Machines, Anarchy and Destruction Open Beta released!

[BS-er]

We've released an early open beta of Machines, Anarchy and Destruction.  The goal in releasing an open beta is to expose it to a variety of hardware in order to understand any issues.

We're going to submit the game to the 2009 Independent Games Festival competition on October 31, so the more people that beat on it, the better our entry will be!

Grab the beta 0.1 demo at: http://www.orderlymayhem.com/downloads/mad_beta0.1.exe.  It's about 73.4 MB in size.

Please post feedback in the beta testing boards at the forum: http://forum.orderlymayhem.com.  We're most interested in feedback regarding technical glitches and bugs at moment.  Design suggestions and gripes are also much appreciated, but will likely be delt with after we've submitted our game to the IGF competition.

Some sounds and models are temporary or currently missing, so they will be improved shortly.

Thanks to all who lend their time!

EDIT
I made some mistakes in the installer.  It was supposed to install two essential components, which may or may not be on many systems already.

If anyone is having trouble getting it to run, try installing the two components below:
Microsoft Redistributable Libraries for VC2005 SP1
OpenAL Installer

EDIT
There is also an issue where the game depends on a more recent DirectX 10 version than some may have installed.  If you get an error message Regarding any missing DLLs, please update to the latest revision of DirectX 10.

EDIT
An update to the game executable is available at:
http://www.orderlymayhem.com/downloads/MadGame.exe
This executable fixes a problem where the game crashed on some platforms with high end audio cards that have Xtreme Audio (X-RAM).  It also allows vehicle control keys to be changed from the Control Settings page.
Put this exe in the mad_win folder of the game folder.

[Angstromicus]

Downloading. Counting frags tomorrow, sheep tonight  .

[bigbadbogie]

Brilliant!!

An absoloutely spectacular game!!!

Just spent a couple of hours on it. Finished training and a few IA missions.

The graphics are beautiful, the gameplay is extremely fun and the physics and scenery are downright incredible!

I'll definitely be spending some more serious hours on this!!!!

[Steeveeo]

oooOOoooo, been lookin forward to this! Downloading!

[Nielk1]

Grrrrr, can't test till Friday.

[BS-er]

Brilliant!!

An absoloutely spectacular game!!!

Just spent a couple of hours on it. Finished training and a few IA missions.

The graphics are beautiful, the gameplay is extremely fun and the physics and scenery are downright incredible!

I'll definitely be spending some more serious hours on this!!!!

Wow I was expecting some attaboys, but I wasn't expecting that much of a glowing review at all.  As a developer, after awhile all you see are problems problems problems, making you feel less than secure than you probably should be.  Still its far from perfect of course, stil an early beta.

I made some mistakes in the installer.  It was supposed to install two essential components, which may or may not be on many systems already.

If anyone is having trouble getting it to run, try installing the two components below:
Microsoft Redistributable Libraries for VC2005 SP1
OpenAL Installer

[OvermindDL1]

OpenAL is used by many games in modern times, hence most probably already have it.
As for the VC2k5 redistributable, BZ2 1.3 requires and includes it, so yea, everyone here would already have it as well.
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[Commando]

There are a few things I don't like regarding the physics.  Both turning rate and turret rotational rate seem to be too high for me to get use to.  Bz2 seemed to have some build in delay to handle turning called alphaSteer.  The steering wouldn't be so bad if I didn't use the A and D keys for steering.

[OvermindDL1]

You can change the controlling method, there are a few of them.  And BZ2's delay is not strictly just alphasteer, do not forget that BZ2 operates at 10 times a second, meaning your input could by delayed by as much as 100 milliseconds, 1/10 of a second.  This is a good article about in-game responsiveness (and something BSer might read too, good ideas to watch for).
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[Commando]

Yeah, that is one of the settings that prevents the steering from being too responsive in bz2.  I had to set alphaSteer to 2 to allow the player to keep his reticule on an enemy while turning.  Leaving it too low resulted in jerky turning due to the quick acceleration.

[Huscar]

Downloading right now, good to see you made progress.
I hope I'm not going to far off-topic with this but could you tell me what graphics engine you used again? I seem to remember you said it was a free one. Looking into making an AI-centered game myself, that's why I'm asking. Again, sorry for going off-toppic.

[BS-er]

The game uses Ogre for graphics.  I'm quite satisfied overall.  It can seem complex, but pays dividends when you get to know it fairly well.  It seems to be scaling nicely with the graphics card technology.  I like some of the addons that have been made for it, such as the editable terrain and paging geometry (which I use mostly for grass and shrubs).  Other addons are in the pipeline, notably a particle effects plugin that's more advanced than the simple one that is included.

[Steeveeo]

My Review:

Short, but expected for a demo. VOs were QUIET, had to turn everything WAY up to hear the voice telling me what to do, then when the audio returned, my ears got blasted! Graphics are good, a couple noticeable glitches (like the factory "building" mesh gets stuck as that of the Fighter plane), and the explosions could be tons better.

Also, I couldnt figure out how to group anything built from the factory, nothing else showed up in the group panel and the RTS standard Highlight->Ctrl+Groupnumber did nothing.

BTW, needs a full on RTS IA (like in BZ2).

[TheJamsh]

not the easiet install ever, havent managed to play it yet as i keep getting missing file errors. one of which is related to Ogrse

'This application has failed to start because d3dx9_33.dll was not found. reinstalling may fix'

AND

OGRE Exception(7:InternalErrorException): could not load dynamic library .\rendersystem_direct3d9. system error: the specified modulecould not be found in DynLib::load at..\src\ogredynlib.cpp (line 80)

[Nielk1]

Did you try installing the 2 parts he said where not included in the installer?