The inevitable, "the natives are getting restless, where's the update?" Thread

Mohawk20 · March 11, 2009, 07:13:52 PM

I will make an official statement in this post:

I am very happy with this product so far. I bought Deep+Animation more than a year ago, and I really got my money's worth so far.
Bugs have been fixed and features have been added over the months. Since I bought it we got transparent water, multicore support, painted shaders, working rock objects (well, sort of), an a load of other stuff I'm so used to now I don't even remember not having it.

My point is, with this next official release nothing's really going to change except for the price. Okay, so the version number is changed, as it has over the last months every update. And we get more features and bug fixes. Same as every other update that is not announced...

So I can understand that you are eager to play with a new version, but I don't get all the fuss about this particular update. It's just an update, and if you want to buy it, you should be quick about it (or actually have done so already), because the price is only going up from here.

That's my statement, and you will have to do it with that.

jo · March 11, 2009, 07:44:27 PM

Hi,

Not really my place to say anything, but I don't want to see people freak out :-). Right now we're targeting the release around the end of the month. All our efforts are focused towards that. There's been a lot of changes since the last public release, plenty of bugs fixed and some handy new stuff added.

I don't think we're going to have everything in the final release that everyone wants, if we tried to do that we'd be forever and it's been a little while already :-). It's important to remember that although we're calling this a "final" release there is no sense of finality too it. I might ask for a little bit of time off :-), but aside from that it's business as usual. As soon as the final release is available we'll be moving on with further improvements. For example we'll start working on a 64 bit version. We haven't done that yet because it would potentially have caused quite some disruption to the code which would have delayed us getting to a gold release in a timely fashion.

So that's what's happening from a development perspective. We're targeting a release at the end of the month, doing spit and polish and getting things ready for that. It's definitely an important release for us but it is part of ongoing development. If something you're after doesn't make it into the final release then chances are good it will be in the next update after that.

Regards,

Jo

PG · March 11, 2009, 07:53:33 PM

Cool. Thanks for the info jo. Do you know if there is a plan or schedule as to how future developments will be released? E.g. the animation module. It'd be good to have new features like that released in packs like Vue does.

Jack · March 11, 2009, 08:40:14 PM

um id don't think Matt really wanted us to know about the release in march because he was afraid something like this would happen

ie another discussion about terragens release date that always seems to boil into intense arguments

Jo will their be unlimited textures for models? so we will not be limited to 16 textures for each model?

sjefen · March 11, 2009, 08:45:06 PM

Well..... it's just a target

- Terje

rcallicotte · March 11, 2009, 09:30:20 PM

Buzzzzz, I see it, too. But, do we really care? I don't believe Matt is lying, intentionally or otherwise. Of course, if you think that, then it's another story.

Anyway, let's just wait. Whether we're right or not, cooler heads prevail.

Quote from: buzzzzz1 on March 11, 2009, 03:02:08 PM
I guess you don't remember in December of 2007, yes 2007,
when Matt announced the release would be on Jan 4th 2008. That quote is below:

Kevin F · March 12, 2009, 09:03:09 AM

Part of the problem here is that x-frog jumped the gun and got everyone excited when they posted this on Feb 21st:

"Press release, some free highend plants, are coming next week "

and still no sign of them.

rcallicotte · March 12, 2009, 09:04:33 AM

Yep.

Quote from: Kevin F on March 12, 2009, 09:03:09 AM
Part of the problem here is that x-frog jumped the gun and got everyone excited when they posted this on Feb 21st:

"Press release, some free highend plants, are coming next week "

and still no sign of them.

PG · March 12, 2009, 09:24:18 AM

Will they did, eventually, say that they would be releasing them alongside the Terragen 2 release. That's what started all this.

rcallicotte · March 12, 2009, 11:20:25 AM

And xFrog said that because some of us were complaining about a previous update from xFrog that hadn't come true. But, come to find out, there were other plans.

Maybe it's because we believe we're closer to what is going on with Planetside's business, since we're on this site frequently and what is the reality? If Planetside wants to communicate another way via the other means of advertisement and press releases, they might just not believe they need to tell us who visit the website everything. Hmmm. Yeah, that could be it. Makes sense, too.

But, where it doesn't make sense to some is that we can't query vendors through our TV sets or radios or ask questions through a magazine in the same way we do here on this site. So we might expect more than we should.

I bet Planetside could want to reach out to more than the handful who are members and visitors to this site, though I bet they show signs of loyalty to us as well. After all, who else gets to talk to Matt the way we do and not get on Santa's Bad List?

Quote from: PG on March 12, 2009, 09:24:18 AM
Will they did, eventually, say that they would be releasing them alongside the Terragen 2 release. That's what started all this.

buzzzzz1 · March 12, 2009, 11:50:35 AM

I love the software but hate the business practice.

I will say this one last thing: Anyone who thinks that the Business Models of Xfrog and Planetside are acceptable, well I feel sorry for you. I personally feel like I have been fed misleading advertisement for a long while now. Oshyan even said a while back that if they published how long this would really take not many would have invested in the pre-purchase. If that's not misleading and bordering on false advertising I don't know what is? I really didn't want to stoop to this level but I think it's called for......Now YOU sit down and Shut Up! PG!

domdib · March 12, 2009, 12:11:25 PM

I suggest it's time to lock this thread.

Zylot · March 12, 2009, 01:23:14 PM

Seconded, there's no need to let this get out of hand.

Mohawk20 · March 12, 2009, 01:44:40 PM

And perhaps change the name of the thread to: 'The inevitable, "a native was getting restless, where was the update?" Thread'...

RichTwo · March 12, 2009, 08:44:41 PM

Agree with you Mohawk - And no restless native here. I may want to know, but I still barely am learning how. This proggy in comparison with the original separates the men from the boys, women from girls, whatever. When the whole she-bang gets public, the whole digital scenery-generating capability will be turned on its ear. I don't think I'll be able to grasp even a whiff of the totality. But to me, it's be like "I'm driving a car with over 400 HP and the speed limit's 60." Nice to know it's there.