ARGH

[Doc]

ARGH!

Ever have one of those moments when you are beta testing a game and suddenly become sick of doing the exact same thing for the one millionth time trying to hunt for annoying bugs?

ARGH!

You just get sick of looking at it. It's no longer a game. It's not fun any more. It's not even a hobby. It's suspiciously like work... Which is no fun at all. You have to be real careful that you do not lull off in to the doldrums... You must remain painfully alert looking for things like spelling and grammar errors in text dialogs, plot holes, and all manner of unpolished unfinished edges. The tedium gets so bad when you find your self staring at the same thing over and over that you start to lose track of things like spelling, you just blaze through dialog boxes. Which is bad. REAL BAD.

Especially when it is an RPG. And there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of characters to talk to. And you must go and talk to each and every one. And some of them don't even say a damn thing to you till you go and visit somebody else on the other end of the world. So it's back and forth trying to remain alert seeing what stuff done flag triggers with other stuff done flags and global event triggers. You go off and kill the bandit lord, slay the giant mammals of frightening size, and whollop the stuffing out of the bad guy to save the world. Or the Princess. And in an open ended RPG where there are thousands of side quests and things you can do, and it's all very open ended, you have to try and try again each time trying a new way to skin a cat to see if the game will remain meshed together if you do things in an odd sequence.

ARGH.

Same dialog boxes over and over. Except they change. Subtly. As you alter events and change global event triggers, the world and it's reactions to what is happening changes. Some times text dialogs change by a few simple words. So much to pay attention to. Big fat stacks of telephone books worth of text. You go through it a million times and somewhere along the way, you zone out and fail to notice an event flag or forget about a period. Or there is a typo. "Teh Bandit Lord is dead."

And then there is game balance and cheese and trying to become devious to see if the engine can be abused somehow, and if so, how badly. Can you actually make an indestructable character. And if so, is he (Or she) indestructable and Godlike, or just plain ironclad indestructable. Or on the other end, does the mage type characters die if a goblin does so much as look at them funny? Just how much damage can you make a fireball do? Out of the hundreds of monsters, creatures, and other encounters, how fair and balanced are monster resistances, and how much damage does their fireballs do?

Daisies daisies going crazies.

[Yrrek]

That sucks. Maybe you should stop beta testing. =P

[Occhidiangela]

ARGH!
Daisies daisies going crazies.
[right][snapback]94349[/snapback][/right]

Bragging or complaining? ;)

Occhi

[DeeBye]

What game are we talking about here?

[the Langolier]

What does this have to do with anything, and why would anyone care?

[Bun-Bun]

What game are we talking about here?
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DDO, possibly?

[Drasca]

I'm betting Geneforge 4... or another spiderwebsw creation

[Doc]

Avernum IV

That's the game.

There is a remarkably high standard for these games... To get the bugs out. I am feeling slightly burned out. I can't say why exactly due to non disclosure agreements, but the game is huge. Really farking huge. So stupidly large is the game world that it has become a daunting task to deal with everything that must be dealt with. Imagine every explorable area in Diablo II and the expansion Lord of Distruction. Now imagine something a good deal larger. No, larger. Keep going.

I still love what I do, I am just a wee bit burnt out.

All for the love of the game though.

I only said something because we all love our games here. It can be hard to love them when they become work though. I was just peeved and venting. I mean, this is a gaming site, right? And when we play, we talk about the game. Why should it be any different when we are working?

RPGs are just the most frusterating sorts of games to beta test. That's all. There is entirely to much involved sorting everything out.

[Mithrandir]

Why don't you just concentrate on one (or two, or whatever) area(s) to thoroughly "beta test" and just try to have fun when exploring the other areas and just report casual errors you notice. Nobody said you had to fix the entire game by yourself, and you'll certainly do no good to the game company if you burn yourself out in a couple days and don't do any more testing period. There should be more than a few people beta testing this game, jes? You don't have to be a one man army aout it.

[NiteFox]

Or there is a typo. "Teh Bandit Lord is dead." [right][snapback]94349[/snapback][/right]

It would be awesome if they kept that in. :wub:

[jahcs]

It would be awesome if they kept that in. :wub:
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Heh, then every time someone wrote in to the game's forum to complain about it you could say "That was me, I did that." *Doc oozes smugness*

Just take a break. Then go at it again. Break the game down into sections and focus. At the same time don't get bogged down by the minutiae in their entirety. Remember, you're not the only beta tester out there for this title.

[Doc]

There are a LOT of people that beta test for Jeff. And we don't get paid. We do it because we love the games.

Our attention to detail is what makes the games good. We have a game designer (Jeff) that actually pays attention to our beta reports. And we have always done a good job.

And that's the thing. The world is no longer sectioned. I can say this because it's on the website. Everything now is at scale. For anybody that's ever played Jeff's games, like Exile or Avernum, you would know what I mean when I say the town is just an icon on a large world map. When you "enter the town" a new map of just the town loads for you to view. No longer. Towns are built to scale as part of the whole map. The world is huge. It's overwhelming. It's going to be one of those RPGs that people will play for weeks, months even, just to get through the game and you will be hard pressed to look in to every nook and cranny, and find everything there is to find. It's one massive dungeon crawl. It's so wonderful because of scope and size... But daunting to get the kinks out.

And it's got to be done by xmas.

[Occhidiangela]

And it's got to be done by xmas.
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The game or the testing?

Prior experience with the Avernum series is completely unnecessary to enjoy Avernum 4. Avernum 4 will be $25, or $32 with a hint book, and should be out in early 2006

Occhi

[Doc]

The game or the testing?
Occhi
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Mac version should be done by xmas. Windows version will come a few months later.

I am taking a bit of a break. But I shouldn't be. <_<

[Drasca]

It's one massive dungeon crawl. It's so wonderful because of scope and size...
[right][snapback]94394[/snapback][/right]

Oh my god. I remember playing through exile I, trying to get through later series, and barely getting through Geneforge, and not able to explore all of Geneforge 2.
I couldn't do it. It was too big. I've been through most of Daggerfall, Morrowind and Fallout 1&2, and... Avernum feels bigger than them all.

Sick. You are sick. Totally utterly sick. I'm in awe, jealous, and pity you for trying to test something so big.

To those unaware, the preceding were world-spanning games. Insanely, mind-blowingly large. If Avernum 4 goes the way of other Spiderwebsoftware games.... this one's even larger. World of Warcraft feels small and quaint in comparision.

[Doc]

Oh my god. I remember playing through exile I, trying to get through later series, and barely getting through Geneforge, and not able to explore all of Geneforge 2.
I couldn't do it. It was too big. I've been through most of Daggerfall,&nbsp; Morrowind and Fallout 1&2, and... Avernum feels bigger than them all.

Sick. You are sick. Totally utterly sick. I'm in awe, jealous, and pity you for trying to test something so big.

To those unaware, the preceding were world-spanning games. Insanely, mind-blowingly large. If Avernum 4 goes the way of other Spiderwebsoftware games.... this one's even larger. World of Warcraft feels small and quaint in comparision.
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Exile/Avernum I's world size is about the same size as the starting area of Avernum IV. Like I said, it's all built to scale. All cities are now real size on map instead of a single tile or two as representation. Avernum II, with the journey through the Waterfall Maze and later in to foriegn lands was huge... Arguably one of the largest game worlds created. Ever. AVII has been dwarfed. Humbled. Everything now is one big section. It's not like Geneforge where it got so large that you clicked on the map to load up a new section. You want to go somewhere far away, you walk through the whole world in real time. It can take you a good half hour to well over an hour of just walking to get from one location to another.

And yes, I am sick. You can not begin to imagine the scope of this game. And neither could I at first. Grasping it, getting my head around it, is still taking some effort. Only a real sicko or somebody fanatically dedicated to the cause would do such a thing.

I am not yet decided which camp I reside in.

[Mithrandir]

You want to go somewhere far away, you walk through the whole world in real time. It can take you a good half hour to well over an hour of just walking to get from one location to another.[right][snapback]94430[/snapback][/right]

Sounds... fun?

Now I'm a fan of open-ended "exploration" (edit: the GTA's, Mercenaries, etc.) type games, but an hour real time to go from one place to another is just retarded.

[Doc]

Sounds... fun?

Now I'm a fan of open-ended "exploration" (edit: the GTA's, Mercenaries, etc.) type games, but an hour real time to go from one place to another is just retarded.
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There are faster means of transportation. There always is. You just have to find it.

Teleportation has always been a common Exile / Avernum theme. :whistling:

Exile and Avernum are huge. They always have been. Exile III Ruined World was one of those games that you could easily spend six months playing a single game with a single party of adventurers. Sure, you can finish the whole game in a day, but you miss 80% of it if you rush. In some of the Exile / Avernum series, some dungeons became visible only when it was a certain in game month. So you have to waste some time waiting for days, even months to pass. But while you waited, the world died. Plagues became worse. There was a real sense of time and urgency. As you stood around and picked your nose, cities became seiged, and if you kept waiting, people would die. Towns would be destroyed. And the game became harder and harder.

There is a lot involved in these games. You should try them. Beware, you will look at the clock and realise that it is 4 am in the morning and you will wonder where the time went.

[Mithrandir]

After looking at their website... only $22.50 for a full game? Not too shabby. I already have so many games I haven't finished though and the Xbox 360 is coming out soon, I'm not sure I want to get involved with a game that huge.

Oh well, I'll give it some thought.

[whyBish]

Oh my god. I remember playing through exile I, trying to get through later series, and barely getting through Geneforge, and not able to explore all of Geneforge 2.
I couldn't do it. It was too big. I've been through most of Daggerfall,&nbsp; Morrowind and Fallout 1&2, and... Avernum feels bigger than them all.
[right][snapback]94419[/snapback][/right]

Yeah, my first thought was lucky Doc getting to Beta test Oblivion :P