Update on Alpha Start?

They never said December or February, they said "winter", and intended it to mean exactly that. Spring starts March 20th, so don't expect it before the 15th.

The last I heard was from FrogBoy, where he said early March. I never heard the December or February statements except as guesses by the Fans.

Before Brad said March, the official date was always sometime this winter.

Sorry, I have lost track of all of the links for this, but maybe someone else has them handy.

The FAQ stated: "alpha access (coming this winter)", which is still accurate.

The December Update gave this as an estimate: "While this isn’t a promise, we anticipate the Alpha version being made available in late February."

The last word, however, is: "Now, that said, I would guess that the alpha won't come out until early March."

I hope this clarifies everything.

Most fan guess's that I saw early on was middle to late February, (including myself) never saw anything sooner than that, Frogboy had been hinting at early to middle March which would still put it in line to be prior to the end of Winter.

So based on that less than 5 weeks

We now have an official date for the Alpha (as in, this has been set as much in stone as humanly possible): March 27.

I apologize for it being later than expected.  As some of you know, I've been pretty ill this Winter and as a result I haven't been able to get as much AI work in as I had hoped. 

There is a silver lining in this in that, for the first time, I've had to really start training someone on AI programming who has been implementing the core parts of the AI (I still design the AI but I'm not the one coding the AIFindClosestEnemyUnit() type stuff now).  So the net effect is that you'll have 2 people doing just the AI instead of 1.

No you lied; now it's in the spring, and you said winter!!! Just kidding! I would rather get it right the first time. March 27th is fine. Thanks for the update. I would rather get the right instead of rushing the game.

Ask off work....

This is great news thank you...hope you're feeling better too

Next he'll be telling us the Alpha will be available on April 1st.

Can't wait to try the alpha version! March isn't far 

March 27? It's like double holiday!

Take care.

March 27? ... Brother from Japan is in town.....

Yeah bro you can't come, I have sabola you really can't come. What is sabola? Its SARS and ebola in one. Nasty stuff from when a Chinese chicken mated with an African monkey. You REALLY REALLY can't come. It's a vomitorium in here, bleeding from the eyes, puss everywhere, and I'm coughing up blood like the 3rd act in a Korean drama. Yeah its really really bad.

I think I remember them doing that once before, and it wasn't even an April Fools joke. Or was that someone else's game?

Come not Mars but May, when winter is almost a forgotten dream... But then we should be out in this world I guess. And not a digital one. Easy to say now, while it is still winter. And you care little for the darkness outside... I don't think Mars will win this one either. Hard as it might try.

Brad  I hope you fully recovered from illness there been some bad bugs out there this winter! March 27th is a good day for the Alpha release,.... all tho that date Brings Mix emotions this will be the 10th Anniversary  of my mom`s Death. the 27th is when we buried her and said good by!also being only 2 days before my Birthday I`ve not celebrated it since. Maybe this year I`ll change that! 10 years been long enough to morn my loss!

Gmail was officially released on April Fools 2004. And given the company's history of really screwing with users on April Fools, a 'free email service with 1GB of space' announcment was on par with PigeonRank and a Lunar Google Base in terms of believablity.

I just did a search and found what looks like an announcement of the Alpha of Political Machine for April 1, 2008. There is some confusion here, because I had to extrapolate a bit from what I was able to read.  https://forums.galciv2.com/305676/get;1666536

thx.  I'm still a bit bed ridden.  I hope to get back to work this week. 

well we now have a date WOOHOO

i do have some questions for pre-release

mainly is there anything users can and should do to prepare?

some example's

1 i don't have a steam account so setting one up is a must are there any special considerations involved with getting the alpha? do i need to link an account

2) system hardware we know it requires a 64-bit OS and i believe direct x 11 are there any other system specifications we need to worry about

3) IV with 1 weeks supply of food, bedpan, chips, pop, etc, etc

4) any other thing i haven't thought of that might be useful to prepare ahead of time

Looking forward to the alpha release ...

Hopefully they use their own software release it.

You'll need to install Steam and set up an account. When the alpha comes out, you'll get a key that you put into Steam to register the game. There's no account linking or anything like that.

Technically over one month left before the end of winter.

Looking forward to it.

FYI

Nice to see old aliases like Nastytang

I could've sworn I saw Feb officially mentioned somewhere, but I never really expected that to be the date and of course, it's all moot now.

I think they should've just gone for Apr 1st since that's about the same time, and would've been great fodder for messing with people.

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to March!

Just realized I misspelled March. Ah well. Through the marsh we march in March... *blinks*