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Howdy folks,
Before we get started I should probably introduce myself. My name is Cody, and I'm the Producer at Grey Box dedicated to the ongoing development of Grey Goo. Prior to Grey Goo's launch, I was primarily responsible for managing development of the game's website, as well as putting plans into place for our post-launch support. It's nice to e-meet everyone!
With Grey Goo officially being launched for over two months, and with our first major balance patch out in the wild, I wanted to take a moment to update everyone on the direction Grey Goo will be heading over the next couple of months. We've had a ton of great feedback from all of you up to this point, so it's only fair to return the favor by communicating back the results of that feedback.
I'm specifically going to address some concerns that have been floating around the forums, Reddit, Steam, and social media sites. If you don't see something addressed here, it's not because we haven't seen it, but rather that we won't be addressing it in the next few months. My hope is that we can make these letters a regular occurrence, and some of the missing updates will be mentioned there.
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First up, an update on Replays. Replays have been in development since very late last year, and as of March 13th they have entered QA testing for the first time. Our current projections have replays slated for release sometime in mid April, but that is completely dependent on the number of bugs the team finds and the number of builds required to get something ready for release.
At launch, replays will automatically be recorded by your PC, but they must be manually saved if you would like to keep them forever. Currently, players are able to jump between 20 second intervals to both fast forward and rewind the replay (note that this is still being tuned as it impacts the file size of the replay). We also have a number of UI overlays that can be toggled on and off to get a quick sense of things like unit counts, resource intake rates, and more.
It's worth noting that patches will unfortunately render previously recorded replays as unviewable. This was a sacrifice we made in order to keep build sizes down and to get replays out to players faster. Still, we think replays are an incredibly useful tool for learning the game, and we want to make sure they're in place and vetted by all of you before the next flood of players join the battle.
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Beyond replays, we also have a few Terrain Editor enhancements in the works. The first of these will allow community map makers to import their own custom environment assets into the editor. We've been extremely impressed with the quality and variety of submissions to Steam Workshop we've seen so far, and we believe that allowing users to import their own models will only take things further.
We're looking forward to seeing what you members of the community can come up with. Expect further information on the map editor enhancements next month.
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Finally, I also wanted to address the reports of cheating and disconnects we've been hearing from all of you by saying dedicated servers are coming. When development began on Grey Goo, there wasn't enough of a focus on the online, competitive aspect of the gameplay. Instead, we wanted to make a game that was fun to play with your friends both online and in a Local Area Network setting.
While we feel like we were successful in this endeavor, during Closed Alpha it became apparent that there was larger than anticipated interest in a robust, competitive online experience. In order to correctly support this, work on dedicated servers began a short time later. Please understand that a change this large takes a disproportionate amount of time to develop, but now we're getting close.
We expect to enter QA testing in the next few weeks. With something this important, we will likely roll it out to the PTB first to make sure it's safe for a wider release. We'll be sure to make an announcement if and when that happens.
That's all for this time. Thank you again for all of the time you've spent playing the game as well as the feedback you've submitted. We can't stress enough how important it is to what we do.
Also, since this is the first time we've done something like this, please let us know what you'd like to hear about next time or if there are other formats you'd prefer to receive these types of updates in. We're working very hard to improve communication between us and our fans, so any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.
Until then, I'll see you online.
Best,
CodyB
Producer - Grey Box
P.S. - Here's a sneak peek screenshot of Replay Mode...
[img=https://www.greybox.com/media/uploads/goor_2015-03-31_10-51-49-53b.jpg]
Discuss this update in the official forums.