Test the Alpha 5 release candidate!

[Tynan]

Alpha 5 is ready to go but I want to get some good testing volume in on it. If you're interested and willing to mention if you find a bug, please post here and I'll add you to the public tester crew. Thanks all!

[lorddestu]

I would love to test it and see what I can find.

[Jarwy]

I would also like to test the Alpha 5 built for you. Been playing all the public releases more than most of my Steam games.

[narkul]

Noob here. Willing to test though.

[Gwalchfaen]

I would be happy to do so as well.

[nacker1776]

You can count me on board.

[fraz]

I'd be happy to help!

[drfish]

I'd love to spend a chunk of the long weekend testing alpha 5.  Maybe I can actually find a bug before someone else does this way.

[Tryndalis]

Going to be free this weekend and I'd really like if I could help test.

[Chaoticredux]

id like to test

[FroBodine]

I am not trying to be argumentative or mean or anything, but we paid for access to an alpha game.  Why don't you just release what you think is a completed alpha version to everyone?  You will get tons of testers, and will be told by many if there are any problems.

Are you just not interested in doing hotfixes to alpha versions?  Again, I'm just curious about your release process.  Some developers will release builds daily (Arcen, for example), while others have a rigid monthly schedule.  If you think you have a candidate, why not let us play it?

[Jarwy]

I am not trying to be argumentative or mean or anything, but we paid for access to an alpha game.  Why don't you just release what you think is a completed alpha version to everyone?  You will get tons of testers, and will be told by many if there are any problems.

Are you just not interested in doing hotfixes to alpha versions?  Again, I'm just curious about your release process.  Some developers will release builds daily (Arcen, for example), while others have a rigid monthly schedule.  If you think you have a candidate, why not let us play it?

My guess is that he doesn't have time to upload a new built every day due to bugs that would crop up from untested builts. Testers on the other hand could download the test build from a filesharing place or something like that, dunno.

[Tynan]

I am not trying to be argumentative or mean or anything, but we paid for access to an alpha game.  Why don't you just release what you think is a completed alpha version to everyone?  You will get tons of testers, and will be told by many if there are any problems.

Are you just not interested in doing hotfixes to alpha versions?  Again, I'm just curious about your release process.  Some developers will release builds daily (Arcen, for example), while others have a rigid monthly schedule.  If you think you have a candidate, why not let us play it?

Well, Alpha4 got hotfixed 4 times, to version F. So did Alpha 3. In general this is unpleasant for everyone, since now players are forced to manually update their game or suffer game-killing bugs, and I'm distracted panic-fixing bugs and re-announcing fixes and re-uploading and re-testing the game over and over. It takes away from the time when I can work properly on the game and do deep, risky, bug-making developments on new game systems. This is why I'm experimenting with new policies to reduce this hotfixing phase.

I know you guys all signed up for an alpha, but there is a limit to that. You can see the list of known bugs I am shipping to you. I'm also willing to ship a game with missing content, imbalanced, lack of clarity, general shallowness, and lots of other faults, because it's in alpha. I am not a perfectionist.

One thing I'm not willing to ship, though, are game-killing bugs. When the game crashes hard or colonists get stuck in unstoppable behavioral loops or the performance crashes down to 4fps and makes your colony you've played for 5 hours useless, nobody finds the excuse "but it's an alpha!" very compelling.

Faults are okay - but I don't want to ship game-breaking bugs to 30,000 people. Hence spending a few days doing a final test. I think 98% of players won't even register the few-days delay.

[Tynan]

And all right! All those who asked are now public testers. Please check the public tester forum for info on what to do next.

[The Lord of Boxes]

It there still time to sign up? If so, count me in.