User Pass
Home Sign Up Contact Log In
Forum > Test Server Discussion > Testing Server Links
Bort
Admin
offline
Link
 
Ok, I've been spending some time tonight getting this set up as best I could. And yes, I keep some odd hours.

You can view all test server games run here, sorted in the order that they were run:

http://test.goallineblitz.com/game/game_list.pl

Note that the test server is a single machine, so too much traffic will very likely overload it. In other words, if it's slow, come back later.

Games and replays are public, meaning you shouldn't have to log in to view them. I think it might be kinda neat to do that on the live site, too, to share with outside people and get them interested in the game, but I digress.

I wasn't able to get the player pages public due to the way the logged in user info is intertwined throughout that page's code (I'd have to spend quite some time untangling it). Therefore, there's a list of the builds of the players used on the site via a link at the top of the game list page, in a text file. I haven't gotten it done yet, but I plan to do some sort of similar text file "game report" for each game run in the future, in case there are new players created, or some get moved around, etc.

We are also discussing the idea of adding a "note" field for test games so we can mark the reason the test was run, for future reference on the game list page. The games made sense at the time, but I've made various changes, fixes, and other things as we test, so it would probably be good to have a point of reference for the test beyond whatever we were talking about in PM's or threads, etc. I'll probably add that at or around the same time as I set up a game report.

Tpat has also volunteered to help put together a tester blog of some sort, to sort of be a "companion" to the data here, and document stuff we've fixed or addressed. This should help people make more sense of the data, too, because some of the game results might surprise you if you don't know what we were testing as far as a code update (such as 50 fumbles or crazy pathfinding, etc).

General notes, since there isn't a blog at the moment:
- We've been doing major tests, mainly of D play creator and some reported things like lack of fumbles or stiff arm not working right, for about a week or so.
- The site's been up for about 2 weeks. The first week or so was spent mostly getting people acclimated, talking about what we were going to do, setting up test teams, etc. Some of that is certainly still going on, as well, as we seek to build the best testing process we can.
- The "leaked info" as far as I can tell after some snooping, was that somebody said tackling is better than strength for not missing tackles.

Now the other stuff:

The following people are currently doing the bulk of the testing on the site (I'd estimate about 80%):

Mike Rogers (especially, Mike has been very helpful with lots of ideas!)
Rate
tpaterniti
Koncorde
VenomCoach
Ken1
Bones (what's the ALT code for the beta symbol? )
Norsemanvike

A few other people have been helping out here and there, but mostly just providing ideas, feedback, and helping set up test teams. These people haven't really run a lot of tests, and don't log on all that frequently due to current time constraints, etc, though they may become more active testers in the future:

Jacob McCandles
Darkus Black
Vawn
Vanilla Thunder
Havoc
Voltron
dusk883
Jed
DrkSandman
kalkmanc
madet0rder
ZickZack
Wei Wu Wei
J9
bigtisme
dirk41
morbo

Thorn, me, DD, and our design guy are also on there, of course.

I've invited some various other people, but they declined or logged on when we started and have never come back, so they're not part of the site and don't have active accounts. A couple of them helped us create some players on their first day which we are using, but they're not active testers. If they want to name themselves as invitees, that's fine, but it's up to them.

There are a couple other people on the site who have expressed concern over some of the reaction that some of the testers who "outed" themselves have received. I don't want to force exposure on these people to the type of backlash that has been shown already by some users, since they are nice people and were just trying to help out. The above listed people have volunteered to be named initially and these other few users and I will make a further decision after we see the reactions to them. I will require that all testers are known, however, so those who don't want to be known will no longer be involved with testing if that is their decision, and they have all agreed to that.

Also, I am drafting up a new NDA type agreement that I will require all current and future testers to sign, so we can make sure we have our bases covered. We'll make sure to run it past our lawyer to make sure it's good and legally binding. All of the current testers are in agreement this is a good idea, since even though we have come to a general agreement on the test site, it's good to have it in official writing.

I would also like to say that anyone claiming to be a tester and attempting to spread disinformation about it will receive warnings and/or suspensions. I would like to try and avoid that sort of thing as much as possible, as it just fuels stupid rumors. Also, the random trolling in unrelated question and discussion threads with "test server" remarks needs to stop, please. I understand if you're upset, but it's no reason to spam and troll other legit threads. Thanks.

In final conclusion, I want to apologize to the community about the way we went about setting this up. It was never meant to be a big secret, but I didn't really make that clear to the mods or testers, and some of them thought it was supposed to be hush-hush for now. That wasn't their fault, but mine, in getting some communication wires crossed, so please don't take it out on them; they thought they were doing what we wanted, and were just trying to help out. Next time we do any major updates to how coding or testing is done that would affect the community, I'll make sure to let everyone know ahead of time with an official announcement. I really hope that, moving forward, we can use the test server to preview new updates and bugfixes in test games instead of those that matter in production, which will really allow me to be more proactive in doing said fixes.

I'm going to leave this particular thread locked, but I will make a new discussion thread in GLB, to help keep it in one (new) place.
Last edited Mar 20, 2009 15:25:37
 


You are not logged in. Please log in if you want to post a reply.