TL;DR
- Steam Cloud Saves will be added
- Humble Bundle backers list
Steam Cloud Saves
For the Advanced Features "Online Save feature", it will be provided through Steam Cloud Saves and available to everybody. When I announced an Online Save feature, back in 2015, I did not know about Steam Cloud Saves. I can read it exists since 2008, so I guess it's my mistake not knowing about that.
Currently, the Steam Cloud Save is not active, and the game saves its database in your AppData directory. You can easily find your save by launching the game and look in the Options, there is a button to open the directory where the save is.
I edited the Advanced Feature page product on Steam to remove mention of the Online Save feature, and I will implement Steam Cloud Saves with their developer tool.
Mini crowdfunding
When the Early Access was launched in 2017, people could prebuy the game on the website, like a mini-crowdfunding. There were various tiers (early bird, get your name in the game, etc), which can be bought with a Humble Bundle plugin window integrated in the website.
Every people who get the game at this time will be contacted and get special rewards, like having his name in the credits.
Humble Bundle info
As I need to get all emails from backers through Humble Bundle, I was reluctant to do so, as I got some problems with lag, but it was already 6 or 7 years ago... everything is running fine today.
For every product, I display all sales with a starting date of 2011 (far before anything was available) to be sure that all orders will be displayed, and I click on the "send csv to my email button".
Hopefully, I gave every product an unique name like "reward15" for the $15 reward. Still, I rename the csv by adding an intelligible name like "Alpha" or "Alpha-Early Bird".
Why not use Humble Bundle crowdfunding tool?
Humble Bundle has a crowdfunding tool to send an access to a download page, but you need to provide the email adresses. So you still need to download yourself the emails of a product, then upload those emails in the crowdfunding tool of this product.
Besides, I need to send an online form to ask people for their name in the credits, and I cannot do it with a simple download list.
Test product removal
Looks like there is no way to remove a product, so my test products are still there.
Game Executables and DRM Free
All game executables are from 2018, so I hide them. I will upload an up-to-date DRM Free version, likely on my mediafire account, and give the link through the email I will send to backers. I need to have as few as possible ways to give access to the game, as managing multiple platforms is a hassle.
Data check
I double check I have all csv files from Humble Bundle. My goal is to mix all data files together to have only one data source to work.
I open every file in Excel, and add a column "category" with a name like "15-alpha". This is a way to display the price of the reward and remember what it corresponds to, but also a way to sort all info by alphabetical order.
To gather data, I was thinking about using something smart like Excel Power Query, but a few minutes of copy-paste were more effective.
The creation date is completely useless. I ckecked original data to be sure, but the csv data sent by Humble Bundle are really those numbers. They correspond to the "minutes, seconds, and tens of seconds" when the order was created, instead of the full date (year, month, day, hour, minute, etc).
I filled a bug report to Humble Bundle.
Hello,
I just extracted csv data for all my products, and the "created" column, instead of containing the full date "year, month, day, hour, minute, second", it only contains "minute, second and tens of seconds".
2017-12-01 7:34:10.5
becomes
34:10.5
Here are the steps to reproduce the bug:
- I go on a sales product page like [REDACTED]
- I choose a very old starting date to be sure everything is displayed (like 2011)
- I click the button "export csv to my email"
- I receive the email
- I download the csv
- I open the csv in a notepad tool (like Notepad++)
- I can see that only part of the date is in the "created" colmumn
I think datetime should be displayed as
YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss.S
year-month-day hour(24h):minute:second.tens of seconds
Could you please fix this issue (or transfer this message to the technical team), and come back to me?
Thanks in advance.
Looks like Steam replace text by emoji in code formatting, which is either a bug or a very bad design choice. I won't fill a bug report because I cannot display a bug report.
Who gets what?
Contrary to what I was thinking, the data does not represent people who buy a product, it represents people who has an access to a product.
If someone pays $14 for the alpha early bird, and has access to the $15 alpha, he is listed two times. But with only one payment. There are also a few people who either bought the game several times (thanks), or there are other ways to understand the data. I play it safe and group everything together for each people.
As the crowdfunding displayed publicly the number of backers and the total money raised, I will give here the final numbers:
There are 235 backers who raised $3537! Thank to everyone of you!
Rewards are incremental, so every backer will receive all rewards corresponding to the lower tiers.
Supporter - 55 backers
Alpha - 132 backers
Advanced features - 40 backers
Name a nanomachine - 8 backers
I really liked designing those reward panels, using Inkscape.
Next step
I intend to work next on the google forms and the email.
I will work on the dark ending cutscene. I have a good idea.