Hey everyone,
As 1.3 is well on the way to completion, I thought I'd explain the way the release is going to be handled this time. For 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 we did the release first through an "open" beta on the forums, and that's how it's going to be handled this time as well. All three times it's revealed some major bugs that have made the final product infinitely better. This time, however it will be limited to people with 15 or more posts. There are a few reasons for this; primarily, it's the best way make sure the beta is being tested by people who actually care about making the mod better, and have contributed to it in some way. This isn't to say Facebook fans or ModDB followers haven't contributed via the comments, but there's no way for us to limit it that way. The betas are meant to expose bugs that we've missed while making it, not as an early release for everyone to play. It's way more useful to us to have a dozen or two people who play it and post what's wrong than allow a flood of people to come along, and either play it and not post any issues or decide that the beta is representative of a final release and then just run off with it.
We're still several weeks out, though, so don't get too excited yet, and anyone with any ideas for the mod still has lots of time to pass them along.
-Corey
cool! i am glad you are nearing release of 1.3. and thats really not a bad idea, to restrict how many people do the beta. otherwise, you could just get a bunch of people thinking thats it and not coming back to the mod.
Exactly. This kind of system usually gets a response along the lines of being exclusionary or whatever but that's entirely the point. We don't have the same kind of QA team real titles have, and for a mod to have that kind of team often kills their interest in actually playing the mod beyond one version. You burn through beta testers faster than anything else.