A word of warning about the Alpha
- Thread starter Ayo
- Start date
nats
Banned
Alpha means little, just that the game isnt feature complete. It doesnt indicate a degree of playability at all. I am playing an alpha game at the moment and have had more than 200 hours of great fun out of it - its called Kerbal Space Program - perhaps you have heard of it? That game is still in Alpha simply because its not feature complete yet, but the game, even now, is more playable and more fun than most AAA final releases (cough ... X Rebirth ... cough .. Rome Total War 2 ... cough .. Simcity ... cough).
David was already talking about a prolonged gamma.
Also David is far from new to this.
Have a little faith in our Guinness book of records programmer. Im sure he knows exactly what he's doing.
And this game is the very essence of the man.
It won't ever be released too early.
Too be honest.
I believe most of the alpha is already pre-tested.
But that's just my geus.
Also David is far from new to this.
Have a little faith in our Guinness book of records programmer. Im sure he knows exactly what he's doing.
And this game is the very essence of the man.
It won't ever be released too early.
Too be honest.
I believe most of the alpha is already pre-tested.
But that's just my geus.
why setting any release dates then? makes no sense
You have to give something as a release date during kick starter.
Besides, 15+ years in the waiting! what's a few months more ?
The dates are just rough estimates my realistic opinion is first beta is going to happen in February or late January. after all they said December for alpha and that is a huge range of days 1 ->31, As it is now 10 December they stil got 3 weeks to give us alpha.:S
Oh man i am so going get allot of flak from the more optimistic People on this forum. Ofc i am as most here hoping for an early as possible start of alpha but i am stil mostly calm about it.
Oh man i am so going get allot of flak from the more optimistic People on this forum. Ofc i am as most here hoping for an early as possible start of alpha but i am stil mostly calm about it.
Oh, that click-fest of a game. Yes, I bought in to that. It really was aimed at the tablet market and somehow ended up on PC. Very disappointed and haven't looked at it in months it seems. Glad they are re-designing it.
"Alpha testing is simulated or actual operational testing by potential users/customers or an independent test team at the developers' site. Alpha testing is often employed for off-the-shelf software as a form of internal acceptance testing, before the software goes to beta testing"
Anyone who whines during this phase does not understand the process.
I will be there for this phase like many others and will be seeking to break the build and sniff out bugs more than actually wanting to enjoy the game in its current state.
Frontier can expect from myself anyway as much feedback and reports as possible during this phase and not a whine/grumble or tear even if it does not work on my rig off straight away and bombs to desktop.
Anyone who whines during this phase does not understand the process.
I will be there for this phase like many others and will be seeking to break the build and sniff out bugs more than actually wanting to enjoy the game in its current state.
Frontier can expect from myself anyway as much feedback and reports as possible during this phase and not a whine/grumble or tear even if it does not work on my rig off straight away and bombs to desktop.
well said.
our job as alpha testers is to try and make FD moan ''oh crap not another report from him , we still havent sorted all the probs in one before last''
If they go from alpha to beta in 2 months then it's a really stable alpha build, or it's just not been tested. Especially if you count the festive period - that's going to eat about 2 weeks, which would give us an alpha test phase of about 6 weeks...
6 weeks sounds like a long time, but it's nothing if you find you have to re-code a huge chunk of the game.
If final release (lets guesstimate) is July 1 then i'd expect beta to be running right up until then. There would be a "good as final" build released for the boxed copies about 3 weeks before release, with inevitable patches required.
Alpha will probably take 3 months, Beta will take an extra couple on that and then we'll probably enter a "Gamma" release phase.
The end of the alpha phase will probably be fairly stable and look a lot like the start of the beta test, in fact most folk might not even see a difference.
You can compress the test phases, but you'll either reduce the quantity of stuff being released or the quality of it. If some things are "to be released in a patch later" then alpha/beta will continue for those items even after release.
What you forget is that the game has been in alpha test phase for quite a while internally. This is the large scale test, however.
In other words, it's likely that most of the basic game engine problems will have been sorted out by this point. However, what they can't test until they let us ravenous beasts out of our cages is the large scale networking side.
As such, I see the issues being those of interconnectivity between clients, lagging, synchronisation glitches, disconnects, ships flying through each other etc.
Of course, what we won't get is a polished system or visuals, merely placeholders or "this week's test" visuals.
In other words, it's likely that most of the basic game engine problems will have been sorted out by this point. However, what they can't test until they let us ravenous beasts out of our cages is the large scale networking side.
As such, I see the issues being those of interconnectivity between clients, lagging, synchronisation glitches, disconnects, ships flying through each other etc.
Of course, what we won't get is a polished system or visuals, merely placeholders or "this week's test" visuals.
Having come lately to this I see a community formed with the kind of quality I rarely see these dayss and I have no doubt the Alpha guys will form one of the best teams you could imagine for pioneering such a historic game
The buzz now is massive but Elite is a game which deserves the kind of patience and absolute attention to detail which makes it so special. It is so inspiring to see what has been growing here and I can only wish the Alpha guys godspeed on this very special journey they are taking,
The buzz now is massive but Elite is a game which deserves the kind of patience and absolute attention to detail which makes it so special. It is so inspiring to see what has been growing here and I can only wish the Alpha guys godspeed on this very special journey they are taking,
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
Kind and encouraging words, Capt. We'll do our best to live up to them and help FD make a great game.
DYB DYB DYB?
DOB DOB DOB!
I really love space games, but I couldn't justify spending that much to play the alpha. The most I could spend was up to pirate level and I was happy to kickstart and support this game. Congrats to those who did and I will be watching videos of it on youtube. I am glad to see that we have a community willing to put in the time to improve the game and not complain about crashes/bugs.
Well people are already showing themselves to be poor alpha testers - posting problems with the site in multiple threads instead of using the dedicated support e-mail. You're making Frontier's job much harder, folks :-/
That's not really what happened. They gave out alpha access as a bonus for contributing at least a certain amount towards the development of the game. Very different things. I am under no illusion that I paid for a product (other than the final game & the physical stuff) when I selected my contribution level.
Not necessarily. I was in the Mists of Pandaria beta, and there were a few very vocal people who were complaining that they had been cheated because the game would not run on their machines. This may well happen with Elite: Dangerous. I would not be entirely surprised if some people are unable to run the game at all until very near the release date. I hope that I am not one of them, but if I am I will assist in any way I can in diagnosing the issue, and I will be very sad, but I will not complain.
