Alpha 0.6 Released!

Direct link: http://www.indiedb.com/games/planet-explorers/downloads/planet-explorers-alpha-06
Torrent: http://pathea.net/a06p.torrent

Hey all, it’s been too long, but we’re finally done with the alpha 0.6 build. There were just too many things packed into this build for us to move any faster, but we should have scheduled better. We’ll try to make the build content smaller for a0.7 (yeah right knowing our personalities) so we can hit our scheduling better.

As for alpha 0.6 itself, the build is no longer free to play, for anyone that wishes to only try out the game, please try alpha 0.53. We’ve reached a point in the game’s life where we think it’s actually worth people’s hard earned money. To get into the alpha right now, you can just pre-order it here. For early backers from Kickstarter and Paypal, we’ve been sending out your keys over the last few hours, if you don’t get your key within the next 24 hours, please contact us at admin@pathea.net, check your spam folder first though (we really screwed up and sent the email out as “hello player”). Currently, the build is for PC only, we’ll be releasing the Linux and Mac versions later this week.

Here’s the changelist for Alpha 0.6:

– flare gun with very cool flare
– blaster gun
– stun gun
– rifle tupe 2
– gatling turret
– proton turret
– battery (to power things such as blasters, shields, and other energy devices)
– 12 men hair styles
– 15 women hair styles
– 2 all new face types (f/m)
– building creation (5 types)
– launcher for game with patch updating
– minerals everywhere
– random mineral patches
– 5 new armor types
– caves everywhere
– new adventure map random seeding (with names as the seed, so “Planet Godzilla”)
– random map is now looking great and infinite
– flora on random map
– new npc system
– new npcs
– ragdolls for ai
– new forest animals
– switching items no longer have frame drop
– new save ui with instant picture taking when saving manually
– multiplayer adventure and build modes
– new inventory for multiplayer
– digging materials in multiplayer
– freed around 100MB of ram
– vertical take off craft creation
– settlement building
– new landscapes
– new missions
– new locations
– new weather
– new moon cycle
– new materials such as coal and sulfate
– player being able to load items other players made in multiplayer
– alien base
– alien ai
– personal PC UI and functions
– using shield (defaults to the ctrl key)
– energy shield
– glass windows
– invert mouse in first person and gun mode
– tree cutting progress bar
– overheating for vehicle weapons
– animals causing area damage to other animals
– items durability (include turrets and vehicles! Fix them up in the repair center for now)
– andhera queen
– flying bird small
– layerback boss
– blindatillo boss
– player being able to load items other players made in multiplayer
– Personal PC UI and functions
– newer tutorial ui
– NPC can fire ranged weapons
– better pathfinding for ai
– option to show hp change
– better animation when standing still
– more animation variations
– better cave detection to turn down the ambient (still needs work)

If you’re on a 32bit machine, we’d suggest you try using a software called Ram Smash. It clears your ram whenever you get close to the crash limit (1.7G), that way you can play the game for long periods of time without crash (the game pauses for a bit when the ram’s getting cleared).

To activate the game, please type in the email you received the key with as well as the key itself. If you cannot connect to the server, please wait a bit and try again. The activation server is in the US. If you still cannot access after 24 hours, we’ll have to troubleshoot case by case.

For multiplayer, hosting a private server allows you to play on LAN, an open server is on the lobby. So far it’s still coop only. There are still some bugs in it that we’ll attempt to address with a0.61. And yes, there will be an a0.61, we already know a lot of the bugs in the current build.

After we release some patch builds for a0.6, we’ll start moving in the direction of a0.7, which is aiming for a September release.

We didn’t get to finish the mineral magnetometer scanner tool on time for this build, so here are some locations for some of the ores (you’ll need to find the rest on your own, there are lots).

copper 11574, 9117
copper 11601, 9288
copper 10728. 7654
iron 11083, 6507
iron 11367, 7803
iron 11047, 8167
oil 11898, 7888
oil 10017, 7191
aluminum 10300, 8527
aluminum 10530, 7915
aluminum 11835, 7596
gold 11740, 7443
gold 11862, 8091
coal 10269, 7299
coal 11182, 7380
silver 11133, 8748
silver 11799, 6178

Anyway, thank you again for all your support and please enjoy the release!