Beta Testing Advice

hippyman

Member
I've been working on an application for the past few weeks or so and it's turning into a full blown animation editor for GM:S. It's finally getting close to being pushed into beta and I wanted to get some advice from people who have more experience when having their games or applications tested.

I can't decide if I should do an open beta or if I should keep it closed and only work with a select few people. I see pros and cons for both. An open beta would theoretically mean that bugs can popup quicker since there is more heads using it, but closed beta would theoretically mean that I'll be less overwhelmed and it will be easier to keep things organized.

This is the first time I've made something that I felt like could potentially be something useful to more people than just me so I'd like to go about this "the right way" (if that even exists).

I'd love to hear from anybody who has experience with this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

-Hippyman


P.S. If you're interested in beta testing PM me
 

Phil Strahl

Member
My advice is to gradually expand your testing base. At first it was only you, then you show it to some close friends and colleagues and get quality feedback. I would suggest that you go in closed beta first, then gradually open it up to more and more people, e.g. have your closed beta testers themselves invite more people. That way you won't get overwhelmed by many reports of the same bug over and over again while ensuring higher quality feedback when there are fewer, handpicked people involved.
Thanks to how the AAA industry is handling things nowadays, something titled "Open Beta" usually is nothing less but a finished game whose access is restricted to people who pre-purchased or jumped through some other stupid hoops set up by the publishers. So whatever you have, most "open beta"-participants expect a pretty finished product and are much less motivated to log (usable) bug reports.
 

RangerX

Member
I agree with Phil. I also have 6 years of quality insurance behind my belt and what I would do if I was you is to have solid but smaller team (your select few peeps you're talking about I suppose) and then provide them detailed test documents.
A small organised team with proper documentation can test a game VERY WELL.
 

hippyman

Member
Cool, I will keep these things in mind. It's definitely not even closed to being finished. It's starting to look like an application but it still is really clunky and the code is a total mess.
 
T

The Green Dev

Guest
like it gets slower as the animation ends and or gets faster as the animation starts etc.
 

hippyman

Member
Sorry I didn't edit in time. You do mean curves then. I've thought of this and I would like to eventually implement it. I imagine I should just be able to plug in a different interpolation script if you didn't want linear interpolation
 
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