Hello Everyone. It has been quite a while since our last update on a large site like Equestria Daily-most of our updates happen over twitter or on our podcast “Blast Cast”. A lot has happened since that last update however and I’d like to let you all into a few specific things that have changed about Alicorn Princess Blast since then. Let’s catch everyone up on what Alicorn Princess Blast is really quick just so that we don’t have any confusion.
Over 2 years ago we released a prototype of the game along with this trailer. After that we began full development of the game and have been travelling from convention to convention showing it off and getting feedback. We’ve been keeping those interested up to date as best we can but with many developers focused on the game. In the spirit of maintaining transparency and honesty, we’ll explain what has been going on behind the scenes. Alicorn Princess Blast is a volunteer project formed by a group of friends. It hadn't gained any serious traction until after the first few conventions prompting us to form our company. People have been increasingly interested over the years which prompted us to begin more serious development on the game. There have been frequent setbacks due to people leaving and joining, meaning that a lot of the elements of the game have shifted and changed over time. Something else that has happened over the last two years is that those on the team have both gained and lost jobs which they rely on as a means of maintaining their own lives. As a result of this the project pace has slowed to more of a light jog down from rigorous sprinting. We have found that it can sometimes be difficult to focus all of our creative efforts on fine tuning and finishing the game when the urgent matters of a teammate require their immediate attention.
The lack of consistent updates on all fronts is one of the areas affected by this constant shifting. The majority of the developers have their efforts and spare time focused on finishing all of the features of the game. There have been very few moments where we have the time to update our audience on the progress we've made much to our own disappointment. We apologize for this and are making an effort to create a way to keep you all up to date on what's happening with our project. The plan will be simple. We're going to commit to giving you all monthly updates through our current channels so that you all remain informed on the development of the game. We’re going to kick this off with a big update on what’s happened ever since that trailer got released two years ago.
We’re In Alpha!
Firstly, the game has reached alpha and has been in that state for a little bit. We’ve been going from convention to convention- our most recent outing being at BronyCan, over the last year or so. We’d like to thank everyone who gave us feedback. While not complete quite yet, we’ve begun crucial testing to refine the experience to make sure that it fits comfortably for everyone. We believe that if we get the experience just right in the first level then it will be much easier for us to develop the game. We’ve also been discussing setting up a system that would include pushing out weekly or nightly builds to the public. It’s at this time where we’re really going to need help from the general public to help make this game amazing! If you’d like to help us out with the play test, sign up for our mailing list by going to www.alicornprincessblast.com.
Adding To the Fun
While developing the game we discovered that there are a few ways in which we can add to the engagement of the whole game while keeping it light and easy for newcomers to the shoot-em-up genre. One change to add to this is our new weapon system. This system will have up-gradable shots that do more damage based on the amount of experience diamonds you collect from defeated enemies. We found through internal testing that this felt better compared to the original prototype where you simply collected a flower to automatically upgrade shots. This also made level design and game balancing more of an interesting task for our designers to take on. At BronyCan however, we received feedback that the system hadn’t worked out quite how we expected so in the coming months we’ll begin prototyping a new system that we promise to make more simple and easy to understand.That’s everything for this month, look for another update from us at the end of October.
Hello everyone, Kaylin here! This last weekend we were at the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo showcasing Alicorn Princess Blast! Seattle Retro Gaming Expo is an annual gathering of retro enthusiasts to celebrate the retro aesthetic and the joy retro games had brought them in their early years. We had such a great time showcasing the game to everyone there. We especially enjoyed seeing everyone from kids to adults playing the game and reveling the challenge we presented. It seems that when you have a simple premise- " a flying unicorn who shoots lasers", it's very easy to grab attention and get people into the game! As such, the reception to our game was tremendous. Far greater than we were expecting. We would love to go again next year! We are currently looking at going to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo which will be happening soon. For game updates head on over to the Alicorn Princess Blast Website!
Hello everyone. Kaylin here! Let me start this off by apologizing for not updating for such a long time. The team has had frequent plans to keep the public up to date on whats going on regarding the game's status. However since this project is mainly comprised of developers who have day jobs to keep, life can get in the way of progress sometimes. Speaking of developers with day jobs, we held a panel at this years Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) called "Part-Time Heroes: Making Games on the Off Hours." I was a speaker on the panel and Ket was the moderator. Thank you so much to everyone that came out to see the panel, I had a blast telling everyone about the experience of making games on the side and what it was like being apart of a volunteer team of people. For those who couldn't make it out, there was audio recorded for the panel. We'll be making that available shortly so that you can listen to your hearts content! For updates on the game, head over to our site for Alicorn Princess Blast!
We are looking for a Game Designer for our top down shooter game Alicorn Princess Blast; do you have the skills for the job?
With the date for our early access demo of Alicorn Princess Blast drawing ever closer, we are seeking a Game Designer for our game! We are looking for an individual with one year experience in game design and is familiar with the basic elements of game design. Additionally, we also need you to be an individual with working knowledge in Unity3D, and someone who displays effective written and verbal communication skills.
What is our game about? Alicorn Princess Blast is a Top-Down shooter in the vein of Galaga or Sky Shark designed to emulate the joy and intensity of early arcade shooters while also providing a challenge for a modern audience. Players will journey with the Princess through the Shimmering Isles as she takes to the skies, and together will defend her homeland against the encroaching forces of the Fearmonger and his minions.
Are you a Game Designer with one year experience? Are you a Game Designer who is familiar with basic elements of game design and a working knowledge of Unity3D? Do you have strong verbal and written communication skills? Are you the person we are looking for? Visit http://thegamingcolts.com/joinus and fill out our recruitment form today!
The Gaming Colts can be reached by filling out our contact form at http://thegamingcolts.com/ask or you can reach us at [email protected] - DP
Hello everyone! This is Kaylin Norman-Slack here to give you adevelopment update on our project Alicorn Princess Blast. It’s been a fewmonths since our last update and a lot has changed since then. Allow me tobring everyone up to speed.
Thelevel we’re working on is coming together! We’ve got enemies in the level, butnot yet moving around. And we have camera movement through the environment based on a series of connectors placed in the level.
There have been numerous challenges to get to this point in development (some which are still ongoing), and I’d like to discuss them with you and bring you inside what is going on.
A few months ago we talked about having to rewrite our entire code base based on the feedback we got from Everfree Northwest. Now we are at a point where our code base can be used within our levels. This is great news because in theory we should be able to pump out the content we need for the demo. There have been numerous challenges along the way for all teams involved and I’d like to talk about a few of them.
From a design perspective, creating something like this and slightly innovating on it is always difficult to do. When striking out into the unknown by implementing a new feature or variation on an established trope, mechanic or element in a game, you have to take time as a team to evaluate it and figure out how this feature will not only impact your team in terms of time needed to produce it effectively, but also the impact it will have on the overall game. For instance one of the things that we’re doing differently in this game compared to other games in this genre is in the introduction of “spells” instead of bombs.
These are a couple concepts produced by out pixel artist Pix3m, of a spell that will be in the game. This spell generates a shield that protects the player from incoming enemy fire, yet allows the player to shoot through the shield. This spell only lasts for around 5 seconds—meaning that you can’t rely on this spell forever. In these concepts Pix3m, grapples with how the spell will look in the environment. Each of these concepts drastically changes how the player uses the spell in the game. Currently this a big topic of discussion between teams as it requires sound design logic, convincing animation and good implementation.
Management is something that can be tough for any team. Management of a team project is extremely important as it can make or break a team instantly. Challenges that we have faced within the past few months have been communication errors. We’ve addressed these immediately by meeting together, addressing the issue at hand and figuring out a way to make sure the error doesn’t happen again. More often than not, this means that team leaders have to be more transparent in terms of communication and to make sure that everyone on the team is working. This is easy in theory, but challenging in practice as even within The Gaming Colts, leadership styles differ according to the profession at hand.
For instance, the reworked code base is now at a point where it can be implemented into our levels, but that alone took a massive effort from the programming team. Tim will discuss the challenges associated with that in an accompanying post.
Our art team has been doing a stellar job of creating not only the content needed for the game but helping out with concept work to get ideas across, like the crystal shield concepts pictured above. Here are some samples of concepts they’ve cranked out to help the design team:
These are two concepts by our lovely artist Tiana Tampico; the wendigo is planned to be a possible boss in a level. The bog light is an enemy that will appear in the second level of the game. We’ve decided that since this is a game that has to do with fear, that it would be logical to make the monsters look scary and menacing.
There are a lot of updates that need to be done but we’re still chugging along! And we’re going to be more frequent with our updates now that we have Dara Potocska to help us out with it! Thank you for continuing with us as we continue to build out what was once a meager prototype!
During the first week of December two of our members took up the challenge of Ludum Dare to create “one game, on one screen.” And over the course of a weekend jam, Pix3m and Geldshot fashioned together “The Room”.
The Room, a Top-Down, light horror game; places you in control of a solitary figure who struggles with poor mental health and fears the outside world. Together you will explore the house, uncovering clues that will lead you further into the darkness. It will be up to you to find your way out.
Pix3m and Geldshot invite you to check out their jam entry for Ludum Dare on the Ludum Dare website at http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?uid=23547 . And if you’re further interested, they invite you to take a look at the code for The Room, which they have made available here: https://github.com/geldshot/house-of-emoji. Play through the game and let them know what you thought!
Pix3m and Geldshot are members of The Gaming Colts (http://thegamingcolts.com). Further artistic work from Pix3m can be found on pix3m.deviantart.com. For further programming magic, work from Geldshot can be found on http://geldshot.com/ or you can find him on twitter @Gelshot .
We are looking for a Unity Developer for our top down shooter game Alicorn Princess Blast; do you have what it takes to join?
We are seeking a Unity Developer with an understanding of Object Oriented design, Git and C# or similar languages for our team as we continue to develop our top down game, Alicorn Princess Blast. With the date for the early access demo of Alicorn Princess Blast drawing closer, we are looking for another member to fill out our team.
Alicorn Princess Blast is a Top-Down shooter in the vein of Galaga or Sky Shark designed to emulate the joy and intensity of early arcade shooters while also providing a challenge for a modern audience. Players will journey with the Princess through the Shimmering Isles as she takes to the skies, and together will defend her homeland against the encroaching forces of the Fearmonger and his minions.
We are seeking a Developer with Unity knowledge and experience for our team, who also has an understanding of Object Oriented design, Git, and can use C# or other similar languages. Are you the one we have been seeking? Visit http://thegamingcolts.com/joinus and fill out our recruitment form today!
The Gaming Colts can be reached by filling out our contact form at http://thegamingcolts.com/ask or you can reach us at [email protected]. - DP
Gather 'round and let us tell you a tale of a fine developer! Kevin joined us as one of our original founders and has since been providing us with much of the code we need to get Alicorn Princess Blast up and running! From meeting to meeting, this stallion knew how to warm our hearts when we needed it most! But alas, paths can part in these times, and Kevin sees opportunity elsewhere! It's with tears in our eyes and pride in our hearts that we bid him farewell on his journey towards game development! We've learned so much from each other over these passed few months friend! Don't worry Kevin, We'll always have a spot saved for you here at The Gaming Colts! Kevin will retain full credit for his work in Alicorn Princess Blast!
Alicorn Princess Blast Development Update November 8th
Hello Folks,
Kaylin Here for another development update on Alicorn Princess Blast! The last time I updated you all on the happenings inside the Gaming Colts, we were just beginning production. Well it's been a month or so and we've progressed quite nicely~! Here's a few of the things that happened.
Ever since entering production we've come up with a schedule that fits every ones needs on the team! This schedule calls for the creation of three levels within the coming months.
We're close to hitting a BIG milestone!
We're close to completing one of the levels of the game! I can't release details about the level as that would spoil the carefully crafted narrative arc we've made. But what I can tell you about why this is big for us is that we've completely retooled our code! development for when we finish the levels will me much easier! this means of course that making this game will become easier compared to making the prototype that we showed!
Early Access Demo will be in April 2015!
I've taken the liberty of making this my senior project personally for my degree. This will see it grow at a much more rapid pace compared to previous time spent. We're getting a lot of help from outside sources (some with experience making and marketing games professionally). As such, you will begin to see us engage with you more! There was a survey we conducted recently that helps us gain more information about what devices people are using! This will help us get this experience to you quickly!
We need your help!
As you may have noticed these updates have been kind of infrequent. We've all been busy working on the game to make sure that we have something to show! But we do want to engage our audience on some level of consistency. We'd also like to make others aware of the games progress through different sites. As such we're going to need someone to help us a little bit with PR! If you have any experience with public relations, please fill out recruitment form and we'll talk shortly afterward!
Thank you so much for your vested interest in this game, please stay tuned by viewing this site, following us on Twitter, or Facebook
We're doing a small survey about device usage of parents and children! and we need your help! If you're not a Parent of a child or A child, please pass the survey along to parents and children you do know! (with their parent's permission)
A little about the survey:
It's a small ethnographic survey that gauges device usage among parents and children.
No private information in this survey is taken other than a rough estimate of annual income, and all information given is anonymous and strictly confidential!
In case you missed the announcement via twitter earlier, we are now our own corporate entity. This is a huge step for our team and our projects as a whole. This lays the ground work for arranging things like an eventual steam release (for instance) or even the possibility of a kickstarter.
As always, our primary concerns will remain the creating of great games for everyone. This merely puts us in a better position to fulfill the goal of creating the full version of Alicorn Princess Blast. With that said, we look forward to creating the best shooter and princess simulator you've ever played. have a great day!
We've hit production for our project! It's time to stop theory designing and to start actually building the thing! Here's what we can say about what's happening next.
In the coming months you will see some screenshots and videos from us as we produce another vertical portion of the game! Things are going to be hard this time around though due to a number of reasons. Mainly that we all are busy with a lot of other things in our personal lives. some of us have full time jobs and the rest of us are still students! I'm a graduating senior so most of my time will be spent doing my portfolio. This won't effect your experience though with the game play experience though. I say this so that you know whats going on in the background a little bit.
I can't tell you the specifics of what we're going to do in this new version of the game but I can say that from a development standpoint, we completely redid our system to match the feedback given to us from friends, family and all of you who are watching us! We're more confident now than we were before that we'll be delivering something that will build on the prototype we released.
We discussed numerous possibilities with the game as well as this team of friends - which has grown a lot sense Everfree! So during the development of this game there might be some surprises you may see from us along with those screenshots.
Tentatively, the release plan is to have something of a full fledged demo out by April. It's a very tall order considering that it's during the school year. But we have a few tricks up our sleeves to help us get there!
I ask that you keep your eyes on this website for more updates from me and the rest of the team.
And if you have any questions for us at any time ask us through the ask form! We monitor this site quite a lot so we'll see it immediately!
Development Update from the Gaming Colts (September 15th)
Hello,
This is Ludric. A lot has happened within the past few days that concerns the development of Alicorn Princess Blast. Things have also been changing a bit around The Gaming Colts itself. I'll give you an update on what I can.
First and foremost, Pre production of the game is near complete with a few sections of design to be hammered out and some task tracking and production things to take care of before we are once again in full swing. The reason why we couldn't just continue producing the game is because we had to re-evaluate a lot of choices we made. The goal behind the original prototype was to create just that- a prototype! Because of that we made some pretty wonky choices in our programming (Geldshot still has nightmares sometimes due to 'hacks' he had to make to meet the deadline). This was evident in the prototype itself when we showed it.
So going back into pre production we had to scale our design to fit a game instead of just a level and a boss. I can't tell you much more than that though.
Better UI!
Not as in better looking, but better functioning. One of the pain problems that the prototype has was with it's menus and that was on the count of us using some extra plugins to get the functionality we wanted. In the months since our prototype released, Unity has upgraded their engine with reworked and easier UI scripting meaning we no longer have to rely on said plugin to get the functionality we want.
This goes double for Everfree Arcade!
So production for Alicorn Princess Blast is slated to start in October which means you guys will be seeing screenshots and maybe some concept art from the pre production phase. We can't show everything mind you for reasons I can't discuss but I will try to keep all who are interested updated on our goings on!
Oh, Before I wrap this up, you've no doubt seen the article Geldshot has written on testing and how to test games. Well we're going to try to start posting those as well. Hopefully it will help other game developers with their games.
Anyhow, Keep your eyes on this site and our Twitter and Facebook for updates on our development.
Recently we released the prototype of Alicorn Princess Blast. Through this we discovered a whole swath of bugs, issues, and exploits that would have plagued our game through to a final launch in... oops, almost stole Ludric's thunder. In any case, I see a lot of value in discussing how we plan on incorporating QA into our development process and I think at least one other person will too.
First, what is the purpose of testing a game? In short, testing a game is an act of information gathering that allows you to better address the needs of the game as a software application. It gives you insight into what is working, what is failing, and what will prevent your players from even playing. When bringing testers into your team it is always important to realize that their job is strictly data gathering and you should keep the proper amount that lets them do that job.
The goal in all of this is attempting to release the game within a certain "Acceptance Criteria" that essential says: Of the issues we know about, only minor ones are left that barely affect gameplay. There is know such thing as a perfect game, there is only learning to make better games. So in the interest of that we make games that play well and only have minor nitpick issues so that the player can enjoy the entire experience.
Thus my general plan for testing is as follows:
Develop bug criteria and guidelines
Perform active and regular testing
Perform playtests with interested parties
Reach the Bug Acceptance ratio before launch
Each of these tasks deserves their own section, therefore:
Develop bug criteria and guidelines
Bug criteria is essentially meta information about issues discovered, and guidelines is what our plan is for assigning said meta information. In coming up with our meta information, we need data about the bug that is useful to all the parties viewing it. Description is obvious, but less obvious are things such as severity of bug, priority, system information, location and build. How about a short glossary?
Severity: Depending on your system, you may label bugs as A-D for severity or some other collection of terms (Blocker, Critical, Major, Minor). The most severe bugs will be the ones that are cause the application to crash or worse, the least severe will be almost always be cosmetic or event feedback for changes.
Priority: This is where the producer or leads take a look at the bug and decide just how important it is that the bug get's addressed. Usually the priority closely matches the Severity with a little room for wiggling depending on what is happening at the time. If you have to get a functional build out for playtesting, you just might lower the severity of bugs on maps that won't be played in the interest of having the map that will be played function.
System Information: This is part of some general housekeeping for every bug where in the tester provides as much information as possible about the environment that this occurred in. Smart testers will be able to recognize when certain information is important, but it's become expected that system information is always important.
Location: Otherwise known as: what system is breaking on us? This is the part where you identify which part of the game is effectively breaking, so that you can decide easily who's job it is to fix it. Usually the guidelines will include information about what severity a bug is based on it's location. Thus, some expected baseline locations are: Graphics, Art, Sound, Input, and Gameplay. Change and add to this as you need because it's important to understand what is breaking.
Build: What version of the game broke. If you are using version control (and you better!), then it becomes very easy for the technically inclined testers and your developers to look up and understand what version of the game broke on them. This then becomes vital for knowing what possibly broke the game and tracking what build will fix the issue.
Reproduction Steps: No matter what testing you do, steps to reproduce the error are always necessary. The more involved in explaining how they occurred, the better. You should provide some example reproduction steps in your guidelines. Good reproduction steps will walk the reader through the process from starting the game to the error you are encountering.
The Guidelines
You have to have a document available for the entire team that contains templates for bug writing, the severity/location guide, an explanation for writing reproduction steps, and finally some example bug reports. In this document you can explain how bugs are handled from person to person, who is responsible for forwarding them where, and what kind of deadlines are used to ensure the bug is addressed and resolved. There is no shortage of information you can provide in this document so I'll start with the most important items, and let you improve your documents from there.
Severity/Location Guide
I put this at the top because the reason people will be referencing you document the most will be for the Severity/Location Guide and for template information. First you want to review the task tracking software you utilize for bugs and determine what kind of severity information it lets you assign. From there, give a short explanation on this note and then delve straight into the guide.
For the guidelines themselves, I like the same general criteria that Build Breaker (our Testing Lead) came up with.
Blocking is anything that crashes the game or worse,
Critical is something that prevents play even though the application works,
Major is things that make people want to not play because they are so bad,
Minor involves more polish oriented things in which they aren't bad but aren't good either
Trivial is are things that are usually nitpicks or enhancements that you probably don't have time for.
Knowing these as your bug types, you will often take and apply examples for every severity and location so that a tester gets a better idea of your intent. All in all, you probably won't have more than two pages of information here, use as much as you need though.
Template Guide
Here you have the advantage of being aware what bugs pervade your game ahead of time. If you find that there are some issues that, based on location or other criteria need extra information, create a template that your testers can quickly copy and paste into other fields. Some task tracking software has templates as a feature, but I would still recommend having a record of your templates for future projects.
Most important parts of a template! Naming conventions for bugs, empty header, description, reproduction steps, and actual vs expected outcomes. Templates are things that evolve as a development team realizes what information tends to be useful to them. A quick search for "bug report example should give you some food for thought as to what you need in your team. In any case, the report should atleast contain the information we talked about under "Bug Criteria" and in most cases, more. Things like fixed by, reported by, and description of fix are extra pieces I would recommend including within your template as they simply help get work done.
Bug Life Cycle
This is more an explanation to your team as to how bugs are handled than a quick reference. This essentially details who fills out what information, handles the bug, and ultimately closes it once it is done. In most cases, the bug is expected to be handled by a producer who then assigns it to be fixed to a developer. Then, the developer fixes the bug and attempts a back and forth with the tester to determine if the fix failed to either address the issue and/or if the fix was actually implemented. If all goes well, the bug is closed once all regressions on it have been completed.
An example diagram of the bug life cycle courtesy of www.softwaretestinghelp.com
Perform Active and Regular Tests
You need testers on your team. These testers need to not be the people making the game. Yes, they can be programmers, yes they can make fixes themselves (from time to time) but it is a good practice to have a couple testers who's sole job is to pick apart the buggy gameplay that the developers won't admit is broken. In part, you are asking your testers to be cold-hearted and ruthless in every test they do, setting the standard for the quality of game you are making.
You may cry (sorry!)
That said, many teams I've worked with/encountered are the kind of team that works only in their spare time, with few extra members. In this particular case I'd say that it's absolutely necessary that you have one of your programmers take up the mantle of SDET/Test Lead and read this (and other) articles! I cannot stress how important it is that someone have the dedicated task of arranging how and when testing happens, especially in a volunteer team with limited time. Testing needs to happen every week, for every iteration, and needs to check off on every release.
That out of the way, I'd like to broach the topic of test cases. In a traditional testing environment, test cases take the role of instructing and reminding the tester what to check and where to check it. These generally start as a short list of things within an email, notepad, or even excel document.
Your entire goal with these test cases to understand the pitfalls of your game in an iterative sense. I'd suggest writing short test plans that address every control scheme, interaction, level, entity and state of the game that you can think of. Once you've done that, come back to the test plans on a regular basis, like after a sprint, and add any new cases to check for. The test cases themselves should be simple pass/fail affairs, though their actual state can be pass, fail, blocked, N/A, in progress, and not tested. Some examples:
Every button in the menu can be reached in a logical manner
No input breaks the menu
Enemies deal damage on moving player
Enemies deal damage on stationary character
Damage is accurate
From there you can include an adhoc section and some notes about the goals of test plans if you want, but there is a good starting point here. Make sure you leave your testers ample time to both adhoc and follow the test plan but other than that, you've at least got the beginnings ready.
I don't have much more to say about regular testing. We setup expected dates that our build is supposed to be considered "locked" till we push out more changes from what we are working on. This generally follows a weekly schedule (Friday is lock day), and uses the branching nature of version control to support it. Testers work in dev and stage branch, we merge to dev on Friday and leave it alone after that so they can work.
An interesting side effect of how our team is structured is that our testers, Build Breaker and Palm are actually part of the Technical team. this means that they assist with pre-production as programmers and understand the designed intent for many of the systems of the game. I mention this mainly because it's abnormal, usually testers have less technical skill (that's what SDET is for) and gain that through interactions with other's to learn things such as automation scripting and software design. Not every team will have this setup.
Perform Playtests with Interested Parties
People are interested in your game. This means you should reach out to them for play testing what you are making. We can have a long discussion about how/why of NDA's and the like later. I'm currently concerned with why, from a testing perspective, we want to hold playtests.
The easiest answer is that your testing team has limited scope. While you can find a hundred critical or blocking bugs, it only takes one to drop a project to it's knees. Think of the "Red Ring of Death" from the Xbox 360. While many people experienced it, with a small test case the issue didn't seem that bad. In fact, I know many people who never even experienced the issue. It still had a dramatic effect on the success of the Xbox 360 and can be used as an example of bugs that can't be found without more hands on the product at one point or another.
My suggestion, is that every project should have some semi-regular play testing dates set aside that people can look forward too. Before you reach those dates though, I want you to consider all the house keeping you need to do for this. Things your play test should include:
A start and finish date
Outreach (get the people you want ahead of time)
Dedicated staff (people managing the event)
A subscription form (always collect email addresses for people to track you)
A bug reporting form
Someone to filter and report the bugs from the form
A plan
I'm not going to go in depth into the organization of a play test here. I think it's a topic that deserves it's own post, and I've spent more than enough time just on the topic of testing here. Thing is, it's important to realize that every single piece of your team wants to know what is happening during the playtest, so it's an event that you cannot be lazy about in any circumstances.
Reach the Bug Acceptance Ratio before launch
Every single thing you do in testing comes down to this last statistic. This is the point where you actually sit down and address how the game is shaping up bug wise before the intended release. So, what is a Bug Acceptance Ratio? Well, remember that severity of bug discussion we had earlier? Simply put, Bug acceptance ratio is the number of each severity of bug you are willing to allow into your final product. In many cases this comes down to something like: 0 blocking, 0 Critical, 1 Major, 10 Minor, and 100 Trivial.
So, as the project nears it's release date, it becomes important for the developers to address the bugs almost in exclusion to other development. This may mean resolving bugs that aren't problematic as by design or will not fix, but each resolution has to be a decision that is agreed upon by tester, developer and producer. You can't simply "By design" a bug that crashes the game, you just can't. There's a special place in the bottomless pit of tester hate for people that do this sort of thing.
Really, the best way to approach this step is to realize that the production cycle of your game fundamentally changes in the last month to 6 months of development. This is the point where new content slows to a crawl, and existing content is iterated on for improvements. Take this time to think about what you've done, and improve it in every way possible. Address the nit-picky problems that have been bugging your staff and get creative to fix them. Just remember, at the end of production you have to ship and move on to the next game.
Closing
I give a lot of ultimatums here and I would like you, the reader, to realize that testers really care about making games. Sure they come down hard on developers (like an ant telling Goliath to knock it off really) but this is strictly out of a want to see the game improve. Truth is, each and every one of us don't want to see a single game devolve into the unforgettable buggy mess that so many do. More good games always make for a better world.
Useful Resources
Interview Questions for QA Tester (http://qaquestions.net/)
Never has a better or more succinct list of what a tester does been compiled. If you want to know everything a tester should know, this is a great starting point. It even covers things considered to be SDET knowledge.
Software QA and Testing Resource Center (http://www.softwareqatest.com/index.html)
This site is a treasure trove. It contains everything from FAQ to tools, to even books that are useful. You might not find every answer you are looking for but you will find a lot of answers. Barring the god awful presentation of course.
Software Testing Help (http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/)
I shamelessly stole one of their graphics during this post so I better plug them! it's basically a blog that addresses software testing problems on a regular basis. Half of the search results you'll get for testing information will come up with their articles so give them a read (or send it to your test lead!)
Development Update for Alicorn Princess Blast and Everfree Arcade
It's been a little bit since the release of our prototype of Everfree Arcade and Alicorn Princess Blast. We have been taking in as much feedback as we can about the prototype and incorporating it into our future plans!That said, here are some updates for both Everfree Arcade and Alicorn Princess Blast.
Alicorn Princess Blast:
We have shifted back into pre-production for a larger game as promised when we were showcasing the prototype at Everfree Northwest. A lot of the ideas that are flowing through our collective veins right now are kind of a "pie in the sky." We've also gained some new members who will be adding to our collective force when it comes to developing the game. You can see who those members are on our staff page. A good portion of our time will be spent repairing the errors in all sections of the games as well as redoing how some of the things are put together for more efficiency. Production on the Alicorn Princess Blast is expected to begin soon. Details on that will follow as soon as we have them set and stone and are able to discuss them publicly.
Everfree Arcade:
Everfree Arcade hasn't completely taken a backseat to Alicorn Princess Blast, but we admit that production on it has slowed down in favor of the APB project. This means of course that updates to EFA will be slow as we only have so many people to dedicate to a specific project (and right now pretty much all of our staff are working on bringing out a better version of APB). With Everfree Northwest a little less than a year away though, The project will see some major updates in the coming time before Everfree Northwest 2015 along with Alicorn Princess Blast.
Keep your eyes on this site for our next dev update and more news about the projects.
