 |
| |
|
|
korn469
|
 |
Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:15
|
|
quote:
Is this going to be a stand up fight Sir, or is this going to be another bug hunt?
Hudson from Aliens |
Well that time is upon us, Civ3 is right around the corner and will be in our greedy little hands before we know it. Besides all of the much anticipated features like culture, armies, forced labor, war penalties, etc.; Civ3 will also come with at least a few bugs. In the past the fans came together under the direction of that Civ Heretic Yin26  and put together a buglist for SMAC. That buglist proved to be quite successful, and firaxis fixed most of the items on it. Quality Assurance is one of the most labor intensive parts of computer game development making it a fairly expensive item; not only that resources earmarked for Q/A are determined by how well the game sells and how long its sells remain strong. Firaxis has a good record of supporting their games, but even firaxis has a limit on how long they can use resources to support a game. This means that the sooner bugs get found, the greater the possibility they will get fixed.
The one resource overflowing here at Apolyton is free time. By harnessing our free time we help alliveate Q/A labor needs for firaxis. While bug hunters at Apolyton could not replace Q/A team members at firaxis we could prove to be a very useful resource for them. For one thing we work for free! Additionally we are some of the most civ players, and we know a bug when we see it. With some cooperation between firaxis and Apolyton, the community and the developers could work together in the same way they for for the past two years and really accomplish something great! I really hope that civ3 is flawless, I realize that this isn't possible, but I think it can come very close.
I have contacted MarkG and DanQ about this, and it appears that we will have their support in this project (like always! thanks guys!). Also I mailed the following document to Kelly Gilmore yeterday, and a reply said that I Kelly was off from work right now but would be back on monday. I would have mailed this to Jeff Morris, but I don't have his email address.
quote:
Firaxis (Q/A in particular),
We here at Apolyton know that Firaxis will do everything within its power to find and quash all of the bugs in Civ3 during the beta; however, some will make it into the final release. With SMAC, it seemed that bug lists created by the fans helped make the job easier. With that in mind, we at Apolyton would like to focus our efforts on creating the best bug report we can for you at Firaxis. All we can offer you is a group of enthusiastic (rabid) fans who are willing to volunteer their spare time to finding and verifying bugs. All we ask is for you to tell us how you want this data organized and presented. We want to work with you as closely as possible to ensure our efforts will be of a great benefit to you, because the greatest reward for us is having the best possible Civ3. So if you would be kind enough to tell us how you would like for us to classify, verify, organize, and report bugs to Firaxis we will follow your instructions. Any other suggestions or advice you might have would also be helpful. Our process will be completely open over at Apolyton so feel free to drop in as much as possible! Thanks for your time.
|
I know that I have moaned just as much as anyone about Civ3, and I am now putting money where my mouth is. I will buy the person who finds the most verified Civ3 bugs an Apolyton t-shirt of their choosing. Yeap, you heard me. If you are the person who finds the most bugs in Civ3 I will buy you an Apolyton T-shirt. I already own one myself, and I will gets some pics of me in it soon to prove I am serious.
The one lesson learned in the past two years is that organization makes all fan efforts more successful. It is much better to create an Apolyton bug list, than for each fan who finds a certain bug to fill the firaxis Q/A team's mailbox. So here is what I am proposing.
In our bug list efforts we need a few positions. First thing we need is for the community to post the bugs they find. This is the basic bug hunter position. All you have to do to be a bug hunter, is when you see a bug goto the correct forum, and describe the bug. If you have a save game that would be great! The next position we need is for people to verify the bugs. They look at the bug list, see a bug that hasn't been verified yet, then they try to recreate the bug. Once they have done this they will post a savegame of the bug. The next position is the bug list administrators. They need to scurry the forum looking for new bug postings, then they need to take those bug postings, make sure they are really new bugs, then post them to the official bug list, which will be topped in the correct forum. The last position is the most interesting, and that is the game breaker. Thos who want to be game breakers will try to do crazy things to induce bugs. If they are really creative, then hopefully this can really speed up the process. All the community needs is a just a little bit of your free time.
Until we hear from Firaxis the exact method of describing bugs is unknown. Hopefully they will give us a form to follow, but if they don't we will work out our own form, so that the list will be as easy to understand as possible. I really hope that Firaxis participates, if they do then they will get even more benefit out of it.
Just remember that we have one goal, and that goal is to make Civ3 the best quality game possible!
If you wish to participate please, say say which things you would like to do and put the email address you want to be contacted at in your post. As things get nailed down a little bit better, I will update you; however, if we are going to be ready and have this organized from day one we need to start now.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Jason Beaudoin
|
|
Canada
Jan 1970
time: 00:15
|
|
You can add me to your list of bug hunters. If I find any bugs I will do as you've asked.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
BLackraven42
|
|
I'm in for bughunter, but don't need tee shirt. give any of my points to the person who verifies the bugs.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
dennis580
|
|
I will not go out of my way looking for bugs. I want to enjoy the game and have fun. Nevertheless I will post the bugs I find in the game. I won't be checking to see if it's already been reported though, because I don't want to ruin the game; just like I'm going to avoid reading about strategy's, I will also avoid reading about bugs. So sombody will have to check it that bug has already been posted.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
tniem
|
|
Hope College
Apr 2000
time: 00:15
|
|
Korn,
I have told you in the past that I am very interested in helping out in any way I can. I want to see how this all goes down. So of course if I find a bug or can help verify one I will.
That said, at the top you mentioned administrative positions helping you out with lists and what not. If you need help with this, just explain more what you mean and I would be honored to help out in the effort. In my opinion this is going to be a privilage, thanks in advance for all the work that you are going to put into it.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
korn469
|
|
Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:15
|
|
tniem
as for the admins
we certainly need more than one, just in case...i mean anything could happen and without a designated replacement it could throw the entire process off track
but their job should be this
we have a single official bug listed topped in the correct forum, one administrator will maintain this list, in the same way as gramphos's resource list, or ribbanah's wonder list or my unit list
the other admins besides acting as replacements will look for the new bugs threads, then check it against the list to make sure no bugs get duplicated so if a player like dennis finds a bug and posts it, that it will not be on the list twice...if the bug is new they post it to the official bug thread (along with the name of first person to find it), so it can then be added to the list
not only that they will need to work with the bug verifiers to make sure that every bug on the list has at least one (if not two) save games for firaxis...the admins will also need to keep up with the first person to verify a bug
so they maintain the bug list, act as replacements, work with verifiers to make sure that we can prove the existance of all of the bugs on our list, and to make sure that each bug on the list is an individual bug...we don't want to send firaxis three of the same kinds of bugs
that being said we won't need that many admins, maybe five total
the big area of need is probably dedicated bug verifiers or game breakers
also all of these jobs are fairly informal so anyone can help find or verify bugs, however for the sake of order the bug hunt admins should have the sole responsibility for maintaining an accurate and up to date official bug list
and even if there are some hiccups along the way, no problem we will work them out...i hope we will have success in this effort, and out of everything this should prove to have very tangible results
|
|
| |
|
|
|
BLackraven42
|
|
Good idea, but we don't want the AI to become too powerful...
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:15.
Apolyton Time is 00:15. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
20-10-2001 02:54
Is this perhaps the first bug? Do I get a T-shirt for that?
Attachment: 
WOW!
no not graphics for civ3.
, but, anyway, I congratulate you for your initiative and I hope that the bug list compiled by Apolytoners really help Firaxis to crush the bugs that will inevitably be found. 
|
