Hey there people. I am in quite a predicament, I dont know when to releae a demo for my Retro RPG. I have a release cycle planned, it goes as follows: Alpha 1 Alpha 2 Beta 1 Beta 2 Beta 3 Full release Free Patches. But I'm not sure when I should release a demo. I am no where near Alpha 1, so i dont want to release a demo of the game and the buzz fizzles out, Then again for that percise reason I want to keep the community intrested, so I'm stuck. The game is a rather large game, over 70 quests, so there is alot of choice in what i want in the demo, But I'm not sure what to do. On a related note, how do I go about putting a time limit on the demo with out coding, I heard that BMT Micro have a wrapper to link to ur account and make it easy to upgrade the demo to full version. Thanks Luis
Well, I'm not sure how you can possibly know in advance how many beta releases you're going to need. The process is generally that testers find a load of bugs, you fix them. When the bug list is clear, you release a Beta version. More bugs come in, you fix them, bug list is empty, release another beta, and so on. When the bugs stop coming, you're ready for full release (and demo release, to answer the question).
Personally, I would release a demo when I release the full game for two reasons. If a player is interested in the full game after playing the demo, I want them to go buy it then and there instead of promising the full version "some day". Secondly, I wouldn't want the demo to be sub par to the full game. Ideally, I'd want the amount of content to be the demo-limiting factor and not incomplete/missing/WIP features. But that's just my 2c. I'm sure releasing demos sooner is fine, but I wouldn't go before beta. As you say, unless you are a big name, the buzz fizzles out (gotta remember that one).