[Announce] if.game-testing.org
Juhana Leinonen
the annual IFComp entries tends to get often quite frustrating when for
every technically sound work you seem to get at least one bug-ridden
entry and one that's just broken beyond playability.
I started thinking how we could get more authors to have their games
tested and more people to test them. Posting calls to Usenet works ok
but not everyone follows the newsgroups. The current betatesting site at
plover.net is a bit cumbersome to use. Personally I have never joined
the mailing list because I'm not available for testing 365 days a year
and I would rather browse announcements on my own time than have them
pushed to me by e-mail.
So I present to you if.game-testing.org - a new free service for authors
and testers. Authors can post calls looking for testers and
proofreaders. Anyone who wants to test games can read these calls by
subscribing to a daily or weekly e-mail digest, following an RSS feed,
or browsing the web site. When a tester finds a game they wish to test,
they can contact the author by using a form on the web site.
Members can set up a profile where they give their preferences for
testing, so they will not receive announcements of games they can't or
don't want to play (for example if you don't have access to a Windows
machine and hate western games you can set up your profile so that you
don't see announcements for Windows-only games and westerns).
In addition the site features a small collection of articles about
testing games. If you have a good idea for an article we'd be happy to
host it on the site.
Hopefully this site makes it easier for authors and testers to find each
other and that we'll get to see better and more polished games. IFComp
2009 authors - now's a good time to plan for having your game tested.
Last year's comp had roughly only half of the games betatested, but nine
out of the top 10 games had been tested. Make sure your game doesn't
lose points just because there were bugs or typos that could have been
easily fixed.
So, sign up at http://if.game-testing.org and give it a go. Suggestions
for new features (and bug reports!) are most welcome.
Juhana
--
Spamblock: remove all numbers from the e-mail address.
Nikos Chantziaras
> [...]
> So I present to you if.game-testing.org - a new free service for authors
> and testers. Authors can post calls looking for testers and
> proofreaders.
http://www.plover.net/~textfire/beta.html
:P
Juhana Leinonen
>> authors and testers. Authors can post calls looking for testers and
>> proofreaders.
>
> http://www.plover.net/~textfire/beta.html
As I mentioned one paragraph earlier, plover.net uses a mailing list
instead of a database. The new site allows for much more functionality,
most notably RSS feeds and filtering games you can't or don't want to play.
This doesn't mean you couldn't or shouldn't use plover.net's service,
just like IFDB hasn't made Baf's Guide obsolete even though they have
many similar or identical functions.
Katzy
Juhana Leinonen wrote in message ...
>I started thinking how we could get more authors to have their games
>tested and more people to test them. Posting calls to Usenet works ok
>but not everyone follows the newsgroups. The current betatesting site at
>plover.net is a bit cumbersome to use. Personally I have never joined
>the mailing list because I'm not available for testing 365 days a year
>and I would rather browse announcements on my own time than have them
>pushed to me by e-mail.
You only get an e-mail from the beta-test site when a new game arrived and it
is up to you to download and test/play it after having read all about it. You
are not forced and nobody is angry when you skip a time.
Greetz, Katzy.
Rikard Peterson
Juhana Leinonen <juha...@456nitku.net> wrote:
> Personally I have never joined
> the mailing list because I'm not available for testing 365 days a year
> and I would rather browse announcements on my own time than have them
> pushed to me by e-mail.
A similar issue with your site is that it requires signing up to use.
Why not let people in regardless? (But keep the signing up thing for
notifications and stuff.)
/ Rikard
Juhana Leinonen
>> the mailing list because I'm not available for testing 365 days a year
>> and I would rather browse announcements on my own time than have them
>> pushed to me by e-mail.
>
> A similar issue with your site is that it requires signing up to use.
> Why not let people in regardless? (But keep the signing up thing for
> notifications and stuff.)
That's a good point. I considered both options but decided to play it
safe and start with mandatory registration. If no-one has any
objections, I'll make signing up optional for testers. (Basically only
the author's description of the game is hidden from non-registered
people at the moment.)
Michael Bacon
specify more about their game, especially what the length of the work
is (short, medium, or long.) Thanks for the site, I'm planning to use
it!
Isxek
> for new features (and bug reports!) are most welcome.
>
> Juhana
>
> --
> Spamblock: remove all numbers from the e-mail address.
Thanks for this! The profiling is a good idea - now there's a way to
filter out games I don't want to participate in (not that I've ever
done any beta-testing).
A small nitpick: can we use smaller fonts on the site? Of course I'm
familiar with the text size adjustment feature in most browsers, but
I'd rather we use fonts that are a *bit* smaller.
Jayson Smith
being used here. Most sites ask you to type the characters you see in a
picture. Some offer an audio file of characters for you to type, some of
which are distorted almost beyond usefulness, Google being a prime example.
With the system used here, no such acrobatics are needed, and I can get on
with the signup process.
Thanks!
Jayson
"Isxek" <jales...@excite.com> wrote in message
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