I have sent an email to everyone participating in the beta. Could everyone please check their inboxes (and spam bins) and respond as early as you can? It concerns your names in the credits.

In case, as before, any of you don't receive this email, I'll copy/paste it below.

Hello beta testers,

Firstly, an apology. I had sent out an email to you all back when Stranger’s Wrath HD was first released on Steam. It listed the changes we’d made between the latest beta and release, and also the things we’d listened to you recommend but were unable to change due to design, technical or time restraints. I also explained why your names weren’t in the credits (we were having serious issues with the software used to render them), and that the same problem meant that even members of our own team were being left out of the credits for the time being.

For whatever reason, many of you – maybe even all of you – did not get this email. I can only apologize for the complete lack of information this means you were left with. That is definitely not how we wanted to leave things, and had I found out sooner, I would have sent this email earlier.

The good news is that we have now got the rendering software working and I’m putting together the credits now. What I would like to know from each of you is the exact name you would prefer to be credited as. I know some of you would prefer to go by a screen name, and that’s fine. I will try to use my best judgement for the time being (we may have to ship the new credits before I’ve heard back from you all), and we can correct mistakes with subsequent mini-patches. But the sooner I can hear from you, the more chance you can be credited in the way you’re happiest with.

Yours,
Wil

The update to the beta is now live. Check out the email I've sent everyone for a full changelist.

Howdy folks,

Just to say that, all going well, we should be uploading a new iteration of the beta on Monday. I'll email everyone with the password and changelist when it goes live, but I want to mention a couple of big features.

First of all, Gizzard Gulch has been added. This is primarily so you can test the Bounty Store and General Store menus.

Second, the launcher has been given a few extra options and features, including separate controls for ammo selection, language selection, an OpenGL 2.1 check, and the retention of your AA settings. We've decided to remove 16X AA because, as Stranger uses an engine that was never optimized for AA, it is much more resource-intensive than modern gamers expect it to be.

What I haven't mentioned before (because I wasn't aware of it) is that Stranger HD requires OpenGL 2.1 or greater, hence the new check in the launcher. As it turns out, OpenGL 2.1 is sufficient to eliminate the shader problems that 2.0 was having on ATI drivers.

I'd like to thank everyone who's emailed their feedback. Though we haven't replied to it all, it has all been read and considered.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. We've had a bit of downtime with a complete loss of internet yesterday and the programmers are off work today, but we are looking at all your feedback. Just to cover some of the more common comments:

1. The beta is currently only the tutorial level. Once you reach town, the beta is designed to quit to menu. This is for a few reasons, but for the purposes of compatibility testing, the tutorial contains almost everything that's been a problem. We MAY add the first town down the line.

2. Some of you thought the word 'select' was leftover from the PS3 version. Actually we haven't done a full localization yet, but in this instance it's one of the controls you can configure in the launcher. By default it's set to the Enter key (but the jump button will skip the dialogues too). If 'select' is a problem, what would you guys suggest as an alternative?

3. Obviously the biggest problem is the amount of blackscreening that's happening. Some of you say you can't play at all no matter what your settings. That needs to be the first thing we address, but I'd need to talk to the programmers about that, and like I say they're absent today.

What I intend to do from this point is encourage you to keep sending feedback because it IS being read, and then talk to the tech guys on Monday. I'll see what they have to say with more of the issues being reported and what they'd like to do for the next iteration of the beta. Once I know that I'll email an update to everyone.

Hello testers,

Thanks for joining the group. Right now we're finalizing just a few things with the beta version we'll be giving you access to, while also waiting to hear back from Valve regarding a few other things. It'll be a matter of days rather than hours before you can download Stranger HD.

When the game is ready for you guys, we'll post an announcement in this group (and email you all as well) and you'll be able to acces Stranger HD through Steam's integrated beta testing feature. Before then, though, we're going to need each of you to sign a simple NDA. Nothing for you to get worried about, the wording should be pretty simple (hey, we're not lawyers either).

That's it for now, but Glitch and I will keep monitoring the comments and group chat as much as we can.