Her eye is in the shadows a large amount of the time, but we fixed a bunch of them. In her throw whiff it used to be just black which was really creepy.
Game submission is basically:
We send a copy of the game to MS/Sony. They test it for ALL KINDS of things that have NOTHING to do with playing it, like “Is there any English text in non-English versions, even for one frame?” or “Does accepting an invite while pulling out the controller and the ethernet cable and pressing the Guide/Home button on pad 2 work?” or “Does every loading time longer than ___ seconds have an animation?” or “Does the user get properly booted if they save the game to a memory card and pull the memory card?” All the things that users take for granted but developers have to spend months making sure works. If they find unacceptable bugs or crashes from this battery of tests, or while playing the game “normally”, they reject your submission and you fix them and try again.
Most games do not expect to pass submission the first time, and enough time for a second try is usually built into the schedule. Even with constant evaluation by the publisher’s testers, console submission is much stricter. THIS is the stuff that makes game development “real”, since none of it is about the game itself.
I’m not gonna lie, that sounds really ominous and I don’t think I would be good as a programmer seeing as how I don’t like math. But I’ll take your word. Did you have to do stuff like that in a past life?
[Edit] Oh fuck! The analogy in that link is off-putting alone…Never mind, I’ll stay a happy, ignorant film student who will never have to know the plight that testers go through.
You AREN’T PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. Tattoo that on your forehead.
That’s the thing people don’t understand about being a tester (and why The Tester was so hilarious, who would want to WIN that?) It’s fun when you don’t HAVE to. When you’re playing a game that isn’t finished and your job is to play the same set of levels every day for 8 months, up to 16-20 hours a day sometimes, and notice what changes…then it’s a job, and for most people a horrendous one. If the game crashes, you have to go do all the same stuff again and figure out why. Personally I enjoyed being a tester for a while since I really like finding bugs and it’s basically the same stuff I did to MvC2 (^.^) but I also got lucky to be testing SWBF and Mercenaries 1, both of which were hella fun. You also don’t get to choose what games you work on, so that’s a crapshoot too.
If you find yourself really wanting to be a tester, simulate the conditions for a while and see if you’re cured:
Pick a game that has had a fair number of revisions. It doesn’t matter if it’s a game you like, since you won’t like it by the end, but for a more realistic experience make it a lower-budget game you dislike.
Go back to the first revision.
DO NOT SKIP any of the following steps even if you KNOW the outcome. Retail games will likely pass all these checks since they were released to the public, but you have to check everything anyway since it may have broken since last build.
Testers are on teams so one person would never do all these things, but still it’s a decent test especially for smaller games. [start]
Delete your save data (and trophy / other data if applicable).
Start the game.
Perform a ‘smoke test’: If the game has different levels / scenarios / characters / whatever choices are available from the main menu, quickly enter each and every one to make sure they load. Note any that don’t.
Check all the options to make sure they work, changes get applied to the game, they save, etc.
Whenever you see a UI screen, check it for spelling/grammar errors, misplaced textures, etc.
Begin a playthrough of the game. Play ALL of it, check sidequests/missions/etc. If you encounter any bugs, graphical weirdness, or crashes, note them.
As you play, if there are any bugs noted from last time, do “regression tests” which means see if they are still there or got fixed since the last build.
If this took less than your average workday of 8 hours, for whatever time is left in those 8 hours mess around and try nonstandard playing to see if you can cause glitches or crashes. Note any you find.
The next day, upgrade to the next patch version and begin again from [start].
Alright, Mike said the discussion didn’t belong in Q&A, and he’s right there, but I’m still quite saddened by the lack of any kind of forfeit option on online games. I gave a lengthy post when I asked for it that covered pretty much everything, so here it is again:
I do realize that there will be an option for it for offline matches, but not at all for online matches, and I still think all three points are still perfectly valid. This is one of those oh so simple things that hasn’t been done that I have difficulty getting across how important it is. I’m baffled because first Mike Z liked the post and said he liked the idea, and now:
This is a crock, and a cop out. The metaphor is flawed because you stayed because of principle, and having your quarter on the line. You could walk away at any time and give them that practice; you didn’t have to yank the power cord in order to be free. No one is suggesting that tournament players are going to use it, when the equivalent of that quarter is on the line. This is such a basic core thing that it’s boggling why no other fighter has it, and so basic that I actually have difficulty explaining how important it is. I don’t see anyone giving pro Starcraft players a hard time when they concede.
The entire purpose of asking is to try and cut down on the griefing. People online will be dicks if they any chance to, and not having the option to concede forces players to suffer through the griefing. That’s my biggest concern. Hey, maybe it’s something only the scrubs will have to deal with. Sounds nice, except Im one of those scrubs. Most of the players will be those scrubs. Most will be frustrated with learning a new game system, and wont like having to deal with grief at the same time. “Because that’s how it was in my day” is irrelevant. “Because it will make them hardcore like me” is crazy; you could use either argument to NOT include a training mode at all. They’re already taking the loss; losing is already frustrating enough, and to get to point where they have to say ‘okay, you win’ is even worse, but to go past that point through a few straight minutes of suffering douchebaggery before you can leave? That doesnt help anyone, and just encourages them to do the same when they’re overwhelming a weaker opponent. “But the opponent EARNED that right!” What? You won the game, congratz. Do you tell Mom how she’s such a scrub at Scrabble and teabag the tiles while deciding the last word to play? You won the game, not a an audience forced to watch you jump around like an idiot for two minutes because the game won’t let them leave.
The point is to increase the playing, and lessen the griefing. By giving them the choice to drop a game, it lessens the chances that they’ll drop the game entirely.
So, there ya go. Positive reasons adding it will bring to the table, and negatives that it alleviates. Can anyone give me one good reason why it’s a bad idea? I’ll admit Im pretty set on this, but I will listen to dissenting views. I just seriously see no downside to this, and many upsides, and a whole lot of bewilderment at how the idea can be scoffed out of hand.
It’s “bad” because it detracts from playing (cc options do that, people give up sooner if they have an easy way out) for little to no reason (it takes 10 seconds to die).
I will clarify, since you called me out. (Points for that. Jerkface. :^)
I like the idea of a forfeit option for online, and especially since you’ll go down in the ranks I’ll see about adding one later because of the influence it may have over ragequits. Encouraging people to quit by quitting rather than by disconnecting (since the rank result is the same, or could even be made worse for disconnects) saves time for the other person.
However, that doesn’t stop me from making satiric posts because personally I think the idea of quitting just because you effed up is nuts. I TRY to make the comeback, since it encourages you to attempt risky things you otherwise may not and possibly even ::gasp:: learn new things! It isn’t even humiliating because you KNOW you messed up already. About the only time I remember anyone resetting in MvC2 was when someone picked the wrong characters/assist, since there was no way to un-pick. But SG lets you back out, so…yeah.
tl;dr My personal feelings on the matter will not get in the way of implementing what is probably a very good idea. (^.^)
Is it weird that I basically play games like that already? Then again I did do testing for some small games and one very large mod (threewave for quake 3).
