Hello guys!
Its nice to see our community running extremely well!! Everybody took their part and started to promote the game. The team is really proud of the community it has! We need as much help as we can because its always hard to promote and work on a game of this magnitude but with your help we will be able to pull it off.
In the meantime I have prepared for you yet another taste of whats to come on Miner Wars. I have been filming some of the physics of the engine and also the solar wind feature. Notice how the solar wind drags all the objects in its path and takes them far away. Some users have been asking for combat videos. Dont be afraid guys. These videos are well on their way. We just dont like showing unpolished things.
Tommorow our team has a meeting where we will choose some people that are fit to receive 1st level medals on idea contribution and special 1st level medals for spreading the word. Some people have already done their part before we even started the affiliate program and that is why they deserve it already. Some of them are promoting our game and not posting affiliate links and of course I can see all of those in our analytics console.

Thx for your support in all of this


Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka

Hello guys!
Today we have promised to release some information on the medal awards. Everybody already knows some things but let me repeat some information.
Other missing info can be found on: http://www.minerwars.com/News.aspx#Minerwarsupchng

There are 3 medal types:

1) Spread the word medal
2) Idea contribution medal
3) 3D Model contribution medal

There are 3 medal levels:

1) Level 1 medal will grant you the medal itself on the forums and the ability to submit your own art that will be put on your ship. Basically you will be able to pimp your ride :).

2) Level 2 medal will grant you a free license of the game and all the goodies of level 1

3 Level 3 medal will grant you an exclusive access to the unreleased game content and a much deeper possibility to be a part of the development process itself. And of course the goodies of level 1 and 2.

How to obtain these medals?

Spread the word medal:

250 clicks for medal Level 1
1500 clicks for medal Level 2
5000 clicks for medal Level 3

PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO USE YOUR AFFILIATE URL THAT IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR FORUM PROFILE PAGE IN ORDER TO COUNT CLICK_THROUGHS!!!

Any other work like clubs, fansites and other things that are not measurable by exact means:
will be awarded individually by looking at the work the person has done. Your fan work will be evaluated by Unsung and Awarded on one of the 3 weekly meetings that the current team has.

Idea contribution medal:

Any idea that makes it to the final game deserves its medal. We will be keeping a list of ideas at your disposal very soon. We already have a good list.

1 idea that makes it to the full game Level 1
3 ideas that make it to the full game Level 2
5 or more ideas that make it to the full game Level 3

Please remember that we cannot accept all the ideas that you put forward. Even though we would like to we have to prioritise. Of course we like to hear them all :). Medals are awarded on weekly team meetings. You should act nicely towards Unsung and Sol because they are already a part of the project meetings :))).

3D Model Contribution Medal

1 model of basic fighter, weapon or any other low-poly object Level 1
3 models of basic fighter, weapon or any other low-poly object or one bigger mothership model Level 2
Any work more than that will grant you a Level 3 medal. In that case we will probably invite you into our team :) and it will be up to you to accept.

Any contributors that will show an exceptional dedication to the game will probably invited to our team because we are a game that is made by the community for the community :).
Keep all the things coming guys! Without you this project would not have a chance.

Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka

Hello guys!

Sol Command has been appointed as the new Community Manager. He will be in charge of 3D modelling. In the future, same as Unsung, Sol Command will have the possibility to join the core team of Miner Wars. Sol Commands models have been a really welcome addition to our game. As Marek said "His models look like he was already working on Miner Wars for some time now". So here you go guys.
Give Sol a warm welcome! He really deserves it :)

Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka

Hello Guys!

as always we have been very busy with the development of Miner Wars and the community management part. On a side-note before I start telling you of the changes: Marek has published a chapter in a book about game development called GPU Pro: Advanced Rendering Techniques. Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/GPU-Pro-Advanced-Rendering-Techniques/dp/1568814720/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266696252&sr=8-1 . The chapter speaks of destructible volumetric terrain that we use in our VRAGE for the development of Miner Wars. As you all know there are upcoming changes to the forums. We have already put up two new sections. These are called "spread the word" and "contributing models". These new sections are part of the first change to the community management model that we want to implement.
We are well aware that all of you guys are already doing something extra for the game and we really appreciate it. We have been thinking hard as to how we should make it all worthwhile to you.
You might wonder why the forum already does not have the functionality of the usual forums out there. There is a good answer to that. We want to fully implement the forums into the game. Your forum accounts will be fully linked to the ones you will be using in the game and the game will actively communicate a lot of functionality back to the website.
We also want to fully implement our future vision of making an Indie game development hub that I will speak of in the coming months.
This is why we are making the forums from scratch.

With the new forum changes we have decided to start a few new things:

1) Rank based on number of forum posts (nothing unusual)
2) Achievement medals

a) There will be three types of medals that you can gain in the community
b) Each medal will have 3 levels to it

c) Medal type: Model Contribution - you gain this by contributing models that will be used for the development of the game - the manual how to contribute your models is here: http://www.minerwars.com/ManualFor3DModelContributors.aspx

d) Medal type: Spreading the word - you gain this by submitting your communication, blogging, fansites of the game. Basically any type of communication with the outside world that will further increase the basic awareness of Miner Wars. We have also made a very basic affiliate program that will count every click-through that you will gain by submitting a link that is available on your forum profile. We will automatically display the number of click-throughs that your links will provide on the website. Its easy - just use the link on your forum profile under Affiliate URL. You can copy it anywhere on any forum or website.

e) Medal type: Idea Contribution - any idea that you have for the game mechanics might be implemented. Some of you have already submitted ideas that were seriously thinking of implementing in the game. You will soon be informed which ideas have already made it in the game. Only those that will be chosen will count as a medal award achievement.

f) Level 1 medal will grant you the medal itself on the forums and the ability to submit your own art that will be put on your ship. Basically you will be able to pimp your ride :).

g) Level 2 medal will grant you a free license of the game and all the goodies of level 1

h) Level 3 medal will grant you an exclusive access to the unreleased game content and a much deeper possibility to be a part of the development process itself. And of course the goodies of level 1 and 2.

i) Medal levels can only be aggregated and will be awarded step by step. Every user will first attain level 1 medal and so on....

j) Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka will be awarding the medals!! :) Maybe Marek will also have a small word in that :))

k) Exact numbers of how to reach a specific medal level will be mentioned in the news on monday.

l) Each specific area will have its own moderation and its own set of rules. These will be given to you by the end of the week.

3) Each user will have displayed next to his name a number of submitted posts
4) Our and Community manager posts will be highlited
5) Quoting posts
6) Official FAQ
7) File upload (will include a thumbnail on the forums)
8) Information as to who posted last in the thread (finally :))

Last but not least we have succesfully finished our work on these things:

1) Automatic updater of the game
2) Game installer
3) Networking code, especially game-logic on server side
4) Submitted the first fan-art into the game (test) http://www.minerwars.com/PicZoom.aspx?id=61

I have also been hard at work on the videos that have been promised. I have already captured and will upload a video of solar wind and physics of the game. I will be working on remastering the video over the weekend.

It has been a busy week and the next one will be the same :)

Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka

Hello guys!
As you might have noticed on the forums a valuable member of our community - Unsung, has been appointed as the community manager of Keen Software House. Unsungs first priorities are to work with us on getting more buzz around the game on our own and external forums. Blogging about the game and getting a good number of people helping us with ship modelling. In the future Unsung will help us in running the new Indie developer hub that we are preparing and maybe Unsung will help us with the iPhone project games. All in all we are thrilled to welcome him to our team! Unsung is the first member from the community that had the opportunity to join our projects. We are still looking for other people. These people are chosen democratically by our project team. Usually those that have the biggest impact on ideas, communication and act good towards others are selected. Some of you might in the very near future expect some message from me with a title-offer :).

Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka

Hello guys!

As promised we have added a new video of our current alpha build. This Video features the current cockpit, basic hud, basic targeting and a rear view from the ship. It also features me making a tunnel and reaching an area in the asteroid where there is ice.
Notice that the fragments of the broken astetoids also interact with the ship. Also if you hit the fragment with a rocket then it exlodes. So be careful when firing too much in the tunnels :).
This is first of the series of videos of gameplay features that we will be publishing roughly every week. The aim is to show you how our game is progressing and how close we actually are to the single-player beta release of our game.

You can also find the video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aruyeiqoj4E&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy!

Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka

Hello!

I just want to give a brief update to you guys on how the game development is progressing.

1) We have finished some basic core features of the multiplayer web-code
2) Marek succesfully tested VMWare and the game works flawlessly with it - Apple and Linux users will be able to play :)
3) We are working on putting the basic elements needed for the Single-player Beta release
4) Marek is also currently working on making the installer of the game. The installer should be done until the end of the week.
5) I am still working on the Videos and hope to release it real soon. If not today then surely you will have it tommorow.

Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka

Guys and girls,

Today is a big day for Keen Software House and Miner Wars game. You have been patiently waiting for release of new information regarding our game. There have been very good reasons why we kept silent for such a long period of time. I will try to keep things short but there is a lot of information that I have to share with the community. We are very proud to see our project coming to a succesfull release and we have many interesting things to announce!

First of all our core team has grown bigger by 3 new people. In total our team now has 4 core people and a nice number of external employees.

First lets introduce our Game Development director

Marek "admin" Rosa - he is a person you all know very well. Marek is taking care of Miner Wars core programming. He is the author of our VRAGE - Voxel Rage engine and is a lead developer and game creator of Miner Wars. Marek will now focus solely on game development and has delegated all the other responsibilities to other core team members.

Marek has a background of being a team-leader in a large international telecom company. Marek has started his first works on game development back in 2003 with a preliminary aplha tech demo of Miner Wars. Instead of joining any of the existing game development companies on the market Marek has decided to take a path of his own fulfilling his Miner Wars dream.

Our new core team members are:

Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka - he will take care of our sales and marketing/PR - he is the person who will take care of our community and administer the new sales model we have ready for you. He is also the person behind all of these texts :)

Tomas has a background of being a top executive at a major european software company he is an ex-gaming journalist and has been a passionate gamer for the last 25 years.

Jindrich "Jindra" Sarson - he will take care of our iphone game releases and will be a main developer on all of our iphone projects. Yes dear community you can expect a miner-wars and other iphone release in the near future :)

Jindrich has a background of being a team-leader and project manager in the major european software companies. He also has 3 very succesful releases in the apple app-store under his belt.

Vladimir "Wladimir518" Broz - he will take care of our game graphics, sound and art.

Wladimir518 is a renown european artist. He is active in the comics community. Wladimir518 is the frontman of the best known czech hip-hop band PSH. Wladimir518 is also active in the theater art scene and is an author of some award-winning acts. Wladimir518 joined our project because of his passion for sci-fi games and films.

Keen Software House is currently working on 3 projects. Miner Wars PC/XBOX360 is a project that all of you already know. Miner Wars iPhone is a new project and we will inform you about it when the time is right.
And last but not least we are working on a platformer for iPhone. The game is an old-school platformer style game with classy art graphics and is set for release by the beginning of summer 2010. More information about the game and a dedicated website are in the works.

All of us are passionate gamers and we also love game-development. We have started making games from scratch. Because of this we will try and fashion Miner Wars as a hub for other indie game-developers out there and we will try to be very open about our game development. This is why in the very near future we will open up a channel where we will try and give some basic guidance for the new game-developers and modders out there. Giving them tips and some basic advice for PC/Xbox and iPhone game development. We feel that by speaking openly with our community about the problemacy of game development we will attract many more people to our project.

In the future we would like to recruit some of the members of our community to be either external or core game development staff. We will also ask our community to help us with ship modelling and texturing.
More information about these intentions will come in the near future.

Marek has already mentioned that we will soon release some alpha tech demos and other eye-candy so that you could see how far we have come with our game development.

And now about Miner Wars for PC/XBOX360. We had to make some crucial decisions about how to make our game as best as possible for you guys.
Here are some of the decisions we have taken.

Miner Wars was originally set for a 2009 release. This release was intended to be an "indie" released product. We have however decided that in order to bring the full quality to the gamers out there we will push the release until the late 2010.

Keen Software House has decided to take the following steps in order to release a product that the community of 6DOF gamers deserve.

1) We will start offering our game at a promotion pricing level that will be at roughly 1/3 of the final product price
2) All the players that will buy the game at this promotion pricing will get a full game with no extra charge on the day of release
3) Our promotion pricing will only be applied to the PC version of the game. Xbox360 release will feature a full game with future upgrades.
3) All the players interested to participate on this model will receive a release in these steps:

A) single-player beta featuring some basic features and missions
B) improved single-player beta with more features
C) single and multi-player beta access with some basic features
D) single and multi-player full game with all the features set to the date of release
E) stable flow of upgrades for their full game

We at Keen Software House love our community and listen to our fans.
When you enter our community you will receive many more things that we only show at our forum webpages at http://www.minerwars.com

These will include: (ship model contests, exclusive access to alpha tech-demos, developer diaries, game development tips for indie developers and many more)

Last but not least let us show you some of our new in-game pictures.

These pictures show a feature that we are especially proud of called solar wind. This solar-wind will be a dangerous thing to come by and you will have to hide your ship deep in the tunnels in order to survive.

A BIG Thanks goes to you guys for your passion you have for this project, for your game-feature tips and for all of your questions.

We have been thinking hard about all this and hope for your future support. With our new team we are working hard and fulfilling our dreams.

Today we released new Miner Wars video and screenshots, revealing very large but still-destructible asteroids.

The video was captured from the actual game and the scene contains two 8-km asteroids, five medium-size asteroids, and 300 mining ships.

In this footage we tried to show how your mining ship is small compared to the biggest asteroid. Even your base ship is little compared to them. All asteroids are fully destructible.
In a few years we will be able to reach the moon’s size. It is only 400 times bigger than our asteroids. Think about it – a fully destructible moon. :)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Miner Wars – a video game featuring: 6DOF, Fully Destructible Environment, Single Player Story & MMO

London, UK, July 15, 2009 – Keen Software House is pleased to announce the forthcoming premiere of the Miner Wars video game.

Miner Wars is a 6DOF underground and space shooter played in a fully destructible environment and is a combination of single player story game and MMO.

As a player, you operate an advanced mining ship in an open world asteroid belt area. You dig kilometers of tunnels, harvest the ore, travel the solar system, fight your enemies and discover mysterious alien secrets.

Game play is led by an epic story and is a combination of a single/multi-player game, cooperative, or you against everyone.

The story will introduce you to many types of missions: rescue, exploration, revenge, base defense, theft, transportation, stealth, search and destroy, pure harvesting, racing or just flying around and destroying everything you see.

Features:
- 6DOF
- Fully Destructible Environment
- Single Player Story & MMO
- Persistent open world - millions of km
- 15 mission types: Revenge, Mining, Harvesting, Defending, Exploration, Rescue and more
- High quality rendering

World premiere: Autumn 2009

Platform: Windows, Xbox 360 Live Arcade

Please visit http://www.MinerWars.com for more information on the game, trailers and pictures.

About Keen Software House Ltd:

Keen Software House Ltd is an independent software development company focused on creating innovative video games. We are passionate gamers, who love developing games and we want to make games that people like to play.

###

NOTE TO EDITORS:

Game page: http://www.MinerWars.com/
(Feel free to use pictures, videos and texts from this site to preview or review the Miner Wars game)

Press contact: keenswh@keenswh.com

Company web-site: http://www.KeenSWH.com/

Today we launched our Miner Wars announcement campaign.

Furthermore, in the following weeks we are going to present you with screenshots displaying large destructible asteroids – almost planetoids. Just imagine; you can dig the terrain in any direction, make kilometers of tunnels, place cave ambushes... and more!

We have released this web site to announce the forthcoming premiere of the Miner Wars video game.

Please see the trailers and game screenshots.