I'm not sure when the next beta release will be. many things are too incomplete to warrant a release very soon.
I can tell you that the programming is going forward at a brisk pace. New features include:
- Large sea vessels that you can board and ride.
- Docks and bridges.
- More general cargo-hauling for land, sea and air vehicles. Support for attaching up to 4 cargo objects. These objects can be independent turrets. You can have sea vessels with artillery turrets, uber-flying craft or ground craft with several turrets etc.
- Pilot/personnel in early stages.
These features are far ahead of the assets that can take advantage of them. We have Lizard and Slaor prepping to support that though. I don't envision a release until a lot of that asset development has been accomplished.
Phase I programming is almost complete, wherein it will be a feature-complete single player game program in several months, although too light on assets to make much difference. Phase II will be multiplayer research and development, and during that time asset development can catch up. Phase III will be polishing and adding other features that don't look too challenging. It will be at least a year before we can consider a complete release, but that delay will be worth it in my opinion.
This project is fixing to be much more of a BZ2-style game than I had ever envisioned. I think its the closest thing to a successor that we may have, not to say it will be a BZ2-killer by any means though, just fresh and different enough to be enjoyable even after years of BZ/BZ2.
