Game Testing

[KanaX]

1) When is a good time to have people test my game?

2) Can I present it as an alpha since it is not near completion yet?

3) Where can I request for the testing?
4) How can I protect the game from plagiarism?

 

[kerbonklin]

1) I would say when you create a decent chunk of the game (half or 3/4 of the game) so that testers can get the full feel of your game's systems/mechanics and how they hold up. Enough to judge what's good, lacking, needs improvement, bugs, etc.  And then once the game is fully finished, you need more extensive testing of everything possible.

2) Alphas are totally a fine thing to do, as long as you get rid of any game-crashing bugs before-hand that you know of so testers don't have to deal with them.

3) You can make a thread under the Early Project Feedback section of the forum, just follow the posting guidelines for that section. From there us forum peoples can read what you right about the game and download/play it and we reply our feedback and any bugs we encounter. Don't forget to have your own friends and such do testing for you too if they can. When it comes to testing, you want to have a very wide variety of game-players who will try to play your game differently from each-other.

4) There are various forms of encryption available throughout the forum aside from the default RM Ace encryption, which help more. However of course it's impossible to full-proof encrypt games of any kind, the best you can do is make hackers/decrypting people go through extensive methods which wastes their time. I know there's a few methods here on the forum for encrypting audio and resource files while having the engine being able to properly read them.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

1) Maybe do a test on early, mid and finishing stages of the game


3) You can try to post a thread on the Early project feedbacks subforum


4) You can't. You could possibly try to apply for a copyright of the idea, but I don't think that will pass, coz an idea is just an idea. Everybody can have an idea that are almost the same.

 

[KanaX]

1) Maybe do a test on early, mid and finishing stages of the game

3) You can try to post a thread on the Early project feedbacks subforum

4) You can't. You could possibly try to apply for a copyright of the idea, but I don't think that will pass, coz an idea is just an idea. Everybody can have an idea that are almost the same.

About the plagiarism, I'm not referring  to the stealing of ideas, but the whole game itself. When you give the game to someone else, there is always the chance, that that person may present it as it's own.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

Also, it's best to try to have at least one or two cases where you can watch someone testing your game. Be it a live stream, or someone you know in person. You can see things of great value when you watch people play, especially in terms of menu layouts and map layouts. Do they often go the wrong way somewhere? What is causing this? Do they have trouble navigating the menu? What trends stem from these problems and how can you fix them?

Testers won't often mention these things when they write back to you, but watching them play, you can learn things like "Hey, maybe I need to make the entrance to that building more obvious." or "Maybe I should switch these two things in the menu so it's easier to access that one they ended up needing more."

There's quite a few people who live stream games and give crits on this site, watch for them to mention they are looking for requests and such. Seeing someone play test your game is just super valuable.

 

About the plagiarism, I'm not referring  to the stealing of ideas, but the whole game itself. When you give the game to someone else, there is always the chance, that that person may present it as it's own.

 

Get a feel for the community and you'll quickly start to see who is trustworthy and reliable. There aren't a lot of bad apples on this site though. A lot of games get posted in the early feedback threads often and I cannot think of a case of something like that happening on here. (I could be wrong?)

Also, the best defense against plagiarism is to share your stuff. The more often your work is associated with your name, the less likely someone can get away with stealing it. Share development posts, share your ideas, screenshots, etc etc. Send the game to a few different testers. Your strongest offense against plagiarism is building a reputation and name and a close knit group of people who will recognize your work and call someone out the second things go sour.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@Kanax - then that's more than plagiarism, that's theft already... but the fact still remains, you cannot really protect it. You could try out different things. Your best bet for now would probably be nathan's FEUX service, it's a paid service though


As they say, the only way to protect something is if it doesn't exist in the first place.

 

[KanaX]

Thank you everybody.