Tester team

[keyser]

Hello everyone,
I will give you my opinion about what to improve after yesterday.

linked to this topic too : viewtopic.php?f=42&t=11637

There is 2 choices (imo) :

either raise people awareness about change like this one.
- Make Big Yellow text in aeolus asking people to test beta thing..
- Ask caster to spread the information about testing beta.....

either make a tester team : (this is something that i want to be done since quite sometime to be honest)

Why a tester team would be more useful than using the community ?
Because tester know their shit, they will write proper report, have a better organization....
atm the only "tester team" is for the balance team, we are 2-3 guys. We have a good organization, are fast (little lazzy though), and we don't require much more people because we don't need to rush balance patch that much. (it's already going at a decent rate)

So, I'm thinking about a "tester team" of 10 to 20 persons (not sure about exact number).
=> a good organization : proper chat for them, part of the forum, excel table, proper tools for testing (ex : http://content.faforever.com/patchnotes ... lator.html)
=> efficient guys : been "trained" to not waste time for their test (= know how cheat works, can do test on their own, tips to be faster...); doing proper report (with brief description, logs and replay) on tech forum + repost on github with linked to the topic on the tech forum.
=> about minimum rating : i'm not sure it's necessary, as long as only good/top player do balance test. The other test require less "skill".
=> more recognition about them (as BH said viewtopic.php?f=42&t=11637#p119097). Give them avatar, make them as a real part in contributor.

What to test ?
Server change/patch, client patch, faf beta patch, faf balance patch...
tracking bug in actual game is more tricky, but tester team will know what to do when they find one.

This would help so that patch aren't release later because of lack of testing. The slowing factor should be coders.

i've already some name idea :
ZLO (doesn't have time i guess), petrick (too lazyi guess), me, nojoke, giebmass.....

[Aulex]

Call it the QA team

[Luminareo]

QA?

[yorick]

you can put my name on the list as well if you want. i know a bit of the client code and tiny bits of the games lua code (just scratching on the surface), but i never made any greater debugging/testing attempts ( apart from trying to fix my own code )
To clarify this team is meant to test both client(/server) and game stuff ?

[Downlord]

The QA team should be the one to give green or red light before any release.
Developers should never be allowed to deploy without QA permission.
The QA team must not contain a developer.

Separation of powers

[IceDreamer]

The QA team should be the one to give green or red light before any release.
Developers should never be allowed to deploy without QA permission.
The QA team must not contain a developer.

Separation of powers

This cannot work in a small, community driven project like this. Sometimes, the developers might have fixed something small. Something that simply cannot have gone wrong. Such as changing a typo in a string, or adjusting an icon type, etc. These kind of things could be done, pushed, a deployed with nobody really noticing come a new patch system which doesn't require huge downloads every time, or even with the current one for things like the game beta.

People aren't online 24/7. Don't slow the devs down any more than they already are by given them yet another layer of red tape to navigate.

[Downlord]

Let's not focus on the tiny edge cases but on the big picture. If it's a typo, surely you don't need the QA team.
But I'll remind you of that when the first developer who "just fixed a typo" accidentally also committed something else and break things.

Believe me, I've seen too many quick-fixes-in-production-bypassing-QA-because-it-cannot-break-anything gone wrong.

[Sheeo]

Let's not focus on the tiny edge cases but on the big picture. If it's a typo, surely you don't need the QA team.
But I'll remind you of that when the first developer who "just fixed a typo" accidentally also committed something else and break things.

Believe me, I've seen too many quick-fixes-in-production-bypassing-QA-because-it-cannot-break-anything gone wrong.

Indeed

[EcoNoob]

Well I'd like to help out here, since helping on the programming proved to be too hard

[theeggroll]

Volunteering