Strategic, the map gets respawned and everyone gets moved to default entry positions, which makes defending a sector the most annoying experience ever; there needs to be a way (if Unity allows) to memorize temporary locations on sector exit, otherwise it's a big minus from any JA2 fan.

- same as above, when enemy attacks a sector, they bunch up nicely in a corner of a map; take that and a couple of guys with fullauto AKs and you got a massacre, not a battle; take that and a small group of mercs with no firepower and you get a massacre going the other way

INTERRUPTS et CO

- still hate how interrupts work, there are too many limitations and too different logic from JA2; must make it an automated skills + weapon + AP check.

- instead of interrupt button, make a Stealth button already, with proper AP costs and proper stealth effects

- instead of interrupt button make a Reserve AP button like JA2 has (and allows player to save APs for single/burst/auto fire on next turn)

- do saved APs transfer to next turn? anyone tested it?

---------------

GOOD POINTS

- with the addition of the cursor and autofire the game has gotten closer to that "soul of JA2"; i still have rclicking to go prone/crouch/stand-up, but I can live with that.

- with the addition of the new armor items, I've started to really dig the quickslots; but what lacks for this system to be truely great is the posibility to stack LBE and leg pouches over armor... i know this has been a gameplay decision, but I don't like it, it sacrifices so much good stuff that becomes throw-away

- also love the panic for the enemy ,although it's not very clear what it does, it's a good step forward toward a morale system.

- comparing weapons is also great, but again, the inventory window is so damn crammed and crowded most people would probably not even know such feature exists

- the Strategic map is lovely and the new touches to the old maps have added nice value.

- love the loot cursor (graphics look like a placeholder, but it's mere existence made the gameplay way better).

---

This is all, I think it's enough for a short test. I'll edit and add more as I play.

Strategic layer

• We need to mark a sector (border around it, highlight it) and then be able to have differnt options.
• A 2nd button on the right bottom corner to go into the sector. The "GO-triangle" is not enough. Often you think in sectors not squads. When marking a sector, the squads inside the sector should be highlighted. All features JA2 for a reason.
• Inventory and items could have been copied from JA2. Then it would have worked at least. What we now have is messy. sorry guys. Thx Shanga for explaining why.
• The mercs in strategic layer need their names displayed. They are not random BIA characters. They are unique and have personality. Each person has a name.
• Will mercs need to sleep? Where can I see contract length, stats ect of merc?
• In strategic layer I need to see each merc in detail, as I need to think about strength when assigning a job. This is why the combined system (right click to get mercs details) works so great.
• The cities need NAMES in strategic layer.
• What we see in the following screenshot is the workflow between a sector inventory, the mercs details screen to place items and the task assignment window. Do you have the time to reinvent the workflow and build several UI layers where we iterate 10 times? I would prefer to copy JA2 here and let it be.
• 
• 
• 

I want to remind you again on the UI thread:

http://www.jaggedallianceflashback.com/forum/1790/3885

Here we see these UI parts reworked and reused. Just a hint in another direction. The UI just looks good at the moment but has no real workflow.

I would also like to reconsider again the ammo boxes. I can't tell which one fits to which weapon. And later we have different colors (armor-piercing -> red, blue for xy). As in the screenshots above, different clips have different shape and ammo box can't be misinterpreted as trash itmes (box of matches e.g.).

- dialogue boxes are, as Shanga said, not perfect. There are not dynamic enough. There are too transparent (can't often read the white fonts as there is no contrast anymore). I think it is a failure that you can read what the merc will say in the answer choices. You will never find a solution for that and with translation you will have text expansion . That is why JA2 used predefined classes. Look at minute 5:00, they try to tell a story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZP2hi19V1I

For that you only need triggered responses and some buttons to communicate (Friendly means go forward in dialogue, ect.). You tried a more fallout approach which does not work for me atm. What have we gained with your new system? More choice? Can't tell. In JA2 I could hire NPC or he declined when giving the wrong answer. 14:40 m shows you, that you can get choices via simple YES and NO popups. 

Perhaps you have a workflow in mind and the new UI will come together in the next update. But when and how?

Bleeding doesnt work (only works during combat, after that the bleeding contidition continues but nothing happens, until next combat - then he remembers to bleed properly again ;) ).

Shop is not avaiable?

I hate to say that you could be right. I gave it several chances, perhaps not yet enough, but the new system seems only better in theory. During gameplay it misses the charm. Enemies are standing in front do nothing, then ask for interrupts instead of shooting at me. Why would anyone save for an interrupts when you enemy is in front of you? In real time mode I cannot shoot or go into interrupt to defend a position. This together does not work.

Perhaps a middleground would be this: 

I should get interrupts when new enemies are in line of sight and not when I am in a special modus. That means, I my squad didn't use all bullets

Another element which is missing: fatigue enemies or enemies laying on ground for 2-3 rounds caused by less energy (lots of hits), grenades, gas grenades, melee attacks, nearly dead enemies etc. Then you save APs let them be, new enemies are coming (heard the shots) and they run into 2 of my mercs -> Interrupt! Great, the saved AP is now a benefit. But would I have gone through all mercs each round to activate the interrupt?

EDIT: Now enemies which have no energy lay on the ground and you can shoot them. But there is no animation for beeing fatigue on the ground! In JA2 the body relaxed and the head kind of went into sleep on the arms or so. You can animate that, I know =)

But going into crouch, prone should also happen, when there are heavy under fire (like supression fire). In JA2 it worked to shoot a lot on enemies to make them loose APs as they needed to change stance and loose energy.

Also, something to test - do merc contract expire? The Spice bar mercs have options to hire them for various lengths of time (the regular mercs dont have that option, strange enough). So if you hire Mace for 24h, does he go away when 24h pass? I don't think so, but I haven't done any specific test.

INTERRUPTS IN JA2 vs JAF

About interrupts, I hate them because they're illogic. Interrupts in JA2 were simulating suprise encounters. The better soldier got to shoot first. In JAF there is no logic behind interrupts - soldiers get to have interrupts when they shoot each other in plain sight... where exactly is the suprise there?! Someone completely misunderstood what interrupts are and how they were used in JA2.

Please read up on Sandro's Improved Interrupt System here:

http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/307765/1

That's how a proper interrupt system should work.

I only had a few minutes to play the new alpha build so far, but a few things:

1) Looking much better! but I agree it still looks generic.  Is it Robocop visor view inspired?  If so, please, no.  I know some people have been pining for the sort of pre-computer paper dossier look, but I guess another school of thought would be a early computer screen look (green on black background -black needs to be darker?)

2) Big thank you to all the passionate people with a lot more time than me giving such detailed feedback.  Please listen to these guys FC, they say what I'm thinking 50% of the time and the other 50% of the time I'm thinking "I wish I thought of that" :)

3) It is much too tedious for me to get far in the game with limited time and no heals and seemingly no "strategic" way to approach enemies.  It seems the only tactic worth trying is hire a merc with a rifle then snipe everything from cover?

@gdalf - if you lack time to test, only way to do it is like this:

Go into your Steam Library:

SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Jagged Alliance Flashback\game_Data\StreamingAssets\Original\Data\Units

Open Units.json, find unit with ID "CIA_Agent" (not "CIA_Agent1 or 2"). Find his stats. Give him like 500 AP and 1000 HP. Save. Start a new game. Now you got a Superman that can simply waltz between all enemies and shoot them point blank in the face. 

        "Stats": {
          "AP": 500,
          "HP": 1000,

Of course this pretty much kills all the fun and might at some point spin the game into infinite loops, but at least you get to explore the map without much fuss

Of course, a backup of the Units.json is advisable. And if that's not at hand, a Steam file check and restore will fix it for you.

Heh ok thanks for the tip!

Firing burst and full auto now sprays bullets continuously rather than single shot

I can now definetely say: The auto fire and burst mode is not right. It is not like in JA2 where the bullets are fired in a row. Still single shots with more bullets. Not so cool, guys. Is the spread when using auto fire is worse than burst? This is how it sould be. Perhaps now it is too much spread.

The maximal bullets with auto fire are depended on APs? The more AP I have, the more bullets will come? 

Also the first time I want to shoot at an enemy, there is an animation "take aim" and then there is like a turn animation and fire animation. That takes toooo much time. It is not fluent enough and seems like 3 seperate animations in a row instead of a living person who just fire. I need to go through enemy lines like a merc not a beginner.

Also the bullets tail is to long. It seems like I am shooting rods instead of bullets!?

Dialogues boxes

The answers to dialogues are in the buttons. Now I see, that does not work. You could do it like this: Give us a printer/log/space for answer possibilies and put the anwers information there AND highlight a keyword in these sentences. Now these keyword are placed in the answer buttons and represents and the written answer. Now I can choose between the answers by choosing the correct keyword. The other way to do it would be like JA2 with predefined answers (friendly, recruit, YES, NO.

- crosshair shows "single shot" where it should say "swing" or so with melee weapons. Also the UI is incosistent here. Work in progress I guess.

- I fought in a battle to defend the town. All enemies were grouped/spawned like chess figures. My mercs were spawned on different sides of the map. NO chance. Also the enemies didn't walk or care like they couldn't. They stand in their rows and fired. So here are some refinements necessary when defending/spawning.

One thing - because of it being a Kickstarter project, there's going to be a high number of "junk" NPCs in the game. Because they're backer-named, they also often look unusual and therefore "interesting" even when they have no function.

I don't know if it counts as WoW-ification but perhaps quest and other mission important NPCs can have different colored names?

My main concern is the interruption system. When it was first described I wrote that it would not work, I was hopeful that somehow it would work, but it isn't working at all.

Seeing as there is little to no time I can't hope that you can code a new one that is better in this timeframe. So if the interruption mechanic doesn't work right now I would suggest to remove it entirely and implement something after release. Honestly, the game will play better without the current interruption system.

@Hyrax

I agree. No experiments just before release. Go back to the JA2 system as we described:

take it an automated skills + weapon + AP check and add that you can only use quickslots.

Later after release one could go further (see thread that Shanga mentioned) and test a new system. Interrupts should now focus on who sees who first. The JA2 code will reveal how it was done. As a player I don't care that is seemed sometimes random. You knew to use high experienced mercs on the front and you knew that grenades helped to prevent interruptions. Also during night, with "Scope" or other night ops specialist you had a better chance to see more and see the enemy first. In JA:F I generally have the feeling that you see to far and weapon range does not count.

Not going to comment on elements today, but just want to say that this build is merely a snapshot of development and not a fully tested and balanced build. 

it's on alpha branch and therefore will have bugs and will not be balanced. 

I'm going to try to mostly leave out stuff that was already mentioned unless I think it's very important.

Bugs:
- I would love to have the bank that handles our account in JAF since no matter who you hire, you never loose any money. You can (in theory) hire infinite mercs in the sectors. It's really nice to get to the farm with 6 mercs. ;-)
- Confirmations ("copy that") get repeated several times when moving as a group.

The Good:
- Loving the new aiming reticle. This feels a lot better
- I like what you've done with the place (changes to sectors ;-))
- I love having mercs hirable in a sector, they don't yet leave at the end of their hired time, though.
- Nice to see some (more or less) real bursts and auto fire. The animation still needs work, though. It is still way too slow, still feels more like seperate shots than a burst.

The Bad:
- UI still needs a ton of work. The reasons have already been mentioned above and in other threads.
- The squad inventory needs a lot of work. At the very least some sorting options and we need a 'put all in squad inventory' button on containers, if it's the only way of inventory management we are going to get. Otherwise inventory management is going to be an aweful experience.
- Nice "Utility Strap Vest". Too bad I'm never gonna use it because that would mean much less armor. Please let us carry stuff like this in addition to armor. This would give the inventory system a lot more of a 1.13 feel as well, that a lot of people (including me) would appreciate, I think. Overall a couple of new (non-trash) items I don't see any use at all for.
- When in 4:3 resolution, it is impossible to use the squad inventory. The part of the inventory screen that's at the far right is not shown on screen, so I can't read the stats of the weapon and can't switch to the next page of the squad inventory, because the button for it is off-screen.
- If you want us to use pistols more (which you obviously do (interrupt mode)), you need to give us more of those and especially a lot more ammo for them.

The Ugly (not literally ;-) ):
- Still the same resolution issues: I have a 4:3 monitor, but I would like to play in 16:9, mostly because I want to record the game as well. Right now, this is only possible in windowed mode (otherwise as mentioned before black bars missing screws up the whole screen). However, it is not possible to move the camera in any other way than using the keyboard which is extremely annoying. With the above mentioned problems in 4:3 resolution, I can't even play the game in full screen at all any more without not being able to use all features of the game. Imho at least some of this needs to be fixed asap before releasing this build to the public because there must be a ton of people with those problems then. It definitely needs to be fixed before release.
- The interrupt system needs huge changes for the reasons others have mentioned a lot better than I could. What Shangs linked above reads great. At the very least the system needs to be changed in a way that lets the one interrupting getting the first shot under certain conditions and lets the guy talking to farmer miguel do that without immediately being shot at from all sides when the enemies appear out of nowhere (which they shouldn't anyway imho).
- The loot system is extremely annoying right now. I could live with it if necessary, but I'd rather not.
- I know I said it before, but please add voice acting for the story NPCs if at all possible. It would make the game soooooooooooo much better. Just reading those lines is boring.
- At the very least please voice the mercs we can hire in the sectors (and I don't just mean confirmations). We want to build an emotional connection with them right from the start. And PLEASE give all the mercs more interactions. Right now they are just bodies for hire with less soul than a random XCOM EU soldier, especially since you took out most of their voice acting from the hiring screen (please get those back in there).

We really need to see the (mostly) complete game soon, if the game is supposed to be released within a month. At the moment, it doesn't seem like you are going to give us any time for fine-tuning the game mechanics, maybe not even testing all the features before release. Sure, some of that can be done after release, but it's going to give a lot of people a bad first expression if too much of that stuff is still work in progress to some extend. This is probably gonna mean that the game won't be perceived as well as it could be which certainly would lead to it making less money and with that not a lot of chances for improvements after release (I really hope you are planning some, because the game desperately seems to gonna need them).

That's it for my current play session. I'm gonna play a bit more later and maybe add another post.

Played a couple of hours. I mostly agree with what has been written by others already. Lots of improvement, but still much much work to do.

I think the following issues/bugs have not been reported yet :

• If a save is done in the middle of a fight, reloading may go into an infinite loop. Killing the game then restarting it allows the save to be loaded, though.
• Vicki appears in the roster before you meet her in the game. 
• E11 : no victory horn, sector is marked green on the strategic map, but not on the tactical map. Therefore all NPCs believe that the sector is not cleared and all E11 quests are botched. The last foe was in panic, the bug might come from it.

LOADING SECTOR BUG

G10 - I got attacked by roaming enemy patrols, sector was stuck in infinite loading loop. Tried to enter sector when non-agrro, same thing. So sector is bugged. Considering it's a road sector to the bottom of the map... not good. The most weird thing was that even when replacing the sector files with another sector (K10, you know why) I wasn't able to load it.

Since save keeps putting me back to the same "before attack" situation (I am already in G10 on Strategic map), it's a game stopping bug 100%.  Another example why FLEE button is needed in any situation.

MISSED SHOTS

The graphical representation of missed shots is very very bad. And it's very evident when shooting from point blank range (no idea why someone could miss from 10cm, but oh well). The bullet trajectory is almost 45deg to right or left of the target... which is ridiculous. Imho guns don't shoot in 45 degree angles no matter how bad you are at shooting them.

Shanga is a MAN!

Moving sector/enemy attack bug:

I was attacked while moving sectors, even though my squad was (graphically) almost "out" of the sector.  In JA2, if you were moving, you couldn't be attacked (I guess it was assumed you already "retreated").  What made this funny was that when combat began, my squad was spread evenly in the center of the map... There should also be a retreat option if an enemy squad attacks your square that you're stationary in.

Yep, I encountered exactly the same thing described by gdalf when I landed in the broken G10 sector. I tried to avoid the fight and get out, but no matter what direction I went, I always got caught by the roaming patrol en-route and dragged back to G10 fight.

Will there be another big update before release? Hopefully. I hope our lists and comments helped anyways - all the best for the next sprint.

1 Update soon and then I think we'll add oneor two more alpha branch updates before release. 

I really like the feedback you give in here. it definetely has the most meat to it and I usually collect all and forward it to the right people on the team. We can't react on all accounts, just not enough time, but it's not like you speak to a deaf ear :) 

About the enemy squads, I don't think the player should get to see if they are in motion between squares.  Intel about their movement should be a solitary sighting, i.e. you know they're in a square but not what they're about to do - just like in old JA.  So you don't know whether an attack is coming, but that they are near.

If an enemy attacks with some successful roll, it might be counted as an "ambush" in which your team have no chance to escape (remember bloodcat ambushes?), but otherwise if it is a normal attack (or if there is some merc with the right perk who can't get caught unawares) there should be an option to quietly pull out. Enemy ambushes should also be more likely vs a city than out in the open, if that can be factored into the roll.  The advantage of guerilla warfare and all that.

I think in looking at this alpha build, it is very clear you guys are definitely listening and that is great to see.  This is easily one of the best betas I have seen in terms of dev responsiveness (maybe having a small but mature and dedicated following with extremely detailed comments helps, rather than thousands of people nerdraging over whether or not to have a hot tub in a spaceship *cough*). Our worry is mostly about whether you have enough time to complete all the things you set out to do (and take in additional inputs)!

I hope you can put as much feedback in the next updates as possible until the final build. But keep all this dedicated and detailed feedback so you can work on the game after release. I think we wrote the most important stuff in here now you have to get everything done. I wish you all the best ;-)

I think the usual answer to all questions is 42 = JA2 !

How should we build the sector inventory? 

like in JA2. :)

How should the crosshair behave?

Like in JA2 :) :) 

How customizable should the weapons be?

At least like in JA2. :) :) :)

And the interrupts?

Like in JA2. :o)

I think many aspects (like graphics and sector look&feel) are so damn good right now, you don't have to polish them, they are perfect. I'm eager to explore all maps after release! 

I forget to add, bullet motion through bodies is very unrealistic. Part of the problem is that there are only two dimensions in this game so literally any square it passes through has an inordinately high chance to hit something behind it once the trajectory has been calculated.

1) If you're wearing armor it shouldn't be able to pass through the target easily.

2) Once it hits someone it should slow down (i.e. do less damage on subsequent hits), and it should have a high chance to "miss" anything behind it (bullets change trajectory once they pass through an object, no matter how soft)

3) If there's ammo types, the change in trajectory should be less for AP ammo, more for "normal" ammo, and extreme for HP ammo (but usually missing)

If we would go and make the bullet trajectories even more realistic we would have to have different models for 7.62 and 5.56 caliber. 7.62 is known to hit and go through while 5.56 is known for tumbling and bouncing around inside the target.

It botheres me a little that there is so much armor, I would imagine that a random island with a prince would have guys with machetes, ak-47s (or some other wide spread weapon), green military jackets, hats and barrets. The more trained guys could sport some armor.
So I would prefer more unarmored enemies over smaller amount of enemies with armor  
 

Yeah that would be nice, but right now I'm talking about if you have 3 mercs in a row and the enemy shoots at you in a straight line, you can literally have the bullet going through all 3 of them dealing about the same damage.  Which stretches belief...

Well..time is really the key here..it's not like we have an army of coders who can jump in and add all that before release, some yes, but not all. And naturally the feedback is saved for after the initial release, so can be added later, but also based on how well the game does. 

The UI has been mentioned several times, but for now I only think it's possible to do tweaks as the guy making them is not available anymore, so no one to make major changes...as I pointed out earlier we should have posted his design early and then got feedback on it in the initial stages..captain hinsight ..

2 JAF Admin, so when can we expect 0.7 build on EA steam?

Beginning of next week I'd say

Is the UI concept finished? What we saw is completely unfinished. Or did he just do the concept art and no programming/graphics?

The whole UI history is really disappointing. Just hope there will be any feedback we wrote here that will change it in some ways. (smaller size, placed on the bottom of the screen and so on)

Sure game development is a changing process but you had the perfect style that is simple and good looking from the beginning. I don't get it sorry. That doesn´t mean that the actual UI is totally bad but it doesn´t suit the 80´s.

That here was perfect for the game:

What pisses me off is that fact that the worst parts of the game are hardcoded. UI included. Wrong. Very wrong.

And when I look at update 9 I wonder where all those features are that where written down there:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2079547763/jagged-alliance-flashback/posts/470796

Stuff like that:

More Details

Adding attachments will decrease or increase your weapon stats. The choices you make will determine things like weapon range, weight, repair expenses and most importantly, damage! Weapon customization and development is not about crafting weapons from the ground up, but taking the weapons you find or buy in the world and tweaking those by changing or upgrading their parts. Only by recruiting a character such as a gunsmith will you get access to the meat of weapon customization and repair options.

Or this:

Weapon Attachments

Attachments for weapons are diverse and the amount of attachments depend on the weapon and its number of slots. Slots included on most weapons are the top (scopes), muzzle (silencer, fire suppressor), under barrel (bipod, handgrip) and stocks but the amount of slots can also be expanded via modifications such as rails. Please note some weapons will have a lot of room for customization, while others will not (A pistol with grenade launcher attached wouldn't make too much sense most times, eh?).

Added it to the missing features list. I don't know but it get longer and longer. Hope they can fix and integrate some of these things asap before next update on "hopefully" thursday.

The bloated UI without sector inventory, stacks, "work in progress" signs is a dissapointing at least. It's such a ride here, ups and downs.

In kickstarter FC dreamed or had so many great ideas without knowing how small the budget will be at the end. I can relate to that.

I can understand they don't make exactly the features they mentionned in the KS, to some extent... Things can go wrong or unespected during development, after all.

However, they had a goal, and stretch goals. All those features they mentionned in the KS (and we won't have it seems) concerned the 'goal', not a stretch goal. Don't excuse the waste of features by "they didn't know how small the budget would be at the end". They had the money they asked for and a little more.

Exactly. The kickstarter campaign claimed that 350K + their own additional funds would be able to provide the core game of Jagged Alliance, resembling JA2. We didn't ask for JA2 1.13 here. It's shocking that JA: Flashback is a game which doesn't even have many of the core functions of JA 1, which is a 20 year old game.... I expected a game with the core features of JA2, new graphics and feel, but then perhaps with just 50% of game content.

FC is perfectly capable of making a true successor to JA2. However, the whole production process has been flawed from the get go. The kickstarter campaign was weak and not planned through at all. At this moment, it makes me feel that the 350K was just a random number, and now that funds are running thin, they just rush the game with broken features and lots of missing core features. That's a great way to tarnish the IP.

Perhaps I am being too harsh, but I feel the game is really turning into a disappointment. A classical case of: what could have been...... I still feel that this game has the greatest potential, but it needs more development time. A poor release would alienate the fans forever, and would not bring in new fans either. 

Yeah we don't want to be unfair the budget is very low but I think they should have been focus on the basic features of JA2 only and get it done. A good basic game nothing more. But at the moment even the basic combat and other stuff don't really work well. 

Also in the updates they talked about so much stuff (not basic stuff) but in the end it is clear that with this budget there was nearly every feature that is more complicated is not possible to implement. So the budget calculation went somewhere in the clouds.

And now they cut features down. I think they could make this game great but with that budget the whole calculation went wrong right from the beginning.

It is hard to say but I think the actual status is in other games alpha and from now on the testing should really begin. (plus 6 month of development time)

I really wouldnt bother... if the release would be half a year away... not in a few days... and half the team would be working on another project already -.-

Back in 2003 was implemented honest destructible environment in  "Silent Storm". In 2007 in "Hired guns the jagged edge" was made perfect level design with big maps:poison-green palms, romantic rivers, historic military fort, railway station with wonderful textures cars,mines, port with a giant battleship ...In "7.62" there was a ton of weapons with attachments! This is all the old Russian games and all had different levels of height, roofs, stairs.

And now, in 2014 with a budget of  500k $ and experience in the creation of TBS, with all the developments iof jagged alliance series and knowledge Unity engine just can not realize the simple things like destructible (and we know that one person could do it already http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEoilXeUpWc&index=2&list=PLslh2btRsCEqUEhPkYuof4R04tFUPNpEI ) , can not make a beautiful memorable locations instead of 1 floor "Lego set" without of roof???

You will bury faith in yourselves and in JAgged Alliance (again)
I'm disappointed because 21 october.

Noooo!

I was just preparing for a UI redesign mod, no joke.

Yes, why change from that fitting style to the Command&Conquer theme?

The Dream:
This file like archive and CIA/Mercenary office style. Lower ingame saturation, no white flowers on the green grass, no childish animals.

To be honest, I couldn't care less about saturation and "childish animals" and even though I don't like the style they chose for the UI, I can easily live with that. What I do care about is functionality, features and even more so the feel of the game (voice acted main NPCs, merc interactions :'-( ).

I would say leave the style be (unless it can be done simultanously) and work on the features. Sadly those are lacking quite a bit, either because they are just not there or because they are not working very well.

What I find disturbing is that we obviously didn't even get a look at the full UI before it was pretty much set in stone. With such an avid following, I wish they had used the fanbase and us alpha testers a lot more, for example give us a draft of the UI before implementing it.

I don't buy that argument. That's bait and switch at its finest. If you ask for $250k and say this will let us do this and that, and then turn around and say "Oops, sorry, wasn't enought to do both so we're only doing this. If you want that, it will cost more." Shit like that makes me loose any respect for anyone pulling this stuff.

@Syrop

That is not what I meant. I argue, that during the campaign FC wanted to discuss features that could find a way into the game. They discussed that in anticipation of more backers, they didn't promise some of this discussed features. What they promised is a basic JA2. And now you can argue if a sector inventory counts towards that =)

Yeah I agree with Syrop! If we would talk about the stretch goals and not about the core game mechanics than I would say ok but the most promised features for the core game should work good and with the asked 350.000$ they should deliver even if its hard and we all trusted in FC that is something we shouldn't forget.

Also all the feedback in here is because we trusted in the game. Now it seems like the game will be rushed and just another JA clone. In the end I still hope they can deliver but right now there isn't much hope left. When even the UI guy isn't available and other people went to space hulk than it is clear why this can't work well plus this rushed release. 

IMO, sector inventory is an integral sub-component of player inventory in almost ANY game. The least it should have is a single container for every dropped item on the map. We can debate the semantics, but not having that seems like a really poor design decision. Whoever thought, "Ah, that's not important." should probably not design these types of games. And if someone said, "Wow, that's too difficult to program or takes too much time to do" is probably in the wrong line of work.

I agree. And you know what? FC knows. They know that we wanted a sector inventory, we discussed that. The question is when and why did they decide against it instead of pushing it!? That is a question we as supporters are aloud to ask. Pls respond.

they could still take the money from shitcomposer ^^

ask the community, take the money and another 6 months

Peal, pls tell me, did you try to mod this game already? Where is the whole modding community that wanted to make this game better? Perhaps we can count on them to correct or add features? I think a sector inventory cannot be done by modders. Only story, maps, NPCs etc.!?

I would not worry about the community, I would worry about the hard coded elements, like the UI.

Inventory is not the biggest problem. Sirtech placed so much love and detail into JA2 that they got bankrupt. That businessplan is not on the road for FullControl.

Prepare for a disapointment if you compare JAF to JA2 with every of it's features.

I was wondering the same thing. During KS campaign, they were promoting the fact that all these modders from 1.13 and 7.62 Blue Sun were going to have influence on the game development. This begs the question, what was suggested that actually made it into the game?

Modding as of it's own definition, is in need of a game that has been released. Influence? Ask Shanga ^^

That is not true. JA2 didn't do very well but in some countries. And the love of details was some of the reasons. But wiz8 was the main reason why the went bankrupt.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/why-did-sir-tech-go-bankrupt.53695/

True. But in this day and age, with Early Access and Alpha/Beta builds, developer forums, etc, it can be fairly evident early on what can and cannot be modded.

In a later interview during game's alpha release, game's designer Ian Currie also noted the addition of role-playing and strategy elements compared to the previous title. He also explained that—while the tactical game mode was well suited for multiplayer—they would not be implementing it explaining that non-linear story and role-playing elements didn't suit multiplayer.[44] The developers also explained the game being delayed due to heavy improvements in the game engine, graphics and the creation of a detailed world, and originally expected to release in October 1998.[43] Currie explains the game engine had several ground-up rewrites and they spend significant time with game's physics and projectile ballistics, as well as the creation of the non-linear storyline

wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagged_Alliance_2

So even Ian Currie decided to put in 6 month more of development time to get a better game engine and perfect projectile ballistics and a non-linear storyline. This is what is missing right now in JA:F (burst mode as JA2) and FC could just look into the past and see what Sirtech did then.  + 6 month. We need at least 3 as graphics and maps(world is already perfect.

Just for fun... JA trivia

http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/video_games/video_games_g-k/jagged_alliance.html

Exactly, but I think there is one major difference between Sir-Tech and FC. JA was Ian's "baby", he built it from the ground up. With JA2, Shaun took it further, but it was still JA in essence. Sure there were deadlines, but they wanted to get it right. For FC, it's probably just another project, no matter how devoted they may feel, at the end of the day, it comes down to dollars and cents for Thomas. He has a studio to run and bills to pay. They are unlikely to work days and nights for free as opposed to someone emotionally invested in a project.

I don't know how easy it would have been to create a moddable UI with Unity and without source code or some external dll support. I think pretty difficult and maybe close to impossible. I can live with the UI style - and think the style chosen was probably because it is easier to code external windows. However, I also wish seeing UI improvements later especially the sector inventory for start. Hopefully it's possible later on as I think one mentioned goal was to take the usability into account and trying to do even a better UI than in JA2.

They sadly cannot delay the release date for several reasons. My assumption is that they had this week to add new features and next week to polish the game. Then the review copies need to be send to the reviewers and manufacture the German edition as it comes with a DVD disc. After that they can spend a week for another polishing. Note: 21st October is a release date for Dreamfall: Chapters too (another Kickstarter project), let's see which game gathers more press on the day.

I could build an new UI with HTML/CSS/JAVA, it's very easy. It also could be modable if you let me in the css and html files. Change some margins and backgrounds could do magic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr3ftwo-_Cs

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9670

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/2413

Why not? Bitcomposer has money :D

That is cool, didn't know that you can do that with unity. But HTML and CSS and Java is not enough to create a sector inventory. You need to have access to the source code and hook some inner code to the UI elements. Would like to know how much time FC would calculate to do a basic sector inventory with drag&drop in unity.

The Sector Inventory and the UI are two completely different things. The UI is purly layout and an new Inventory would be a new function.So if I talk about making an new UI, I talk ablout making it look like the KS concept. You are right, I could not programm an new Inventory system.

Oh, Unity comes with CSS/HTML UI support for desktop applications, nice. But Full Control has apparently used some other older approach making this not possible (compared to .NET more WinForms like approach instead of newer XAML).

Yes it would be nice if bitComposer could help the project monetarily.

This whole thing was done, so they wouldn´t neet bitcomposer.... 

edit: when i see that even Obsidian pushes Pillars of Eternity back to 2015.. though the game beeing in a much more advanced state than this....

lets hope for the best, i think a release on the 21 would be a "disaster", but that's only my perspective, i don't know anything about the current state of development.

It will be no disaster if the game is way much further than the actual build. But there is still no animated portraits, still no good working combat or AI, still no real economy, still no good working UI or UI look, still no advanced merc commentaries and interaction and still tons of bugs. 

If all this will be fixed until release than it will be no disaster . . . !

I agree, if they manage to lock down the existing features into a finished state, there's hope. Hell of an effort if you ask me, but all we can do is hope.

Well if they manage to pull all that in 2-3 weeks than i pull my hat. Thats why i put the "" on disaster. For me the space hulk launch was a disaster and I'm particular very sure, that Thomas and the team has learned from it. Especially on a new JA Franchise release, where the whole industry looks sceptical, you don't wanna risk a damn thing.

There is no shame in a delayed release, but if they have to, they could see that by know i guess. The only logical business desicion i see here is a delay.

They shifted the release to an earlier date than planned.... 

as i said.. nearly every KS project postpones their release.. and they mostly have better polished versions of their games already.... i´m highly doubtful for this here, but will also stop with the negativity.. doesnt change things anyways...

You postpone the release date when you have more funding for development. If you are in danger of running out of funds, best course of action is to look at what you have, wrap things up nicely and release the game, hoping to make a decent dollar and come back to development in the future through DLCs and expansions.

In the case of producer backed studios, this is usually where the studio head will bow his head and go to the producer asking for more money. But this is an independent studio and we must respect their choice. They worked for 18 months, this is what they were able to put together, it's time to sell the product.

The latest KS update Thomas posted pretty much answers all questions regarding the when and why. 

..

Fact is this: albeit with not all JA2 features yet, we have a JA game on a 3D engine. Built with modding in mind, with a working editor. I am confident that if they finish the promised features up to the release, there will be a future for JA games. And that we can work together, through modding and future DLCs, to bring JAF to a level very close to JA2's (v1.13 included) perfection.

The base is there, it just needs to be built on.

I agree with Shanga.
What is absolutely necessary is to make sure all the current features work decently. If that's the case, we are imho going to have an at least decent game and a very good basis.
The only thing I really dislike is the missing merc interactions and voiced NPCs, because that is something that realistically seems not moddable (it probably is, but very difficult). I really hope they are going to add at least some of that after release.

I agree with Shanga generally, but I am also reserving final comment for next week's alpha -> EA build which I assume will have some tweaks based on the alpha comments, plus whatever else they can squeeze in from the KS email they've just released.

The main thing I hope they can concentrate on is physics (not moddable easily?) and streamlining repetitive tasks (this is the real reason we need sector inventory, not just sector inventory for the sake of it) that make repeated gameplay tedious.

I am extremely disappointed to see no mention of weapon attachments.  I hope they can clarify if this is in or out because it was in their milestone list and now it's not in the latest email. Destructible environments without RPGs and dynamite is also a whole lot less fun.

You know, I was thinking , looking at their Quickslots system, how many nice things these could be modded into, considering they're dynamic. Anyone thinking weapon attachment rails?

Red Thomas backer letter and final feature list. There is no animated portraits, advanced merc commentaries and interaction on it. But they are in the game until release right?

Please I know the budget is so low and I don't want to be harsh in any way but the deep merc personalities and interactions are what makes JA what it is at its core. That is JA! Besides the combat and economy. Sorry but without animated portraits, the deep merc personalities, commenatries and the background story of every merc there is no JA Game. 

So I just hope that will be in or I am out. Sorry but the merc personalities are the essence of Jagged Alliance. Even in JA1 the portraits are animated and with good voice acting. 

In the letter not all features were listed. For example on September 16th FC responded to the question if IMP will be in. It is. So it is not mentioned in the letter. But it is important to get rid of the agent and give players a choise like in JA2.

Already in the game, really??? In 0.7 version?

In the actual 0.7 Version there is all this not implemented.

Oh the 21 is earlier than originally planned? Ok this makes sense now :((

*edit

Can someone post this letter for backers? I cannot open it :(

Here is the letter. 

"Dear Backers,

Being at the point in the project where we are wrapping up to release JAF soon, I wanted to take the opportunity to send you a personal message from me to you.

While it has only been 18 months, looking back, it feels like years ago that we ran our Flashback Kickstarter. But the fruit of that campaign is ripening fast and is about to get into the hands of you and everyone else as the final product of that highly eventful month in April/May 2013.

Looking back at the Kickstarter campaign, my memories are quite blurry due to a lack of sleep and constant worry that we would not hit our target. For 30 days the team worked from 7 in the morning until way past midnight, only to repeat the same pattern again day after day. I’m sure that half of my grey hairs magically appeared from that period. As you may recall, we only reached the minimum goal with just hours to spare, and the joy was indescribable when we unlocked this project.

In some ways it was fantastic. We would now be able to work on Jagged Alliance, something very close to our hearts, and we were excited to be working with a very dedicated and vocal community. But in other ways it was quite stressful, as we knew we only had the absolute minimum to produce the game and our options for raising additional funds were limited.

In hindsight there were so many things we could and should have done differently, be more prepared, produce a playable version and not spend so much time on creating a website. Looking back we really should have spent more time producing solid high level designs to communicate our vision to you. In hindsight these are the things you only really learn during and after you run your first real Kickstarter...."

"So we are wrapping up development now, adding the last features these weeks.

The final game will add cool things like

energy system, so you can't spend all your action points every turn without getting tired and finally collapsing
morale system. Your mercs will risk panic if you get overwhelmed a and see your other mercs dying.
complete strategic level gameplay. Healing, repairing items, militia, capturing cities, defending against enemy attacks and so on.
an AI that actually knows about cover and moving
squad inventory to keep war plunder around
more varied armor
more weapons
more mercs
the last batch of Kickstarter content
lots and lots of bug fixes, polish and balancing "

Hope these were the only things you guys cared about because I guess thats all we get...

You missed the best part of the update:

Full Control 

@Zombra - it didnt make it in for all mercs. BUT - the code support is there for a while. You can take a look at the example for NPC_RadioMarion in the NPCs.json file for "animated icons".
"unitID": "Npc_RadioMarion", 
"name": "Marion", 
"nick": "Marion", 
"prefab": "FemaleMerc", 
"gender": "Female", 
"icon": "NpcPortraits/Marion.PNG", 
"animatedIcons": [ 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait01.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait02.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait03.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait04.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait05.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait06.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait07.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait08.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait09.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait10.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait11.png", 
"NpcPortraits/Unknown_portrait12.png" 
],

Shanga & Co

For us not modding guys here...

Is this now in fact good or bad? I mean i take it that animated portraits are not in :(

But you can mod them? For a while? huh... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5-jLkVmRJ4

Watch Ivan's face.

And don't be too harsh, it's a 5 minute hack job.

Here is a question to the modders.

Animations were kind of adapting to the voice acting. For instance, when Deidranna laughed, "ha, ha!" the mouse opend 2 times with a pause. So not only repeating image with mouse closed, mouse open. How did they do this? 

In JA2 also the mercs in the UI (here left portraits) had this kind of animated portraits. @Shanga You made ivan talk. But only in the dialogue window. Is the rest not ready so FC did only put portraits in the UI?

JA2 animations a bit more complex than my hack job. So it looked more realistic. But they're not hard to achieve or re-use for JA:F, it's basically "eyes open/closed", "mouth open/closed". They weren't perfect either, I can give you a few of examples where the mercs kept moving their lips after the sound ended, but their speech files were created so they fit the animation length/loop. I doubt there was any lip-sync code involved and if it was that code was very basic.

So far from my tests the only part of the UI where animations are used in JAF is the quest radio window. The merc portraits seem to be static. That or I haven't yet figured how to animate them. But the good news is that since the code is in game and it's externalised, all we need is proper access to UI and some hints/guides from FC and we can animate everyone. 

So we would need a script that knows wich pics to grab vom the list

animatedIcons": [

Because we need to animation styles. One, for eyes, eyebrowse if mercs are not speaking. And one if they are speaking. I can't see that FC put this differentiation in the code. Or are there diffent json.files available?

Also, when a mercs said for exmaple "I see the bad people" and the pop-up in the left appeared, the portraits on the bottom didn't move lips.

Other files "These include all the speech for all the playable or escortable characters. Those speech lines are delivered in-game, without the characters portrait showing up, with subtitles at the upper left corner of the screen." quoted from http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=186256 

What we can see there are 116 voice triggers. I can see that not all of them are necesarry for JA:F. But that is something we cannot mod as we would need more speech files. So this soul of JA2, the commentaries, I wonder how many will make it in. For complexity, sirtech has given each merc 3 friends and dislikes. Also "appreciates an npc’s personality" is something that was so nice in Arulco. to see my mercs connect to the folk =)

Well, in theory it's not very difficult to make a trigger. A very basic trigger is already in - it's when you select the merc and he/she says something. It's very time consuming, but in time this can be achieved (using old JA2 voice files at least).

Unless they externalized the whole trigger decision tree or dynamically build one from json source at runtime, I don't see how you can insert completely new trigger without recompiling the source. Ideally one would throw in unused triggers but they would still have to be tied to logic tree, which unfortunately takes the most time to do.

I guess we'll just have to wait for final release to see just what kind of "modding" access they allow to the engine. If all we get is being able to modify merc attributes or change weapons' stats or something trivial like that, that would suck big time.

I have Some Knowledge of Programming, more in Transformation, xml, etc. Hope That I can do stuff later. If for FCgets a lot of sales they will probably pitch in 10 triggers if we ask them. It Imho important that the Mercs speak sll the time for immersion. I I am so glad that our experienced programmers with their huge knowledge of Ja2 source code are in :) Good Idea Shanga, of course we can we use the speech files of Jagged alliance. I wonder if they did any new voice acting as they pitched during kickstarter. I have to say it's easier if they didn't ;)

I am not saying the system is 100% working, I am just saying there are clear indications they were working on it, they have the foundations laid and with a bit of love and past post-release we can have a fully functional system.

Concerning JA2 facial animations, I did some closer reading on that topic. Seems I was wrong, there's lip-sync built in JA2, in form of GAP files:

The .gap files, for those not in the know, contain values which express the delay between each movement of the lips on your character portrait, so it moves along perfectly in sync with the speech. If you choose not to include a .gap file, the computer just moves the lips at the same interval

 

Something to chew on, FC... Please note that Trailblazer, one of the veteran hackers of the BP community, has been able to make a GAP file generator, years ago. Basically a tool that analyzed a WAV file and generated the timings. Ideally we should have a system that does away with any extra tools and have a JSON that allows to set the timings manually.

So are there really no animated portraits in the final build? I hope this is a joke. A JA Game without animated faces, good voice acting and interactions between the mercs is like Call of Duty without weapons.

If this is true and there will be just the pictures than it will be a huge dissapointment. Than we also wouldn't need portraits because without the emotions they are completely useless. 

The development time for this game is already too short, and then with just 1 month of development time left FC decides to move one of the key coders (for UI) to Space Hulk..... This basically spells disaster. Given the lack of time, all resources should temporarily be spent to make Flashback a success. Spacehulk already didn't receive too many favorable reviews. Therefore, a poor release of JA: Flashback would not only alienate old fans, but also wouldn't bring in new ones.

Like Shadow mentioned here, a Jagged Alliance game without proper voice acting of MERCS and NPCs, interaction between different characters and without animated faces isn't a Jagged Alliance game. At the moment we just have a turn-based game with similar (albeit dumbed down) combat mechanics as JA 2, but it doesn't capture the essence of Jagged Alliance at all.

@Shadow - I can't say what is in the final build, because I haven't seen it. All I've shown is the mechanics implemented so far, which proves FC are working on facial animations. For how many mercs if any they will add facial animations, only they know. Of course, wouldn't hurt if they'd commit to answer regarding this issue, but I can see why, in this point of time, they won't write down any promises. Too many have been made and "creatively" broken.

@Scope - No idea what happened to the UI coder, are you sure he's been realocated to SH? That would actually be a good news, because it means he can be brought back. My fears are worse since I read that he's "not available anymore". As for faces, I've been playing custom merc mods for v1.13 with bad or no merc sound files or no facial animation and it still felt like playing JA2.  I think what makes JA2 mercs differ from Company of Heroes, for example, is the merc biographies and their personalities. They're not stamped factory clones, they have fear, hate and love. This is a big part of what makes you love or hate a merc for life. So yea, when it comes to this part, I must agree, won't feel like JA at all if they don't fix it. PS: This is also where BIA screwed up.

@Shanga: Yeah sure they shouldn't make creatively promises and then break them but come on that is a feature that is one of the most important for a JA Game at its core. We don't talk about bonus stuff or something else. They promised a good basic JA Game and that must be in. It would be like a racing game without wheels.

Sure the money is short but before I make for example a weather system I must be sure that the core elements work well before I implement bonus stuff even if its easier to implement. So maybe the animated portraits are in and they make a good job so I wouldn't judge to early but that must be in. Even if the money is short. Combat, economy, deep merc interaction. That are features that can't be cut down in JA Game. So I hope they get it done. And again that is no bonus stuff just what the game needs from the start.

I am  modder and I admit I don't look at this game as the average player. A normal player expects a tightly wrapped game. Me, I am happy if they deliver it in bags of nuts and bolts, as long as I have an instruction manual and they let me build it as I want. 

Truth is, as there was no other man alive who could make another Elite game than David Braben, there's no other man alive who can make another Jagged Alliance than Ian Currie. It's like you'd go to your neighbour and promise you'll make him another two children "exactly like the ones you have". Nope, they won't be the same. They will have 2 legs and 2 arms and a head. And have a slight resemblance to their siblings. But won't be 100% the same thing.

Left with this cruel truth, what are our options? Well the only option is for a game that every JA fan can make his own. Customisable. Moddable. A platform for a million mods and fan made sequels. This way, everyone, whether you like JA2 becaue you're a gun nut, or you like the RPG in it or simply you like to kickbox cows, you get to play YOUR JA.

That was my drive behind this campaign and still is.

Make JAF a game of the people for the people, to use a very communist slogan.

Up to a point, things went according to plan. I am just hoping they'll follow the same route.

Bottom line is - if you are a hardcore JA fan, do not expect JAF to be the dream game of your life, even when it's complete and fully moddable. But do expect one of the user made sequels to be that game you always dreamt of. 

The only problem now is that we're in Limbo. We have neither a modding platform, nor a full-fledged game. I'll withhold my full judgement until release, but I wanted to clarify why I might seem enthusiastic about some things you folks find strange and I might not care so much about animated portraits or other things you deem essential (as long as there is a way to mod them into the game).

In my opinion, modding can only do so much. Sure, modders can tweak all sort of stats and put in custom weapons and maybe even produce custom maps and do some coding here and there. But that's pretty much as far as it goes.

Proper professional voice acting, model animations, good quality textures and art work on the other hand is very hard to produce for (unpaid) amateurs. There's very few people who have the skills needed for this and they will usually not work for free unless they happen to be uber hardcore fans of a game.

You can re-use the voices from JA2, the model detail is fine for a TBS and the Unity assets are also easy to make (if you really want more) or cost like $10-20 per bundle.

It's not such a huge issue. The main issue is having coding externalised. If it's not, you need a 12 month Unity Pro license and that's $1500. Not an option for a free mod.

Umm, I think you may have gotten Unity wrong. Unity Pro will not let you disassemble compiled code. Without source code, you cannot make significant changes. And there is only so much you can externalize. Unity Basic has everything Pro has except advanced shaders/rendering features for increased visual quality.

Creating new assets requires Unity Pro. That's what I meant. 

The biggest problem so far with modding is the limited set of trigger events, compared to JA2. Looking at this:

https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?url=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2994227/JAFTXLuaScriptingReference.pdf

OnZoneEnter

Basically you can make a trigger activate when a merc walks on specific tile. Like in JA2, when some mercs saw the dead bodies and went rambling about this and that. Not very sure if you can make your own mercs talk, though. I only saw an example of triggering an NPC talk.

Click on NPC

This is fine, but JA2 has a trigger for having merc X and Y in the same sector that generates the merc interaction and all those funny comments or forced quits. That trigger is missing.

The big question is how one can expand this trigger system. Also, these triggers are "assets" so adding new assets brings back the issue of Unity Pro.

On Unit Killed

This also sounds interesting and very similar to the JA2 event where mercs that were friends would moan about a loss. Considering this can be tied in with the skills, you can play around with a loss of morale for a while.

I am not a coder or a Lua expert, but I know I can get people to code this, if it's possible to expand the system. Just don't make me pay $1500 for the privilege. 

Scripting in JA:F is done in Lua. For more information about writing Lua code, click here.[www.lua.org] 

Triggers

In order for Lua to be executed, it needs to be tied to an trigger. A trigger is executed at certain events; OnSectorLoad, OnZoneEnter, OnUnitKilled etc. It can also be triggered when you click a Unit (an NPC).

The Trigger asset can be found in the AssetsPanel under Logic foldout. Just drag it into the scene like any other asset.

A trigger is split into two scripts. The first is the condition script. Only if this script returns true, the effect script is executed.

Zones
If a Trigger has the event type of OnEnterZone, it need to be connected to one or more zones.
A Zone is a collection of tiles marked up in the scene by a cube. Every tile within the cube belongs to the zone.

A Zone is an Asset prefab and you can find it in the Logic foldout in the AssetsPanel.

Even with Unity Pro, I don't believe you can achive what you're refering to without access to the source code. Triggers are not assets per se, but one can argue logic/trigger decision tree is one. However, like I mentioned before, that would assume the tree itself is dynamically built at runtime and parsed during execution. 

That's pretty much clear. 

What I am trying to asses here is what they provided so far, what can be creatively used and expanded and what else they need to provide. Most likely not the right forum for this, but consider it more like a monologue since I'd rather get no answer than deviate a programmer from work 5 minutes all considering.

Probably when the dust settles after release we'll get to have a dialogue with FC and see where do we go from there.

I am not 100% sure, but I recal reading somewhere here on the forums that the UI guy was shifted over to the Space Hulk team.

On another note, I appreciate people's enthusiasm for modding, and we have had some great modding for JA 2 over the years. However, I believe it is totally unacceptable that FC delivers a subpar game lacking of core features and full with bugs, and then this should somehow be magically patched up by some amateur (no disrespect intended) programmers post-release? That just isn't right. It's not right to the backers who supported this game, expecting at least the core features to be in (this was promised). It is also not right to new players since they at least expect a game without game-breaking bugs. In any way we look at it, the project didn't have proper management and there has been a lack of communication on different fronts. Anyway, let's hope for a wonder. If man was able to build the pyramid in Egypt and the great wall of China, perhaps JA:F could have its missing core features finished in 1 month. However, somehow I believe the latter goal is even more ambituous than the former two..... 

UI guy has not shifted to the SH team..was here for a limited time and is working on his own project right now. 

@Scope - nope, modding is not about patching bugs, God forbid. That happens with JA2 nowdays because the source code is public and it's basically a fan project, but for a commercial project with closed source it's pretty much impossible to fix major bugs. It's still the devs job to deliver a working game.

My assesments regarding modding were as to how much content modders could add, given the proper coding is in place. Making a mod with proper weapon names or animating some faces... that's a cosmetic change. 

I fully agree, FC needs to keep their end of the bargain. We'll see. They might not be the most organised team ever but they have the heart in the right place. They made SH work eventually. If they patch JAF to a decent state post-release for me it would be ok. They would hurt their ratings and their sales for sure if they don't get the release right but us, those who already own the game, will get our product delivered, sooner or later.

just wait and see. We can only hope.

Comes the next EA update tomorrow?

When comes the next alpha branch update?

Even if it comes tomorrow we should be aware it is still alpha, has bugs, has not the feature we already listed. So I would really like FC to describe what we should test (e.g crosshair) and provide only feedback to topics, that are worked on until release. Everything else has been said already. So tomorrow?

Seeing as the elements that are being update are the Strategic UI, Energy, Morale and Item Degradation those are the main areas of interest. But when you add new stuff old code may break, which is why it's hard to give complete guidelines as more or less everything needs to be tested. 

I think they created a build yesterday evening that we'll do a bit of testing on internally...Unsure what happens after that. 

So where is our update EA steam???

I guess they will bring it until friday. The most updates so far came out on fridays.

I would be really nice if we can get the new build tomorrow. Why waiting? Makes no sense to me. How much time have you got to test internally? We will focus on the stuff, you won't find. So pls. release tomorrow.

They must have their reasons, but time is running short!

I guess they don´t give it to us not because they don´t want to. I think the update crashes or doesn´t work overall with the other features so there might be problems. But I hope they get it done until friday.

Yes, a new version in the next days would be good, so that we can judge the current state.

It makes little sense to put out a build where there are major issues with certain elements...You would just be annoyed that you encounter a game breaking bug all the tme = no testing. 

Usually when you introduce new code that is connected to old code you'll see bugs and sometimes it can be tricky to locate the issues. 

Yep, I agree. If there are bugs and devs know about them, there's no point in releasing the build just so everyone runs into them and goes "omg look, there are bugs". Yet it's important that you give yourself time to release at least one Release Candidate before official one and enough time to receive reports and fix final bugs (those that team didn't catch).

Is today EA update Day or Alpha Branch Update Day? 

So I am certain we will get some news today, if a release is possible today! Hope we'll get it.

Wow 11 days before release and there is nothing to update or to tell or to show? I can understand that the EA Customers are pissed off. In the whole EA Time there where maybe 2-3 updates. For me its ok, because I could test the alpha branch update but the other people get nothing so far.

I hope that we get hopefully one last big update before release to test it.

Early Access means you get the complete game xx days before release. I don't know how thils will be done. But fore sure, please don't think Early Access, Beta Access and Alpha Access are the same.

Steam introduced something else, confusing people a bit more : Steam Early access

It's more like a pre-order with alpha/beta access.

I guess Shadow86 is speaking of this kind of Early Access ;)

Ну и что ты говорил, так пафосно "начало следующей недели, я же сказал". Где, где обновление, уже конец недели? Проотвечался, горе администратор.

Yeah when you tell us beginning of next week it´s just fair to make a status update at the end of the week when there is no update. But nothing really? No update and no status update. I know you all are busy but not one comment to the next update is really a fail.

Shadow, fail is a bit harsh. we should all calm down, we are all in a though spot as we expected a game with more features. But raising the voice again will not change anything. have a tee calm down and wait for complains after release :)

My tip for you guys is Rimworld give the game a try. Alpha7 is out, much better than a buggy JAF build ;)

It either shows that both programmers working on the game are so busy that they cannot answer a couple of questions or that the project is so disorganized and mismanaged that a project leader has no idea what is happening.

Or that Andreas is in his weekend (which he deserves) and the devs didn't get out the next build :) So we have to wait until Monday/Tuesday!?

Really I am cool but it wonders me when there should be a new update at the beginning of the week and there is even at the end of the week not one and there is even no comment to that.

I am not angry but I can´t understand why there is no communication. When there would be a status update it would be ok. But even with a status update its not good that there is still no update. I expected end of the week ok and there were no utopic expectations and even that is too much. 

He's certainly entitled to a weekend, as is everyone. Thankfully, I think I'm done with expecting JAF to be amazing. Other than few tweaks here and there, I don't see anything groundbreaking in the new build or even the final release. So once you're resigned to that fact, it feels like a stone lifted off your shoulders. Meanwhile, there is FF XIII that's going to occupy my long holiday weekend. To all Canadians on the forum, Happy Thanksgiving!

Ну ты и терпила, Арча.

Come on there are the next big milestones for the game so close and even the release is 11 days away and there is not one comment to the update possible? Sorry but if there are no huge reasons not to write here than the whole thing is really sad.

I feel like the game isn´t important anymore and they just focus more on Space Hulk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLMi10wvc3E

There is one important reason: the developers screwed up. Large projects with time management in a year or more - too tough for them.
They are - amateurs.
Yes because Spacee Hulk connects them obligations to producers.

Thx. Now I'm really sick. WHAT is going on? I thought every resource available is now used to get JA:F out in 11 days? What I see is a 16 minute Video about another game which could have easily draw 8 hours of resources out of JA:F. (EDIT: Yes, this video has been released today!!) A whole fricking day. If you can do that, you could also comment on here in the forum.

Assault cannon for Space Hulk? Were are our heavy weapons, one of the many missing features. Even the 3D-animator reworked the whole Space Hulk animations? GREAT. In JA:F you even have no perfect basic animations. Like crouch which stutters 2x.

"waiting for every animation" blabla .. yeah that is what we complained for in JA:F. Make it fluent, make it like JA2. Pls shadow be free to NOT calm down. Frist time I feel really disappointed!!! Very sorry that I was blind to the fact, that JA:F time is over.

Q4 2014 for this Space Hulk game - that is why they decided to rush JA:F out so they can focus on Space Hulk?

And another reason why FC is not motivated anymore about JA:F could be, that they can't satisfy anyone really. We will miss a ton of core features which we really talked about in early developement and you don't need to talk about it because it was clear to just copy the JA2 core features along the road. I'm baffled. Where is the commitment to us and JA:F?

Oh hey we can have the JA licence for an penny, let's just use our engine on it.

End of story.

We should first rename it:

JA:F UG

Jagged Alliance Flashback Unfinished Game.

i've have been out all day so no chance to comment...working tomorrow instead. 

As I have said numerous times...SHA is a different project..the funds for that project was secured separately and can't be used for JAF...contractual stuff....some team members do overlap and work on both projects, but core team is different. 

SHA is an expansion to an already existing game..standalone yes, but built on the same core with tweaks. 

Talking to the team on skype now there should be a new build on the alpha branch now, For PC/Mac)...Unsure if the changelog is fully updated at this point, but will go with what's there. 

0.8.0 (other version on alpha branch, so probably even more fixes in) 

Features

• Weapons and armor now has durability that decays which affects damage, precision and AP cost.

• Weapons and armor can be repaired using repair kits

• Enemy units now drops random loot

• Armor can now have different colors

• Automatic turn when shooting at enemy not in view cone

• UI Sound FX

Added more Lua commands

Bugfixes

• A lot!

Thx for the update. Still, delaying huge SH tasks for the sake of 1 week JA:F development would be a good thing to do?? Also still waiting for an answer in the "missing features" thread about the triggers we'll have in JA:F and if they will be moddable via LUA or so.

I think you bugged up the feedback form in the Alpha release... Now all the keypresses continue to be logged even when the feedback form is "closed".  There's typically a string of wasd (scrolling with keyboard) whenever I open it.

I got a big performance drop in framerates on my laptop (Core i7, 8 GB RAM, Intel HD 4400 so I know, probably not supported, but it was quite disappointing since the last build was the smoothest I'd played so far)

We of course have the people that overlap on both projects work on JAF now, but coder wise you can't just say 123 switch...doesnt' work that way even if it's the same code, there are different structures and rules they need to follow...Would actually think adding "outside" coders would do more harm than good at this point as their code would potentially mess up already existing code. 

Guess I'll have to repoke Dan far an answer there..but he's busy coding...he just built a linux version for the alpha branch as well...feel ftree to poke me again if I forget..

They have been messing with UI...I remember that bug from a ways back, so shouldn't be too tricky to undo. 

Actually had lots of reports with that exact graphics card before...mostly for Space Hulk though. Try setting the options inside the game. I tried setting them when launchign the game and they didn't regiter properly, but worked when set from inside the game. 

Don't poke then, thought you know the decision for the triggers. Coding is more important now.

So the game feels different now. But it "gained" lot of new bugs which doesn't make it a playable JA title atm. Will write a summary tomorrow. 

Also as the game is nearly finished, there is a lot of polishing to do!? Guys, should we open a alpha 0.8x feedback thread?

A bit too late for a longer test, but the strategic UI is still completely unusable in a 4:3 resolution and it is still impossible to play in a 16:9 resolution in fullscreen on a 4:3 monitor. At least one of those needs to be fixed before the release, otherwise a lot of people will be rightfully upset.

Too late sent him a mail already, but I guess giving an answer ain't to time demanding, maybe he can just tell me and I go in here and write. 

Yeah.. a new thread should be the way to go..really need to contact the website coders again so he can add "pages to posts" they get waaaaay too long. 

 

Don't know how many play on those monitors, but valid bug nonetheless...adding it to our bug tracker right now..unsure if it has been mised before....seen you post it before at least.

By the way, there are a ton of typos in those messages you get in the loading screens.  At what point should we start reporting them?  They're a little hard to report because they're gone by the time the screen loads and you want to get on with it.

The hit percentage doesnt change anymore, regarding to how many ap you invest into the shot... 

To start with we can run through them once more I guess, but you're right right tricky...have to sit ready with your "print screen finger" :P 

Will report it, thanks!

-Turn-based and turnless modes alternate pretty weird

- game.exe has stopped working everytime I exit JAF, last builds as well

- randomly dropping loot - I still prefer that enemies drop what they are carrying

- Like the music and improved loading screens, but still far from complete game feel

- interruption system is removed? the game feel much more logical now

. interesting performance - not cpu intensive anymore, but getting weird GPU usage at times

- headshots should be more lethal, right now it is much more smart to go for torso shots (better hit %)

- Some mercs have great weapons for their price, bones for example sks is really good in the beginning

- AI is mostly trying to run towards mercs rather than shoot at them 

Now we got really good sounds and the music atmosphere is way better. Compliment for this ;-)

The rest still needs much love but lets see what you can do until release.

But where are the animated portraits?

Please bring them in. They are so important for the atmosphere and a JA-must have.

but where is the promised update on EA steam?

I don't have access to alpha branch to test this, but it bothers me a lot. I'm all for hand placed loot (on the maps) and people drop what they have (WYSIWYG!!!).

The random loot is one of the biggest flaws of Wastelant 2 in my opinion, i wish JAF didn't make that same error.

I agree somehow with all the wuzz about random loot. At first it didn't bother me. But playing a while and seeing the enemy with a nice gun and afterwards just getting a pistol...whooo...that doesn't seem fair to the player.

Hey,Archo, do some twitch stream by 0,8 version.

hi, sorry never did before. But in the other thread I mentioned video links which show some new features like opening closets. Shanga is the twitch guy here :)

So ll do some lomg play on youtube!

Would be nice. Overall the game much improved but we have to keep on pushing the devs :o

Yeah I want my animated merc portraits and advanced merc commentaries, please devs that is overdue. And give the rest of the game the love that it needs. There is still hope ;-)

Stream will come guys, but I had a horribly busy weekend, wasn't even online for most of the day, nevermind play anything.

Sounds like some days with family :D

I only have access to EA so a stream would be nice.