GameGlass Status Update

Isn’t it crazy?

SCPADD was started 2 months ago, GameGlass was started one month ago, and now we are nearing some of the soft deadlines we put forward for you folks.  To look back and see what’s been accomplished in two months has been mind-blowing, and it’s been amazing to have you all along for the ride.  Seen our IndieGoGo campaign lately?  Over 1500% of our original goal.  Bonkers!  We have been showcased by both TheNoobifier1337 and BoredGamer, done multiple interviews including the one most recently with The Base Radio, done a few live streams, and have a team of 6 people (7 including Chad, our lovely community manager) working on GameGlass.

We’re even giving away a full MonsterTech sim rig.

You all have a burning something…

It’s a question, not crabs.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

We have been asked a million times… When’s alpha?  When can I use it?  You said February!

I want to take some time to explain to you all where we are at behind the scenes.

First, there’s a few things I want everyone to remember:

1. While we spend every spare hour we have on GameGlass, we all still have full time jobs (yes, we are all basically working two full time jobs right now) 2. We all have responsibilities beyond GameGlass.  I have a one year old, Ron is still in the process of moving, Mike has had some personal matters to attend to, Andy has 2 kids, Doc is working on a flux capacitor & Alfredo is dealing with some full time commitments.  Even with all of these things going on, we have made MASSIVE progress 3. Making this experience seamless for every type of device isn’t easy.  Not only are we spanning iOS, Android, Windows and Kindle devices, we are spanning all browsers that run on those as well

4. We are located all over the world.  1 in Canada, 2 in USA, 1 in the Netherlands, and 2 in Australia.  We stay on top of this with project management software, but it’s not as easy as when your in the same TZ

To give you an idea of the status of things, here’s a screenshot:

This is just ONE of the boards on this list, the rest are filled to the brim as well.  We haven’t made a public facing developer roadmap for one reason – it takes us away from doing what we need to be doing to get GameGlass in your hands.  After launch though, we do plan to create a public roadmap showing you what games and Shards we’re working on.

So what’s taking so long?

Apart from what I mentioned above, there is a great deal of things going on so I’ll break it out into sections.

Back-end –

Doc has been a backend wizard, we have all of our servers set up, our deployment workflow is operating, and we are basically ready for pre-alpha.  The functionality we will be delivering to the folks in pre alpha (influencers, VIPs, family members) will look very different than the experience we plan on bringing to Full Alpha.  Pre-Alpha is only intended to last a week or so, in order for us to hammer out some bugs on a smaller scale.  One issue we’re dealing with is we’re very front-loaded with Alpha testers. Normally more people would be in Beta than Alpha, but for us it’s backwards.  There is over 700 people that are registered for Alpha.  FAR MORE than are registered for just Beta.  If we just went from our internal release straight to that many people in Alpha… well you could imagine how that would go.

Now that everything is in place for Alpha, Doc is working on our “package redeemer”.  Basically, it’s how we are going to grant all you folks access to the Alpha.  The plan currently is to distribute “keys” to your email addresses, which will have a link to our site.  Once you visit the site, register your account and redeem your key, you will have access to the Alpha.  This is very complicated because we have to consider great deal of different scenarios, especially as we scale towards launch.  There are many different perks we offer on IndieGoGo, and we need to consider different access levels.

Client –

Mike has been hard at work refactoring the GG client, and we are putting the finishing touches on it now.  It looks very different than it did when it was just his standalone project MFD.  The user experience has been greatly improved, and we have gone to great lengths to provide you with a seamless experience installing the client and having it run on your PC.  Again, we have to be forward thinking about how the client is handling things like security, encryption, and the delivery of local IP addresses for storage on our servers so you can easily access GameGlass and have everything function properly on your external display.

Front-end –

An absolutely astounding amount of work has gone in to the front end.  This is what you all see, it’s where GameGlass comes to life.  Some of you may be thinking, “why couldn’t you just use the SCPADD code”?  The answer is because compared to what Ron & Alfredo have done, it belongs in a landfill.

The entire interface code base has been redone from scratch, by people that do this professionally. There are now proper frameworks in place, and they have gone to great lengths to take into consideration how this platform will be used on different displays, aspect ratios, operating systems, browsers and how we can re-use components for different games.  It also needs to support Fragments.  This is not an easy task, it takes careful planning and a bazillion lines of code.  It also has to hook up correctly with the Client so all of your commands are reliably and swiftly executed. We have made loads of progress on the front-end in the last week.  Here’s an example!

So, let me explain what you’re looking at!

From left to right (my favorite):

• Samsung Galaxy S2 [Running Chrome]

• iPad [Running Safari]

• Kindle Fire 8 HD [Running Silk]

• Microsoft Surface [Running FireFox]

Yes, we are developing this for Silk as well.  We want the best experience possible, and the best way to give that is to make sure GameGlass works flawlessly on any devices default browser.  There are still some kinks to work out in some of them, but things are looking really good so far and we are getting really close.

OK I get it… Gib Alpha!

Our predictions for Alpha were mid February.  We still plan on getting as close as possible to that deadline as we can.  But please keep in mind, we do not want to release an inferior buggy product to you.  We won’t be releasing Alpha until we can be sure we have a decent experience that isn’t full of bugs.  We are very close to this so have faith!

Pre-Alpha (Very Soon)

We plan on releasing Pre-Alpha to a select group of users within the next few days, barring any major issues.  Again, to clarify for those of you who just skipped to this part, Pre-Alpha will have Influencers, VIPs, and Family.  We need to release to a small batch of people before full Alpha due to the sheer amount of people in Alpha.  Trust us, it’s for the best.

Alpha (1~ week after Pre-Alpha)

You know who you are!  Alpha invites will go out a week or so after pre-Alpha.  Again, this is subject to change based on issues that arise.  For Alpha, we will probably start with ONLY the Flight Systems shard, and over the course of the Alpha release new shards as we get them developed.

Beta (1 month after Alpha)

Same deal as Alpha.  Subject to change based on how Alpha goes.

That’s it!

Hope you enjoyed this dive into the development process of GameGlass.  We are extremely excited to get this in your hands, so be patient with us and we will make sure that you have the best experience possible.

Thanks again for all the support!