Yesterday we invited around 500 people to test out the new Atmosphir experience. It was a little bumpy - a little downtime, multiplayer lag, etc - but overall things went relatively well.
If you aren’t in either of those camps (most of you, I’d imagine) - fear not, our plan is to eventually continue letting people in small groups. If you’re already an Atmosphir member or ever signed up on any sort of “waiting list” for Atmosphir, we will send you an invite as soon as we can - but to be perfectly honest, that could be 2-3 months away still. Please be patient!
If you are a Player’s Club Member or signed up on the Prebeta form (the special form that was only up for 2 days, NOT the normal waiting list), you should be set. If you think you should have received an invite and didn’t, check your spam folder; some users said the initial email was erroneously sent there. But 500 emails were definitely sent out, as I have confirmed with the first and last person on the list that they received theirs.
Also, there is a thread in the old forums here explaining things in more detail, along with a full list of the invitees.
Hello faithful community, hope you had a nice week.
We are still looking good for the 500 person prebeta launch on Monday. We have run into several migration issues bringing old levels into the new system this week, but those appear to be solved now. We were pretty concerned about it and it had the potential to push things back more, but I believe the problem was isolated and fixed just today. There are still a few finishing touches that we’ll need to put together this weekend, but I see no major red flags like last week. If anything last-minute comes up, I will let you guys know. One thing to note is not everyone might get their invites at exactly 12pm pst as mentioned before - I very well may have to send out the invites manually, which could take some time…so bear with us.
Things are still a little rough around the edges, but overall I think the extra time was well spent. Looking forward to an exciting day next Monday. I will probably be playing multiplayer just about all day, so add me as a friend (okaysamurai) and you should be able to see what I’m playing by going to the main menu and selecting Play > Compete > Friend Sessions.
Until then, have a nice weekend and see you next week.
Prebeta launch tomorrow is not looking good. We’re all working hard today, but some things that are just outside of our control - they’re not worth getting into here. I’m frustrated, but determined that we’ll be able to find a solution soon.
Best-case scenario, things work out and the 500 prebeta invites go out tomorrow; worst-case scenario, you have to wait another week. At least that’s my best estimation at this point.
Anyway…we will try to think of some way to thank you for your endless patience. In the meantime, a new trailer will be revealed in the next day or so, so stay tuned…
We have been pushing development as hard as humanly possible. To be completely honest and transparent with the community like I’ve always tried to be, there have been eleventh hour changes outside of our control that we have come up against in the past 3-4 hours. We will be working this weekend and trying to get ready by Monday. Rest assured we are all trying our best. I will update you more on Sunday evening.
On February 8, we will be giving prebeta access to around 500 of our current members. So, if you’re an Atmosphir member right now, all you have to do is enter your username on this form(Update: This is now closed). The exceptions are Players’ Club members, who have already been entered and need not sign up again. If you are among the first 500 signups, you will then be notified by email next Monday with information on how to access the beta.
Here’s some more clarification if you’re looking for it.
Q: Why aren’t all 20k users being let in on February 8?
A: That was the original plan, but there are too many outstanding bugs to be considered ready for that large of a group at this point. By limiting it to 500 at first, we can get the most dedicated fans in, which is a much more manageable amount for giving feedback, stress-testing the servers, and playing multiplayer. Those who have stuck by Atmosphir through all of this don’t deserve to wait any longer, and are more willing to overlook bugs than the general public. If we receive more than 500 signups, we will continue adding people in during the following days and weeks. Our revised plan is to get all 20k in by early March - slowly but surely.
Q: I don’t have an Atmosphir account yet. Can I still sign up?
A: Not on this form. The best thing for you to do is sign up on our waiting list here. Depending on demand, expect your invite in 1-3 more months.
Q: What happens to my atmos/club membership?
A: After the migration, we will be transferring these over later this week. However, you will not be able to buy more atmos or club memberships until we have our new store set up, which is still 1-2 weeks away from being fully implemented. If you do get access next week and find something wrong with your account, email us immediately and we will take care of it.
Q: What about all the items I bought, will those be saved?
A: The current plan is to have everyone start from the default basic set, and be given back all their atmos they ever got - from the initial 100 free atmos, further purchases, buildup from weekly club amounts, or contest winnings - and be able to buy things all over again from scratch. This seemed like the only fair way to do things given that the looks/textures/animations of many items have changed, and gives you a second chance to buy what you want. All prices for this period will be the same as they were before.
Q: Will I be able to access all of my old levels?
A: Yes. Every old level will show up in the play browser with a “convert” button next to it that you will have to manually press to reconfigure it to fit within the new Atmosphir system. As reported before, some extremely large levels might run into conversion issues. For these, I would recommend opening them in design mode and saving them as a draft, with the hope we will improve optimization in the future. As a means of comparison, I was able to convert Platformed: World 2 just fine (a large mountain temple), but not Genesis Fortress (an even larger multi-tiered castle).
Q: Why do the dates keep changing? Can’t you guys ever stick to a launch date?
A: We have a very small team working on a very big game. While we are working around the clock to reach our milestones, unfortunately a lot of things have taken much longer than originally anticipated. We are essentially working with three systems - the Unity engine, the web backend system (called the MFP), and the website itself. Before we were solely focusing on the game, there was an unorganized web backened component, and the website was almost an afterthought. Now, for better or for worse, the 3 systems have to work together and can’t exist without each other. While that makes for a faster and more flexible game, it also adds to the complexity and means a lot of venturing into unknown territory. Our publicized launch dates have been our best guesses, but quite often we have reached those points lacking the high quality standards we want to achieve. I can assure you that not a second is wasted, and with each passing day the game gets exponentially better. But we apologize for this, and will work towards setting more realistic goals with a reasonable amount of buffer time in the future.
On August 17, 2009, six of Atmosphir’s finest writers and players were welcomed to a group which would come to be known as the Editorial Staff. Their job? To search for the best that Atmosphir’s designers could come up with, and put them in the spotlight. Since then, their numbers have swelled to a grand total of eight; Colinnn, EdacOnag, Adz, Boberto, EliteBlackDragon, DuffyZeEmu, Robcozzens, and Swordsman761.
Over the past 5-6 months, these eight have brought you a new Level of the Day nearly every day. Through the good times and the bad, they have stuck together and served the community through their impressive writing abilities and playing skills. However, the time has come for them to rest their fingers and set their quills aside.
After January 12, no new levels will be accepted into the play browser. The following Saturday, January 16, will mark the end of the first series of reviews provided by the Editorial Staff. After that, we will be taking a break from the writing to prepare for the upcoming release of Project Stratosphir, which is currently aiming for a February release.
Have no fear, though. Like most excellent authors, the Editorial Staff will return to write their second series shortly after Project Stratosphir’s release. Of course, that means we have to give you a little homework over break.
With the release of so many new features, we’re going to be looking for the coolest uses of these new additions when we write reviews. So your assignment is to brainstorm some new ideas so we’re overwhelmed with levels deserving of being Level of the Day. Sound simple enough? We thought so. You’ll have roughly a week after launch to build your levels before we equip ourselves with fresh quills and new parchment.
As a closing note before we go into hibernation, on behalf of the Editorial Staff, I’d like to thank the community for giving us the chance to write for all of you. There is no sense in writing these reviews if there is no one to write for. So thank you to everyone who takes the time to read our reviews, from straightforward reviews of EliteBlackDragon, to my own elegant (and lengthy) novels, as they have become to known as. We’re nothing without all of you, and we look forward to our return next month!
A friendly public service announcement: In preparation for the new version of the game (which is currently scheduled for February 5th, in case you haven’t heard), anything uploaded to Atmosphir after January 12 will not be included in the migration. We’ll leave the current game and site up as long as we can, but if you want your levels and scores to show up in the new game, upload or play right away! (Don’t worry about stuff like atmos and club memberships, those are separate).
Thanks for your understanding and hang tight…a whole new experience is right around the corner!
About a month ago, we asked you to create the best arcade-style levels possible in Atmosphir. Designers from all over the world answered the call, and came up with some insanely fun challenges that our players have been battling through in the past weeks. The top winners are based community votes from our forums.
…I’ll leave descriptions this time to our editorial staff, since many of these levels will undoubtedly win LOTDs. But congratulations to Saunby, Frodo, and Bender for their atmos prizes (250, 500, and 1000 respectively). In addition, this time around we gave prizes for the top leaderboard players for the winning levels, so congrats are also in order for Daimon (250 atmos for his score of 3717 in The Diamond Ruins, and 500 atmos for his score of 12841 in Evolution of Speed - Zone Two) and Cheezyboom (1000 atmos for his score of 3502 in Insert Witty and Attractive Title Here).
And thanks to Adz for helping me with calculating the votes as always. As a special treat, he put together this video of the top 25 entries! Enjoy!
The forums were taken down tonight due to a relatively minor issue (all your information is safe, so no worries). We are hoping to resolve this shortly and bring them back online sometime tomorrow afternoon. There will be no Level of the Day today either. Sorry for the trouble, and thanks for your understanding!
