Call for Testers

Version 2.3 is now feature-complete, and we’ve given it a reasonable amount of QA ourselves. But there is a bunch of new content (16 new scenes), and people will play it differently. So we’d like to have a few more outside (beta) testers.

You need to be running iOS 5.1 or later, and be willing to play the game and report things that bug you.

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

Apple gives us only a limited number of test devices in a calendar year, so we are only looking for a small number of beta testers at the moment.

How to Find Your UDID

You need to use iTunes on a computer. If you are using a version of iOS earlier than 7, you may be able to use an app. 

In brief, connect your device to iTunes, click on the Serial Number so that it shows UDID, then right-click and choose Copy.

How We Update

As you may know, we’re working on an update which will include the winner of the Scene Contest and a number of other new scenes. We actually added so much that we had to revise the file format (it wasn’t really designed for expansion back in 1997, and we didn’t rework it for the iOS version).

All screen shots are from actual App Store updates

But we always make sure you can continue a game you’ve started. King of Dragon Pass is a long game, and it would be unreasonable to have players not upgrade because they’re in the middle of a game. So KoDP reads the previous format, but writes the new format. In fact, we’ve done this before, so it can read several old formats. We also sometimes have to go through gyrations to make sure new variables appear only at the end of our data files. (During development, we’re less strict about this, and testers occasionally have to discard games in progress.) Just to make sure, I just loaded a game which was actually saved in 2011, before the 2.0 release.

We also do our best to test all the new content. There are 16 new full scenes, plus news and other followups. We run through every outcome of every choice, ideally in the context of a normal game. The last thing we want is an update that has serious bugs! All this play can uncover minor bugs in previous parts of the game, and we fix those too.

Finally, we want the update to be free to everyone who’s bought the game. That’s pretty much how the App Store works, but I suppose we could make new content an in-app purchase. While episodic content may sometimes work like this, King of Dragon Pass was not designed to be broken into chapters. There are other reasons for making the update free, but a big one is that don’t want to ruin the play experience.

Version 2.3 is not yet ready to go, but when it is, it will be quality software that’s compatible with ongoing games, and will be a free update.

The Debug Dialog

When I was creating the iOS version of King of Dragon Pass, I included some of the same debugging utilities we had in the original game. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember exactly what we had, and there was no good way to look, because the release version of the game didn’t have them. (And it’s real hard to search an mTropolis project.)

I knew there was a way to trigger a specific scene (critical for running them over and over to test all the possibilities). And a set of commands that do things like get rid of all your food (to test things like starvation advice) or get raided by Trolls.

But I knew there was something more, just not what it was.

Today I happened to run into this code
/*
Returns text about our clan helpful for debugging (shown in the \ dialogette)
*/
char* CPlayerClan::DebugInfo() const
{
gString = "farmerMorale: ";
UString::Append(gString, this->MoraleFarmers());
gString += ", warriorMorale: ";
UString::Append(gString, this->MoraleWarriors());
gString += ", thrallMorale: ";
UString::Append(gString, COSL::GetIntegerVariable(var_thrallMorale));
gString += ", mood: ";
UString::Append(gString, this->Mood());
gString += "\rvictory: ";
UString::Append(gString, COSL::GetIntegerVariable(var_victory));
gString += ", kingship: ";
UString::Append(gString, this->Kingship());
gString += "\r";
UString::Append(gString, fYearsAsType, "year", "years");
gString += " as clan type\r";

return (char *)gString.data();
} // DebugInfo


which was clearly used to display some internal status useful for testing.

This isn’t as important as it was in 1999, but we’re in the process of thoroughly testing a number of new scenes (currently 14, but several more are in progress). So I put this into the current debug dialog. It’s almost like seeing a long-forgotten friend.

iPad in Beta

Last month I mentioned that we were still converting screens to use final iPad-sized artwork. That process is complete, and the game has gone out to a number of beta testers, to make sure everything is good on a variety of devices and versions of iOS. (We’re making a universal release, so the same game still needs to run properly on iPhone and iPod touch.) We’re testing here too, and have been squashing a number of bugs.

It hasn’t been in testing long enough to have confidence in the code quality, but things look pretty good so far.

As a developer, most of my testing consists of looking at specific parts of the program (either something I just changed, or to investigate a problem someone else has reported). But I finally got a chance to play a complete short game from beginning to end. This did reveal some issues that needed to be fixed. But it also felt like the game is finally on its native platform. You hold the iPad much like a book, and this meant that King of Dragon Pass really felt like an interactive story (and less like a computer game).

The iPad layout was actually constrained by not having artwork at any higher resolution than you see here. But the results are that text never covers artwork, and you almost never have to scroll. The text is super crisp (on a new iPad) and the iPad screen is bright and gorgeous, so the art looks great. It’s all a really good experience. And as you can see, we don’t need to hide the extra information (the list of clans was behind a button even on the Mac/Windows version), and the manual is available from within a scene.

So if you don’t have an iOS device and want to play King of Dragon Pass, get an iPad.

A Taste of QA

While cleaning up the house (King of Dragon Pass was created in our home office), I ran across a notebook kept by Rob Heinsoo, our QA lead. Here’s a typical page:

While for the most part we avoided the branching problem, King of Dragon Pass still had a lot of content, and we wanted to make sure each response of each scene was tested. Most of these had success and failure results, so our QA team had to keep track of when these happened. (It was possible to force things to happen, but I think our preference was to have them come up naturally, since in many cases things depend on something that happened earlier. Forcing a scene or outcome might be buggy in its own right.) Note that a scene might behave differently depending on clan status, e.g. R288 depends on morale.

The new scenes in 2.0 went through a similar process to make sure every branch and outcome worked.

Our Newest Ring Member

One of the features in the latest update (version 2.0.4) is a new advisor. Like many in the game, the art is based on a real person. In this case, it’s one of our beta testers, Liana Kerr.

We’ve been blessed by a number of helpful and perceptive testers, willing to spoil their potential fun by playing a buggy copy of the game. Since they’re all volunteers, I added to the pool of beta testers as the game got closer to release. Even a game as repayable as King of Dragon Pass will eventually become jaded, and I wanted fresh eyes. (I did however take a number of testers who had played the game before, figuring that a gap of 10 years would make a difference. And these players could tell me if it was still true to the spirit of the original.)

Unfortunately, something went wrong with our bug tracking system, and I can’t get exact counts of how many bugs each beta tester sent. But even without exact statistics, I know it’s Liana. Although she was an old hand, she dove in, and played seemingly endless games, trying out different approaches, and sending all sorts of reports.

Her enthusiasm was remarkable for someone who had already played the game a lot. Here in her own words is her introduction to the game:

“Back in 2001, when my boyfriend and I were at college, he gave me King of Dragon Pass for Valentine’s Day. (Reader, I married him.) I would have enjoyed it well enough if it had just been a clan simulation based around cattle management, exploration and battles, but the sheer amount of random events and notifications, the focus on mythology, the gorgeous artwork and exceptional writing kept me playing it for years, until I thought I had quite played it to death. Even then, every so often I’d still have the urge to build up a happy little Peace clan swimming in cattle and trade goods!”

Once the game was released, I began working on VoiceOver support, so that blind players could enjoy the game too. There were a few bug fixes in that build too, so I sent it to my stable of testers (plus some blind players). You can imagine my surprise when Liana decided to try the game using VoiceOver! Not only that, but she continued sending insightful feedback that helped make the game more accessible.

This was so over the top that I wanted to do something special to say thank you. I asked our iOS artist, Jani Lintunen, if he could create one more set of advisor faces, and he graciously agreed. Since this was to be a surprise, Jani had little to work with. (By contrast, when Stefano Gaudiano did associate producer Elise Bowditch and myself, we gave him photos of our parents.) But he nailed it. Liana says, “The picture of her when she’s old looks very much like my mom, but older (and my husband thinks it looks like my mom’s sister). It’s really eerie!”

Many testers helped make this game more fun and less buggy. I was lucky to get their help. And lucky Liana was willing to play yet again. Thanks again, Liana, and maybe some day I can arrange a visit from Cragspider…

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…

Manual

The game manual is basically the last development task before the game is truly feature complete. And I’ve finally begun converting it from the original PageMaker files to HTML with CSS.

The original was 60 pages, which is a lot to read on an iPhone. We’ll either make the same HTML available on our site, or more likely convert the multiple pages to a single PDF. (I’m not sure of the best tool to do that with.)

As usual with early screen shots, I need to caution that things may still change.

Once the manual is complete, we’ll send the game out to a new crop of testers. (We got about three times what we needed for the first round, so we have a pretty good-sized pool of potential testers now.)

Feature Complete

I keep looking at the To Do list, and it looks like all features will be implemented very soon (perhaps even today), with the exception of the manual. There are tasks that need to be done before release (such as update the FAQ to reflect the new version), and bugs that should be addressed, but it looks like everything I currently plan to do is done.

Of course, I could be overlooking something. And that’s why I’d like to accept a small number of testers. (It needs to be small in part because Apple restricts development to 100 devices.) The ideal tester:

• Has not played before (OK, that probably leaves out most readers).
• 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 test 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 62 MB with overly compressed artwork).
• 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!