News Premium Beta access update

[Michael Brookes]

Quite. There will not be a separate alpha version until FD release stuff for the next major enhancement (planetary landings, etc). That is probably at least a year away.

That isn't necessarily the case. We have said that we will send major builds to the alpha backers for restricted testing before making it available to the wider testing group. That might change, but hasn't been confirmed.

Michael

 

[Kwambus]

That isn't necessarily the case. We have said that we will send major builds to the alpha backers for restricted testing before making it available to the wider testing group. That might change, but hasn't been confirmed.

Michael

Ah so I wasn't totally incorrect. Is it confirmed that game breaking bugs will be piped to the Beta backers as soon as possible? or will those go to Alpha backers first for testing? Still don't understand this Alpha/Beta business, but there you go.

 

[Michael Brookes]

Ah so I wasn't totally incorrect. Is it confirmed that game breaking bugs will be piped to the Beta backers as soon as possible? or will those go to Alpha backers first for testing? Still don't understand this Alpha/Beta business, but there you go.

It depends on the build, if we feel it needs a smaller test first then it will go out to the alpha backers first (or premium beta and alpha further down the line and depending on what scale of testing is needed). For smaller updates it's likely it will just go out to the currently active backers without a smaller pre-test.

We haven't got to that stage yet, although the Alpha 4.03 to premium beta 1 worked well for us.

Michael

 

[Memnoch]

Some bug fixes from A4 made it in to the build I think so it wasn't exactly the same but nigh on.

 

[Gangsta]

Ah so I wasn't totally incorrect. Is it confirmed that game breaking bugs will be piped to the Beta backers as soon as possible? or will those go to Alpha backers first for testing? Still don't understand this Alpha/Beta business, but there you go.

The way I'm seeing is that they are letting the Alpha backers have first viewing or testing of new code to highlight/flag game breaking bugs/anomalies before releasing the code to a wider premium beta backers to find the less frequent ones that are more difficult to find and replicate, with more eyes and hands it's more quicker to find and fix them.

I would imagine the majority of the beta backers are interested in the gameplay and the game itself, so they would be happier running more stable code, the Aplph backers are more likely to be more developer minded getting some satisfaction from find game breaking bugs and have the patience to put up with the frustration of testing such code.

There must be a fair number of beta backers that have the the DNA of Alpha backers, may be FD can increase numbers participating in the Alpha testing by recruiting from these hardcore Beta backers?

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

There must be a fair number of beta backers that have the the DNA of Alpha backers, may be FD can increase numbers participating in the Alpha testing by recruiting from these hardcore Beta backers?

There will be lots of them. I suspect that the only real difference between alpha and beta backers was that the alpha backers were able to and willing to spend more.

 

[munkor]

It depends on the build, if we feel it needs a smaller test first then it will go out to the alpha backers first (or premium beta and alpha further down the line and depending on what scale of testing is needed). For smaller updates it's likely it will just go out to the currently active backers without a smaller pre-test.

We haven't got to that stage yet, although the Alpha 4.03 to premium beta 1 worked well for us.

Michael

Never thought of it this way before. At first I was slightly miffed by alpha's getting the build/builds earlier than betas even after the 30th but, when you put it this way, it makes complete sense.

 

[DarthLuca]

I hate to ask, but are we likely to see a new build before this weekend (the 14th June)?
And if not when?

It's just that some of us have lives outside of Elite and like to plan ahead. . .

 

[stridecolossus]

It's just that some of us have lives outside of Elite

Does not compute!

 

[amigacooke]

I hate to ask, but are we likely to see a new build before this weekend (the 14th June)?
And if not when?

It's just that some of us have lives outside of Elite and like to plan ahead. . .

I just go with if I'm busy I don't have time to test. It's not like we're being payed to test, quite the opposite.

 

[baskila]

I hate to ask, but are we likely to see a new build before this weekend (the 14th June)?
And if not when?

It's just that some of us have lives outside of Elite and like to plan ahead. . .

Short answer: no. Michael Brookes said it will come next week as they are too busy with E3.