Single Player Beta Testing Team

About

In most aspects the quality of today’s mods have reached the professional level and you only need to look at the number of downloads to see that the gaming community is eager to play these mods.

Proposal

I propose the creation of a specialist Independent Single Player Beta Testing Team. The objective would be to create a team that mods and mappers can use to ensure that their product is the best it can be.

Why is a team Need?

One area of development that is often neglected is beta testing. Unfortunately most mods think that it is simply a case of getting team members or friends to play the levels a few times. It can be this approach that forces the mods to release patches. Or perhaps more importantly lose potential players.

In the past a mod could be made by one person but things have changed. Now, if a mod is to reach its potential, it requires specialists - level designers, coders, concept artists, modelers etc.

If a mod separates the above mentioned skills why not the beta testing? Perhaps because there are few known specialist beta testers? Another reason could be that everybody thinks they are capable of being a beta. No matter how hard you try to view things from another person’s point of view you can never do it properly.

Being objective about your own or a colleague’s work is difficult. In-house testing is important for early stage development but there comes a time when having a fresh pair of eyes view the work is very useful. Being deeply connected with project or piece of often means we miss certain things that are very obvious to outside people

Why only Single Player Mods

The starting premise here is that a Multiplayer game is almost always in development. Every release, whilst not openly called a beta, is in fact just another test version. Maybe it contains a few new maps or some extra features but if anything is not suitable if can easily be removed from the next version

Single Player mods are very different in this aspect. Beside serious bug fixes most SP mods are released and never updated! Occasionally a single developer may listen to the community and make a version two but that’s quite rare
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Another point to consider is that Single Player maps and mods normally require more time and effort, especially if they want to stand out from the crowd. This in turn means more testing may be required

Status

The project is in a dormant phase, this means I am too busy with other projects to devote enough time and effort to make it happen. However, if somebody was interested in taking this project on then I am happy to discuss it.