Beta Testing Progress
The beta testers and the WC: Saga team are as busy as ever as all of the crucial come together.
The latest round of testing takes us into the back half of the WC: Saga campaign featuring both small and large scale engagements. Larger numbers of fighters and sometimes epic capital ship battles are just some of the treats in store.
The increase of scale also means that testing is vital to ensure that the gameplay experience works well. If the player will be called on to make meaningful contributions to every mission and objective and that has to work no matter what is happening in the mission.
The last couple of weeks have seen a new build released to testers including several new missions featuring the Excalibur. The elite Confed heavy fighter is truly a fantastic weapon and players will enjoy flying this space craft when it becomes available. The WC: Saga Excalibur features everything from aim assisted guns to auto-slide and a judicious number of missiles – just what is needed to complete the next set of missions.
A couple of new issues to share since the last update:
- One of the capital ships in the game had a missing floor on an observation deck inside one of the launch bays. Geometry fixed and model updated.
- Your wingman on one of the missions decides not to fire on remaining Kilrathi fighters after achieving a main objective. Problem solved.
- During a convoy escort the Kilrathi tend to ignore some of the transports. The solution was to add some additional bombers to beef up the attack. This will force the player to take action to defend the convoy.
Green Lighting
As testing continues there comes a time when the content has to reach a completed stage. For WC: Saga this process is called “green lighting”. When a mission reaches a certain level of polish then testers check the fine details to look for any lingering problems.
Here are just a few things that testers are checking:
- All objectives are present.
- Wingmen are behaving appropriately to the situation.
- Voice and message text match.
- Autopilot cameras work correctly (i.e. no ships fly through the camera for example).
- The debriefing is correct and matches the end scenario.
- Your wingmen don’t bump into you while taking off.
There are many more hurdles that must be completed before a mission has been fully checked out. Once a mission has passed all of the checks it can be green-lit and considered finished barring any last minute adjustments.
The Saga Continues
Progress continues on WC: Saga as testers continue to fly missions and discover bugs. Sometimes that means replaying the same mission over and over again to expose bugs or take different actions to test the mission outcomes.
That’s it for now. Enjoy some great new screen shots and we’ll be back with a third update on beta testing progress in the near future. Until then!
