Ok, guys - I come bearing official news. A parley with the forces besieging Fortress Fractal, if you will
Aiming for Tuesday for the release (SeaBee: my apologies. Zarcon: Hah! You were one day off. Unless it ends up being one day late. Would you rather be right or get it one day early? aerandir: right on!).
Modwise: actually, 0.35a mods will be compatible with the game. There are some new data fields, but it uses benign defaults if they are not found.
I'm sure it won't get pushed back any further, but it does raise interesting issues; people are paying for an alpha, and in the old days people expected bugs and crashes and so on. With customers becoming increasingly demanding, small devs like Alex obviously now feel pressured to present these incredibly polished experiences in alpha to avoid the negative publicity of people complaining about unfinished software...but of course by definition that's what an alpha is.
That's a very interesting point. I don't know that I'd call the alphas so far "incredibly polished" (thank you, though!), but I just want to make sure the releases are playable games in their own right. I personally wouldn't want to just run some tech demo every couple of weeks, and so that's not what I want to deliver. As you point out, the perception of quality is also a consideration. I just wouldn't say that it's the main reason.
Still, it's been *far* too long since the last release. That was due to some poor planning on my part, resulting in a change of direction (and the addition of the campaign mode!). Subsequent releases should be a lot more timely.