We haven't heard much about Camelot Unchained since it came out of Kickstarter last year with more than $2 million. In fact, the last bit of news wasn't particularly good: An alpha test that was supposed to run in August was pushed into 2015 because of a shortage of engineers at developer City State Entertainment. But a 'pre-alpha' testing period actually took place a couple days ago, and according to studio founder Mark Jacobs, it went swimmingly well.
It's worth keeping things in perspective: The pre-alpha test was very small, peaking at more than 500 simultaneous players, and the action took place within a fairly tiny arena. But the servers ran through the entire test without a single crash, and while the battles didn't reach quite the scale the developers were hoping for, they say performance was rock-solid throughout. The game's server-based physics also performed "beautifully," and the character creation system reportedly went over very well.
"Major problems were non-existent, and while there were a number of issues with older video cards/CPUs and OS versions, these were in a tiny minority rather than the majority. We are actively working with the players to update our F.A.Q. with the known cards/OS version with issues, just as we did with the previous AMD card problems," Jacobs wrote. "However, we’re going to fix those issues sooner rather than later (as soon as we get some build machines up with the older cards). Now, this doesn’t mean you will be able to play Camelot Unchained with a 7-year old machine with Windows XP, but we are addressing any known issues with cards as a priority item."
The majority of complaints related to things like slower-than-expected movement, casting times, and other such issues, but Jacobs pointed out that the pre-alpha is intended to test the engine, not the design elements. Follow-up testing sessions are scheduled for today and Sunday.
