I prefer having a selected team of testers, however they should be chosen
using certain criteria which I list below:
1. They should be able to follow your instructions. If you say that, in
order to sign up to possibly be selected as a tester, go to the following
URL: and you then provide that URL, and people send a reply to your message
asking to be a tester, they are automatically out because you already know
they cannot follow simple instructions.
2. Testers are selected based on their operating systems and their computer
setup. You don't want only testers of Windows 7 or higher if you're going
to have customers who may still be using Windows XP. You want testing on a
wide variety of setups to get good results.
3. Testers must be able to not only give constructive criticism and
suggestions, but they absolutely must be able to communicate them to you and
the other members of the testing team. Good communication skills are a
must!
4. Testers must be able to tell where they were when the problem occurred,
what they did to cause the error, and what the error was. If other testers
can reproduce the error by doing the same thing at the same time, then the
error is a confirmed bug, and can be worked on.
Troopanum 2.0 was tested in this way, and worked pretty well when it was
released.
---
Be positive! When it comes to being defeated, if you think you're finished,
you! really! are! finished!
----- Original Message -----
From: "john" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2014 10:36 AM
Subject: [Audyssey] Looking to take a poll on opinions about game betas
Hi all,
I'm looking to get the community's opinion on how you feel that the beta
process for a game should be handled. I have several different concepts,
and I'd like to figure out which the community prefers and why. Below,
I'll detail the different strategies I'm thinking of. If you could, please
choose the one (or top couple) that appeal to you, and explain why you
feel this way. If you have your own thoughts on how betas should be done,
I'd love to get more input.
The first strategy I'm considering is a public beta. Basically this means
that once there's a playable game, it would be released to the public,
just as if it were finished, with the caveat that there are probably going
to be less features and more bugs than a released game would have.
Secondly is a private beta process. Once a beta version of the game is
finished, a team of testers would be selected, and would be able to test
out and help debug/enhance the game prior to release.
Third is a private alpha/public beta process. This would basically mean
that an even earlier version of the game would be released for private
testing, and once most of the issues are ironed out, released as if it
were a public beta.
Fourth is simply not doing a beta process at all, and only releasing the
game in any form when its ready and fully playable.
In addition to all this, if you're a developer whose experienced beta
processes before, would you be willing to share some of your
thoughts/experiences/words of wisdom with me? If you've done beta testing,
is there anything that should never be done, or something the game dev can
do that makes testing easier on you?
Thanks,
John
P. S:
Over the past several months I've been sending a lot of messages to
audyssey asking for help with programming and concepts, and I think I'm
finally at the point where I can start to offer up some details on the
project I've been working on.
Most of my reason for being so secretive up to this point is simply that I
wasn't (and still aren't completely) sure that I was actually going to be
able to finish off the game.
The basic idea is a combination of aspects of the smugglers series and
time of conflict.
Inspired in part by all the news about U.S. cyber security and some
particularly interesting articles I read about a year ago, I came up with
the idea for this game. The (incredibly creative) storyline is basically
that government and corporate types managed to develop a chip that allows
a remote user to control a person's actions and/or emotions remotely, and
then marketed it as a way of advanced crime protection and mental health
management. Of course, remote meant via computer, which was hackable, and
that's exactly what happened. You will play the part of the leader of a
small fringe group who managed to escape the clutches of the people that
now control nearly all of the planet's population, and have to defend your
base against their attacks until the scientists and programmers you have
with you manage to crack the signal being used to access the chip, and
return free will to the citizens of earth.
The game is primarily going to be menu based, though I'm still tossing
around some ideas for areas where text input would be more useful than
scrolling through massive menus.
There are a lot of aspects of the game that are still incomplete, and most
everything is somewhat malleable at this point, but I'm pretty confident
with the overall storyline/game concept.
I'm writing this in bgt, which means only windows xp and later will be
supported.
The game is going to be completely freeware, and I'm currently planning to
be hosting it on dropbox.
I'm not going to offer a release date, but I will say that I'm at a
(extremely) tentative alpha stage right now.
Happy gaming.
---
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---
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If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected].
You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
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All messages are archived and can be searched and read at
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected].
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list,
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