Reminder if you missed it yesterday, the public beta for From Earth is now out and the Download button is now visible. Check out the store page here.

The From Earth public beta is now available for download via Steam here. From Earth requires you to own Half-Life 2 (which is roughly 10 euros at the time of writing) on your Steam account, but you should not need to have it installed. The mod itself is a 5GB download and should run on any computer that can run Portal or any other Source Engine games of that period.

For those unfamiliar with From Earth, here's a short synopsis:

You take the role of Zenaida Liu, one of two human beings sent on a voyage to a remote alien planet designated EX775. As the first humans to ever set foot on the planet, she and her companion, Anthony Yaremov, have little to no idea of what to expect. Anthony soon runs into trouble with the local alien government, and Zenaida must find a way to rendezvous with him before the situation can escalate. She has to make a choice between either fighting the local populace or trying to learn their language in order to communicate with them. With limited resources on an unknown, potentially hostile alien world, Zenaida must find a way to use the alien technology to her advantage.

From Earth features a first person combat system that the player can use to fight the Z-Duw government soldiers – if they so choose, that is. Alternatively, the player can unlock alien words by simply listening to what the aliens are saying and attempt to use our custom built language system to unlock alien sentences. Once the player has unlocked an alien sentence they can always speak that sentence without having to use the language system. The player must also examine the alien’s technology in order to understand how it works. If one pays close attention to how the aliens themselves utilise this technology, they too can learn how to utilise it. The player also has an array of climbing abilities, allowing them to stay out of sight of the the Z-Duw project soldiers trying to catch them.


The public beta features the entire From Earth storyline. Simply put, you can play it from beginning to the end. Some choreographed scenes might be a bit unfinished, and there are certainly placeholder models in place in some sections of the game. That said, all major features are in and the game, as stated, is fully playable. However, because of the scope of the game it was impossible for us to find enough playtesters to properly give the game a thorough examination. So, we are releasing the public beta in order to gain feedback on the game in its entirety. Is the language system fun? Is the combat too difficult or too easy? Is it intuitive to try and create new items? And so on. Any and all feedback is appreciated. We will do our best to iterate and improve the game based on your feedback.

Some aspects of the game might be more difficult to change, but don't be afraid to leave any kind of suggestions on the Steam forums for From Earth.


We will obviously try to fix any bugs that arise, balance the gameplay and fix any parts of the game that are too difficult or are simply not interesting enough. We will also continue to roll out visual updates to the game as we go forward. The aforementioned placeholder models will eventually be replaced, and we will continue adding new props to the game. On that note, please don't be afraid to leave any feedback on the visual aspects of the game either, as this allows us to know where we should be focusing our efforts.

Apart from that there will some smaller updates and even some small feature additions too. I am also thinking of adding Workshop integration and writing a few tutorials for people interested making maps for From Earth, but right now it's too early to say if there will be anyone interested in pursuing that – it’s simply a possibility going forward.

At the moment I am thinking future updates will be released on Friday. I will try to provide adequate warning beforehand if there's ever an update that might potentially break your save files. You can follow From Earth on Twitter or Facebook[www.facebook.com] for more frequent updates and descriptions of what will be included in that week’s update.

Public Beta

So, right now our plan is to release a public beta in the end of February on Steam as a free download. There's still some things I need to figure out and check out before that, but hopefully I can stick to that date. It might still change if there's a lot of problems or completely game breaking bugs that I find. I also need to go through the process of making the store page public with Steam.

Why public beta?

One of the reasons is the problem finding play testers. I desperately need a lot more info on the gameplay and I don't have enough active play testers currently to get the game out in a realistic time. I also need to get something published and get a lot more feedback.

I will be looking for your feedback on everything including gameplay, story, and the aesthetics. Of course there’s some things that I might not be able to change at this point anymore, but don’t shy away from giving any feedback.

What will the beta include?

It includes all of the gameplay features and all of the story stuff in place. There's a lot of placeholder models, materials, sounds, and a lot of stuff that will be replaced and improved. Gameplay will be tuned according to feedback. I will change enemy placements, puzzles, and might even remove entire features if they end up having too many problems. The game might change a lot during the beta, and not just visually.

Some features included will only be available through console commands.

Should I wait until the beta is over before playing?

I will probably need all the help I can get to test the game and would appreciate any feedback I can get as early as possible. While it might not be the optimal experience I hope you will check it out and help create some buzz about the game.

Save files may get broken during the beta.

One of the problems with play testing is that I might do small changes to code or the levels that might create problems with your save files. In the code I have tried to make it backwards compatible as possible, but with level design this is a bigger problem. For example, I might need to change the layout of a level to fix problems with gameplay. In your save file you might be standing in a spot where a wall or static prop would appear and you would get stuck. If you do changes to the entities these changes will not be affecting your save files. You will need to restart the level to have gameplay changes take affect.

I will of course try to avoid doing changes that might break save files. During the public beta I will try to restrict updates to specific dates. If I only update on Friday’s for example, you can start playing on Friday hoping to finish the run before the next update comes and not have your save files affected. I will also include a warning to updates that might do that. Still, some updates might be completely necessary to fix big problems.

PC only for now

I don’t own a Mac or Linux computer nor have I ever used them so I am not really familiar with how those operating systems work or what goes into converting the files for them to use. Because of that it might take a bit of time and help from the community to get Mac or Linux versions working.

English and Finnish translations only

At the start I will only have English and Finnish UI (though the basic Valve gameui stuff will be in all the same languages as in HL2). If you are interested in translating the subtitles and HUD for From Earth into another language I will be setting up some kind of page with info on that.

Read about the merging item system or the "crafting system" in From Earth: http://hlssmod.net/index.php?page=0&news=45

So luckily I managed to get my PX fixed. Turns out only the power source was fried. Last week I talked a bit about the Custom Items in From Earth. It's a bit technical description of how I create big array of items for From Earth, and also how modders could create their own. Next week, I am going to post about the Item Merging system.

Meanwhile, here's the teaser trailer for From Earth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4oSmf8xtaU

What is From Earth?

If you are not yet familiar with From Earth, here's what it is:

From Earth is a single player first person adventure game with focus on puzzles and first person combat system. The player, Zenaida Liu, lands on an alien planet and has to figure out how to find the only other human being, Anthony Yaremov to continue their mission. With little to no equipment with her, she has to learn to use what is around her to succeed. She soon discovers the alien population on the planet and has to make a choice of either trying to communicate with them or to fight. The alien government is trying to capture them both and Zenaida soon finds her life at risk.

The gameplay focuses on trying to figure out how to use the alien technology, how to interact with the aliens using the alien language system, and melee focused combat. Zenaida also has some platforming abilities that she can use to traverse the world.

From Earth is a Source Engine / Half-Life 2 modification and is coming to Steam as a free game.

http://hlssmod.net/screenshots/42.jpg http://hlssmod.net/screenshots/43.jpg

As usual you can follow @FromEarthMod on Twitter for more frequent news.

Looking for help

We are still looking for people. If you are interested to apply, you can send me a message on Moddb, Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail me at au-heppa@hlssmod.net.

Composer
We are looking for a composer to help finish the music for From Earth.

Other
We are interested on getting any help we can get, especially world texture creators and prop modellers.