ivar
22nd August 2006, 18:55
In Testing
"Testing is the realm of Quality Assurance (QA)." This is the final stage before something hits Tranquility and our QA Manager reigns supreme. Having gone into testing usually means it has received a deployment build and the various types of testing has commenced on our Singularity test server. Occasionally we only test on Chaos things we want to keep as a complete surprise.
The different types of testing done at this stage are usually regression testing and gameplay testing. We develop ideas in iterations - we create a prototype and then constantly evolve it based on feedback. In Development we do simple gameplay testing and revise our design based on our experience and basic functionality is tested.
In this testing phase, we do more rigorous testing, especially of fixes and changes to the design (regression testing) based on feedback from more extensive gameplay testing. Usability testing is also done on major releases and so is hardware compatibility testing.
If you want to contribute to testing, you can apply to the ISD Bughunters (http://myeve.eve-online.com/isd.asp), download test builds (http://www2.eve-online.com/patches/testpatches.asp) and try them out on Singularity and join #EVE-Chaos on the Coldfront IRC network (http://www.coldfront.net/).
http://myeve.eve-online.com/bitmaps/img/none.gif
http://myeve.eve-online.com/bitmaps/img/none.gif
Revelations 2.0
Core Technology Optimizations
Improvements to various widgets, gubbins and doohickeys in the server and client code.
Vista Compatibility
Should ensure that EVE works smoothly with the Vista OS, and includes changes to various file paths.
Map Fixes
A few careful adjustments to the seamless map system to iron out a variety of interesting quirks of the current system.
New Starbase Structures
A range of new Starbase structured designed to grease the wheels of your war machine. Twinned Jump Arrays (similar to a Jump Bridge, and used for rapid redeployment of strategic assets of the “pew pew” variety), Scanning Arrays (gives you a better picture of what’s going in the system), Cynosural Generators (allows you to rapidly recall your capitals to certain systems without needing a mobile generator at the destination) and Cynosural Jammers (to suppress the formation of cynosural fields within certain volumes) may all be making an appearance. The pirate factions have also been busy, reverse-engineering starbase structures for their own ends…
Starbase Warfare
More granularity in Starbase combat (rather than simply alive/reinforced/dead), better control over Starbases in combat, more granular role-based management and so on. Most combat- and logistics-oriented structures will be moved outside the forcefields, where they can be incapacitated (although not destroyed without significant effort) by raiding gangs. To counter this, players will be able to take direct control of starbase weaponry so they can manually direct its firepower.
Outpost Improvements
The original implementation of Outposts was just the first step towards world domination. They now have the ability to be upgraded, allowing you to install new services and improve existing ones. On the flip side, individual modules on both Outposts and Conquerable Stations are now vulnerable to surgical strikes – attackers will be able to damage or destroy the relevant station areas, selectively disabling key services until the owners repair or replace the necessary hardware.
Upgradeable Sovereignty
Again, more granularity, but for sovereignty: multiple levels of system ownership, with increasingly powerful effects as you invest more resources into claiming individual systems. New levels grant the ability to anchor new structures, upgrade your outpost and eventually gain starbase invulnerability in certain key systems.
Constellation Sovereignty
The next step on the road to world domination. Takes a key role in next-generation territorial conflict, should discourage the uberblob, and also confers certain key benefits to the owning alliance.
Heat
“All power to guns” and other such clichés will no doubt be coming soon to a channel near you as this new tactical feature is phased into the game. Push your ship to its limits – and beyond! (Guaranteed free of celebrity gossip.) The initial relase of heat enables you to overload key modules such as weapons, tanking equipment, propulsion boosters and EW modules in a tight spot, boosting your abilities for a short period but at the risk of burning out your modules and rendering them unuseable.
Corp and Alliance Improvements
The corp is mother, the corp is father. Which probably makes the Alliance your grandparents, or something... Improvements include Alliance History for corps, Corp to Alliance standings, new roles for starbases, more logs, proper divisional wallets, better search tools, streamlined recruitment, export managers, job histories and remote item management.
LP Store
The old LP /Agent Offer system is being dragged outside and beaten into shape – LPs will now be stored on a per-corp rather than per-agent basis, and the “offer” system will be replaced with an LP store holding a whole raft of new and/or improved offers. Many old offers have been removed, new ones added, numbers rejigged and extra shinyness added. Think less “summer fete tombola” and more “army surplus store”.
Gang Support for Missions
The mission owner can now opt to split mission rewards automatically between up to five gang members, just by clicking a new button. Standings, bounties and LPs will all be distributed equally on request.
Level 5 Missions
A whole raft of new missions designed for the more discerning (and risk-happy) pilot. As the Empires gear up for war, increased border tensions lead to lots of new opportunities for capsuleers in the right place at the right time. Level 5 agents will dish out faction-themed missions designed for larger groups of players, and many will permit both sides to bring capital-class vessels along to the party. The new agents will all be distributed in low-security areas of space, to allow easier movement of capitals and to encourage more interaction between players of all occupations.
Built-in Scanner
All ships now have the ability to scan for exploration sites by default. The built-in scanner allows easy-to-find sites to be probed out without any specialist equipment, but due to its specialized nature cannot locate other ships.
Encounters
New bite-sized exploration sites which can be easily tracked down with the built-in scanner. They should be more interesting than asteroid belts and much easier to find than full-sized exploration sites.
Revamped Escalations
In order to make the escalation combat dungeons a little more rewarding, they now have a chance of spawning rare “Commander” NPC spawns which can drop highly valuable loot.
Static to Exploration
Most of the old “static” complexes are now being moved into exploration distributions, and can be found all across known space. Low-end complexes (difficulty 1 and 2) will remain in place to allow new pilots to experiment with complexes without having to learn the scanning system at the same time.
Tutorial Upgrades
From the Department That Never Sleeps, another round of upgrades to the Tutorial – the most significant of which is a substantially streamlined initial tutorial which starts new players in space rather than in a station.
Tactical and Strategic Weapons
A number of new combat tools, including Triage Modules for carriers, Remote ECM Burst for motherships and the introduction of proper Bombs for the Stealth Bomber class.
General Upgrades
A list of smaller improvents too numerous to list. Includes more and better NPCs, a new function that prevents emergency warps when logging out at starbases, the ability for gang commanders to select another player to give bonuses or their behalf, faction missiles, wallet data export, easy outpost transferral and many more things besides.
Starbase Testing
Structures
These are just guidelines for testing starbase structures, give your self a bit more time and try to break each structure you test. Use your imagination, don´t just zombie through this test doing only what is lined out. Try to find scenarios in which you can break or possibly use structures in a way they are not supposed to work, f.e. overloading or being able to use structures from outside the forcefield etc.
Aggression/Defences
Sentry guns/launchers
Check range, rof and damage
Check if they stop firing if the ammo runs out.
Reloading sentries.Tracking Array
Does it increase the optimal range and tracking speed of all turret sentries?
Is it stacking nerfed? How much difference is there between having 4 and 10?ECM Batteries
Are they chance based?
Can they target jam unjammable ships
Do they have a better chance of jamming if you are using f.e. white noise to jam radar?
Check rangeStealth Emitter Array
Does it decrease the signaturea radius of the tower?
Is it stacking nerfed?Warp Scrambling Batteries
Check range
Check that they warp scramble strengt and that warp core stabs counter it.Stasis Webification Battery
Check range
Check speed modifier on the target ship.Shield hardening array
Do they add to shield resistance when they online?
Do aggressors less damage to a tower with hardeners online?
Are they stacking nerfed?
Assembly arrays
Small Ship / Medium Ship / Large Ship
Try producing every ship type in small, medium and large ship assembly arrays i.e. test small ships in med array and large ships in small array etc.
Can faction ships be produced in assebly arrays?
Make sure that they can not produce tech 2 ships.
Make sure they can not produce modules, ammo, components, etc.Advanced -Small Ship / -Medium Ship / -Large Ship
Same as above but make sure you can only produce tech 2 ships.Capital Ship
You should not be able to anchor it unless you have sovreignty.
Make sure you can not produce anything but capital ships, carriers, dreadnaughts and titans.Component
Make sure you can not produce anything but capital ship components and tech 2 components.Ammo
Try producing every different ammo type, crystals, hybrid ammo, projectile ammo and missiles.
Make sure you can´t produce anything else than ammo.Drone
Make sure you can produce all drone types, combat, armor/shield repair, Ewar and Fighters.
Make sure you can´t produce anything else than drones.Efficient and Rapid Equipment.
Check that efficient assembly uses less materials
Rapid assembly should have reduced building time.
Check 5-10 different types of modules at random
Make sure you can´t produce anything else than Ship modules.
Production
Moon Mining
Set up a moon harvester and link it to a silo, make sure you harvest stuff into the silo
Link the moon harvester to a coupling array, offline the silo and empty it
Online the silo again and link the havester to it again.Mobile Reactor
Reactor array should be able to do simple and complex reactions
Medium Reactor array should only be able to do simple reactions.Refining
Make sure you can only refine one item type at a time.
Check that the correct amount of minerals/ice is dished out
Are skills applied to refining yeld?Silo and Coupling array
It should only be able to store one item type.
Can it be overloaded?
Can it be unanchored while not empty?EvE - In Development (http://www.stk-s.com/forums/showthread.php?t=986)
EvE - The Drawingboard (http://www.stk-s.com/forums/showthread.php?t=984)
"Testing is the realm of Quality Assurance (QA)." This is the final stage before something hits Tranquility and our QA Manager reigns supreme. Having gone into testing usually means it has received a deployment build and the various types of testing has commenced on our Singularity test server. Occasionally we only test on Chaos things we want to keep as a complete surprise.
The different types of testing done at this stage are usually regression testing and gameplay testing. We develop ideas in iterations - we create a prototype and then constantly evolve it based on feedback. In Development we do simple gameplay testing and revise our design based on our experience and basic functionality is tested.
In this testing phase, we do more rigorous testing, especially of fixes and changes to the design (regression testing) based on feedback from more extensive gameplay testing. Usability testing is also done on major releases and so is hardware compatibility testing.
If you want to contribute to testing, you can apply to the ISD Bughunters (http://myeve.eve-online.com/isd.asp), download test builds (http://www2.eve-online.com/patches/testpatches.asp) and try them out on Singularity and join #EVE-Chaos on the Coldfront IRC network (http://www.coldfront.net/).
http://myeve.eve-online.com/bitmaps/img/none.gif
http://myeve.eve-online.com/bitmaps/img/none.gif
Revelations 2.0
Core Technology Optimizations
Improvements to various widgets, gubbins and doohickeys in the server and client code.
Vista Compatibility
Should ensure that EVE works smoothly with the Vista OS, and includes changes to various file paths.
Map Fixes
A few careful adjustments to the seamless map system to iron out a variety of interesting quirks of the current system.
New Starbase Structures
A range of new Starbase structured designed to grease the wheels of your war machine. Twinned Jump Arrays (similar to a Jump Bridge, and used for rapid redeployment of strategic assets of the “pew pew” variety), Scanning Arrays (gives you a better picture of what’s going in the system), Cynosural Generators (allows you to rapidly recall your capitals to certain systems without needing a mobile generator at the destination) and Cynosural Jammers (to suppress the formation of cynosural fields within certain volumes) may all be making an appearance. The pirate factions have also been busy, reverse-engineering starbase structures for their own ends…
Starbase Warfare
More granularity in Starbase combat (rather than simply alive/reinforced/dead), better control over Starbases in combat, more granular role-based management and so on. Most combat- and logistics-oriented structures will be moved outside the forcefields, where they can be incapacitated (although not destroyed without significant effort) by raiding gangs. To counter this, players will be able to take direct control of starbase weaponry so they can manually direct its firepower.
Outpost Improvements
The original implementation of Outposts was just the first step towards world domination. They now have the ability to be upgraded, allowing you to install new services and improve existing ones. On the flip side, individual modules on both Outposts and Conquerable Stations are now vulnerable to surgical strikes – attackers will be able to damage or destroy the relevant station areas, selectively disabling key services until the owners repair or replace the necessary hardware.
Upgradeable Sovereignty
Again, more granularity, but for sovereignty: multiple levels of system ownership, with increasingly powerful effects as you invest more resources into claiming individual systems. New levels grant the ability to anchor new structures, upgrade your outpost and eventually gain starbase invulnerability in certain key systems.
Constellation Sovereignty
The next step on the road to world domination. Takes a key role in next-generation territorial conflict, should discourage the uberblob, and also confers certain key benefits to the owning alliance.
Heat
“All power to guns” and other such clichés will no doubt be coming soon to a channel near you as this new tactical feature is phased into the game. Push your ship to its limits – and beyond! (Guaranteed free of celebrity gossip.) The initial relase of heat enables you to overload key modules such as weapons, tanking equipment, propulsion boosters and EW modules in a tight spot, boosting your abilities for a short period but at the risk of burning out your modules and rendering them unuseable.
Corp and Alliance Improvements
The corp is mother, the corp is father. Which probably makes the Alliance your grandparents, or something... Improvements include Alliance History for corps, Corp to Alliance standings, new roles for starbases, more logs, proper divisional wallets, better search tools, streamlined recruitment, export managers, job histories and remote item management.
LP Store
The old LP /Agent Offer system is being dragged outside and beaten into shape – LPs will now be stored on a per-corp rather than per-agent basis, and the “offer” system will be replaced with an LP store holding a whole raft of new and/or improved offers. Many old offers have been removed, new ones added, numbers rejigged and extra shinyness added. Think less “summer fete tombola” and more “army surplus store”.
Gang Support for Missions
The mission owner can now opt to split mission rewards automatically between up to five gang members, just by clicking a new button. Standings, bounties and LPs will all be distributed equally on request.
Level 5 Missions
A whole raft of new missions designed for the more discerning (and risk-happy) pilot. As the Empires gear up for war, increased border tensions lead to lots of new opportunities for capsuleers in the right place at the right time. Level 5 agents will dish out faction-themed missions designed for larger groups of players, and many will permit both sides to bring capital-class vessels along to the party. The new agents will all be distributed in low-security areas of space, to allow easier movement of capitals and to encourage more interaction between players of all occupations.
Built-in Scanner
All ships now have the ability to scan for exploration sites by default. The built-in scanner allows easy-to-find sites to be probed out without any specialist equipment, but due to its specialized nature cannot locate other ships.
Encounters
New bite-sized exploration sites which can be easily tracked down with the built-in scanner. They should be more interesting than asteroid belts and much easier to find than full-sized exploration sites.
Revamped Escalations
In order to make the escalation combat dungeons a little more rewarding, they now have a chance of spawning rare “Commander” NPC spawns which can drop highly valuable loot.
Static to Exploration
Most of the old “static” complexes are now being moved into exploration distributions, and can be found all across known space. Low-end complexes (difficulty 1 and 2) will remain in place to allow new pilots to experiment with complexes without having to learn the scanning system at the same time.
Tutorial Upgrades
From the Department That Never Sleeps, another round of upgrades to the Tutorial – the most significant of which is a substantially streamlined initial tutorial which starts new players in space rather than in a station.
Tactical and Strategic Weapons
A number of new combat tools, including Triage Modules for carriers, Remote ECM Burst for motherships and the introduction of proper Bombs for the Stealth Bomber class.
General Upgrades
A list of smaller improvents too numerous to list. Includes more and better NPCs, a new function that prevents emergency warps when logging out at starbases, the ability for gang commanders to select another player to give bonuses or their behalf, faction missiles, wallet data export, easy outpost transferral and many more things besides.
Starbase Testing
Structures
These are just guidelines for testing starbase structures, give your self a bit more time and try to break each structure you test. Use your imagination, don´t just zombie through this test doing only what is lined out. Try to find scenarios in which you can break or possibly use structures in a way they are not supposed to work, f.e. overloading or being able to use structures from outside the forcefield etc.
Aggression/Defences
Sentry guns/launchers
Check range, rof and damage
Check if they stop firing if the ammo runs out.
Reloading sentries.Tracking Array
Does it increase the optimal range and tracking speed of all turret sentries?
Is it stacking nerfed? How much difference is there between having 4 and 10?ECM Batteries
Are they chance based?
Can they target jam unjammable ships
Do they have a better chance of jamming if you are using f.e. white noise to jam radar?
Check rangeStealth Emitter Array
Does it decrease the signaturea radius of the tower?
Is it stacking nerfed?Warp Scrambling Batteries
Check range
Check that they warp scramble strengt and that warp core stabs counter it.Stasis Webification Battery
Check range
Check speed modifier on the target ship.Shield hardening array
Do they add to shield resistance when they online?
Do aggressors less damage to a tower with hardeners online?
Are they stacking nerfed?
Assembly arrays
Small Ship / Medium Ship / Large Ship
Try producing every ship type in small, medium and large ship assembly arrays i.e. test small ships in med array and large ships in small array etc.
Can faction ships be produced in assebly arrays?
Make sure that they can not produce tech 2 ships.
Make sure they can not produce modules, ammo, components, etc.Advanced -Small Ship / -Medium Ship / -Large Ship
Same as above but make sure you can only produce tech 2 ships.Capital Ship
You should not be able to anchor it unless you have sovreignty.
Make sure you can not produce anything but capital ships, carriers, dreadnaughts and titans.Component
Make sure you can not produce anything but capital ship components and tech 2 components.Ammo
Try producing every different ammo type, crystals, hybrid ammo, projectile ammo and missiles.
Make sure you can´t produce anything else than ammo.Drone
Make sure you can produce all drone types, combat, armor/shield repair, Ewar and Fighters.
Make sure you can´t produce anything else than drones.Efficient and Rapid Equipment.
Check that efficient assembly uses less materials
Rapid assembly should have reduced building time.
Check 5-10 different types of modules at random
Make sure you can´t produce anything else than Ship modules.
Production
Moon Mining
Set up a moon harvester and link it to a silo, make sure you harvest stuff into the silo
Link the moon harvester to a coupling array, offline the silo and empty it
Online the silo again and link the havester to it again.Mobile Reactor
Reactor array should be able to do simple and complex reactions
Medium Reactor array should only be able to do simple reactions.Refining
Make sure you can only refine one item type at a time.
Check that the correct amount of minerals/ice is dished out
Are skills applied to refining yeld?Silo and Coupling array
It should only be able to store one item type.
Can it be overloaded?
Can it be unanchored while not empty?EvE - In Development (http://www.stk-s.com/forums/showthread.php?t=986)
EvE - The Drawingboard (http://www.stk-s.com/forums/showthread.php?t=984)