Who Beta Tested This?

It's amazing how bugs can crop up no matter how many computer the game gets tested on. We had 30+ computers in the office running the game without problems, but a team of over 100 gamma testers and we're still getting new bugs in Makes me wish we were making a console game...at least then we'd have 1 set of specs to test against.

Please, if you run into errors (that havn't already been listed and acknowledged), let us know and we will get a fix out ASAP.

The beta testers are listed in the credits.

I was beta tester, and gamma. We did our best considering we have lives and weren't part of a formal testing team with associated proceedures and tools. The process was informal, yet immensly enjoyable and productive. The development team can probably attest to the fact that without the testers you'd be seeing a lot more than eight "significant" (whatever that means) bugs. Or maybe you wouldn't be seeing anything right now, because the game wouldn't have been released until mid year. Credit where credit is due.

Why do you ask? Are you after a group of people to rant at or something? Need something to do while you wait for a patch to fix these eight significant bugs which are stopping you from playing and enjoying the game? Poor form.

I'm another one of the beta/gamma testers. I can't speak for the testing methods of everyone else, but I would log on to the IRC chat room when I got home from work, and ask the devs if there was anything in need of special testing. If there was, I worked on it. Caught several bugs that way. If there wasn't, I hit the sandbox mode with a custom race on a Gigantic galaxy looking for AI issues with large maps, dialogue errors with custom races, etc. To be honest, I never once finished a single game until today, as I restarted every time a new build hit SDC (that would be 2-3 days apart or less most of the time.

We found a lot.

Some of the stuff was pretty obscure to us, hard to track down, and still being tweaked.

The game's not perfect. Everyone involved will admit that.

But it's still a great game to play.

Its been said a lot elsewhere on the forums, but I'd like to say thanks for a FANTASTIC game. 0 problems after about 20 hrs. play. Thanks god for good people still making great games for the pc.

Makes me wish we were making a console game

Ouch! Over $2,000 on my gaming system, and someone in the industry is wishing it was on a console. There is no way I can describe how that half of the gaming industry disgusts me...most of the money, very little 'truly good games'!

I was in the beta and gamma. The game, as-is it very solid.

What I've seen reported on the forums would fall into the cosmetic area or in the hard to reproduce problem.

The beta and gamma team all worked very hard and at the end, we would all be playing the game for hours on end without finding any real bugs.

I think some people, looks at Sontum, have unrealistic expectations of a game that has to work on so many hardware configs and played in so many styles and ways.

I am enjoying the game hour after hour. It works great here.

No offence, Mat, but you're post is offensive. Not to mention moderatly ignorant. *Any* (PC) game releases with a junkload of errors simply because PCs are not all identical; what my computer will hiccup on will be ignored by another computer -- or not come up at all! -- simply because I have different hardware than that other computer.

On top of that, your comment about "Developers are notoriously lax about recognizing errors they will be responsible for fixing... " has the right end result, wrong reasoning. Developers *do* miss a lot of things, not because they are lax and lazy, but because they are a *much* smaller group than the fan base will be. Meaning that they can playtest 30 or so playstyles, probably pretty closely related to eachother, whereas with a million fans you'll probably have half a million or so to deal with, depending on how striclty you define "playstyle".

Um, I was in the beta. I found beta 5 to be pretty stable and the final game is working flawlessly here.

There is no way in hell a game this complex could have been released with it working perfectly for all people. If there is some huge major bug going on that everyone else, I sure haven't seen it.

The closest thing I've seen to a serious problem is the losing mouse pointer problem and, surprise surprise, hardly anyone runs into it. I've got a Geforce 6600 and I've never run into it.

But don't met me stop your rant, share with us the huge mega bugs that everyone should have so easily caught?

Hehe Sorry for that comment, Sunjah...it was more out of frustration then anything I'm glad we made it for the PC...it just a bit overwhelming when you have thousands of different configurations that the game needs to run on.

I played the game for a month on my box without crashes, but players get the gold version and have crashes out of the box It's just disheartening...but at least the people who aren't having problems seem to genuinely enjoy it

I completely agree with Citizen Lugge. Furthermore I don't think that any developer or tester has anything to apologise for. It's a fine game that will only get better, considering StarDock's track record. Sure, lots of people found bugs. They also reported them without making disparaging comments (for the most part). Taking the devs to task is unnecessary.

I'm having problems at times and completely enjoying it! Most companies don't support their products as long as Stardock does, and I have faith in their skill to fix all the bugs. I am willing to wait and get an even BETTER game than what I purchased.

Stardock has the best policies of any Corporation I've run across.

Don't let the naysayers get you guys down, just keep up the good work.

There were hundreds of people with access to tne beta, and players were also involved in gamma testing. This game is not riddled with crippling bugs as you suggest and the vast majority of people are playing unhindered. Personally I found beta 5 to be solid, the gamma builds very solid and the release is playing great.

I haven't spotted one typo either.

Every PC game has some bugs in it, thats just reality. I have no idea what these 'significant errors' you've found are but if you report them Stardock will fix them as soon as they can.

I sometimes wonder if people think before they write.

Here is a game that runs on how many different setups? Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP. How many different video cards? How many generations of video cards.

Out of the bugs that have been posted, how many of them are universal? I have been playing so much this weekend that my wife is really getting teed off at me. Number of crashes = 0. None. Number of problems = 0.

It bugs me to be put into the role of one of those raving "fanbois" that annoy me on forums so much. But you sir are the type of person that helps bring out the worst in people when you come on and make a post like this.

Matt, please do not create multiple posts on the exact same topic. Thanks.

The sort of bugs I have been noticing are major Gameplay related issues, which would not normally lend themselves to being platform specific. For example, a number of people have found that galaxy wide social production bonuses are not being applied. I have personally found more bugs in the custom race creation section of the game than I can count, although most of those are simply annoyances, a few will significantly alter the game (as I said, my custom races have been getting between 4 and 12 starting logistics points) and loading a custom race will often cause the current one to go over the attribute point cap.

There are issues with fleet creation, some combinations of ships under your logistic cap still won't become fleets. The error that all production and research is cut to zero for the turn after you load a save seems huge, although based on the production graphs it happens to the AI as well. The base ship models are not taking advantage of new technology (ok, this one is more of a missing feature) There appear to be many problems with revising a custom ship design, too many to list, although all can be gotten around by starting over.

The point is, if I was able to find this many critical errors without looking for them, I am very dissapointed that the same errors were not found by people specifically looking for them.

Sorry about posting twice on this, the first one had an 'error during post' and since it didn't come up on my post list I didn't think it had been received.

I have to agree with everyone here. The bugs aren't your normal game killing buys from what I've ran into. Alot of them seem to be logic errors (variable not being 0 out, not being added together correctly, etc), and these type coming from a developer background can sometimes be really hard to catch unless you specifically looking for it .

Having bought Galciv1, I'm sure all these will be fixed. To be completely honest, most of my problems I've had have been with Stardock Central rather than the game...and I guess that is a good thing.

As me mate Steve would say: "Crickey!"

Where I work "critical" is a designation assigned to a problem which stops production systems, or significantly impacts their performance. I assume you're still enjoying yourself, as in able to play the game and keep doing so - wanting to do so even. The problems don't seem so critical if you ask me. I don't see how yer rants are helping the cause at all. Seems more like trolling to me.

You weren't there for beta testing, and if you were you wouldn't have made a difference. Expressing dissapointment in those people and the process is counter-productive. Recommend a more productive course of action such as bug reporting as opposed to mean-spirited bug-ranting.

I have to come down somewhere in the middle on this one. There are some pretty silly bugs in the game. For example, why is +4 logistics +4%?! What in the world does adding +4 to your logistics pool have to do with percentages? Why do the government types refer to "Colonies of Earth" when I am playing as the Yor? Why does it say "Invading a star system" when I am invading a planet?

That being said I love the game but it needs to be polished. So long as the patches keep on rolling I won't hold it against anyone. That being said I would hope that the issues I have listed above eventually get buffed out.

Heck, I found some of those bugs. They all had easy work arounds though... Besides, you can be fairly confident they'll be fixed, and in the meantime, what's two extra mouse clicks?

Good luck everyone.

I'll say this. Matt be glad this is not EA or Activision who made the game. They have the worst bug testing and tech support in the world. Ex. Call of Duty 2

IMO Stardock has done a superb job of testing and even after the release they have been here in the forums helping users as best they can. Sure there are some bugs left, but that happens with any piece of software. Heck look at Windows XP.

Sometimes I even wonder if the Stardock devs have gotten any proper sleep lately.

Well that's my 2 cents.

I haven't been getting sleep either, but i've been playing. Game crashes due to a hot video card has made me very grateful for a wonderful zoom out feature, which keeps the processor usage down but does not detract from gameplay.

Frankly, even with some of the bugs or misimplementations the gameplay is not in any way shape or form broken. I simply adapt and keep kickin some Korx a$$ (they have a fetish for pickin a fight with me, every game!) while holding of 9 players on a gigantic map on Painful difficulty.

Game Roxxors. I have not been this strategicaly challenged and behind and trying to keep up in a LONG time. I may be addicted

The thing I am worried about with the production bonus is... I think the computer still get their bonuses, not 100% sure on this one though. Another thing I would point out is a pseudo-bug is all of hte secondary races popping out of nowhere with 5000 credits each and no technology. The easy exploit in the game I've found thus far is selling all of my tech to one of these people and taking 4000 or so off their hands.

It's not the Beta tester's fault that there are some bugs. I am yet to see a "perfect, bug-free" complex computer game get released.

What I AM miffed about though, is how the Beta tester's computers must have been set up. I am wondering if they were all top-notch "ideal" set-ups?

I am hugely dissapointed because I've been so looking forward to this game and my Geforce card is one of the ones that apparently doesn't support true type fonts. And as there is "no fix, sorry, because noone in Beta testing ran into this difficulty", then I am just waiting to hear back from support (who have not replied to my email yet...) about obtaining a refund.

Truly gutted.

The point is, if I was able to find this many critical errors without looking for them, I am very dissapointed that the same errors were not found by people specifically looking for them.

Ok, let us see what some things in what you have found:

For example, a number of people have found that galaxy wide social production bonuses are not being applied

I was the first to report it during the beta.

The error that all production and research is cut to zero for the turn after you load a save seems huge, although based on the production graphs it happens to the AI as well

Yes, the fake turn on the reload is a known problem spottedi n the beta

The base ship models are not taking advantage of new technology (ok, this one is more of a missing feature)

Do you really want to be submerged by lots of ships design? And in case you have missed it, each weapons and armor have a specific component model associated with it. It would be just overhelming to have the core ships up to date with your tech.

There appear to be many problems with revising a custom ship design, too many to list, although all can be gotten around by starting over

Well, I wonder what you would have said during the beta when upgrading works strangely or CTD where caused by obsoleting/deleting ship and loading a previous savegame.

And I prefectly know (it was suggested in the beta) than a copy template feature (to copy only the jewelry) would be nice.

The point is, if I was able to find this many critical errors without looking for them, I am very dissapointed that the same errors were not found by people specifically looking for them.

Why do you think they weren't spotted? The fact that they aren't corrected didn't mean that they aren't spotted. Just that they was more important things that needed to be corrected, like CTD.

For me, a critical error is a CTD or something that haven't a workaround. But I could be wrong.