Extending availability of prereleases

[aerol]

The current publicly available prerelease (p3) suffers from a very annoying altar bug that makes converting an altar as a non-lawful or being a pious chaotic practically impossible. This bug alone affects normal gameplay enough to turn some potential players away from the public prerelease and keep them playing 1.1.1 until the finished product comes out. Surely it's in everybody's interest to have more people playing the new versions, as it amps up the hype and results in more needed bug reports and feedback.

Here's a possible solution: make prerelease 5 publicly available. This would be easy enough to implement, it doesn't include any of the new races and classes so it still keeps the private prereleases exclusive, and it doesn't include any notorious crashing or gameplay altering bugs.

As an accompanying measure (and this is something Thomas hinted at at some point), private prerelease access could be opened up to new donors. There are plenty of people coming out of the woodwork who did not hear about the campaign in time or didn't have the financial resources during those two months who would love the opportunity to donate now in exchange for access to the prereleases.

What say you? I don't have commenting access to the Adom blog, so perhaps somebody could post a comment there and direct Thomas' attention to this thread.

Edit: correction as per Stingray1's post below.

[JellySlayer]

Perhaps suggest as an RFE? Thomas checks those regularly.

[Stingray1]

It is only p3 that has that bug, so p1,2 is fine to play. See my sig.

I do think it will be good if more ppl can join the party. Maybe suggest that he opens another campaign for the prereleases only. As you said.

[Silfir]

I'm pretty hopeful a future release will get designated as a public prerelease at some point (followed by another couple of months of doner-exclusive nightly builds). I do understand that those who donated the right amounts should receive special treatment - but every couple of months, perhaps right before a major feature inclusion, the general ADOM public should get to share in the wonder as well.

ADOM 1.2.0p5 is old hat. Releasing it publicly now would be sort of like throwing a day-old nibbled-on doughnut at the beggars stuck outside the party while the three-story lemon drizzle cake is being served. Not to mention it would introduce a bunch of potential testers - to test an already outdated version. Might as well not bother.

[aerol]

It's old hat to us because we've experienced chaos knights, mist elves, ratlings and p7. Seventeen new corruptions and a bunch of important bug fixes is nothing to sneeze at. There's a lot of ground between p3 and p5.

[Silfir]

I didn't say a days-old nibbled-on doughnut is inedible. It's still more of an insult than a treat.

[aerol]

I honestly doubt anyone would take it as an insult if p5 was publicly released. I think a great majority of the players without prerelease access would be happy about it.

[Aielyn]

I didn't say a days-old nibbled-on doughnut is inedible. It's still more of an insult than a treat.

As someone who wasn't able to donate to the resurrection, I would like to say that I would not even remotely take it as an insult if I were able to experience some of the changes to the game prior to final release of 1.2.0.

I was even going to post with a suggestion that there be a delayed release system, where they become publicly available after a certain delay; and if the source code is still available to TB (I don't know if he keeps source code for each prerelease separate), perhaps with incorporation of bugfixes that prevent major problems - you know, repair of code that causes crashes, etc.

Even, say, a 2 month delay would be reasonable, from my perspective (assuming that it'll take well beyond that for the final 1.2.0 to be released). It would give me, and people in my position, a chance to experience some of the new content and the adjusted gameplay, but still maintain the promise made in the campaign to give donors access to prereleases ahead of time.

[tootboot]

As a $25 Donator I wouldn't care if all future prereleases were just made public.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

As a $25 Donator I wouldn't care if all future prereleases were just made public.

I personally wouldn't care either, but I guess TB can't do that because maybe someone among the hundreds of people that donated $25 or more would care...

But I think making some prereleases public would be fine. The text of the $25 donation level says that you get access to "all prerelease builds". So if everyone gets access to all the prereleases, someone could feel cheated, but not if non-donors get access to only some prereleases from time to time.

Opening the access to new donors would be nice too. Maybe we could still make it to the color RPG :P