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Internal beta vs normal beta

RockyRocketsRockyRockets Member UncommonPosts: 70
in Camelot Unchained
What is the difference between them?

Comments

  • professornomosprofessornomos Member Posts: 67
    Originally posted by RockyRockets
    What is the difference between them?

    Work.

     

    Internal testing is meant to break the game and to do so  you have to work at things like pathing, bugs detection and replication, etc.

     

    Beta is meant to stress the game after most of real work is done.

  • ZarthuxZarthux Member Posts: 28
    Originally alpha testing was when there was no real form of a game to play. It was, in many ways, broken and had place holder graphics. Unlike today's games where it is used as a marketing tactic to get you to purchase and play the game before release.

    Therefore, Mark Jacobs changed the title of alpha testing to internal testing. So, internal testing is about flushing out mechanics with things missing (what alpha used to be).

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  • RockyRocketsRockyRockets Member UncommonPosts: 70
    If the kickstarter funds which beta will it be in normal or internal? Because they said they wud start beta shortly after kickstarter.
  • MellozMelloz Member Posts: 26
    They need to clear up the verbiage. The way I understand things is that it goes Int. Testing (what would have been called Alpha a decade ago) --> Alpha (would have been an early beta) --> Beta Stages. I think MJ is talking about int. testing. The differences:

    Int. testing won't be a working game at all and will require a lot of monotonous work to test, write bug reports, then retest and so on.

    Alpha should be where it begins to be a game. Though it won't be near fleshed out.

    Beta is just an extension of that. As things get more refined and stable, they'll add more people to try to break it more and get better feedback with numbers approaching a live server.

    I would also expect them to have stress tests at various times though this where they ask many if not all backers to log in to get an idea on how their current code will handle the numbers.
  • SkeeterslintSkeeterslint Member UncommonPosts: 71
    Internal beta is normally what most games call friends and family beta were the only people playing are devs and people that they know, its typically a stage after alpha and before the masses start being let in to test.
  • LawtoweenLawtoween Member UncommonPosts: 103
    Originally posted by skeeter667
    Internal beta is normally what most games call friends and family beta were the only people playing are devs and people that they know, its typically a stage after alpha and before the masses start being let in to test.

    You've misread something.  CU does not have an "internal beta" phase.  It will have, as someone posted above, internal testing, then alpha, then beta 1, then beta 2 and finally beta 3 (at least that you can receive access to as a reward in the kickstarter).  IT will include about 800 people from the kickstart (if i've counted correctly and all the tiers sell out).  Alpha will be more than 2000, and beta 1 is quite huge (again if all the tiers sold out, I don't think any of the alpha or beta tiers with over 25 pledge spots have sold out).

    But the first reply pretty much got it right, the IT will not be a game, it will be work.  The reason people signed up is to have influence over the direction the development will go during that stage (when the direction might still have a chance of being changed, if only slightly).

    Lawt

  • SkeeterslintSkeeterslint Member UncommonPosts: 71
    Originally posted by Lawtoween
    Originally posted by skeeter667
    Internal beta is normally what most games call friends and family beta were the only people playing are devs and people that they know, its typically a stage after alpha and before the masses start being let in to test.

    You've misread something.  CU does not have an "internal beta" phase.  It will have, as someone posted above, internal testing, then alpha, then beta 1, then beta 2 and finally beta 3 (at least that you can receive access to as a reward in the kickstarter).  IT will include about 800 people from the kickstart (if i've counted correctly and all the tiers sell out).  Alpha will be more than 2000, and beta 1 is quite huge (again if all the tiers sold out, I don't think any of the alpha or beta tiers with over 25 pledge spots have sold out).

    But the first reply pretty much got it right, the IT will not be a game, it will be work.  The reason people signed up is to have influence over the direction the development will go during that stage (when the direction might still have a chance of being changed, if only slightly).

    Lawt

    I never said this is what they were going to do have I was merely defining what internal beta typically is so I think you have misread what I was saying.But basically what they are doing with their internal testing amounts to the same thing as a friends and family beta that other games do.Most beta nowadays are just hype tools but CU isn't taking this route I think the alpha and beta stages will be much different then what most poeple that haven't been testing games for the past 15 to 20 years are used too.

  • meddyckmeddyck Member UncommonPosts: 1,282
    Originally posted by Lawtoween
      The reason people signed up is to have influence over the direction the development will go during that stage (when the direction might still have a chance of being changed, if only slightly).

    I think and hope that these people are wrong about what is going to happen in IT. Everybody will have influence over the game design as soon as the backers' forum opens after funding is successful. You don't get special influence about the actual gameplay by purchasing earlier testing stages aside from being the first to report all the bugs. All the IT testers get is the chance to try to break the login screen, see if they can crash the server by typing in really long sentences in the chat window, look for holes in zones, see how many consecutive hours they can stay logged in, and stuff like that. That's why the tier is considered to be work and has been tightly limited to people who specifically want to do that kind of testing.

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  • wormedwormed Member UncommonPosts: 472
    Originally posted by RockyRockets
    If the kickstarter funds which beta will it be in normal or internal? Because they said they wud start beta shortly after kickstarter.

    I don't recall MJ saying that. He did say IT might start within 6 weeks after KS funds. As people have mentioned before internal testing (IT) is NOT beta. The game is NOT developed. You're essentially doing things like jumping into their engineering tests and performing tedious tasks to break the game, replicate bugs, or do things for them that they're testing, fixing or trying to accomplish.

    It is NOT beta. Hell, it's not even considered alpha at that point. Alpha, according to KS, is still slated for August 2014.

  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769
    Originally posted by Melloz
    They need to clear up the verbiage. The way I understand things is that it goes Int. Testing (what would have been called Alpha a decade ago) --> Alpha (would have been an early beta) --> Beta Stages. I think MJ is talking about int. testing. The differences:

    Int. testing won't be a working game at all and will require a lot of monotonous work to test, write bug reports, then retest and so on.

    Alpha should be where it begins to be a game. Though it won't be near fleshed out.

    Beta is just an extension of that. As things get more refined and stable, they'll add more people to try to break it more and get better feedback with numbers approaching a live server.

    I would also expect them to have stress tests at various times though this where they ask many if not all backers to log in to get an idea on how their current code will handle the numbers.

     You will not see clarity in the language because language changes over time.  The old terminology for alpha/beta has changed much in the past 30 years and for games beta has become part of marketing.

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