4.12 open testing

[bitterman]

Hello, guys!

I guess it's a tradition for all of virtual pilots to be given a new patch as gift for winter holidays. So, I suppose that all of us are looking forward to the new one and it is coming soon.

Due to that, I'd like to post a question about testing of upcoming patch:

Is testing of 4.12 going to be opened or closed? If it is going to be closed (or it's already going so), then is it possible to make this testing and testing of next patches opened? Obviously, this will incredibly speed up testing and debugging of patch and will decrease the amount of butthurt during release. If it is not possible to make testing opened, could you name the reasons why this can not be done?

This question is sincerely coming from the next squads and groups:

159BAG
GOVP
SG2
AxA
RR
IronSky
ES
Trd
KG200
KG26
aviachamp.ru

[dFrog]

As far as I know betatesting is already in progress

[bitterman]

is there any official information?

[Treetop64]

Pre-release testing was announced weeks ago.

Don't worry. If the quality of DT's prior work is anything to go by, the wait - no matter how long - will be well worth it.

[Snake]

This waiting is killing me!!!:mad:

[JtD]

Open testing isn't planned. If a particular squad wants to participate in testing, it would probably be the best idea to send an email to the TD address. Doesn't mean it's going to happen, but with this topic alone, chances are zero.

There's always the risk of a patch leaking, and the more people involved, the bigger it is. Having the community partially upgrade to a buggy beta-version is in no-one's interest, so it's a good idea to keep the testing circle reasonably small.

[bitterman]

I must consider, that your words make me feel in a bad way. Very bad way.

So, tell me, please, what the heck is "a patch leaking"? Leaking to where? Leaking to whom? To all of the people, that DT used to call "Dear Il-2 fans" in their own posts? To the people who love them? To the people who trust them and are waiting with trepidation for the new improvements? Leaking without any financial and confidential lost? This is ridiculous! If it is not, then what is the sence of all of this? What is the sence of this forum? What is the sence of the wish lists, discussions and bug reports when most of them are just ignored or implemented in a terrific way and presented to us packed in the snots of sobbing about "oh, gods, we've got so much work to do and so little time to implement it"? Damn it! I know very well how it's hard to maintain big projects using only personal free time. From this point of view I'm giving my deep respect to all of the people who have ever contributed to this game. But at the same time I should say that current DT team shows us their unprofessional behaviour of software developers. We do not need a heap of promises about how good it will be a bit later and how much they need to do now. Sometimes it sounds to me like a promises about life after death. Such a wrong approach. Do less. But do it now. Do it with a high level of quality. Do it on time. Ask for help. Nobobe will die from this. Appreciate and accept the help of your fans. You are doing the work for them. But the words
Having the community partially upgrade to a buggy beta-version is in no-one's interest, so it's a good idea to keep the testing circle reasonably small.
look selfish and cynical. May be it's a good idea to left this reasonably small testing circle playing in their sandbox alone? Sorry, if there are rude words, but the situation exactly looks like that. Let's be realists.

[Fenrir]

Bitterman, you're well off track in my opinion; there's nothing ridiculous about having a small core of reliable and trusted testers to beta test.

Their way means testing among a limited but cosmopolitan range of setups - feedback is more managable in the event of the more prevalent & serious bugs and allows quicker analysis.

It also avoids the hysteria and drama-queen-itis - and there's already more than required of that, much emanating from your direction I might add - that seems to effect the public response towards bugs in a general release version. Also previous massed beta-released have caused some confusion and compatability issues which don't help matters much.

I suggest you dial back on your sense of indignant entitlement; there's a lot of passionate people here eagerly awaiting the patch and it's new features, you certainly aren't the only one keen to get your hands on it.

As for JTDs post being selfish and cynical... ? We're clearly on VERY different wavelengths, cos to my eyes, what he said was neither opinion or conjecture - just fact.

[bitterman]

ok. I see. I haven't played il-2 for a long-long time, so i said not only about my self. it's a common opinion in the big parts of the eastern community (commonly non-english speaking, as you might guess). just fact. thanks for clarity.

[AnpeJIb_23]

Dear pilots, many thanks for your thoughts and comments. However, the question is addressed directly to DT, and we would llike to hear an official response.

With respect AnpeJIb, representative of KG200.

159BAG
GOVP
SG2
AxA
RR
IronSky
ES
Trd
KG200
KG26
aviachamp.ru

[TelluricSummer]

I think this time they will do more to integrate with other work in progress ... as SAS team.
This might be interesting since the communities paid and professional development are joining ...
let's see!
and good luck!

[TheGrunch]

I would suggest that the reason development teams often don't go to open testing is that it is not really very valuable for game development, because being a player is not being a tester:


Most players do not test bugs in a methodical manner
Most players do not provide bug reports in a structured manner
Many players do not understand what an "alpha" or "beta" version is and are quite happy to write huge rant-posts about the beta version they just downloaded because their friend told them to
Or in our context, about how DT have porked their favourite ride deliberately


As a result, even confirming bug reports takes far more time than with dedicated testers because players will not necessarily check basic facts such as whether they can reproduce a bug, or even note down the specific conditions in which they experienced a bug. It's not really worth it just to satisfy players' desire to get a new version early.

[bitterman]

As I have said, it's a wrong approach. Thing shouldn't be done in a such way. Let's look for example at linux kernel. zillions of users use it. thousands of developers contribute to it every day or so. there's a new patch release coming out every week or two and there's a new minor release coming out in several month. and everyone is ok and pleased. so, this is quite possible. and this is the only one example. how it is happening? it's just opensource project. popular opensource projects are developing fast and evetyone can be heared: want to see something new? want to fix some bug? you can do it? then just do it and show to everyone what you've done and it will be accepted if it's really worth it. But 1C do not allow to make il-2 opensourced, although they do not get any money from the target audience. They are just leaving this project rotting from within while they are making money on other projects. and yes, this is selfish and cynical a bit. maybe i'm wrong, but i do not know how to name it in other words. Nevertheless, there is no question in this post. just another fact

[Macwan]

huh, sounds you are really bitter. Wish it will be better in 2013, and btw Happy New Year !

[TheGrunch]

Let's look for example at linux kernel. zillions of users use it. thousands of developers contribute to it every day or so. there's a new patch release coming out every week or two and there's a new minor release coming out in several month. and everyone is ok and pleased. so, this is quite possible. and this is the only one example.
Please don't speak to me about the Linux kernel as if I don't know. It's not a good argument. By the time bug reports reach the kernel development team they have been filtered through the bug trackers of every single relevant distro and information has been collated between a HUGE number of users, so they have been confirmed as a bug, numerous more technically adept users and maintainers of the distro have provided various logs to examine the causes and tested the conditions which cause the bug thoroughly, and occasionally someone has contributed a patch. Not to mention that Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman work FULL TIME at the Linux Foundation maintaining the kernel.

It's not an analogous situation. Linux has a vastly larger and largely more technical userbase than Il-2. There are also developers who work full time catching bugs for commercial distros. Il-2 has a very small unpaid development team and a fairly small, mostly non-technical userbase.

Either way, the argument was not about releasing the Il-2 source under a non-commercial license, it was that players to not make good testers, and this is still true. Don't get me wrong, I would love if the Il-2 source was released, but that won't happen because:

But 1C do not allow to make il-2 opensourced, although they do not get any money from the target audience.
Il-2 is still on sale.

[bitterman]

huh, sounds you are really bitter. Wish it will be better in 2013, and btw Happy New Year !

thnx man, but, please, don't let yourself to be misleaded by nicknames. this one is from Quake II. this topic is not my own initiative. of course, some thoughts are personally mine and some of them are expressed in the manner they should not be, and i'm sorry if they made someone disappointed. but the main purpose of this topic was to get to know if it is possible to make testing of current and further patches more opened? this question is comming from the groups of virpils listed in the 1st post. they just want to get exact official answer. If it is "yes" they will go with "me gusta" face. if it is "no", they will go with "okay" face. that's all.

Il-2 is still on sale.
oh. that's the argument. i just forgot about it. so much time has passed since 4.08.

as personally i understand, the main point of current testing process is the absence of a propper bug report which can gather all bugs with full description in one place, constrain their uniqueness and provide some rating feature which will allow to tell "oh, there's a bug in the bug list. i have the same. let me confirm it and add some comment to expand the plot of the problem" and will show the most common bugs and their debugging state. there are free bugtracking systems online. why just not to use one of them instead of having messed-up distributed testing forums? or i haven't took into consideration something again?

[IceFire]

Bug trackers could work but someone would have to maintain it and filter through all of the responses including likely thousands of non-technical users who are reporting bugs that aren't.

I worked in tech support for 5 years and although we encouraged our user base to report issues and come to us with problems for all kinds of support, the number of actual bugs we found in the product we were using as a result of user response was extremely low (like 2%).

So there is a break even point between having useful testing feedback and just having a wad of unusable data. The forums at least has a weeding out process that occurs naturally through discourse.

[Treetop64]

I must consider, that your words make me feel in a bad way. Very bad way.

So, tell me, please, what the heck is "a patch leaking"? Leaking to where? Leaking to whom? To all of the people, that DT used to call "Dear Il-2 fans" in their own posts? To the people who love them? To the people who trust them and are waiting with trepidation for the new improvements? Leaking without any financial and confidential lost? This is ridiculous! If it is not, then what is the sence of all of this? What is the sence of this forum? What is the sence of the wish lists, discussions and bug reports when most of them are just ignored or implemented in a terrific way and presented to us packed in the snots of sobbing about "oh, gods, we've got so much work to do and so little time to implement it"? Damn it! I know very well how it's hard to maintain big projects using only personal free time. From this point of view I'm giving my deep respect to all of the people who have ever contributed to this game. But at the same time I should say that current DT team shows us their unprofessional behaviour of software developers. We do not need a heap of promises about how good it will be a bit later and how much they need to do now. Sometimes it sounds to me like a promises about life after death. Such a wrong approach. Do less. But do it now. Do it with a high level of quality. Do it on time. Ask for help. Nobobe will die from this. Appreciate and accept the help of your fans. You are doing the work for them. But the words

look selfish and cynical. May be it's a good idea to left this reasonably small testing circle playing in their sandbox alone? Sorry, if there are rude words, but the situation exactly looks like that. Let's be realists.

To say that this dramatically skids off the point is an understatement.

There is really no need to take it personally that DT chooses to conduct testing the way they do. It's been like this for years, and it's apparently worked well.

[DuxCorvan]

To me, it looks like some people are impatient to try the pie before it's ready.... Hands off the food, kids. You gonna have to wait until we are all at the table. ;)

http://image1.masterfile.com/em_w/00/09/93/700-00099393w.jpg

[bitterman]

Please, dont call people you dont know "kids". some of them are over 50 y.o. I can see there's a thin red line comming through some posts and wiring up the thought that some people just want see things to happen faster. But indeed they just want to see things to happen better and offer their responsible and scrupulous staff. It's a pity that you see only consumption purposes. do not measure another's foot by your own last

[Snake]

One week left! ;)

[nic727]

One week left! ;)

For the patch???

[Tuco22]

My body is ready.

[Lagarto]

To me, it looks like some people are impatient to try the pie before it's ready.... Hands off the food, kids. You gonna have to wait until we are all at the table. ;)



At least the cooks know that someone is still interested in their cooking. Which reminds me of what Elvis Presley once said. Asked if it bothers him that people keep asking him about autographs, he said, 'Hell, no. I'll start to worry when they stop doing that'.

[Luno13]

Please, dont call people you dont know "kids". some of them are over 50 y.o.

Physically, perhaps. Mentally? Hm...

[K_Freddie]

How's the testing going ? :)

[Treetop64]

Actually I'm just trying to put myself into a coma until the patch is released. It'll be quicker that way... http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/image/s9.gif

[RegRag1977]

Actually I'm just trying to put myself into a coma until the patch is released. It'll be quicker that way... http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/image/s9.gif


LOL!

Great idea actually :))