Beta testers and spelling correctors needed
Hello;
When you are reading this, it means the beta period of "The Secrets of Dyrt" has begun. This will be a "closed-beta" meaning that only a selected group will have access to the beta and of course, I need them to report any bug or other sort of trouble the game has so I can fix/remove that.
I will also need peeps who can check the spelling and grammar of the game. In a large project such as this it's impossible to keep it all free of spelling errors and grammar errors. Of course, the "errors" in the quotes said by the character Blenchy: all of those were deliberate, but all other characters are supposed to speak proper English or Dutch, depending on the language setting. For the spelling correction I'd prefer somebody who is a native speaker to any of those languages and who (of course) has proper knowledge about the depths of the language. (In basic I used US English in the game. I know I'm spoiled by Hollywood, so I guess that's why).
Dyrt is a game that runs on both MacOS X, and on Windows (sorry, Linux gave me too much trouble during the development, so I'm afraid a Linux version will NOT appear), so I will need testers for both platforms (believe it or not, even though the game is for 95% written in Lua, some Lua errors did pop in in Windows which didn't pop up in Mac. Well Microsoft has always been beyond me).
Here I'll write down the system recommendations. The game will very likely run error-free on lesser systems, but it might be terribly slow. (Basically I just looked in the system info on both computers I had at my disposal during the game's development).
System recommendations - Windows:
- Windows Vista or Windows 7 (the game's behavior under Windows 8 and Windows XP is not known to me)
- Intel Core Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
- 2GB RAM or more
System recommendations - Mac:
- Intel processor (required)
- 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 or better
- OS X 10.6 (Leopard) or higher (the game was tested on 10.8 (Mountain Lion))
- 4GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Memory or better (since the Windows version appeared to run fine with 2 GB, I expect the same for the Mac version).
One final point which goes for both platforms. The beta-versions of the game will very likely be updated quite often depending on how many fixes will be done. The downloads of these beta-games are packed with 7z, so you'll need a tool which can extract 7z files.
To sum it up in short once more:
"The Secrets of Dyrt" is an RPG game in the old NES/SNES style, but with a few modern twists. The game should be playable with keyboard and gamepad. Any gamepad your OS can detect should work (I used a Logitec F310 for testing the game myself). Anybody who is familiar with the genre should pick up the game quite easily.
Of course, it'll be your job to test out anything I didn't think of and report it to me if things malfunction. For this I set up a private section on my forum on my website Dyrt.sourceforge.net. If you are interested to aid me in my quest to make Dyrt the best of the best, or well, to make it at least as error-free as possible, then please hop over to my forum and sign up. You can also use my direct link for that Dyrt.sourceforge.net. Please note, all new members of my board will need my personal approval so you may have to wait several hours before you can post. I'll try to process your sign up as quickly as I can. What makes my life a lot easier is when you tell me in your sign up form that you want to be a beta tester/spelling corrector.
What I need to note is that "The Secrets of Dyrt" is an open-source project with no sponsoring or any other sorts of funds involved. So this will be a volunteer job, however I can give you a few things to return the favor of helping me.
- Of course, you will be credited for your trouble in the game's ending credits, and also in the game-info you can access in the start-up screen.
- If you want a link to your page on the game's website, you got it. Just give me the site's name and the URL. The only requirement I put to that (it goes without saying) is that your site is trustworthy and free of any malware, excessive advertising and so on. I will have to check that before putting the link on. I hope I don't sound too strict here, but I guess this is pretty obvious.
- And last but not least, I've space to put in a few extra NPC characters in town. You may create such a character. You may pick the race, gender, name and what the character says when the player speaks to him or her. One character each. Alas I has to put a maximum to each race, and if a race is available to goes by first-come-first-served. I will have to review the character on a few points though. The character may not be used to advertise. The character shall not be used to spread hate, illegal activity, and that kind of stuff. And the character must basically fit in the world of Phantasar plus the race you chose. Don't make your character say he likes to race in a Ferrari sports car, as it's very unlikely anybody in Phantasar knows what that is. Maybe an extreme example, but you get the picture, I guess. Exact details are present on the beta-testers forum on my website.
If you are interested please go to my website and sign up. If you have any questions before signing up, please don't hesitate to reply to this post and I'll answer them as well as I can.
Yours truly;
Jeroen
aka Tricky
aka Rachel
aka Phantasar Productions
