Testing questions - The Bear and Badger

mk64

Does anyone know what the testing process is for a new console?

Developers are doing more and more online beta tests for players to try out, I suppose this is the easiest way to iron out glitches and bugs? Do they do this for consoles?

What are the pros and cons of beta testing games?

Stopharage

Cons of game testing - mind-numbing repetition of playing the same game over and over again and hunting out glitches. My brother did beta-testing for Eidos in Wimbledon years back for a Tomb Raider game and he spent a month playing through the game, trying to identify hidden walls, parts of the game the developers didn't want you to reach, getting stuck in/on scenery etc. He couldn't play a game for a few months afterwards, zapped him of all enthusiasm.

Fairly sure it was poor pay too. Just above minimum wage. Plus he got piles from being sat on his arse for 11 hours at a time.

davyK

I suspect it has become less rigorous as patches have become feasible - opinions as to whether this promotes a drop in quality can be drawn from that. Back in the days of cartridge based games I suspect testing was done to a far higher standard.

The first version of Micro Machines for the NES had a bug in it (I think Codemasters had won the legal battle to get the right to publish NES games outside of Nintendo's control). When the carts came back from the factory they found a bug - if you reversed over the start line at the start of a race the game would crash.

They traced the bug down to a single bit value - and devised a little gizmo that would fit into the cart and write the correct value to required RAM location when the game was loaded. This little gizmo was a lot cheaper to produce than a rerun - and ended up being sold separately as a cheat device - the Game Genie.

monkey

Nice anecdote. Didn't know that.

monkey

That wasn't sarcasm btw.

Yossarian

mk64 wrote:

Does anyone know what the testing process is for a new console?

All I know is that Microsoft's almost certainly involved lots of heat sources and temperature read outs. And hitting things with hammers. Actually, that's probably true for both.

davyK

monkey wrote:

That wasn't sarcasm btw.

Shucks - I know. Can't remember where I read that - might have been in an old issue of Retro Gamer in one of their "Making of" articles.

Just realised the OP was about the hardware - not the software...oh well. I would like to think that Microsoft would crank that side of the opration up a tad. Whirring drives and moving parts are another source of possible failure - solid state is the biz - the Atari 2600s from '77 are still going strong.

Howdy, Stranger!

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