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Welcome to 2015

If you are still with us, and why wouldn’t you be…. welcome to 2015 with BlackFoot Studios! We have a feeling its going to be a really great year around here so we hope you keep hanging on and enjoy the ride. It’s going to start  gaining some speed here soon. 😉

John starting working on the official Ground Branch Steam store page today! That is actually a pretty important milestone as it signals the start of moving into more of a public phase for Ground Branch. On that note, we are looking for some professional (either actual experience or work quality) to help out on the graphics side of things for the page. It’s going to be important to start off with a professional appearance so I’d like to do it right. If you think you would be able to help for reduced rates or even barter a bit, let us know as soon as you can.

We have also got around to setting up a public bug tracker so people can help out by submitting bugs once the demos are available. That is getting tested out by a private group as I type this.

On the game side of things Kris has been busting ass with getting things stable and features more completely implemented. He has also got the first pass of character and weapon configurations in and working. This includes the in game UI and saving/loading out actual constructed configs.

On the art side the existing training maps have received one more pass for visuals and some more detailing work. John has also started working on the main demo map that will be used to show off various gameplay features to get people interested in the upcoming Early Access. Sort of a ‘try before you buy’ for the Early Access. It’s a reworked version of the warehouse map that was shown in the UE3 screenshots and videos. We will use this map as a “proving ground” for gameplay types and features throughout development.

So we hope everyone had a great holiday and safe New Year. It’s time to get back to work!

John & Kris

New wallpaper

We have a new wallpaper available courtesy of DetCord, a friend of BFS. Feel free to download, use, pass around or whatever you feel like. 🙂

Enjoy!

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A plan rarely survives first contact!

We are not doing a new Kickstarter.

Now that the initial shock is over let’s talk about the good news.

Instead of a second kickstarter we are going to do our own Early Access on this site until we have a build that can officially go up on Steam Early Access. Yep, we feel we pretty much have a solid enough build that we feel comfortable putting it out there. It will be rough, buggy and lack features/content but it will be Ground Branch and will give you a very good idea of what that actually means.

We are finally there people!
While getting the UE4 build far enough along to get decent KS material, we realized that we were actually pretty close to having something playable. I saw that we could spend a month building out the KS material then another month running the KS or we could spend that time finalizing the build, getting our licensing in order and the EA infrastructure in place to actually get GB out there in playable form. In the amount of time it would take to create the KS then run the campaign, you will be able to play and support GB! So in the not to distant future you will be able to financially support GB while playing it and while getting constant updates and giving us feedback.

 
There are a few very important things that are happening before we can actually launch this thing. We have a “punch list” of items that must be done before anything gets released. More importantly, we still need to get the final engine licensing paperwork(certain things need to be done before we can ship anything to the public) with Epic completed and all of their legal items in place. This may take a few more weeks, but the process has started. Don’t worry things aren’t going to drag out that long.

 
We will be handing out a build or two to a select small group of forum members before going public to make sure we have all the kinks worked out. Final licensing paperwork must be in place for that as well. We will soon expose a “store” page here that will list various support tiers just like a kickstarter, though you will get an actual download link once the transaction is complete. We plan to follow the lead of successful early access titles that paved their own way like Door Kickers and Overgrowth.
 

We feel this is a win win situation and one that allows us to grow Ground Branch development at a natural pace. It allows us to hold true to our mantra: ‘Do not build a community around a game….. Build a game around a community’

Keep checking back for more information as everything is finalized over the next few weeks.

 

 

 

Taking out the trash

We thought we would give everyone a heads up about whats going on lately and where things are headed.

Firstly, as most have heard, we are going to be doing a smaller scale Kickstarter. Details are being finalized so stay tuned for more info.

Next, we are currently redoing both our main BFS and GB web sites. They are getting a new coat of paint as well as overall design. In the mean time, the information about Ground Branch on GB.com is getting updated to be sure that it more accurately reflects the current design.

So keep an eye out for some upcoming announcements.

 

Quick update… leave us alone, we’re working.

Excuse the lack of updates, meow, but we’re busy and lack the time to do a proper vid/update due to reasons, none of which I will go into right meow.

Even if you have been living under a rock, you should meow that Takedown: Red Sabre is due to be released any day meow. Whether you supported the TD kickstarer or meow, it is great to see a new game in the tactical FPS genre make its way to release meow. There is a discussion on TD currently on meow forums here.

Anyways, as I said, busy, so I don’t have the time right meow to show off anything related to GB. Maybe next week, I can show you something meow.

Also, meow.

-Kris