Lack of Basic Testing

[HerrJoebob]

As for clone tool, surely this is only crucial if you are using the money cheat?

That's an odd view. What it does is keep you from having mismatched cells, so it's crucial if you're OCD like a good architect should be.

Seriously, losing clone ruins A10 for me, which is a shame since parts of the rest seem cool.

[Collic001]

Its an Alpha. BTW Its an Alpha. Got it?

There's a world of difference between "That does something weird", "That doesn't quite work the way it's supposed to" or "That doesn't work the way I'd like it to" and "You broke the thing that used to work and effectively removed its functionality for this version because you done goofed your code".

Regressions happen all of the time in alpha development. Everyone here has been spoiled by just how stable and robust the code for this game is. Look at Project Zomboid for an example. After a year of development they are still trying to reach feature parity with previous versions of the game. Features that were in the game and working prior to a huge re write. Countless things have been removed, disabled or are otherwise broken. This kind of thing happens all of the time in development. If you have a problem with this don't buy into an alpha again. Theres no other way to say it.

Chris breaks one tool (and the fact it is broken is mentioned in the game itself, so this isn't due to 'lack of testing' or whatever dubious, invented reason) and lets a sound bug through and you grab your pitchfork. Get a little perspective please. You aren't coming across as at all informed or rational right now.

[Augwich]

I completely agree with your post. I have been following two games in Alpha - Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program - and both had and still do have testing before they release updates. Minecraft has a pre-release and snapshots in which the user can download the application with the updates and test the features and the game in general.

I would like to point out that that was characteristic of the Minecraft BETA, not the Alpha, which was rife with bugs and really was just up in the air as to what was going to be added and when and what was going to be fixed. In the early stages of Minecraft development, it was very characteristic for the devs to add new features before fixing old ones. This was at times much to our chagrin, but we reminded ourselves that we were playing an alpha version of the game and the testing would come in time. As it did, during the Beta.

[Great Magical Hat]

Chris breaks one tool (and the fact it is broken is mentioned in the game itself, so this isn't due to 'lack of testing' or whatever dubious.

I believe the news feature actually downloads news from somewhere, as I swear it still said "Alpha 9 is now out" for about a day after alpha 10 came out. In other words, the mention of it was written after the game was out and very possibly Chris did not know about when they released alpha 10.

That said, it's a pity there's no regression testing (read: automated tests) but it may just not be feasible to do this.

[Collic001]

Chris breaks one tool (and the fact it is broken is mentioned in the game itself, so this isn't due to 'lack of testing' or whatever dubious.

I believe the news feature actually downloads news from somewhere, as I swear it still said "Alpha 9 is now out" for about a day after alpha 10 came out. In other words, the mention of it was written after the game was out and very possibly Chris did not know about when they released alpha 10.

That said, it's a pity there's no regression testing (read: automated tests) but it may just not be feasible to do this.

He did know, because it's there on the main menu in the introductory notes for the build (when you press escape). The information on the steam page is updated seperately, and often these notes aren't kept up to date at all for a lot of games. IV are unusual in that they seem to be on top of this (I would assume someone at Valve does it working with the developers).

As for regressions, they are going to happen. It happens during practically every alpha phase for software in some shape or form, and I only use that qualification because if I use an absolute someone will try to argue I'm mistaken in some way. If the worst that happens is that a tool is broken in one of the builds, (and while it's a useful tool it's not game breaking especially now we have planning mode) we should consider ourselves very lucky.

People need to realise that things that worked previously in some builds are going to break in others. It's all part of the process of game development. Every buyer was warned the game would have game breaking bugs.

I'm not aiming all that soley at you I should add, I'm just frustrated at the deluded sense of entitlement displayed by some people here. The alpha was sold in very clear terms.

[Great Magical Hat]

He did know, because it's there on the main menu in the introductory notes for the build (when you press escape).

That's exactly what I was talking about: when I was first playing alpha 10, if you pressed escape, it still showed an old message about alpha 9 in the menu.

If you don't believe me, you can download alpha 4 and look at the news in that version's menu. Unless you are saying they knew that they were going to break the clone tool in alpha 10 back when they were making alpha 4, a message showing in the menu simply does not mean it was written before that version was released.

[paktsardines]

alpha 9 and 10 (maybe 8?) download the latest message when you start the game. It was in a changelog sometime ago.

[HerrJoebob]

alpha 9 and 10 (maybe 8?) download the latest message when you start the game. It was in a changelog sometime ago.

Hardly, A10 did in fact have the A9 welcome message for the first day. I doubt they knew they'd broken clone until the reports came in. I blame the fact that Chris clearly only plays the game with the debug cheats turned on.

[paktsardines]

Hardly, A10 did in fact have the A9 welcome message for the first day.

Why hardly? It does exactly what I said it does. The reason alpha 10 had the alpha 9 message is because they hadn't updated the welcome message on the server before the release and it took them a while to realise. Similarly, once they realised they'd broken the clone tool they updated the message again on the server.


Here is the server your game connects to when it starts. Clicking on the link should sound familiar:
http://motd.introversion.co.uk

[Collic001]

Hardly, A10 did in fact have the A9 welcome message for the first day.

Why hardly? It does exactly what I said it does. The reason alpha 10 had the alpha 9 message is because they hadn't updated the welcome message on the server before the release and it took them a while to realise. Similarly, once they realised they'd broken the clone tool they updated the message again on the server.


Here is the server your game connects to when it starts. Clicking on the link should sound familiar:
http://motd.introversion.co.uk

Okay, my mistake I didn't realise that message was updated live. The rest of what I said stands though, as does my frustration at peoples attitudes when bugs crop up in an alpha pre release build.

[Great Magical Hat]

Hardly, A10 did in fact have the A9 welcome message for the first day. I doubt they knew they'd broken clone until the reports came in. I blame the fact that Chris clearly only plays the game with the debug cheats turned on.

I wouldn't have found it either, actually. I first liked the idea of a clone tool very much. But then I researched it and found that I could only clone very small pieces and it couldn't even clone partial foundation. On top of that, I realized I was paying (in-game cash) for a simple extension to the interface, so I stopped researching it and I haven't used it since. The thing is, it's easy enough to build cells that are all the same if you don't place all he objects in a single cell at a time, but instead take a n item type and put one of it in each cell.

In conclusion, it may very well not have anything to do with cheat usage and I think Chris actually does play the game without cheats.

[Mas Tnega]

If you have a problem with this don't buy into an alpha again. Theres no other way to say it.

Chris breaks one tool (and the fact it is broken is mentioned in the game itself, so this isn't due to 'lack of testing' or whatever dubious, invented reason) and lets a sound bug through and you grab your pitchfork. Get a little perspective please. You aren't coming across as at all informed or rational right now.

You seem to be massively overstating how bothered I am about the lack of a working clone tool. That or desperately short on quality victims for your blatant condescension.

It's worth noting there was a full day between the tweet for the new version and the one for the broken clone tool. Also worth noting is that the blog post, written roughly halfway between the two, didn't mention it. The postscript in the version notes could have been written at any time so it can't prove anything either way. It's not an unreasonable assumption that it went unnoticed - given the nature of the issue, untested too - and it's not an unreasonable expectation that it should have been tested prior to release. Shit happens but people still get to be disappointed about it and no amount of saying "It's an Alpha, got it? An ALPHA" and smug tone arguments is going to invalidate that.

[Collic001]

If you have a problem with this don't buy into an alpha again. Theres no other way to say it.

Chris breaks one tool (and the fact it is broken is mentioned in the game itself, so this isn't due to 'lack of testing' or whatever dubious, invented reason) and lets a sound bug through and you grab your pitchfork. Get a little perspective please. You aren't coming across as at all informed or rational right now.

You seem to be massively overstating how bothered I am about the lack of a working clone tool. That or desperately short on quality victims for your blatant condescension.

It's worth noting there was a full day between the tweet for the new version and the one for the broken clone tool. Also worth noting is that the blog post, written roughly halfway between the two, didn't mention it. The postscript in the version notes could have been written at any time so it can't prove anything either way. It's not an unreasonable assumption that it went unnoticed - given the nature of the issue, untested too - and it's not an unreasonable expectation that it should have been tested prior to release. Shit happens but people still get to be disappointed about it and no amount of saying "It's an Alpha, got it? An ALPHA" and smug tone arguments is going to invalidate that.

When you buy a product after having it explained to you what that product is, and then are shocked when the game breaks after being told it's likely that can and will happen, condescension is the only responce you can expect. Now, saying that a single developer in alpha 'threw the code over the wall' and 'done goofed his code'. Now I find that condescending and inappropriate. And that's the reason you're getting less than freindly responces from me. You should know what alpha means and posts like that say to me you really don't. By all means vent here on the forums, but it won't make a blind bit of difference to anything whatsoever. The quality of releases for PA so far has been excellent, with no real regressions until now.

Beta phase is when bugs are fixed, in alpha things are added and occasionally other things break or don't work as expected. If you really wanted to do something positive you would log bugs for the developers instead of moaning about their existence here on the forums - perhaps you do, but threads like this don't contribute anything.

EDIT: This was just combative. I edited this to reflect why I'm annoyed with your posts in the thread.

[asmo0]

Its very hard to convey how easy it is to accidentally break something under development. Especially for "small" projects, one programmer, there is no way in hell that he'll document and make well defined separations between modules purely for himself as he's going along.

(speculation) Take for example the bug where dirty laundry now is often thrown into the wall. This was probably a bug that existed in alpha 9, but it rarely occurred because prisoners would always put on the new clothes instantly when reaching their cell, and the clothes automatically gets "thrown" forward into the cell. Now they put them on when reaching the bed, and the bug from before surfaces.
Development time would slow down significantly if Chris needed to spend time testing all the features before every new release, not just the new ones. Thats what we, the alpha testers, are here for after all...

[Collic001]

Development time would slow down significantly if Chris needed to spend time testing all the features before every new release, not just the new ones. Thats what we, the alpha testers, are here for after all...

This. If some of the people in this thread had their way the net result would be possible delays between releases and less features. No one wants that. You can't see what's workign and what isn't until it's actually in the game and bowing to demands like this would just slow down developement and have a negative impact on the majority of the playerbase who play each build without complaint.