More Testing

I’ve been thinking about what it will take to get KoDP to the App Store. Right now,  the game seems to be working pretty well. And I think the UI has gotten a lot more polished thanks to feedback from our testers.

But the end game is not extensively tested. So I think I may need a new breed of tester. Unlike the previous crop, this probably would be someone who has played before, because I’d like someone to win the long game.

In addition, the prospective tester

• Has an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad capable of running iOS 4.1 or higher.
• Is willing to use prerelease software. The game may crash, be impossible to win, or have other bugs. Saved games may not be loadable by future builds.
• Is good about noticing things that seem odd, and then reporting them.
• Reports them to us! The game isn’t under NDA, but there’s not much value in blog posts that an unreleased game has bugs.
• Has access to WiFi (you’ll download the game on your device, and it’s about 99 MB).
• Volunteers. Apple also restricts promo codes, and reviewers and other marketing needs will come first.

If you’re interested, send an e-mail to bugz |at| a-sharp.com. Please include the type of device you have and its UDID.

To get your device ID:

1. Launch iTunes on your computer
2. Connect the device
3. Click the device in the DEVICES list on the left
4. Click the Serial Number (to show UDID)
5. Select Edit > Copy (to get the UDID on the clipboard)

Thanks for your help!

KoDP Update

For various reasons (including illness), it’s been some time since the last post. Sorry about that.

King of Dragon Pass is now a lot closer to being complete. In fact, yesterday I went through the manual again, and was able to remove the “first draft” warning. (The manual wasn’t really a true first draft, since it was adapted from the original game’s manual. But some elements of the game have changed, and some are new. So the manual needed to be treated as a new project.)

One way I can tell it’s closer: it’s possible to win the long game. (Doing so revealed some bugs, which are now fixed.) I’m in the process of trying to win a second time, though my clan leaders don’t seem to have great heroquesting skills this time around…

Anyway, other than “Test,” the to-do list is basically empty. Which is a good thing, since a number of recent bugs were introduced while making other changes.

Testing is going to determine the release date (just as it did in 1999 — we slipped our original date slightly so that QA would have more confidence in the build). This time around, it’s mostly our volunteer testers, who have been finding a number of issues.

So while I don’t have a date, code-wise (if not bug-wise) the game is ready to go. So let me go back to trying to find bugs, and I’ll be able to give more details…