The final week of the beta is upon us!

You guys have been amazing with the amount of feedback you’ve been sending us, and we’ve paid close attention to every little detail. We’ve been working flat-out to make as many changes as we could; some of them were entirely successful, some of them were completely unexpected, and others, unfortunately, will have to wait until the final release before making an appearance.

Our latest build contains many improvements since the beta first began:

• Better networking performance (with further improvements already in progress).
  
• Better CPU and memory performance (ditto).
  
• An entirely new combat system, to give a more strategic and controlled experience. (Please note: If you liked the old system, don't worry, you'll be able to alternate between the two attack systems in the final version of the game. In the meantime, we'd love to hear your feedback, please discuss here )
  
• Reworked menus.
  
• A stable master server to track your games.
  
• Extra maps.
  
• Bug fixes, tweaks, and all manner of little added titbits.
  

If you’ve not done so yet, now is your last chance to try out these improved features and tell us how much you love/hate them! After next week, we will be going into a deep hibernation of frenzied development to add everything that we simply didn’t have time to during the beta.

Don’t worry if we missed something that you really REALLY wanted. The chances are good that it will be in the final version, and we will be setting up a 100% free trial just before launch, so that you can get an idea of how you feel about the finished product.

Until then, download our video game here!

The competition rages on, and we've had an unprecedented amount of entries!! (compared to our other competitions that is)

Can you do better? There's still time! Grab a pen and scribble it down! Remember, gravity is your friend.

In other news, the next beta release is coming SOMETIME THIS WEEK! Exactly when? Even I don't know...

I thought I would start this with a picture of a sweet kitten in a compromising situation, perhaps accompanied by some pseudo-childish text. I felt sure that this would warm your hearts and cause ours to swell with the potential of the future. However, I fear there is not a LOLcat in existence that could raise our spirits from this, surely the lowest of depths.

We have not managed to release our patch this week as we hoped. But, rather than publish something of low quality, we’ve decided to stick with it a little longer to make sure it’s good enough for you, the people good enough to stick with us through our troubles.

We’ll most likely be producing something next week, but, as a result of our miscalculation, will be pushing back the beta by another week so that you guys have a chance to enjoy it. You shall have every inch of the Plain Sight that you deserve and, indeed, more. All we ask is for a little more of your patience.

Also, if it will make you feel any better, I have clearly won the poll of who should get the day off (thank you to everyone who voted) and I’m still working this weekend. VIDEO GAMES!

On second thoughts, maybe I do need one of these...

Our keyboards awash with tears, day and night flitter past, oblivious, we toil toward the imminant patch of Plain Sight.

From the front line, here's the news. A low down on what our bloody, bruised fingers have created for you:

1. The networking has been fixed. Now there's much less bandwidth being used and host should no longer have an advantage. This should make the game roughly a million times better. On a technical note, we're doing things in the same way to Counter Strike.


2. New attack system. The current system is a bit of a spam fest. Some of you may like this (so we’ll keep the old system in) but we wanted to make Plain Sight more tactical. In the new system you’re required to lock onto a target before you can attack them. This will be done by holding down the attack button and tracking your opponent’s movement. When you release the button you’ll attack. You can do this at any time but the longer you’re tracking the opponent the longer the range and the more powerful the attack.


3. Memory performance. Currently there’s a bug that just eats away at your memory like a stoned cookie monster. We think this is why the game starts crunching after a certain time. We fixed this by changing three lines of code.


4. and, as usual, bug fixes!!

We're hoping to get to get this to you for the end of the week.

In other news, Rock Paper Shotgun’s Kieron Gillen has written a preview of Plain Sight for Eurogamer - go forth and read!

Finally, because we love you, here’s some more wallpaper to pimp out your PC’s with.

Preview above, pick your resolution: 1024x768 1280x1024 1440x900 1680x1050 1920x1200

Here it is folks! This update should solve a bunch of your problems!

Download it and read the release notes here

What's next? Well, there’s currently a networking/performance bug that makes some games grind to a halt after a certain number of people join. From what we’ve been told, this manifests itself in a mix of frame rate drop and network lag. As this only happens on certain peoples PC’s, we really need your help finding out what causes it!

If you’re experiencing this problem, please let us know about it on this forum thread.

Once this is nailed we can start adding features...

EDIT: Changed the image to Adam Atomic's latest Sketchbookr entry. Ace.

After quietly mentioning the words ‘open beta’, the entire internet decided to give our servers an utter pounding. Prison style.


Like the new accountant inmate after his first shanking, our servers were left in a bloody gibbering heap in the corner of the room.


A few teething issues arose, these were :

1. Our first build was 130 megs. After some clever audio compression trickery we chopped it to 38 megs. Much better!


2. The masterserver (the bit of software that lets everyone join games) couldn’t deal with a trillion people hitting it and kept crashing (hence the ‘master server not found error’). This is being fixed today. Also, due to the sheer volume of traffic both web servers went splat.


3. General XNA compatibility/install issues. Lots of people ran the .msi file not the setup.exe. This meant that XNA 3.0 Redistributable and .NET 3.5 weren’t installed. If the game crashes when you try and start it, this is most probably the reason. Go forth and download.


4. Our code that tries to bypass firewalls (aka ‘NAT punch though’) doesn’t always succeed. This meant that lots of people were hosting games which other players couldn’t join. Solution: open port 24816 on your router and software firewall. Head over to http://portforward.com/ for full info.



5. Finally, the game sometimes doesnt quit properly. Many issues (Lawrence thinks 80-90% of them) have been caused by an old Plain Sight process running in the background. So basically, the game running twice. This will be fixed in the next release, however if you run task manager you can remove the PlainSight.exe from the Processes tab - you'll find this should solve many problems.

That covers most of them ... hope it helps!

Also, here’s a game development tip. Once you release your open beta, however great you feel, wait a few hours before going and getting arse-faced in a pub. We learned this last night.

By 11 o’clock it became apparent that using my iPhone's remote desktop app to keep resetting the master server wasn’t the best idea. Alex, with a gut full of booze, had to head back to a late night (drunk) coding session. What a trooper!

Aside from that, everything went grand. We’ve been blown away by the response to Plain Sight. Thanks to all of you for putting up with our slightly turbulent launch. We're working around the clock to fix bugs and we all look forward to hearing your feedback over the next few weeks.

EDIT: forgot to mention this, we're hoping to release a patch that should fix a bunch of issues tomorrow!

Oh boy, the launch of our public beta is so close! Horrifyingly close, in fact. Say you’re a well-stacked “babe” in a slasher movie, and you bend over to pick up the handbag that inexplicably fumbled out of your grasp, and when you stand up again HOLY CRAP HE’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU! And there are scars all over his face, and he’s smelling your hair and crying.

That’s how close.

But... it’s too late now, there’s nowhere to run, and your preposterous bosoms would have slowed you down anyway. Give in and accept, for the Beta is here right now and you are already in its thrall.

The Escapist Magazine is running an http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/interviews/ids/5664-Indie-Developers-Showcase">Indie Developer Showcase which you should keep an eye on, because in approximately 24 hours they will be running a feature on none other than Beatnik Games! It’s pretty much going to be the essential Beatnik Companion of 2009 and by way of honouring their grand gesture, we have made Plain Sight open to all!

Anyone that’s not made it to the closed beta so far, now’s your chance! Anyone that’s never even bothered so far, now’s your chance! Don’t delay, download right now! Who knows when we could have a sudden change of heart and whisk the whole thing away and tear up the website and just quit.

Let me tell you: any day now.

SECOND IMPORTANT EDIT: With such a heavy load our master server is a tad unstable. We're doing what we can to fix this however (over the next 8 hours) if you get a 'master server not found' error don't worry, this is just a temporary glitch. Everything will be back up and running asap.

IMPORTANT EDIT January 21st (6:00pm GMT / 10:00am PST)
We have made some improvements to the build since yesterday. This includes a dramatic chop in the file size to a third of what it used to be, which should make you happy!

If you downloaded the game before this edit, you will need to do so again, uninstall the previous version and reinstall this new one.

Sorry! we'll have proper patching working for the next update so this isn't necessary again.

A new internal beta build of Plain Sight beta is up and it’s 1000% better.

Oh yes, you heard me. ONE THOUSAND PERCENT BETTER. This is not a random figure plucked from the air. It is true. It is science. It is our new networking.

Other great stuff included; a new map (as seen below) which we’ve called ‘Little Bang’, game customization, re-worked blocking and attacking and a bunch of bug fixes -it’s all super awesome.



Oh, what’s that? You’re not on the beta? Well, dry up those tears, that’s not going to be the case for much longer. Those kind folks at the Escapist are featuring our humble little Plain Sight on their 'Indie Games Showcase' next week. To celebrate this we’re going to be launching a totally free (no sign up required) version of Plain Sight. This will be the “open beta” we spoke of many moons ago. It’ll go on for the rest of January (and perhaps a bit of February) at which point we’ll pull the plug and you’ll have to wait a few weeks for the demo.



If you’ve put your name down for the beta (or you’re a registered member) we’ll email you will full details.