Hi john.
I am in a couple test teams currently so I will try to help.
my answers are dispursed through out the message.
At 03:36 a.m. 9/07/2014, you wrote:
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.
Well thats fine, no deadlines, or anything.
However stuff like that can get lost, people will get tired of a game
even before its out unless it just comes out without warning.
And once its out there will be preasure to get it out.
Without a test team to test it privately to there may be a lot more
issues than expected.
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.
Thats a good ida, its what is currently done at least its the way I
do it for the stuff I am involved in.
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.
Well as I have helped in the design of stuff from the ground up sound
wise it can be done ofcause you go back enough you will have a lot of
extra stuff to handle.
this does handle things well though private alphas and betas followed
by public betas and maybe concept demos if you are that daring.
Ofcause you will have issues such as how to have people comment and
test weather its through a dropbox system for files and a server or
server all the way, etc.
In mtg one of the groups I have been testing in for example, a
spammer has somehow got our comments server app, and used it for no good.
its secured now, but with any system say dropbox folders things can
be deleted by mistake ie you restore the system with windows restore
and the point is not dcurrent or.
you kill something by mistake to people simply killing files.
This can get bad fast and has caused the odd folder to close.
In one case with me when I had an issue, people were not happy about
what happened justifiably, and I was able to fix my processes and
backups to fix that issue or at least minimise it.
However this way has headakes but then they all do.
Fourth is simply not doing a beta process at all, and only releasing
the game in any form when its ready and fully playable.
This is a really bad idea.
First impressions mean a lot here.
if somethin you released is not looking good first off people will
say this is crap, you are crap, all your stuff is crap and you may
have hacked it from somewhere else.
And it gets deleted and forgotten.
I have had a few such games that while I have not commented on them
as such have gone in the bin because I didn't feel they met my expectations.
The thing is now with bgt being free and so many other engines and
such though there are few real companies the number of small startups
2 of which I am in are popping off daily or at least almost daily.
There is a lot out there.
Some of it is good, some of it is not.
But if you don't want your stuff lost you better make sure you keep
that topic in the forums near the top.
In the audiogames forum if a topic drops below the first page I know
that its been forgotten.
It doesn't matter if your game was good or not the fact that you left
it to long and its off the front page automatically classifies it as
probably not worth it and if you leave it longer it may not even
interest anyone.
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?
Well as a tester and sound designer myself, I don't know.
It all depends what resources you have at your disposal.
You need at least a bt sync share, dropbox google drive or other
storage to have your files and comments text files.
From a calaberative standpoint google drive or dropbox maybe dropbox
would be good starters as they have clients and can be easily used
but you have issues with files being killed.
bt sync uses the bit torrent system and you can control with the
means of secret codes who has read or write permitions.
But be carefull about those as they can be abused.
Limited files you can use sendspace there is something called wuala I
think and thats supposed to be good to.
Servers.
If you have access to a web or ftp server your files could go on
there, maybe having a secure comments system to your server will be
good but make sure you have a username password scheme bcause
otherwise it dcan be abused.
There is a topic somewhere on the audiogames forum about sounds.
A few sound libraries are always a good starter royalty free sfx are
cheap but you can ocationally get some sfx from games or other places.
You don't necessarily need to own them yourself as long as you can
get whatever you need when you need it and ideally have the licence
to use them its enough.
Music.
In contrast there is a lot of chip and other music on such sites as
bandcamp which can cost for nothing to next to nothing maybe a bit
more but nothing over 10 bucks and as little as a dollar or nothing.
Some are name your price so you can pay what you want.
There is a lot of free stuff and most of it you need to credit the
author and website.
As for code and libraries most stuff is free you can sometimes get
stuff if you know how a lot of opensource stuff exists already.
If you need to use a discussion group ie freelists or yahoogroups or
something that is fine to but they have their own set of things to sort.
If you have a web sever and mailman you can make your own list but
there are spam issues to handle to.
And there is probably more I can not think of right now.
it all depends on what you want or need.
For a first timer, dropbox folders are easy to setup.
you don't get much space to start with.
Firstly you will need to make something simple and release it so
people get your style then see what happens when you ask.
You may get better responce if someone knows what you are about.
Its not always like that ofcause most times when I want to do
something I shoot in the dark and hope like hell I have not made a mistake.
In the case with mtg and also reality gaming studios the 2 groups I
am currently working with, I was able to play some basic versions of
the games.
Compaired to what I am testing now they are totaly rubbish but at
least I got a good idea of what I was doing.
Though I have worked on testing projects on and off for the last 10
years or so I have only really been on a constant ish role since the
beginning of last year so maybe a year or 2 at best real work.
You also need to be on reasonable terms with your testing team.
I don't mean always agree but getting into a big dust up is probably
not a good idea either.
though I have had good relationships with my bosses, there are a few
that have really not got me into a mood to continue working at all.
If you can't take harsh critisism from your team or have a short
fuse or someone in the team does then they or you are probably not
going to survive the process.
There have been situations where this happened to me.
Though I only rage when justified there have been times it could have
happened more often, and my temper can be shorter than most of
something is not just so.
Saying that in 99% of all cases you shouldn't have an issue.
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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