Patch is out on Steam and will be on Desura.

The Eterium 1.0.1 Patch has been released on Steam.  It is currently awaiting approval for release on Desura and should be available in a day or two.  An updated demo will be released soon as well.

Version 1.0.1.3402 Changelog:

New Features

• Rudder Pedal Support 
• Optional First Person Shooter style mouse control. The original joystick emulation style mouse control is now called "emulated" and is the default
• Added keyboard only flight controls: Select Direct / Keyboard on the Joystick tab in the launcher
• Added individual dead zones and sensitivity settings for all axes
• Launcher closes when game launches (there is an option to leave the launcher open on the settings tab)
• Before mission, the player is reminded to return the throttle to the zero position if it is not already
• Added option to swap the sticks on the Xbox 360 controller 
• Added more robust logging to the game to help us track down problems

Bug Fixes

• Fixed annoying in-cockpit engine sounds from wingmen in formation
• Fixed Heavy Fighter turret odd behavior when using mouse control
• Reduced the frequency of Eject warnings
• Fixed instances of incorrect wingmen being listed in the kill score section during debriefings 
• Mission Vega 4: Fixed failed objectives showing success 
• Fixed taunt enemy spam exploit
• Fixed a couple spelling errors
• Fixed volume and improved explosion sounds
• Fixed crash when starting game with joystick hat assigned to weapons
• Mission Eridani 2: Fixed failure music playing when mission is successful
• Mission Lyota 2: Replaced the first two S'tra with Stri'kal to make the mission a little easier 
• Fixed Xbox 360 Controller: Dpad Left selecting some menu items

 

Update from Kickstarter.

Act 2: The Last Stand of the Canopus

There has been some requests for new missions and DLC for Eterium.  I have always been planning to do DLC for Eterium, but currently our sales are not at a level to fund full development of DLC.  I have decided instead to create an episodic Act 2.  The first episode I intend to release for free and it will be available soon.

I have learned a lot in the development of Eterium and I have every confidence that, while the DLC will be shorter than the main game, the quality will be much higher.  My current plan is to have a branching story line.  The amount that the branching will effect the final outcome of the story will depend on how popular the episodes are.  If people like this idea, I will start working on creating longer episodes that allow for more use of mission branching.  The first episode will be 5 chapters long, with 3 played during any one play-through.

 

Also mentioned that they should have game disk some time next month

Just finished playing this & it was great, took me back to my wing commander days. Also have it from the dev that there will be DLC comming out soon the first installment will be free with a total of five chapters.

The other four I assume at a additional cost.

Shadowma

Wow, is there any way for us non backers to purchase the cloth patches??

thanks in advance for any info.

Shadowma

Only played a couple of the early missions as I am waiting for the disk copy to come.

Don't know about the patches, have you checked their website or ask them on Facebook or Twitter if you use them.

Eterium is in the Indie Royale bundle

http://www.indieroyale.com/

Should be seeing that game disk soon

Reward Update

When I started doing the kickstarter, I thought that making the game would be the toughest part! Turns out the rewards are becoming a bit of a challenge as well.  The good news is, they will be ready to ship soon!  I just want all of you to know that I haven't forgotten about you and I am working on it.

I have some pictures of the Physical copy of the game and the physical copy of the soundtrack to share.  Unfortunately the game disks were copied wrong.  I have contacted our manufacturer and they have corrected the problem, I received shipment notification yesterday!  I should be getting them soon.

Game and Soundtrack Box Front

Game and Soundtrack box back

The final piece of the puzzle are the hoodies. I've been having a lot of difficulty with the company I am working with to produce these.  They are slow and fail to follow instructions.  If they don't get their act together soon I'll need to find someone else.  They quoted me an arrival date of June 9th, but given how slow they have been moving and how they failed to correct the last artist proof I asked to be corrected, I doubt I'll be receive them anywhere near that time.

Once I have the corrected game disks, I'll start sending out the rewards.

DLC Update

The DLC is going great and nearing completion.  We'll have larger battles and tougher gameplay, for those looking for even more of a challenge.  You can stay up-to-date on my progress at www.eterium.com

Eterium DLC autopilot flyby

Again, just a reminder, the first Episode of the DLC which will be over 25 missions will be released for free and included in the next update. You won't have to do anything but update the game and you'll get the option to play it when you start a new campaign.

 

Just finished playing this & it was great, took me back to my wing commander days. Also have it from the dev that there will be DLC comming out soon the first installment will be free with a total of five chapters.

The other four I assume at a additional cost.

 

Shadowma

I think you miss-understood me.  The first episode of the DLC will be five chapters long (just over 25 missions).  It will be a branching storyline so you'll only play through 3-4 chapters in any one play-through.  The missions also branch within each chapter, meaning you won't play all the missions of each chapter in any play-through.  There are three endings to Episode 1, all of them are cliffhangers.  The "winning" path of the DLC is very very difficult.  I don't like to refer to it as the winning path because the losing paths' stories and missions are equally engaging.  The entirety of the first Episode will be released free, not just the first chapter.

This video demonstrates one of the new features being added to Eterium: the lock-on camera. While in the cockpit, the camera automatically, but subtly, follows your target. Not only does this give more of a 3D feel for the cockpit, but it also gives you a hint of where your enemy is.

Note: The 4 missiles I launch at about the 30 second mark seem to go off course, they actually don't. I was launching them to take out the enemies on my tail.

 

Nice 😎

Just downloaded it from Steam

 

Act II Episode 1 Released

The first episode of the Act II DLC has been released today along with the 1.1 patch.  The DLC is available for free and packaged with the update.  It's available on Steam now and will be on Desura soon.  The new DLC features 27 new missions and a branching story-line.  These new missions are a lot of fun.  Access them by updating to 1.1 and start a new campaign.  You'll be given the option to start either the main campaign or Act II.

Version 1.1 Patch

Version 1.1 fixes many bugs and adds a new camera feature.  The camera now looks (subtly) in the direction of your target.  While at first I thought this might be a distracting feature and I planned to make it optional, after playing with it on, I really liked it!  I set the feature to be on by default.  If you don't like it, you can disable it on the settings tab in the launcher.

The 1.1 patch also makes the explosions sound a lot better and fixes several explosion related sound bugs.

Rewards Finally Shipping

The rewards have finally started to ship out after several setbacks.  First of all, as I posted about in a previous update, the game disks came burned incorrectly.  The company that manufactured them sent me replacements.  However, the replacement disks had terrible quality printing on the box and I was very disappointed.  I decided that I would rather not wait for replacements, so I opened all the disks and put the good disks in the good boxes.  Because of this, the boxes will not be sealed.

The second problem came from the company I hired to print the hoodies, after a mistake on the proof it took them over a week to get another proof to me and that proof had the same mistake.  Finally after several weeks the order went to printing.  I have received them and they look great.

I was originally planning to go with a company to handle all the shipping. But after reading the fine print of the contract, I noticed there were too many hidden fees.  As such I have decided to ship the rewards myself.  I have received all the packing material and started sending rewards out.  So expect to start getting them soon!  I'm sure you'll agree when you see them that they were worth the wait.  I am very pleased with the quality of the rewards.

Looking forward to seeing the DVD as it will be the first game DVD I will have received from a kickstarter.

Came last Monday but I only got down the sorting office a couple of days ago. 😎 my first boxed game from Kickstarter.

Interesting post mortem from Andrew Luby (rogue Earth) about Kickstarter, making games ect.

 

All rewards have finally been shipped. I've been hearing back from many of you and I'm glad you are enjoying the rewards. I wanted to deliver the highest quality rewards I could and I am very pleased with how most of them turned out. If you responded to the survey a bit late, you'll be receiving your rewards a bit later and may receive some shipments directly from our manufacturers. This concludes the Eterium kickstarter. If you have any comments or questions feel free to post in the comments or contact me.

Post Mortem

After any major project, I like to think about what went right, what went wrong, and how things could have been better. Eterium was a massive undertaking by a team that was too small to take it on in the time frame we planned. We slipped our initial release date of October 2013 by half a year. However I feel the game we delivered was much better for it. I am very proud of Eterium and how the game turned out. The game has been in the hands of players now for three and half months and so far there have been very few reports of bugs. The game has received nearly unanimously high praise by those who have played it. The number one complaint against the game is the anime art style. And if that's all people can find to complain about then I consider it a success.

The Kickstarter Decision

We made the decision to go with Kickstarter to help aid in the completion of this game because we realized that I (being the programmer) would need to concentrate my efforts full time to finish the game. We were expecting the kickstarter to take off. We had delusions of double, triple, or even more funding. The game we had designed was really intended to be made on a much larger budget. The amount of money we asked for was, honestly, below the requirement to make this game. Like many other games on kickstarter, we expected to come in well above our goal or not at all. Sliding just past our goal hours before the end was both a moment of exhilaration and a big "Uh oh" at the same time. While I doubt the game would have ever seen the light of day without the kickstarter funding it put us on a road to create a game with inadequate funding. As a result Eterium has put a significant amount of strain on me and my family, both emotionally and financially.

What Went Right

We delivered the game! I have had several of our backers say to me that this was the first kickstarter they've backed that has delivered. It was very important for us to get Eterium out before other games like Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous delivered. While our games cannot be compared and are different games that could successfully coexist, it would be suicide for Eterium to release along with one of those giants.

The game we released was very polished and had very few bugs. The team worked well together and we were even able to deliver some of our stretch goals, such as the mission simulator. There were several other features that were added into the game during development and after release.

What Went Wrong

The amount of money we asked for on Kickstarter was inadequate to develop a game of this scope. The low amount of funding did not allow us much room to hire additional help and testers. After taxes, rewards and shipping the $25,800 broke down to significantly less. Leaving me to work on and test a majority of the game alone.

• Character Art: The character artist we hired to do the artwork delivered regular updates for the first few weeks, but after that disappeared. When we finally got ahold of him again, he delivered new sketches of all the characters that looked nothing like the original designs. Soon after, he had a hard drive failure and was unable to deliver. We had paid him 1/3rd up front, so while we lost some money, the biggest hit on us was time. We were facing our October deadline without any character at all. Since, at this point, we knew we would slip our October deadline, I started working to improve the quality of the game and adding the simulator stretch goal.

       We were able to hire Chenwen Hwang, our new character artist, in November. She created all of the characters for the game in just one month. I think she did an increadible job, especially taking into consideration the time spent.

• Marketing: As we approached release, we hired a PR company to assist us with handling PR and Marketing. This company went out of business just one month after we hired them, leaving us high and dry (and out the money) just weeks before release. Rather than hire another PR company, I decided to take care of all the PR myself. This was probably best in the long run, because many people have praised my personal interactions with the community.

       Another challenge of marketing was getting the word out about the game. It was difficult enough for us to get the word out about the kickstarter. While the game is well-liked by most who play it and has solid reviews on Steam, we were never able to get in on any major gaming websites. A large chunk of this is my fault, I am a programmer and I prefer to concentrate on making the game rather than getting the word out. A dedicated PR person would have definitely helped here. Before releasing the game, I did a lot of a reading about marketing indie games. I created a press release and sent out dozens of press copies. But nothing ever gained any traction. I suppose the game was just too small and insignificant compared to the bigger space games coming on the horizon.

Final Thoughts

While I am very proud of the game Eterium turned out to be, I am very disappointed in the poor sales. It was always my hope that Eterium would be a stepping stone to the production of future indie titles. And while I do not plan to give up creating indie games, the sales from Eterium are far below my hopes and well below what would be required to fund a new game. The total revenue for the game so far does not even come close to paying back my personal investment in the game.

Eterium should have remained a personal project. The amount of money we asked for on kickstarter was too low to fund development of the game and the resulting sales of the game have been lacking at best. As a personal project, I could have continued the game at my own pace rather than concentrating my full time efforts on it. However, if the game remained a personal project, I probably would have burnt out on it long before its release. It was nice to be able to put in the effort needed to get the game out quickly, rather than toil away at it for several more years.

As for the future of myself and Rogue Earth LLC: we are currently prototyping several new game ideas in Unreal Engine 4. I have quite a bit of professional experience using UE3, so I was able to get up to speed on UE4 in no time. While I do not plan to create another Eterium/Wing Commander style game for a while (there is just too much competition), I am looking to do another science fiction / spaceship game. Due to the lack of funding, this game will be created in my free time as a side project. I'll share a link when I have something to show.  At this time, I do not have any plans to do a kickstarter for it.

That's interesting. I feel slightly bad about Eterium; I was a backer and played it a little, and contributed one measly bug report, but I never really "got into it" the way I expected to. I'm not quite sure why. Having read the above, I think it's sad that the developer's overall conclusion seems to be a negative one, and that development of the game put an emotional strain on him and his family. I still really admire him for going through with it.

auryx