Beta outcomes

So there may have been some confusion over the beta - the beta test held yesterday was a "closed" beta - we invited a handful of people to come try out the site and try and break it. It wasn't available to everyone, we'd mentioned this in previous posts but not in the one announcing the beta date, so sorry for any confusion caused! The beta itself was successful in a way. People broke things we thought would break, and they broke things that we didn't think would break. The good news is that most of the underlying functionality exists and worked - we created and launched a match with people there. There are issues we've spotted and issues that were reported, and we'd like to publicly thank the people that gave up some of their time to help us test - its pretty invaluable for us. We're unfortunately no closer to knowing a launch date - some of the things we need to work on are performance-related, and some are functional-related. One or two need some time spent on them before we're happy, and there's a lot of small fixes that we need to do to. We'll keep you posted here with updates as we get them!

Site Preview

Hey all! Ahead of the beta test on Sunday, we've got a cool video preview of TF2Center.com made by Cyan, to demonstrate some of the features that will be coming soon with the site launch.




Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

Beta

Just a quick one since it's been too long! Progress continues, and we'll be having a beta test of the site this Sunday. All being well, we'll need some time after that to fix bugs that come up and apply the polish, but we'll keep you posted!

Designs - now with added colour!

So far, we've shown wireframe designs for some of the pages. But that's not all we have, and it's time to put some colour and styling onto those designs! As previously stated, these are the hard work of Mother Tereza, our resident UI designer, so send the kudos towards them if you like them!

There's not a huge amount to say about these at the moment, so I'll largely let the pictures speak for themselves!

Figure 1 - the main lobby page

Figure 2 - lobby page, Highlander

Figure 3 - 6v6 lobby slots 

One thing to point out on figure 3 above, is the slot limitations. We've discussed and investigated this, and almost every 6v6 lobby uses the standard team setup of 2 scouts, 2 soldiers (roamer and pocket), medic, and demo. As such, we've made the page clearer by removing the additional slots.

Figure 4 - Lobby Launched

The server details panel on here contains information for both the game server and the mumble server. While you'll be automatically connected to the game server on launch, the option to join mumble is a manual step (since there may be a legitimate reason you don't want to use it). However, if you do (and we're hoping you do!) then launching mumble and connecting is just a single click away.

Figure 5 - Create Lobby modal

We hope you like then plans! The biggest delay at the moment for getting the site completed is making all of these awesome designs a reality. We're getting there though!