Well after a couple of years of development, Sins of a Solar Empire has gone gold! It’ll be available next week at most stores in North America (more retailers than GalCiv II was at) as well as available for digital purchase via TotalGaming.net.
Here’s a link to some screenshots from the last few days of gamma testing and a sneak peek at the successor to Stardock Central for distributing TotalGaming.net games (which, incidentally, will soon be allowing third parties to submit games, name their price, and after review have them automatically available for purchase and download via the new client).
I’m sure we’ll have to wait a week for digital download as retail chains (GAMESTOP) have their hands around publisher’s throats for ever having the nerve to give customers a more convenient and sooner option to get a game.
Anyhow, here’s something I said in the other thread regarding the game:
I’ve been tooling around in the latest beta, and I’d like to make a few suggestions.
I’m a big pause and give orders kind of guy. It would be really nice if it drew the waypoints of the ships as I gave orders while paused.
And also, I’m sure you’re aware of this, but remapping “spacebar” to pause doesn’t work. It shows up in the keymapper, but pressing space in-game does not pause the game.
Not sure on when the digital download is available, Brad will know. We’ll look into the waypoints during pause issue and we saw your post on the spacebar mapping issue in another thread and I’m pretty sure Jamie (posts here as SpaceFish) took care of it.
Would you mind enlightening us to the situation (hard time) that retail gives the physical publisher of the game? Do you hear or have to deal with any of that?
I’m assuming that’s why digital is forced to wait for retail to get it in…
You are now able to map the ‘Pause’ action to spacebar and have it actually function. I looked into it this morning and the problem was the ‘Respond to Report’ action is mapped by default to spacebar and is blocking your ‘Pause’ action. Thanks for pointing out the bug.
I agree with you on drawing waypoints of ships while paused. We will see what we can do.
Jamie, in the latest build, there seems to be a similar issue with some of the hotkeys tripping over each other’s toes. For instance, if you use the hotkey to find planets with logistics slots (CTL+V), it also triggers the hotkey to zoom the view (V). The net effect is a 70s style zoom shot of a planet with a logistics slot. :)
The release says that Sins will be available both on Totalgaming.net and in most retail stores on February 4th. I was expecting that the 4th would be a ship day (Monday) and the 5th (Tuesday) would be a store date. This combined with the statement that the digital version would probably be available Monday “noonish EST” has me unsure what the fastest method of getting Sins is.
So, for those of us trying to plan our, um, sick day next week, what is the earliest availability (and method) for Sins?
Actually it’s really hard to say as who knows when the retailers will actually put it out. But it’ll be available late afternoon via TotalGaming.net either way digitally. I think on Friday they begin shipping the boxes to people who pre-ordered boxes.
The impulse distribution app looks cool. Does it support any community features such as friends lists/groups/server browsing ala Steam, or is it primarily a distribution platform?
Fixed, thx for the report. Jamie the SpaceFish wizard waved his magic wand and flash all was well in the land of hotkeys. He also completely reorganized them into proper categories and added some new requests such as the collapse/expand all empire tree nodes (already mentionned) plus hotkeys for buying/selling/bidding and most other Underground operations.
Oh hot damn. We are in Seattle right now with no PC access. As soon as we get back we have to put the house back together from the blizzard of paint and carpets that descended on it in our absence. I should be able to get the PC set up again by… oh… I don’t know… MONDAY NIGHT :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Not initially but it will be Spring/Summer. It’ll incorporate blogging, chat, and some social networking features and more of our non-game tech into it.
If you want to see a primitive version of the blogging beta check out http://www.joeuserbeta.com/ (it’s still in testing). But picture users being able to chat, see what games their friends are playing (unless set to private), etc. And it’ll be an open system. That is, we hope to make it so that even if you’re using a third party game not on TG.net that it will still let you know what they’re up to and let you join them. But that’s a bit down the line.
The goal with Impulse is to bring our various techs into a single sleak environment. And then let developers submit their games, utilities, whatever, name their price, and then after review have them be available for others to buy (we do this now on WinCustomize with skins and themes for third party skin authors).
Stardock Central may have the distinction of being the first digital distribution client but it’s pretty long in the teeth at this point (i.e. first also means oldest <g>). So Impulse brings a lot of technological improvements to the table.
But for now, we’re just glad to get Sins of a Solar Empire out there for people.
I have to say, and you guys have known me a long time, this has been an awesome project to be on. I’m not aware of any examples where the publisher and development teams worked so closely together and I think the final game really shows what’s possible when two groups of fans of the genre are working together on something.
