What kind of computer will I need?
You will need a fairly fast computer, with a modern OpenGL-compatible graphics card, and an OpenAL-compatible sound card, and Microsoft Windows 7, to play the game. It does not need to be 64-bit, but will benefit enormously from it. Quad cores with 3.0Ghz will run the game fairly smoothly. The game makes extensive use of "version 3.x and above" features of OpenGL. We recommend downloading the demo and providing feedback including a sane description of your system along with a description of the problem if you encounter any issues including: game goes too fast, game does not go fast enough, game does not run at all, game is "jerky" or drops frames, game fails during load, game fails elsewhere. The game was developed on a quad core Intel CPU with an NVIDIA GPU ~5800 series, but has been tested periodically on other systems including ATI, Dual Core systems around 3-5 years old. We do not intend to extensively develop this, but we could there may be a "lo-fi" version available for those who can't play it on slightly older (2005+, Vista) systems, if there is demand for such a thing.
Will there be multiplayer?
The game designers have every intention of doing at least one multiplayer feature, though originally they had planned to make it multiplayer with "discovery" for players who don't have friends to join their fleet, share building, etc. Unfortunately, budgetary constraints have made it more difficult to add the multiplayer features we originally wanted. If 100,000 copies of the game sell, we'll add as much multiplayer as possible in 6 months, focused just on that, and the multiplayer "DLC" or "patch" will be made available to anyone who bought the game. We plan to use both Peer-To-Peer techniques and a central web service, but we don't yet know if it will be possible given the time and budget constraints.
Will players be able to trade stuff, if there is multiplayer?
Possibly. We'd like to develop community-driven content features to the multiplayer, but it's not certain yet.
When is the 'initial commercial release' planned?
At the present time, we are guestimating 2013, but there is no gaurantee yet on the final ship date. We'd like to have it done sooner, but require funding and additional contributors to do so and currently don't have either of these things.
Can I help test?
Anyone who pre-orders the game is encouraged to participate in the alpha- and beta- phase tests. We do listen to suggestions, but cannot promise they will make it into the final game.
Can I help develop the game?
If you have at least 3 years of C++ programming skill, and at least 5 years of game development experience, understand the ins-and-outs of developing rich performance-intensive real-time multi-threaded applications with more than 100,000 lines of existing code, and (very important) are willing to work long hours (more than 20 per week) for little or no pay with no gaurantee of a paycheck - and really want to produce an awesome game, this one in fact - then we'd like to talk to you and you should send us an email including some links to prior work, your resume (optional), a phone number (required) and a time to contact you. Serious inquiries only. We don't want to train you too much, either, so you'll need to be able to hit the ground running.
How much will the final game cost?
We are targetting the $29.99 price point, because we want to make a game that deserves that much money. Pre-orders at this stage will cost significantly less. See the pre-ordering page for more detail.
