People who are better than other people

Spazmo · Aug 28, 2003

Also known as Geneforge 2 beta testers. I got picked by Jeff Vogel to beta test the PC version of Geneforge 2. A big 'ol NDA and everything, so no, there will be no public downloads of beta builds (though spoilers will be plentiful, I assure you!). So, anyone else get into the beta and set themselves above and apart from the masses?

POOPERSCOOPER · Aug 28, 2003

hey

I never get into beta tests, and I'm really good at finding bugs too.

I dont really care for Geneforge 2 right now anyways, I got a lot of other games I gotta play.

Psilon · Aug 28, 2003

Yeah, I'm in the beta. I'm mailing the NDA first thing tomorrow morning. This should be rather enjoyable. Send bug reports for a month in order to get the final version for free!

Sharpei_Diem · Aug 28, 2003

Very cool. I'm in too...

Saint_Proverbius · Aug 28, 2003

Posting spoilers would violate the NDA, Spazmo.

DrattedTin · Aug 28, 2003

pwned.

Psilon · Aug 28, 2003

Besides, one can get all the spoilers one desires over at the Spiderweb forums. The game's been out on the Mac for what? Two months?

Peacedog · Aug 28, 2003

I'm in the beta, as an "experienced tester", so I guess this is my attempt to create a group of second class citizens amongst testers. I'm probably going to hell as a result, so there you go.

Personally, I won't violate the NDA (never have before).

Send bug reports for a month

Probably longer than a month. I want to say the Genforge 1 testing went past the 2 month mark. The betas for the three Avernums all ran past his release estimates.

The good news is the Mac people got to iron out some of the nasty bugs and issues, so while we'll still get stuff, we probably get a cleaner (and potentially more balanced) product than might typically be expected for the first beta version.

Spazmo · Aug 28, 2003

Saint_Proverbius said:
Posting spoilers would violate the NDA, Spazmo.

Oh, you're no fun anymore. Can I still rub people's noses in it?

Also, bad news (for me, really): I don't get to play right away. My group of testers only gets it in a week or so.

Saint_Proverbius · Aug 29, 2003

Peacedog said:
The good news is the Mac people got to iron out some of the nasty bugs and issues, so while we'll still get stuff, we probably get a cleaner (and potentially more balanced) product than might typically be expected for the first beta version.

That might be true except Jeff Vogel doesn't use SDL or OpenGL for his APIs. He uses DirectX for the Windows versions for some odd reason. If he'd use SDL/OpenGL, then he could make one version and compile for both with minimum changes, since SDL handles graphics(and is fast if you use it's OpenGL hooks even in 2D), sound, input, and so on. I've emailed him before on using it, never gotten a reply, but think of how much time he'd save if it did that.

Seven · Aug 30, 2003

Saint_Proverbius said:
Posting spoilers would violate the NDA, Spazmo.

LOL. Spazmo is like Homer Simpson and Saint is like Lisa.

Psilon · Aug 30, 2003

What's worse is that he's using DirectDraw for the graphics in the Avernum series and Geneforge 1. This is an orphaned interface. It's not being updated any longer; programmers are now supposed to use Direct3D, even for sprite engines. (It's not too hard to do sprites in D3D/OpenGL anyway. Just create a textured quadrilateral. Given the polycounts seen in Morrowind and UT2003, I think you could do a dozen Avernum 3 screens at 60fps on today's cards.)

In fact, the only reason he needs DirectDraw over GDI, given the graphics levels present in the engine, is to change resolutions on the fly. I could easily throw those tiles up on screen using GDI+ without worrying about performance issues.

So, yeah, there's no reason to stick with DirectDraw. When he starts on his fabled Next Engine after finishing BoA, SDL advocacy would become a lot more relevant. Right now I think he's got a Nethergate-on-Windows code base and is just merging in the appropriate code with each release. If he can afford to take the extra two months and make things cross-platform with SDL, OpenGL, or ClanLib, he'll be able to get the various ports out the door in a hell of a shorter time. It wouldn't even be much effort to port over to Linux and attract the Slashdot zealots.

And what does that mean? More sales, which translates to more dough for his kid's college fund.

Spazmo · Aug 30, 2003

Yeah, but like you said, he'd get slashdotted, and poop spiderwebsoftware.com would "fold like a cheap lawn chair."

Psilon · Aug 30, 2003

Not necessarily. Now that Slashdot's got that games.slashdot.org section, he could be featured there without getting Slashdotted. Only the front-page links tend to suffer.

Deathy · Aug 30, 2003

We were on GSN when we got slashdotted, and they were noted for their rubber band powered servers, yet, amazingly, they didn't snap the bands.

Calis · Aug 30, 2003

Deathy said:
We were on GSN when we got slashdotted, and they were noted for their rubber band powered servers, yet, amazingly, they didn't snap the bands.

The server was actually OK at that time. It was a 2.4 GHz P4 running only 2 sites. (Terra Arcanum and Codex)
A server like that should be able to handle the slashdotting of a site like this... especially with their colo provider's bandwidth.

Spazmo · Aug 30, 2003

Speaking of our servers, could we shut down the news@rpgcodex.com account for a while? All the viruses it keeps forwarding into my inbox are tiresome.

People who are better than other people

Spazmo

Erudite

POOPERSCOOPER

Prophet

Psilon

Erudite

Sharpei_Diem

Liturgist

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator

DrattedTin

Liturgist

Psilon

Erudite

Peacedog

Novice

Spazmo

Erudite

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator

Seven

Erudite

Psilon

Erudite

Spazmo

Erudite

Psilon

Erudite

Deathy

Liturgist

Calis

Pensionado

Spazmo

Erudite