Monday, August 15th, 2011
UK1 has been slow in the evenings this weekend due to another huge spike in demand. I’m going to be upgrading the hardware, and also probably changing which database software we use.
Our apologies to everyone who’s had problems logging in – the Texas servers are fast at the moment and UK1 should be fine by the next day or two.
Ian
Friday, August 12th, 2011
My esteemed colleague emailed me in somewhat of an upset state this morning. People are accusing the Frozen Synapse single player AI of cheating! Paul has asked me to write some kind of BLOG POST about how the FS AI is not cheating.
Well, first I can show you:
Start the demo
Get to the main menu
Open the console with ` and type
setRandomSeed(1);
Press enter and close the console.
Click “Demo Mission 1″
Press Escape to skip the intro
Do some plans
Press commit and watch what the AI does
Now go back to the main menu, and do everything again – you’ll get the same map – and give your units different orders. Press commit and you’ll see the AI does exactly the same thing.
I promise you that the AI never looks at what you’ve done when it chooses what it’s going to do.
The AI does know where you are in Dark Mode – we fiddled with it a lot and didn’t manage to get it fun without that.
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
It’s time to bring FS to a wider audience.
The first step on this road is releasing a demo, which, coupled with a big Steam promotion, should go some way to realising that goal.
FS has had a lot of success as an indie game but we think it can go a bit further than that. Thanks very much for your support so far and we’d love it if you’d continue to recommend the game.
Our patch has been delayed slightly due to needing to time this release for today – it is in final testing and will be out absolutely ASAP, we promise.
I’m reposting our press release here, in case wandering journalists find it, but also because I think the ludicrous nature of our press releases should be exposed to a wider audience.
Frozen Synapse, the critically acclaimed simultaneous-turn-based indiestrategy opus from Mode 7, has always been lacking something.
The aforementioned something? A demo to ensnare the unwary gamer in its glistening tactical mandibles, naturally!
Released on Thursday 11th August (which I think is today, hopefully), the single-player-only PC demo will consist of a tutorial plus the following exciting facets…
- A randomly generated single player Skirmish
- Three specially selected missions from the single player Campaign
To accompany this demo release, Steam will be offering Frozen Synapse at a whopping 50% off from Thursday 11th August to Monday 15th August.
The deal will go live at 10am Pacific Time today, which is an American thing, apparently.
We would like to reiterate at this point that Mode 7 consider this discount to be “whopping”, and that this has been independently verified by an external adjudicator from the University of Cor Blimey using the appropriate calipers at room temperature.
“This demo offers a unique opportunity to…oh, who am I kidding?” blurted Mode 7’s spokesnubbin Paul Taylor. “It’s a *demo*: you download it; you play it; we hope you buy the game thereafter. What more do you want from me? My shoes? You want these shoes?”
A Mac demo will follow very soon once its surface becomes so shiny that small insects slide comically along when they attempt to land on it.
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