So I don't think I'm gonna need to point out that little testing bar in the progression tracker on the right... But in case you missed, there sure is a testing bar in the progression tracker on the right! Meaning that V13 is officially out of the internal testing stage and has reached the next stage of testing. Hurray! Progress is being made and release is creeping closer!
But, it's still going to take a little time. Now, as I've noticed in both the dev blog comments & the V13 discussion thread, there are a lot of questions about testing, so I'm compiling the most frequently asked questions in this post so you have all the answers you'll (probably) be needing in one place, and won't have 230498203498 people asking the same question over and over again, yaaaaaaaaaaay
*cough*
anyways.
"Ssssssso what does testing of the game really mean?"
The word really should speak for itself already, but testing of the game is catching any game breaking bugs, such as moves and items not working properly, tile & passability errors, AI errors, sound errors etc. All kinds of errors and bugs that really shouldn't be there, and therefore should be fixed before the release of the game. We don't want to release a game publicly that barely functions and keeps breaking at every turn because that's really not the kind of experience we want to give you, which is why this stage is necessary before we can bring out the update publicly. Yes, I know that some people have been saying like "ohhh i don't mind, i'll just avoid the bug and note what not to do!" but I'll be 100% honest here -- the second people start running into problems and can't fix it on their own we're going to get swarmed with complaints and the same bug reports over and over, and for the sanity of all of the people on the dev team, we're not going to do that.
"How many stages of testing are there?"
In total, three - Internal, Alpha and Beta. We've moved from internal to alpha a little less than two weeks ago, which is a testing phase held with a closed, small group of people trusted by the dev team who go through the new content to sift out the biggest, baddest bugs. After we've progressed far enough into testing in the alpha phase, we'll be moving to the beta phase, which is held with a larger group of people. At this stage we should be at a point where people will start finding smaller problems that might've gone unnoticed during alpha due to a smaller number of people testing things back then, but all the big issues should hopefully be taken care of!
There was a little confusion about the naming of these testing stages this week, due to what we currently call alpha having been referred to as a second round of internal testing in the past, and people thought another round of testing has been shoved in between. However, all that's changed is the naming of these testing phases -- the actual structure of testing remains similar to previous dev cycles and fundamentally hasn't changed.
"But, but but but- if testing has been going on for almost two weeks, why is the progress bar still at 0%?!"
No need to worry -- the bar just doesn't get updated often. We've made progress! Just don't expect that bar to be an accurate representation of our progress at any point in time, lmao
"How long does testing usually take?"
I really cannot give you a time estimate for this, because it entirely depends on the amount of content an update brings with it. V13 is -- like stated in previous posts -- a massive content update, both in terms of new content and older content that has been revised. There's a lot of ground to cover for the testers and it simply will take some time for most people to get through everything, both during alpha and beta testing. There's no saying how long testing will take in total, but hopefully stuff will go smoother once all the worst bugs have been taken care of.
if you want to know how bad it has gotten at times, ask azery. he's had a minor meltdown at least three times at this point i think. please send him your strength and energy
"So when does V13 come out then?"
Again, no release date because we don't know when we're done with testing, but...
I'm sure you'll notice when we're getting close. :)
Hold onto your horses a little longer, yall o7
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