When QA fails, you get back to work with a huge buglist in your hands. And a strong feeling that you won't get much sleep, food or healthy life for next few days. A real-life example:
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+teleporter doesn't disintegrate +bustglass1 wav not precached +1st blood by someone not shown! +AMMO INFO UPDATE BUG CHANGELEVEL!!111 +screen fade on TakeDamage() doesn't work | redundant sv->cl messages +RadiusDamage() does not traceattack()! ~ammo/weapons are sometimes not highlighted in world +virtual ammo is not deleted!!! +soundent -> global class, not entity. also, crash in HL1110 +hgrunt kick sound VGUI: ?strange fullscreen white textures in HL1110 -gfx/vgui/640_arrow* in HL1110 +spectator: "no valid targets" msgs \n +teammenu: disable spectator button in spectator mode +THEME PROBLEM! scoreboard: white title & info text +VGUI edit box does not capture keyboard! +headshot (last hitgroup) last timebased inflictor
And that's just from a few hours of rough testing.
Me wrote: When your game is a shame, you'd better not seek the fame.
Quality Assurance is a vital part of software development. I'm a very demanding person when it comes to quality, so I can't just release raw product and disappoint people. "We care for our gamers!", yes, kind of that :) But when everything just seemed to be done, I decided to test XDM on HL1110 and Xash. Oh, how I regret I did it that evening! Constant crashing, hangups, memory corruption... Well, I plan to include disclaimer like "use at your own risk" into XDM installer, but, seriously, I don't want to do THAT much harm to XDM players :)
Not just the gameplay, but network aspects, resource usage and UI is being tested. Look at all those windows! XHL has almost bulletproof UI with rewritten OOP design. It features panel dragging, custom color schemes, text input/output, even on-the-fly world interaction! I'm amazed it is working (on the screenshot).
Much complexity comes from the fact, that XHL is more a platform than a game (like SoHL or HLFX) - the code is huge and original. In this situation you can't depend on anyone but yourself. Unfortunately, this applies to mapping, modeling, scripting and other things too. Once again, adamix refused to work on linux server, Thunar gave up on making yet another DM map, Xash team is not very cooperating. So it's still a 90% one-man-made mod.
But this delay should not be long :) Now I understand how people at VALVe felt when HL2 deadline arrived. :)
