Early Access: the current state

    • Jeytav wrote:

      One of the stretch goals we reached was "The Golden Voice" which gives us voice acting in the game and no the tto is not going to be the ingame voice actor, it there as a place holder until they are ready to hire or maybe ask some members of the community, to do the voice acting for them.

      Great point, I completely forgot about the stretch goal but assumed they would get voice actors for the full release game, it's just not something that is really critical to the game at this stage.

      Mastermind_Farmer wrote:

      If I had a dislike button for every post I seen complaining about the text to speech in this announcement/game-play video for the EA I would be clicking away at them

      Whilst I can understand that in regards to simple "the voice is terrible" posts I disagree with that in regards to posts that have some constructive criticism.

      Good constructive criticism is a very healthy thing to use in developing a product.

      I'll be honest and say a lot of criticism of MBB is just rubbish and not constructive at all.

    • mmmBetty wrote:

      Jeytav wrote:

      One of the stretch goals we reached was "The Golden Voice" which gives us voice acting in the game and no the tto is not going to be the ingame voice actor, it there as a place holder until they are ready to hire or maybe ask some members of the community, to do the voice acting for them.
      Great point, I completely forgot about the stretch goal but assumed they would get voice actors for the full release game, it's just not something that is really critical to the game at this stage.

      Mastermind_Farmer wrote:

      If I had a dislike button for every post I seen complaining about the text to speech in this announcement/game-play video for the EA I would be clicking away at them
      Whilst I can understand that in regards to simple "the voice is terrible" posts I disagree with that in regards to posts that have some constructive criticism.

      Good constructive criticism is a very healthy thing to use in developing a product.

      I'll be honest and say a lot of criticism of MBB is just rubbish and not constructive at all.
      I 100% agree with you on that just wish some would just take a minute to understand and look at it from the dev's point of view, cause at the end of the day a developer can only take so much criticism that they might just go completely dark on updates not MMB would do that but it has happen with other games that's all.
    • Mastermind_Farmer wrote:

      If I had a dislike button for every post I seen complaining about the text to speech in this announcement/game-play video for the EA I would be clicking away at them, don't know why some can't be happy that we got a update cause honestly i think this the first ever video or devlog we got that was really game-play which show how the hud is going to somewhat look like , how the mission system might be working, how the GPS incorporated in the game etc, but to sit here and nix and pick about the text to speech out of all the other things that were going on in the video is crazy. Remember it's still early game development and those little thing's are going to change over time & near future before full release.

      sorry for the rant everybody!
      You're speaking out your opinion mate and that's allowed. Don't be sorry about that. The world isn't perfect ;)
      Proper Sim gamer. Rally games tractor and truck games. Bus games and train games you name it :)

    • So after having gotten some sleep and watching the video a few more times I feel like I'm ready to type up my thoughts. I'll try and do it in an chronological way. Oh and a fair warning this is going to be a long long long post ;) and this is my opinion and my thoughts they are meant to be constructive and simply reflects what I think should be changed. Edit: wow this is going to be even longer than I anticipated, sorry about that ;)

      -- The Female AI and TTO


      First thing we interact with is the AI lady. I don't mind the english TTO and I can overlook the grammar but her body movement when she speaks is to me a bit excessive and feels out of place in my non-professional opinion I think you should limit her movement and gestures a bit for 2 reasons. Firstly her body language doesn't match what she is saying. She is asking for the farmer to help her husband by cultivating the field in a calm manner but her body language seem to say that she desperately needs you to do it(or something like that). The part where she point towards the tractor is fine and looks pretty normal not perfect but good enough. the part from when she says "hello farmer" to when she is about to say "he needs someone to cultivate it" is fine her movement of the arms seems fine but the part after that seems out of place.

      The TTO is as I said fine with me for 2 reasons.
      Firstly no one should expect you(MBB) have hired voice actors at this point. not for a game that wont require a lot of voice acting unlike titles like FO4 etc. The amount of of VA needed for a game like this can be recorded in I dont know in a week or so and the grammar can be fixed by the community, I would even suggest that - if possible - you upload every single piece of text that the player will see and read to something like getlocalization.com there are many other similar sites out there that provides companies the service of letting members of that company's community translate everything into their native language. I have personally helped translating "Medieval Engineer" a few other games into my language by simple spending a few days/weeks/months(depening on the size of the game) translating words and sentences into my native language and usually there is more 5-10 people who works on translating something into the same language so i my case 5-10 danish people translating and checking each others translation and then approving them. But that's just something I'm throwing out there.
      Regarding the VA itself I would also suggest that you maybe for fun post a thread where people can audition to voice characters in the game and in the future making it possible to have the game voiced into any language out there. I would imagine that people who are going to "audition" for something like this will do it for free and just get credited in the game for it.
      Secondly I think of this video more of a proof of concept meaning showing us how you would imagine tutorials and quest are going to work when MBB get so far. It's also a way to tell us when you expect the game to be released.

      -- Tractors and sound

      The tractor models looks nice and the cabin looks really good. I like all the button we can "push" in the cab and the fact that we can open the door from the outside(would've been nice to see how you activate the IC) I don't mind the stepping in/out of the tractor animation isn't there mainly because things like that can cause visual glitching and can also end up looking more awkward than anything. The sound of the engine starting and running is really nice and I like it. I'm not sure never having driven a Claas but I'm pretty sure he is stepping on the brake instead of the gas pedal when you start driving. I don't really mind either that you can attach the implement from inside the cab but I do hope that we will get manual attaching at some point. The suspension looks fine to me considering. The AI traffic looks good as well although they do seem to drive a bit slow BUT I LOVE seeing the MB Trac driving out on the road towards the field and then into the field and I love the sound of the MB Trac when it starts ploughing.

      In general the tractors and the engine sounds are amazing 8/10. only thing is the sounds from the enviroment not being muted in the cabin and not hearing the noise of the cultivator.

      -- The Rest

      I don't have anything to say about the rest of the stuff in this video except it all looks really good and I hope you find a way to get that poor cat out of that wheel barrel soon ;)

      -------

      So I still got some things to say about the written update.

      I'm looking forward to the coming update next week and I would also like to say congratulations to @Memphis for becoming our community manager and I(and hopefully the rest of the gang in here) looks forward to interacting with you.

      I'm sad to hear that the nvidia bug is also affecting the full engine and not just the demo version and I would also like to say that I had to rollback to 378.66 before that graphical glitch disappeared. But hopefully nvidia will get a fix out soon. Can't have them delaying the game more than necessary ;) but I'm confident that if that glitch is too tough to break without nvidia releasing a fix then all of us who are using nvidia cards will be willing to rollback to a working update, I know I will/already have.

      I'm really curios about this stress test. In order for that test to make sense then the file needs to have a bit of size to it to make sure that as many people as possible can start downloading that "file" simultaneously and also stress the server over a "long" time period. Soooo what kind of file are we talking about here @masterbrain :D

      That's it I got nothing else to say in this post.

      i5 4690k - 3,5 Ghz, EVGA gtx 1070 ftw hybrid - 8 gb vram, 16 gb 1600 Mhz ddr3 ram
    • Now that I have had time to look see and watch the new video there is some good and bad. Voice acting yes you are not a big company don't get me wrong but voice acting in game is something you have to get right it is one of those things you either get right and don't do it, as was posted before body language of the girl also does not match the concern and or issue she is having she seemed over stiff in her movements and overly calm. As for the tractor the graphics theme selves are pretty good fluid motion of the tractor and a company that has finally gotten the point of a tractor is too pull things not drive like a race care. The crop graphics could look a lot better there quality is no more better than Farming Simulator and or Agricultural simulator 2013 for all the issues that game had. Crop stocks are not two plane lines they are round this will take time to improve and such but the earlier you start working on it the easier it is later on. The color and atmosphere of the game seemed to be overly cloudy and fuzzy for the time of day it was. As though the metal was done on a fuzzy blanket than metal.
      Now as for the delay of the release for testing does not bother me one bit I always believe quality should always come before quantity on anything unlike farming simulator that started doing quality work in there days have no made the mistake of doing quantity over the quality of product. Trust me as a gamer you can release one hundred expansions and most will only but what they want for there game. Quality will always keep players playing your game and coming back to you as a customer. More release notes would help the community that has spent money to get you where you are based purely on faith goes a very long way in building good customer to company relations in the future. Ignoring issues not addressing the community does more harm than one thinks look at Giants Software with the issues they are having there on there forum site, a bug is reported and issue is found and instead of fixing the issue and bugs in a timely manner they ignore for a month then say something on the lines of your fault not ours.
      As for the tractors that are in game Class is fine along wit Deutz Fahr as a start but expanded as time goes on with there combines and other equipment and other companies like Case or Challenger Massey Ferguson New Holland and so on and so forth is even better. Don't make Giants Software release promising Agco but only giving already equipment from a prior game and Massey Ferguson 3 Challengers and 3 Fendt and 3 Valtras when they have more than that. Having all the companies equipment as time goes on plus third party equipment just makes the game that more interesting why you have many options and many choices for your farm from a one company way to a get it done period way and everything in the middle. Each farm and farmer then has there way and makes the game seem more alive.
    • MichaelDS wrote:

      ...............Quality will always keep players playing your game and coming back to you as a customer. More release notes would help the community that has spent money to get you where you are based purely on faith goes a very long way in building good customer to company relations in the future. Ignoring issues not addressing the community does more harm ................
      I already get the impression MBB understand this but I will second this for no other reason than for the record .....




      Jeytav wrote:

      ........................- if possible - you upload every single piece of text that the player will see and read to something like getlocalization.com there are many other similar sites out there that provides companies the service of letting members of that company's community translate everything into their native language..................

      I absolutely support this kind of attitude and I reckon it would work well for any textual hints/help features in the game also .... maybe this is actually where the real value of this idea lies.

      In a similar vein the Jeytav's opening comments, what follows is surely not the TL:DR version ..

      It's Monday now, a couple of days since the latest video update .... and some more considered thoughts.

      My initial reaction to the latest video update was one of being "deflated". I do not feel let down or cheated ... just the countdown thing had me allowing myself to expect more than just the date ... even-though I had previously posted that I expected a minimum an EA access date ...LOL

      The voice component in this video actually is very appropriate given the tutorial aspect of the video .... But I will admit that I still need to be convinced of the need for voice acting in the RELEASED sim? This feels like a DLC option for later to be honest. I can imagine, if you are perhaps an Ag-contractor, that you might have to deal with phone calls and face to face farmer conversations ..... it's be very cool indeed.

      That the video is "development stage early game play" is very encouraging. Video quality , robot voice, etc are all not an issue at this time for me. I am looking for features and functionality.
      I frame any comments I make in terms of what the full RELEASE will be at the end of the 2017. between now and then, it's the features being built in that are key. Polish and tuning, graphics, voice, etc will all come along no doubt..

      The comparison, fair or not, will always be the competition and the mods that exist for it.

      These all add a lot to a sim-play experience. This is the stuff I am looking for and I am finding it too.
      In the video, the 'follow me' operation meets 'Courseplay' ... is all right there and looking fantastic. I am interested to know what the actual setup is for the player and I want to know more details on how to actually use the CnC implementation of these features. All that will come of course ... likely in the tutorials.

      The quality of the models is awesome. Claas are class machines and the fidelity in the cab alone, means, this is certainly somewhere I will have no issues spending time. The manual key ignition and the interaction with the door and steering wheel are all great to see. The in cab hud, the real to life 'operating' of the machine from within the cab .... this is why I am in on the CnC product! Folks have mentioned manual hitching/unhitching and I add my vote to this. But here's my mindset .......I love to have 'levelling a plough or cultivator' in the feature set also ....

      One concern I had, based solely on the latest video ( this fed into the 'deflated' immediate reaction I had) is the apparent status of the development itself. Now, the video was a nice intro to the tutorial feature but the real message was about the cat hopefully getting released in June. I feel I personally can live without the tutorials myself (until I get stuck and need help LOL) so I saw that as a filler in the video, else the video would have been weird and maybe caught the attention of the animal rights groups ... LOL

      But the overall presentation of the video, the content, and the apparent status of the EA, gave me a visual reference to compare against the mental reference I have from the Roadmap. Somehow, the two didn't comfortably align.

      Likely for many good reasons, there still is some adjustment for me to make to marry the two expectations together. I left the video thinking ... hmmm perhaps the overall development is indeed not as far down the line as I allowed myself to believe.

      Folks have commented on the video quality. For sure, it is not as polished as the earlier pre KS and KS versions .... so that may explain why the latest feels like a step back for a visuals point of view. I needed to realise this and I now have.

      The overall impression of the machinery shown did not communicate much 'newness' to the images we have already seen .... still MB and Claas in the main. Again, the main motivation of this video was about the cat stuck in the wheelbarrow ...LOL

      The small engineering dev map, light on assets does little to give away hints of size of the map, range of map features etc obviously .... it's a fast loaded test platform. But if you look harder, a second or third viewing), you can still see a very solid set of features, many of which have been highlighted in earlier posts.

      All this is very encouraging but also a reminder (which I need ).

      Full RELEASE is not slated until end of 2017. This is a long time away. Development wise and actually counting off the months.

      EA will be a subset of the final game with a lot of limitations, missing features, imperfect features etc.

      The basis of CnC is looking fantastic ... the developer will need time, resources, constructive feedback and positive engagement to support them through this development cycle.
      Go Handy & Give 'er Lolly
    • MichaelDS wrote:

      ... Voice acting yes you are not a big company don't get me wrong but voice acting in game is something you have to get right it is one of those things you either get right and don't do it ...

      Why do people keep commenting on the voice acting? Haven't you read through the project description and looked at the stretch goals when you backed the project? Or did you blindly throw your money at the project?

      VOICE ACTING was one of the stretch goals (The Golden Voice) that was reached in the kickstarter campaign! This is NOT the final product and voice acting is not high on the todo list right now for good reason. First: The EA release need to get done and Secondly: All the manuscripts aren't written yet. Because things like missions, tutorials ect aren't finished yet, so it would be pretty stupid and a waste of money to hire a voice actor to voice something that would most likely change and some of it only used this once for sure.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by ChiloopaBatman ().

    • Tonihawki wrote:

      who cares about voice??? its about farming, graphics, if game looks real not like some things in FS, and how enjoyable is game, releasing date is important. If we get EA in June this is already 3 months behind schedule!!! For me voice in this game can be voice of Nanny Fran
      I agree, I'd rather they spend the money on even better physics, soil textures, sounds, rain etc. Also, I can read, so if they have tutorials in different languages, it should be just fine imo.
    • Yeah that's a bigish topic on the German forums but I think it would be safe to assume that you can post lp's etc without them suing you for it, but it would be nice with a formal response to this. Hopefully @Memphis and @masterbrain will give us some info about that at some point.

      There are some devs who doesn't want people to make lp's of their game without their permission and they can legally take your channel down.
      So yeah would be nice with a formal statement on this issue. Preferably before EA release

      As said @AgriMax1998 pointed out there is something about in the facts but it doesn't say if you can create let's plays of the game. It only says you are allowed to share official pictures, videos and posts

      i5 4690k - 3,5 Ghz, EVGA gtx 1070 ftw hybrid - 8 gb vram, 16 gb 1600 Mhz ddr3 ram
    • axlpanico wrote:

      Hello everyone !!! I was wondering (when early access comes out) if it was possible to post videos on youtube ...
      They did reply to a German Tweet saying your allowed to stream it on twitch. But yeh it would be nice for a full confirmation on making videos as well as streaming the Early Access.

      "Hello. Will it be possible to stream the early access version at twitch?"
      "Yes, it will be allowed to stream the EA to twitch."

      Translated through Google Translate
    • Seb73 wrote:

      hello,
      Right now the hay season is starting at home in france.
      And I thought you would think, after the mowing let the grass dry and not pass the tedder and HOP the grass is already dry. Also for hay boots.
      The hay would be done in several days ...
      What do you think ?

      Ps : i am french and excuse me for spelling errors ! ;)

      Vous lizes mon pensee Seb73 ....
      (You read my thoughts Seb73 ....)

      This is a great example actually ... the cycle of
      1) cutthe grass
      2) toss the grass (probably a couple of times to ensure the sun gets to it all
      3) windrow the 'now' hay
      4) baling it

      should take time and need the virtual farmer to keep an eye on the forecast before starting the process.

      The current common farming simulator short cuts this whole process ... one run of the tedder and magically grass becomes hay .... this is fine for an arcade game of course ....


      So the time aspect in CnC for the, the making of hay, the growth of crops, the losing of crops also is something I hope MBB are keeping in their plans.
      Go Handy & Give 'er Lolly
    • Noticed on the Kickstarter Crowdfunding page that there are now over 10,500 supporters, who have funded 482,071.00 Euros. At the end of kickstarter I believe the total was close enough to the 250,000 required for first stretch goal.

      With this awesome total collected to date has the development team increased in size?
      How many people are working on this project?

      Thanks
    • Racn wrote:

      Noticed on the Kickstarter Crowdfunding page that there are now over 10,500 supporters, who have funded 482,071.00 Euros. At the end of kickstarter I believe the total was close enough to the 250,000 required for first stretch goal.

      With this awesome total collected to date has the development team increased in size?
      How many people are working on this project?

      Thanks
      I believe it has increased, but I'm not really sure by how much.
    • JackWall wrote:

      Seb73 wrote:

      hello,
      Right now the hay season is starting at home in france.
      And I thought you would think, after the mowing let the grass dry and not pass the tedder and HOP the grass is already dry. Also for hay boots.
      The hay would be done in several days ...
      What do you think ?

      Ps : i am french and excuse me for spelling errors ! ;)
      Vous lizes mon pensee Seb73 ....
      (You read my thoughts Seb73 ....)

      This is a great example actually ... the cycle of
      1) cutthe grass
      2) toss the grass (probably a couple of times to ensure the sun gets to it all
      3) windrow the 'now' hay
      4) baling it

      should take time and need the virtual farmer to keep an eye on the forecast before starting the process.

      The current common farming simulator short cuts this whole process ... one run of the tedder and magically grass becomes hay .... this is fine for an arcade game of course ....


      So the time aspect in CnC for the, the making of hay, the growth of crops, the losing of crops also is something I hope MBB are keeping in their plans.
      After that does not mean that it must be from the EA but with the time I think it is achievable ! :D