Originally, I wasn’t going to do a minor update this week but after preparing the video content for the major update I realized I had more to say about this milestone.

Overall, I didn’t get a whole lot done this week since I dedicated two days to getting that video out. The rest of the week was dedicated to finishing content related to the end game maps. (which I sadly haven’t finish yet)

When I first began writing the script for the milestone update I originally included a longer speech about the bugs I expected to find in the video footage. I said something a long the lines of, “Even though I wrote this script before I recorded the footage, I know with 100% certainty I will run into game stopping bugs.”

I wrote this line in a joking manner, I did inspect to find bugs, but maybe just a few. Nothing to the degree as I was joking about.

Well, when it was finally time to collect the footage, I ended up exceeding my own expectations on both accounts. Every map I recorded in that video had game stopping bugs.

Out of the two days it took me to make that video, at least 40% of the time was me just fixing the bugs so I can properly gather the footage. Now, it wasn’t like these bugs were hard to fix, one of the problems I ran into was as simple as a value being 1 instead of 2. (Yes, I’m not kidding)

The real problem is, each time I run into a game stopping bug, that’s 15 to 20 minutes (minimal) of time wasted before I can get back to the exact point of game testing. That’s the time it takes for me to shut the game down, open the framework editor, find the script, find the exact problem, fix the problem, save the change, start the game back up, and return to the location to make sure the problem is fixed.

I did this on every single map. (multiple times) It was so bad that I didn’t even managed to fix every problem in time. It was so bad that I kept some of the footage with bugs and used it in the video despite fixing them afterward. (I didn’t want to load up the game again to redo the footage) The bugs in the footage I’m referring to is the strange portrait alignment of the “???????” character and the icon not vanishing after the dialogue with Theresa in the desert map.

There were even more bugs than that but I didn’t use that footage in the final video.
This ordeal caught me off guard. I knew there were going to be bugs, but I figure they would be small bugs, not game stopping bugs of this magnitude. This made me realized I really need to play test the entire game ASAP!

But here is the problem. I don’t have time.

I need to finish the game to 80% before I can take the time to play test. That’s were I need to dedicate my time at this moment. BUT I need those game stopping bugs fixed! Right now!!!

The one saving grace of this experience was how well the dialogue worked. No game stopping bugs there. Just a few simple text/image errors. Despite this, I’m in a real pickle.

I’m seriously considering opening beta testing to the public much earlier than I anticipated. Getting feedback of game stopping bugs while I work would save me so much time. As I mentioned above, the real problem of game testing is the time it takes me to fix any bug. Each moment I spend waiting for the game to start/stop or the game engine to load/unload is time wasted on development. And it’s gotten baaaaadddddd.

After finishing all the maps, my load times have noticeably increased. Pretty much all the data I’ve put into the game has increased my load times over the years like crazy.

The game itself takes a good 20 to 30 seconds to first load up but once it does, it plays smoothly, even on a cheap tablet like a Microsoft Surface 3.(the start up time is much longer though) The only exception is when you load a save file. That takes an additional 20 to 25 seconds. I’m not sure if there’s something I can do about these load times since it’s a problem with the amount of data and quality of the data I used.

Well, the main problem at this time is the testing. I’m thinking within the next few weeks I will look into the steam beta testing program, or perhaps just reach out to people I know.

That’s all I have for this update. In the next week I’ll be hitting the ground running by finishing up work from last week and fixing all the lovely bugs I fount.

Until the next update, stay well guys.