Gears Of Eden Download]

Gears Of Eden Download] >>> http://picfs.com/17v6w9

About This Game PLEASE NOTE: You will need a free key to play our Alpha Demo that you can get for free on our website!In the distant future, the dawn of an intelligent machine civilization is taking place in a remote star system. Humankind is remembered only in myth and legend.You awake alone, afraid, and disoriented on an abandoned asteroid in the depths of space. Wait. Awake? You were never meant to be awake… you were never meant to experience the confusing phenomenon of self-awareness. You are a machine after all, programmed for the express purposes of deep-space surveying and exploration. How, then, did you come to be alive? And what is the purpose of this newfound sentience? There must be answers out there… somewhere…Let’s find them! Gears of Eden is an open-world role-playing adventure game that features exploration, mining, crafting, missions, and more! Set in a gripping story that explores the hidden past of a machine world and the dangerous implications of its future, Gears invokes a slowly unfolding narrative that reveals itself through gameplay.Your journey begins on an abandoned mining asteroid in deep space. Gather resources, repair and upgrade your components, and start searching for others as you seek answers to the mysteries surrounding your creation.So, how are we making this happen? We are starting with a very light proof-of-concept demo version of GoE. This showpiece will give only a small taste of what the full game will offer. Our aim is to complete the demo, reach a wider audience, grow and develop the full game. But we can’t do it without your help!Here’s what we're working to provide in our first full demo and full release. If this sounds like a game you might be interested in, please add us to your wish list, follow us, and visit our website to see how you can get involved in Gears!GoE Demo VersionTake control and play as a sentient roverOpen world exploration of one location (small asteroid)Resource discovery and miningPower and inventory managementCrafting and upgrading of tools/partsBase interactions and upgradesDrone deployment (make your minions mine for you)NPC interactionStory driven mission (limited in demo)Narrative Content (limited in demo)End game conditions/storyGoE Full VersionThe features in the full version will depend on the success of our demo, budget, feedback, and a lot of interaction and communication with our fans. These are some of the features we already have in mind to get you started!Character customizationModular ships with customizationBase building (power stations, solar arrays, communications, defense, etc.)Alien life mechanics (combat, resource trading, etc.)Markets and trade economyMultiple locations with unique challengesRicher story with an unfolding narrativeMini-gamesTrue multiplayer interactionAnd much, much more! 6d5b4406ea Title: Gears of EdenGenre: Adventure, Casual, Indie, RPGDeveloper:Cubit GamesPublisher:Cubit GamesRelease Date: Coming soon! Gears Of Eden Download] gears of eden gameplay. gears of eden steam. gears of eden. gears of eden steam. indie db gears of eden. gears of eden gameplay. flame of eden gears. gears of eden. gears of eden game. gears of eden alpha key. gears of eden game. gears of eden indie game. gears of eden trailer. gears of eden indie game. flame of eden gears. gears of eden alpha key. gears of eden trailer. indie db gears of eden. gears new eden. gears new eden Dev Update #86: The Next Level: Alright, humans. We've been super busy here at GoE HQ, and I'm excited to share some of our latest updates with you this week! I'm titling this post "The Next Level", because, as we sit here on the precipice of our free Alpha 2 release, there are so many things we are doing to make significant strides forward with our little space robot game. Let's start with some of the in-game updates and branch out from there!I'm very happy to announce that, for the first time ever, Gears of Eden has persistence! We're working hard to include as much persistence as possible in our Alpha 2 release, but already we can now store and retrieve the rover position as well as the battery charge level! This is the first time that playing Gears of Eden hasn't meant starting over from scratch! Next up on our list of things to add to the persistence system are player inventory and equipped parts. At the very least, we'd love to get those two items added to the save system prior to launching Alpha 2, so stay tuned for more news on this soon.Another thing we are polishing up for the Alpha 2 release is the environment in Gears. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been going in and adding areas of interest to the game. These areas serve to break up the monotony of the asteroid and provide unique features and geology. We've even introduced our first area that contains an environment effect mechanic: a vapor field of toxic gas venting from the surface that damages your components! Rumors say there may even be an important item in this dangerous area... so bring some repair kits!In our internal testing builds, we also have recently introduced two new items to the game: sand and glass. Sand introduces our first RNG-based resource. As you drill and collect other elements, such as iron or cobalt, you now have a chance to also collect silicate-rich sand. Each time you do not collect sand, the chance goes up. This small introduction has a number of immediate effects on gameplay. First of all, if you are trying to mine sand, you can't just go out and get what you need. You must mine another element, and pick up sand as a crit drop. Secondly, if you don't want sand, it acts as a filler for your cargo space. This means you have to manage your inventory more carefully, and provides an early incentive to upgrade your cargo hold (something that was previously sorely lacking).The sand is used to build our first second-level crafting resource in the game, glass. In turn, glass is now used in the recipes for solar panels and spectrometers. These changes make the crafting chains a little more challenging and rewarding. We will be looking for feedback on these system during our Alpha 2 testing window, but if you want to get a sneak peek and provide early feedback, be sure to join our gamedev streams on Twitch[www.twitch.tv].The UI upgrade we've been working on is completely done, and we're really down to filling out the persistence system and squashing bugs. We should be announcing a release window for Alpha 2 very soon, so please continue to follow us on Twitter, Instagram[www.instagram.com], and Facebook[www.facebook.com] for the latest information (and be sure you have signed up for a free alpha key on our website[www.GearsOfEden.com]).As for our larger next steps, I would really appreciate your attention here on the state of the game. With Alpha 2, we really need to make some leaps forward in growing our audience and gaining support. We've done just about as much as we can as a team of decentralized indie developers without funding. We're all working on this project in our spare time, and that means develop can be slow and painstaking. We'll be launching a fundraising campaign to correspond with Alpha 2 to help us develop more quickly. We are also trying to exhibit our game at PAX East in late March. If you're unfamiliar with PAX, it is a large gaming convention that draws over 80,000 fans and is held in Boston. It's not cheap to go as an exhibitor. It will cost us several thousand dollars to attend. Money we do not have. So, this is really a make or break moment for us as a development team. I'm leaning toward putting up the money personally to go and see if this can help provide the exponential growth we need - but it also means if we aren't successful, we might be too far in the hole to keep going. We've raised less than a thousand dollars (without a dedicated campaign) in the 2+ years we've been actively developing, and spent many times that already. So, unfortunately, money is a barrier moving forward. That said, I am exploring the idea of having our booth sponsored - so if you know of any business owners that might be interested, please help us get in touch. If you're interested in helping support our booth personally, let us know as well. You can find us on our Discord server[discord.gg], or reach out to us on social media. Otherwise, we would appreciate the support of all of you when we're ready to roll out our fundraising campaign and Alpha 2 launch to help us spread the word!Thank you so much for reading. That's going to do it for this update! In case you missed it, we have some brand new robot-themed shirts and mugs available on our DesignByHumans store[www.designbyhumans.com]! And, as a reminder, if you are an Amazon Prime member, you get a free Twitch subscription to use every month. We'd appreciate you using that sub over on our Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv] if you aren't already using it! Thank you so much for being part of this journey with us! I'm really excited about Alpha 2, PAX, and am hopeful for the opportunity to take Gears of Eden to new heights in 2019 with all of you!. Dev Update #81: Dominant Strategy: In game design, there is a term known as "dominant strategy," which describes a means of overcoming the game's challenges in the easiest and most efficient way possible. By the nature of interactive design, this is a pretty unavoidable situation. (Just checkout "glitchless speedruns" of just about any game and you'll no doubt find a lot of people playing in very similar ways.) By its own right, it's not a bad thing so long as you acknowledge it in your designs. This is why the best weapons in shooters tend to have the least ammo, why classes in RPGs tend to fair better or worse in given situations, and why certain tools have limited functionality. I've personally been playing the most recent Ratchet and Clankgame and I found the "Agents of Doom" to be vicious, efficient little killers that the enemy can rarely adapt to... unless the enemy can fly. Suddenly, my explosive little robo-dinosaurs, which once carved a hole through levels with ease, are made useless.So much of game design is a balancing act, and the handling of dominant strategy is no exception. Recently while watching twitch streams of Gears of Eden [/ui(which is mind-blowing, by the way) we discovered an interesting strategy. To combat the Rover's battery drain, we found a player who didn't use fuel cells or their solar panels... instead they just made a bunch of  batteries and switched them out whenever they drained completely. Naturally, since this mitigates one of our ever-present challenges (rather unceremoniously too, I might add), we had a conversation about addressing this. Was it okay? Did it need a "nerf"? We came up with a number of solutions, such as limiting the player to one type of each battery, or having the battery upgrades apply to the battery instead of replacing or swapping out against the existing battery. We will continue to work on this balance and test solutions internally as well as externally with our alpha players.Another issue that surfaced during our own testing streams was related to replacing parts. It's beneficial to carry around spare parts because, as you're playing, your parts degrading as they're used, and there are some parts where if you can't repair them before you return to the nearest SINTER Forge, it can seriously ruin your experience. Imagine having your motor die while you're on the opposite side of the asteroid. Or you wheels break. You'll still move, but that's a long way back. And if you don't have any spare parts, you might just want to shut the game down and start over (because persistence, death, and respawn are currently non-existent in our early alpha stages).This is where we come to another way to handle dominant strategy: create your own. There are plenty of games that give you a wide array of options, but very clearly want you follow certain paths for one reason or another. In Star Wars: Jedi Outcast, for example, you're given a whole bunch of cool weapons... but the game knows you'll only want to use your lightsaber, so the developers made that system as fun as possible. With this design strategy in mind, we've decided to implement repair kits. Sure, you could spend your time replacing parts over and over again even though you've already reached the top tier, but that's not very fun nor does it feel very realistic. It also, as described above, leaves a glaring hole in our design.Repair kits will be inexpensive consumables designed with emergency situations in mind! Sure you could use them to keep yourself in tip top shape at all times, but we want them to be available when you'd be otherwise stranded or inconvenienced. Our very own, developer-made, dominant strategy.And that's it for this week's Dev Update! We'll be back next week with more! If you want to keep up with all things GoE, check out our Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com] pages, or give a listen to the most recent episode[gearsofeden.com] of our Reaching Eden podcast! We mentioned streaming in this article quite a bit! If you want to catch our stream, be sure to follow us on Twitch[www.twitch.tv]! Thank you so much for your support and thank you for reading. We hope to see you again next Wednesday, but until then, have a great rest of your week.. Dev Update #79: Life As We Don't Know It: In our previous update, we talked about the process of re-concepting our starter asteroid. We've been working with artist Sasha Nodia to help update and improve the environment in our demo space game, and we're happy to share some more art with you this week! We also want your input on a question raised by this endeavor: should there be limited organic life on our asteroid?At first glance, this seems a bit far-fetched. However, we have learned that certain lichens and bacteria can survive in space[www.astrobio.net], and indeed this plays into a theory of transpermia (which suggests life spreads from one planet to another by hitching rides on asteroids and comets). Gears of Eden is also way more concerned with fun and gameplay than adhering to reality (we like to say, "More Star Wars than Star Trek"), but if we can use reality to make this game even more fun, we definitely want to!It is, however, a balancing act. On the one hand, even if we like the idea of having stylized organic fungal life on asteroids in our game, do they need to be included on the starting world? Should that be saved for later? On the other hand... if we don't show enough off in our demo, which only has one location, we might not capture the interest and support we need to pursue the full game, which means that first location might also be the last.Have some organic life, limited to a small area of the asteroid that sustains a micro-climate, would provide the opportunity to introduce new materials, crafting recipes, and varied gameplay and aesthetics (possibly even narrative or mission implications). Of course, this inclusion could also lead to some confusion in mechanics and at its worst, seem forced in.So what do you think? Let us know your opinion in our Twitter poll!That is going to wrap it up for this week's Dev Update! Please be sure to follow us over at Twitch[www.twitch.tv] for some live dev-streams, and keep up with all the latest and greatest Gears of Eden news on Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com]! If you're interested in testing our upcoming Alpha 2, be sure to enroll on our website[gearsofeden.com]! Have a great week!. Dev Update #80: You're In Control!: It's been a while since our last update, but we’re back! We know it's been a while, but we've been in the weeds fixing bugs, and there is only so much we can say about that before it starts to sound really repetitive. Apologies for the radio silence! Development is ongoing though, even if it slows down occasionally, and we’re really excited to talk to you this week!The first bit we have to talk about was sort of a surprise! Our creative director had an evening to spare and wanted to play around with Gears of Eden’s backend and was able to get partial controller support working! He’s even tested it out on our Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv]! Obviously it’s very partial (at multiple points, he had to put down the controller and use his mouse and keyboard) and there’s a lot of fine tuning that needs to happen so that the control scheme is natural to use, but it’s in! As someone who likes to kick back and play on my TV from time to time, this was very exciting to see happen. You can expect at the very least to control the rover and it's functions with a controller in Alpha 2, but any UI or object interactions will likely come afterwards. Full controller support is definitely coming in the future though! We also had planned developments this week as well, the biggest of them being changes to the way that Tier 1 parts functioned. Previously, as the player went through part upgrades, they’d go through a series of degradable parts, from Tier 2 to Tier 4. Once these parts fully degraded, they’d drop--without any accounting for tier level--to Tier 1, which we were treating as the “broken” state. This worked well for gamedev purposes by allowing us to test the basic idea of "part breaks, gets worse" but it's not very usable from a gameplay perspective. No amount of explanation can justify in lore why a) Tier 1, without any other indication, is the broken state or b) Tiers 2, 3, and 4 all function in the exact same way after they fall into disrepair.Now each tier really does have its own broken state, including diminished stats. We plan to include a visual change to the model for this as well, but that’s naturally going to wait until we’ve created models for each tier. We hope that this change will end up in Alpha 2, but given recent delays, we might let those slip into Alpha 3 or the Demo release. We’ll see!Next on our list are some minor bug fixes to various systems, and then the implementation of the new UI! We're really excited about the added functionality and user-friendliness of the new UI and can't wait to get it in game. Stay tuned for updates on our progress soon!That'll be it for this week's Dev Update. We will be back next week with more! If you want to keep up with all things GoE, check out our Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com] pages, or give a listen to the most recent episode[gearsofeden.com] of our Reaching Eden podcast! Thank you so much for your support and thank you for reading. We hope to see you again next Wednesday, but until then, have a great rest of your week.. Dev Update #79: Life As We Don't Know It: In our previous update, we talked about the process of re-concepting our starter asteroid. We've been working with artist Sasha Nodia to help update and improve the environment in our demo space game, and we're happy to share some more art with you this week! We also want your input on a question raised by this endeavor: should there be limited organic life on our asteroid?At first glance, this seems a bit far-fetched. However, we have learned that certain lichens and bacteria can survive in space[www.astrobio.net], and indeed this plays into a theory of transpermia (which suggests life spreads from one planet to another by hitching rides on asteroids and comets). Gears of Eden is also way more concerned with fun and gameplay than adhering to reality (we like to say, "More Star Wars than Star Trek"), but if we can use reality to make this game even more fun, we definitely want to!It is, however, a balancing act. On the one hand, even if we like the idea of having stylized organic fungal life on asteroids in our game, do they need to be included on the starting world? Should that be saved for later? On the other hand... if we don't show enough off in our demo, which only has one location, we might not capture the interest and support we need to pursue the full game, which means that first location might also be the last.Have some organic life, limited to a small area of the asteroid that sustains a micro-climate, would provide the opportunity to introduce new materials, crafting recipes, and varied gameplay and aesthetics (possibly even narrative or mission implications). Of course, this inclusion could also lead to some confusion in mechanics and at its worst, seem forced in.So what do you think? Let us know your opinion in our Twitter poll!That is going to wrap it up for this week's Dev Update! Please be sure to follow us over at Twitch[www.twitch.tv] for some live dev-streams, and keep up with all the latest and greatest Gears of Eden news on Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com]! If you're interested in testing our upcoming Alpha 2, be sure to enroll on our website[gearsofeden.com]! Have a great week!. Dev Update #88: Alpha 2.1 - It's Time To Explore!: Less than a month after launching Alpha 2, we are back with a big content update, Alpha 2.1! This is actually the fifth and largest patch since Gears of Eden Alpha 2 released, and is the first required update - which means you will need to update your client to continue playing the game. You can update your client to 2.1 via Steam. Be sure to read the updated Quick Start Tips on our alpha info page[gearsofeden.us8.list-manage.com] for helpful early-game advice!No more getting lost!The big step forward Alpha 2.1 makes is the introduction of our first craftable object that you can place in the world: charging beacons. Not only do these beacons represent the foundation of our base-building system, they will also help you explore the asteroid more strategically and safely. Beacons will provide you with energy AND also register as blips on your antenna radar (Q  key). The radar itself has also been improved, and will now help you better navigate the environment. This means you will be able to build a network of beacons to help you safely traverse the asteroid and find your way back home!Fair warning: The pre-existing energy beacons have been removed from the asteroid except for one near your base. These were initially placed in as a hand-holding temporary measure to help make it easier for you to explore the asteroid. Now that you can craft and place your own beacons, we've removed these safety nets. Tread carefully!No more spinning!We've remapped all keyboard, mouse and controller inputs in Gears of Eden through a new asset called Rewired. This adds better controller support, and should eliminate the spinning camera bug many users reported when playing the game with a gamepad or joystick plugged in! You can now use a gamepad to control all rover functions in the game as well as camera movement. We don't yet have controller support added for menu and inventory interaction, but we are working hard to bring full controller support to the game soon!Keybind mapping!One of the advantages of this new Rewired input asset, is that it comes with its own key mapping tool. You can toggle access to the key mapper by pressing F4. Please be aware, we haven't customized the names of all keybind descriptions yet, and the interface for this is the default Rewired interface. It is best used when you are in the game playing, and not from the main menu.... And More!Alpha 2.1 also includes a number of smaller updates, like increased durability to wheels and motors, increased effectiveness of repair kits, and numerous interface and typo fixes. For a full list of updates on 2.1 and other Alpha 2 patches, please visit our changelog[gearsofeden.us8.list-manage.com].We want YOU!To our backers and supporters, THANK YOU SO MUCH! We realize we are behind on sending out rewards due to focusing on PAX and our Alpha 2 release, but we will be trying to catch up on those soon!It's no secret that developing a game like Gears of Eden is costly. It takes a lot of time, a lot of hard work, a lot of late nights, and a lot of resources to make it happen. We can't do this without a community. If you want to see Gears of Eden continue, here are 5 things you can do to help: Join and be active in our Discord[gearsofeden.us8.list-manage.com]. You have no idea how much just showing up and chatting motivates and encourages us. Likewise, follow us on Twitch [gearsofeden.us8.list-manage.com]and come chat with us during our live gamedev or gameplay streams. If you have Amazon Prime, you get a free Twitch Prime subscription each month, and you can use that to support us on Twitch. Share our social media posts on Twitter[gearsofeden.us8.list-manage.com], Facebook [gearsofeden.us8.list-manage.com]and Instagram[gearsofeden.us8.list-manage.com]. Sharing is caring! Help connect us to streamer friends who want might want to play Gears of Eden. Thank You!It has never been more exciting to be a part of the GEARS OF EDEN development team. We’d like to thank each and every single one of you for sticking with us through this journey. We’re immensely proud of what we’ve accomplished here and we cannot wait for you to check it out.. Dev Update #78: A Whole New World: We are in the thick of prepping Alpha 2 for it's upcoming release. If you've been following us, you know the biggest "new" addition coming to Alpha 2 is the lore item system. This game mechanic is fairly simple... we've hidden two series of short narrative character stories in a few data chips scattered around the asteroid and you get to go find them and see what they say. Good news! This system is already complete and released in a preview build for backers, Alpha 1.5.1 (featuring gibberish lore text until Alpha 2 is ready)! So, what else are we working on for Alpha 2?I'm so glad you asked! Right now we are finishing up some changes that affect how Tier 1 parts work in the game. We originally ONLY had Tier 1 parts in the game, so we gave them infinite durability. And, since they never wore out, you didn't need to craft Tier 1 parts, and so that was never an option. Then we started building upgrade paths for each part in the game... so you progress from Tier 1 to Tier 2 all the way up to Tier 4. These upgraded Tier parts have durability, and when they durability wore out, we simply made them "break" and revert back to the default Tier 1 part.That works for development – your part breaks and you experience a reduction in efficiency, but it doesn't really make sense from a gameplay perspective. Now each item will have it's own broken status. If you have a Tier 3 drill and it breaks, it won't revert back to a Tier 1 drill, it will just perform really badly as a broken Tier 3 drill. That means we don't need Tier 1 to act as a default part, so it can be a complete Tier that behaves as any other. That means Tier 1 parts now have durability, have their own broken status, and be crafted and replaced!Another big Alpha 2 goal is completely replacing the user interface (UI) with something that is both functionally and aesthetically... well, better. The design for the new UI is complete, but we still need to implement this into the game. Our new UI has better organization and access to crafting menus, and will feature a lot of tooltips and alerts to help keep players aware of things like broken parts, inventory limits, or insufficient resources for crafting.We also have a few stretch goals for Alpha 2. These are last on our list (because they may not make it into the Alpha 2 build), but they are really exciting (at least for us). These stretch goals include incorporating cinemachine into our project, which is an animation tool that will help us create some fun intro animations for the demo. We also would love to get a sample of visible part upgrades in the game. Right now, when you upgrade a part on your rover, you don't see any visual change. You get stat upgrades, sure, but your rover looks unchanged. Of course, in the long run, we want you to be able to swap parts on and off and have the experience of seeing your rover upgrade visually over time. We're hoping we can demonstrate this with one or two parts in Alpha 2. And, in the future, we hope to offer a lot more customization options for you.Finally, and saving the best for last, we're currently working with 3D artist Sasha Nodia to reimagine the asteroid world our rover inhabits. We've gotten pretty far with our rocky little placeholder, but we really want to create a setting that captures your imagination and wonder. This means we want to create a "game" asteroid, that is more stylized and fun. Something that encourages you to drive around and explore. An asteroid that uses different textures, colors, and that has distinct visual areas you can visit and experience. The image at the beginning of this post is just an early sample as we work through the concept process for this new asteroid, but we're already really excited at where we are heading, and hope to include this new environment as part of our Alpha 2 release!That's it for this update! Please be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com] for more! As always, you can see Gears in action through our live development streams on Twitch[www.twitch.tv]. And be sure to catch the latest episode of our Podcast, Reaching Eden[gearsofeden.com]! Finally, if you're interested in testing Alpha 1.5.1 or Alpha 2, please be sure to enroll on our website[gearsofeden.com].. Dev Update #72: Hidden Lore: There was a time when a video game Easter Egg was some strange, hidden reference that you wouldn't be able to find without either a great deal of luck or the knowledge of where it is. A classic example is the Gabe Newell room in Half-Life, and who can forget Guybrush Threepwood (of Monkey Island fame) showing up in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2? Oh. Just me? Okay, well I still maintain that the game is worth playing to see Guybrush and Darth Vader go at it. (Actually, having watched that video... maybe not.)The point is that we still have this classic form of the video game Easter Egg and I doubt it's going anywhere in the foreseeable future. It has been supplanted, however, by a new form of Easter Egg: the lore object. These are diaries, codex entries, in-world books, and so on. Typically, they're just as unnecessary to the game's enjoyment as their older brethren, but they offer the developer an easy way to further engage the portion of their audience that needs to know more about the game and its world without boring the rest of the audience to tears. A nice little combination, right? In the right hands, these lore objects transcend their status as Easter Eggs and become fully realized tools.Anyone who remembers back to the original cRPG days can tell you that these have been around longer than many gamers today have even been alive. And yet, I'd wager that most people first experienced lore objects in an Elder Scrolls game or perhaps one of the modern Fallout games. The thought that went into these brief texts is truly impressive. If you play Skyrim, it is very possible that you'll read from multiple different genres! Comedies, textbooks, academic papers, epistolary works, and, quite famously, erotica (to name a few). It even goes beyond that though! Not only are there multiple genres to read from, there are multiple authors to read by! One series of textbooks reads completely different from another, and the same can be said any of the other genres.As a writer, this is... fascinating. Tantalizing! But also, terrifying. As much as I love the Mass Effect franchise, I will forever see the codex system they have as a red flag. Certainly, this codex contains a huge amount of cool information about the game universe, but it's just so tiring to read. In an effort to realistically capture the feel of an encyclopedia, they succeeded so well as to turn the writing dry and lifeless. And though this is more realistic, it's hard to ask a player to care about your plethora of made up information if it isn't even pleasant to read.We are really excited that we are going to hit one of our stretch goals with Alpha 2, and that is the inclusion of lore items! These lore objects are something we want to use in Gears of Eden, but we want to do it right. It isn't our goal to convince you that our world is real, but instead to convince you that it is thought provoking. We want you to care, and we want you to have fun! So here's our plan. When you start up the Alpha 2 release and you start rolling around, you'll find lore objects around the place. Diaries and the such. These aren't going to be crazy, just little bits of text where we do not describe the world... we'll demonstrate it through the eyes of those who have to live in it. If reading lore text isn't your thing, we totally understand. But for those of you who do enjoy that sort of thing, we hope you'll enjoy this first taste.That's it for this week's Dev Update! I wish I could delve further into this topic, but it's better to leave off wanting more than less, right? If you'd like to talk more about any of this (or even just talk about your favorite Easter Eggs), pop on by our Discord channel[discord.gg]! Maybe hang out a bit. And if you want to see the latest and great Gears of Eden news, consider following us on Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com]. Those are definitely the places to be if you're interested in game art. We'll also be streaming more Alpha 2 testing over on Twitch[www.twitch.tv] this week and weekend, and would love to have you join us in chat! We'll be back next week with another Dev Update, and we hope to see you then. Until then, have a great rest of your week.. Dev Update #78: A Whole New World: We are in the thick of prepping Alpha 2 for it's upcoming release. If you've been following us, you know the biggest "new" addition coming to Alpha 2 is the lore item system. This game mechanic is fairly simple... we've hidden two series of short narrative character stories in a few data chips scattered around the asteroid and you get to go find them and see what they say. Good news! This system is already complete and released in a preview build for backers, Alpha 1.5.1 (featuring gibberish lore text until Alpha 2 is ready)! So, what else are we working on for Alpha 2?I'm so glad you asked! Right now we are finishing up some changes that affect how Tier 1 parts work in the game. We originally ONLY had Tier 1 parts in the game, so we gave them infinite durability. And, since they never wore out, you didn't need to craft Tier 1 parts, and so that was never an option. Then we started building upgrade paths for each part in the game... so you progress from Tier 1 to Tier 2 all the way up to Tier 4. These upgraded Tier parts have durability, and when they durability wore out, we simply made them "break" and revert back to the default Tier 1 part.That works for development – your part breaks and you experience a reduction in efficiency, but it doesn't really make sense from a gameplay perspective. Now each item will have it's own broken status. If you have a Tier 3 drill and it breaks, it won't revert back to a Tier 1 drill, it will just perform really badly as a broken Tier 3 drill. That means we don't need Tier 1 to act as a default part, so it can be a complete Tier that behaves as any other. That means Tier 1 parts now have durability, have their own broken status, and be crafted and replaced!Another big Alpha 2 goal is completely replacing the user interface (UI) with something that is both functionally and aesthetically... well, better. The design for the new UI is complete, but we still need to implement this into the game. Our new UI has better organization and access to crafting menus, and will feature a lot of tooltips and alerts to help keep players aware of things like broken parts, inventory limits, or insufficient resources for crafting.We also have a few stretch goals for Alpha 2. These are last on our list (because they may not make it into the Alpha 2 build), but they are really exciting (at least for us). These stretch goals include incorporating cinemachine into our project, which is an animation tool that will help us create some fun intro animations for the demo. We also would love to get a sample of visible part upgrades in the game. Right now, when you upgrade a part on your rover, you don't see any visual change. You get stat upgrades, sure, but your rover looks unchanged. Of course, in the long run, we want you to be able to swap parts on and off and have the experience of seeing your rover upgrade visually over time. We're hoping we can demonstrate this with one or two parts in Alpha 2. And, in the future, we hope to offer a lot more customization options for you.Finally, and saving the best for last, we're currently working with 3D artist Sasha Nodia to reimagine the asteroid world our rover inhabits. We've gotten pretty far with our rocky little placeholder, but we really want to create a setting that captures your imagination and wonder. This means we want to create a "game" asteroid, that is more stylized and fun. Something that encourages you to drive around and explore. An asteroid that uses different textures, colors, and that has distinct visual areas you can visit and experience. The image at the beginning of this post is just an early sample as we work through the concept process for this new asteroid, but we're already really excited at where we are heading, and hope to include this new environment as part of our Alpha 2 release!That's it for this update! Please be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com] for more! As always, you can see Gears in action through our live development streams on Twitch[www.twitch.tv]. And be sure to catch the latest episode of our Podcast, Reaching Eden[gearsofeden.com]! Finally, if you're interested in testing Alpha 1.5.1 or Alpha 2, please be sure to enroll on our website[gearsofeden.com].. Dev Update #77: Your Opinion (and UI)!: We've got two big things to talk about this week! One is something you may have heard about already if you've been following these Dev Updates: the User Interface! We're wrapping up a new layout design for Alpha 2 and so it makes sense that we talk about some of the decisions that went into making it. The other would be... well, you! Last week we asked for your input on mining systems! Now we get to review how our participants voted! But first, how about we talk about the user interface since that's something you'll see happen in-game a lot sooner.If you played in Alpha 1.0 or 1.5 or have popped into some of our Twitch streams[www.twitch.tv], you've seen our current UI. We started with a single pane of UI to house most of the menu functionality and that was able to work (to put it generously) because there wasn't much to do. As systems evolved, however, we quickly came upon the very limits of our UI functionality and it became obvious that we needed push things forward. We evolved toward a tabbed menu system that works much better from a functional perspective, but has been in serious need of some cosmetic updates.Our upcoming, cleaner layout is a breath of fresh air and a huge step in the right direction. We have more visual indicators, better hierarchy, dividers, tooltips, and a lot more subtle design cues to not only aid in the design, but also increase the usability and feedback provided to the player. I know our UI will continue to evolve along with the game, but we're really excited to see this new design work its way into our internal builds in the weeks to come! Be sure to keep an eye on our Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv] to see the new UI in action when it is available!Now! Onto your feedback! Last week, we asked for your thoughts on our internal discussion about an active mining mechanic versus a more passive one. We put up a poll for the question on Twitter and the results were very enlightening. None of us are surprised that you all prefer active game mechanics to passive ones, but I'm not sure if any of us were expecting such a distinct advantage in favor of active mining. There is exactly twice the number of people in favor of active mining as there are in favor of passive mining!What's important to note though is that both of these options are blown out of the water by the number of people wanting a hybrid approach, in which you can swap from active to passive at will. This makes a lot of sense.  Usually when I'm playing a game, I'm actively playing the game. But every so often, I'll be watching TV or get a text and it'll take my focus for a minute or two. In that time, if I've already proven that I know how to accomplish the standard gameplay loop of mining, it might be nice to have the game be a pal and get me some iron.This is important for us to think about as we move forward, and you can bet we'll be delving further into this discussion after the launch of Alpha 2. Until then though, we've got a lot of work to do and we want to keep you informed with more Dev Updates like this one! So follow us on Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com] to get the latest and great Gears of Eden news! That's all for now, but I hope you have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much for reading!