Well we know everyone is eagerly awaiting the open beta release of v1.30, because that marks the final stage before it goes live to the game. We're behind schedule, there's no denying that ... but we have redone so much stuff during this dev. cycle and added so many things the game couldn't do before.

It really has been a huge shift in ability and focus even if a large amount of it is in the backend that people might not see or realize the benefits of, this work ensures a better long term future for the game than simple visible content would. We can do things to the game in the future we couldn't have done without this kind of development work being done. Many of those things are things that players have always asked about but were never possible before.

Outside of converting all the games files and data that are visibly displayed in English, we have created the ability for these to all be done in any language we can support, of course Chinese was the big priority and if you have any idea of the Chinese character set and the huge difference it represents compared to English, you'll maybe understand what we mean when we say this was a total mindbender. We did solve the issues however. It was a tough one though.

Most of our art production is now working on the cooler looking stuff we are going to unveil in v1.31 with the Unity upgrade we've been planning for a while now. We had to also build a new launcher app (PlayGate) to enable the kinds of cool things we are going to do over the course of this year to make the game even more marketable. This was fraught with many issues some of which we're still ironing out the last of at this very minute. Another thing we had to wrestle with is we are using a new much better compiler but that broke a lot of things too. So you can see that apart from any new content and features for the game, that you will be able to see and use, our small team has been dealing with a lot of additional problems and upgrades you might not see but still consumed a lot of developer manhours.

On the content side, there is a shift towards the final skill and rank tree changes we brought into their first incarnation with the aircraft list. This required some new planes and the retirement of some old ones. The Bf110C-4/B has been replaced with the Bf110F-B, and the Spitfire Mk.Ib has been replaced with the Spitfire Mk. IIb, in addition to the Bf109F-1 joining the Luftwaffe stable. We also adjusted the rank level access for the infantry so that all units are not clumped into the same levels. There is now a much more logical "ladder" to climb in terms of rank representing your experience as a combatant in the game. Binoculars are easier to get to as an incentive to the new player, rather than being one of the last things you can get as has been the case since they first appeared in the game. As we add newer items to the equipment list we can employ the same approach or logic we have used to reconstruct the progress through the aircraft list from noob to vet.

We have found and fixed a ton of bugs, both big and small, ranging from terrain anomalies, to vehicle functions and everything in between. While (as with a lot of software) we might not ever find and kill every bug there is to be found, we always devote what development time we can to squashing those bugs we do find and are in a position to fix. One of the annoying ones we did find and fix that will please a few folks was those German tanks with adjustable ring gunsights that weren't actually adjusting on their seperate ranging criteria.  This was one old bug! We also fixed a whole bunch of spawner errors we found with a lot of help from players doing .reports from in game. Just today we worked out how to fix the double tracking kill feature that broke ages ago. As it always is with something like this, it's a work in progress.

Finally, TRAINING! We have spent a very high number of developer hours getting the first iteration of in game training features completed for new players. We understand that the vets and experienced players among you may think this not so big a deal ... because you already know how the game works. However it will make a pretty huge difference to the new guys who tend to be overwhelmed by the size, complexity and variety of just how much you can do in this game, and how hard it is when not knowing all those things can make it seem dreadfully unfair on them when they don't understand all the things you experienced guys take for granted.

The more exciting and compelling we make this for new players, the more people we can transition to the battlefields and keep there, and that means more for everyone. More fun, more development, more game.

The best part of all the work we did on this first pass (and it can and will be added to as we move forwards) ... the best part is that it opens the doors to a wide range of really cool stuff we couldn't do before because the means did not exist in the game engine to do any of that stuff. Now we have something to build a lot of cool new stuff onto in the future. It lays the foundation for things that would have been impossible to create previously.

We know it's been a long time coming (v1.30) and that we are running behind our original planned schedule. We are working as hard as we can to wrap up the last of the issues that are stopping us getting the open beta phase underway. I won't give you a day or anything like that, but it's very close now. We thank you for what patience you might have been able to muster during this time, and promise you that as soon as it's ready, it will be in your hot little hands.

S! one and all. Now go and kill something. NOW!