Hello everybody! ( BRACE FOR WALL IMPACT!! )

[jocan2003]

Hello everybody,

Im jocan2003, currently lead tester for Taitale Studio on the Novus Aeterno game, im a big fan of indie game and this one caught my attention. I would like to say that while im eagerly awaiting the beta release, let's not rush anything shall we? What are game state?

There is the design phase, where they are still fleshing out how the game should behave, have as feature and so on, also named planning or pre-production. After all that it goes into a technical review.

After all that there is the prototype building, where they make algorythmn <-- Spell? im french XD, test feature separated, such as world generation, combat system (no graphics here, only the behind the scene mathematic and programing to test if pressing SHOOT has a chance of hitting and if yes how much and so on). Creating tool that will be required for later uses such as plugin for photoshop, code snippet, mission generator etc.

Once they are done testing algorythmn, isolated feature etc, now come the time to put all that together, called pre-alpha, now we start seeing a potential game, the very first video we saw of this game could be called a late alpha build or early close-beta and QA start working i would say usualy once 25% of the feature are integrated but its not an exact science, it depends on the project size, scope, time, and so many other factor, but generaly that about where it start. Depending how fast the art division work, this is where we also see placeholder being removed for real assets.

Alpha, what is this really? Some take a buggy closed beta for an alpha, nope, even alpha are feature complete, all major feature are in the game wich mean, ship movement, character movement, graphic deployement etc, a feature does not mean it already control exactly what happen if you fail stealing from character X.

After come beta also called bug hunting phase, no feature is supposed to be added to the game anymore, only tweak and bug squashing. There seem to be a lot of misconception here. The close-beta wich is SUPPOSED to be testing using external, choosen, DEDICATED team or individual and start testing on a wider range of possible system build and gather as much data as possible to make the game stable, but sadly now closed beta is more commonly seen as a lottery to play (note im not using test here) the game before the other. Personaly i find that very sadening, but sometime, even myself, i apply for close beta-beta just for the sake of trying, why? because even todays gaming market seem to promote that.

Then there is the open-beta, anybody who want gets in, 90% of the game is complete, we need to gather as much data as possible to balance the game and find remaining small hidden bug, and funny thing is, 90% of the tester are that... they test for themself to see if they will buy or not eh...

And then, well you know it, release!

Now come what we saw on the demo at Onlive, some says its feature complete, some other say its worthy of beta and so on, but the question is, is it really ready? Sure its playable, but without insight on the design documentation, its hard to know if there is much more to add, and what they have to add, is there a danger to stability? Because before each release outside the team, there has to have basic QA, always, maybe they dont have time or the ressources needed for that, less time compiling and internal QA for release 0.x is more time focussed on adding feature and giving job to the internal QA.

From what i saw at Onlive demo personaly, i deem it worthy of close beta but without insight on the design documentation i dont know if, from a devloper point of view, really worth the time needed to invest in frequent release for external testing. Internal QA simply have to fire up the latest compile from the devlopement folder, while
having external testing, need to be compiled, tested, cleaned up and then release wich add useless devlopement stall time. Also the game is not feature complete as they are adding a lot of content to the game as we speak, cloaking system we saw on the video, boarding and so on who know what is coming next?

Sure Notch from Mojang took a twist with the beta-system and turned the beta into an income, business-wise its a good move, he was indie afterall. Being indie mean adapting to the current team/devlopment needs. Since they had a lot of money from kickstarter its wiser to rule that system out of planning and focus more on content than pleasing the fans. No matter what they choose im siding with them.

If you have any question about what my job is, general devlopment process work, how to get a job like mine etc, feel free to ask!

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More information about me and toward this game, i love it, and damn i wish i could do anything to help the devlopement! Im 26, father of a 15month old little girl, im really proud of her, i love cookies, my gf (I had to add that she was looking strangely at me!) also love to joke around and be nothing close to serious, you should see some of my post on taitale forum haha. But when time arise i can be professional! Like i said somewhere im french so im pretty sure this wall of text is ugly to any native english user. I live in Quebec Canada, im far from rich but i love what im doing!

Have a nice day

[Stelly]

Welcome to the forums

I loved your post, it was nice to read and loving the look of the game, how do you find bringing all the people that work with you together around the globe? I see that you have people from the UK, and other far away places, trying to have a team meeting must be interesting

Stelly

[jocan2003]

How? we keep it simple, and when we set-up meeting its as easy as connecting to mumble, but most of the time we simply relay message for minor stuff using msn or dev forum post. Right now i am mostly on stand-by waiting for the Infiltrator program to fire up, then ill have my hands full coordinating the flow of tester, but i do participate in dev testing when a new feature appears to make sure its stable. Also as lead tester most of the niformation i receive are on a need-to-know basis wich mean i dont know what are the futur plan most of the time unless its directly connected to the testing im doing. Right now the bulk of my job is a bit of PR and forum moderation, answering question i have answer to and forwarding question i cannot answer to the proper guy, but most of the time i get ninja'ed anyway!

Have a nice day!