Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

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EnsaladaDeTomate
 
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#21

Post by EnsaladaDeTomate » Tue Nov 25, 2014 3:33 am

I would definitely join and help on testing, but for the moment, university is beign insane, so i dont think that ill have free time until january.

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doomjoshuaboy
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#22

Post by doomjoshuaboy » Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:19 am

i could be a tester with the new zandronum 2.0. I don't do internet everyday as much so I would love to be a tester.

cheers

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Arco
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#23

Post by Arco » Sat Jan 10, 2015 8:41 pm

Watermelon wrote: Releases are only done in an untested state if the apathy of testing is so large that we can't wait any longer.
I feel as though as this statement cannot be highlighted enough.

The amount of testing that goes into this has been severely lacking during the past few months due to the fact that no one really cares about moving Zandronum forward with Zdoom. All of the complaining that goes into it doesn’t make it any better, and having 1 to 2 people test on some randomly picked time, realistically, amounts to nothing. Making a release and basically forcing people to play the updated codebase is the only real way to get any type of testing done. I’ve tried to get sessions done on my own machine months ago and it’s been made clear that no one wants to help.
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TerminusEst13
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#24

Post by TerminusEst13 » Sat Jan 10, 2015 11:44 pm

Arco wrote:due to the fact that no one really cares about moving Zandronum forward with Zdoom.
Let me provide an alternative viewpoint.

I've been using 2.0 constantly in development. Almost every little bit of testing I do for my mods has been on 2.0, unless I need massive numbers of people online in which case I test with 1.3, but for the most part I've been using 2.0 constantly.
This was done at Water's request, who I had a little discussion with about how 2.0 would affect a few mods I work on (ZDWars and DemonSteele, specifically). He said that he was working on a few changes that he would really like me to test once he's finished, and that he'll come back in a few days with some new things to check out.
This was about two months ago.

In my case, it feels more like the developers don't care about moving Zandronum forward. Which I can see is blatantly wrong, considering how the last update to the git is only five hours ago and activity is pretty regular, but I'm not really entirely sure what more I need to be doing.
I mean, I'm doing what he asked. I downloaded 2.0, I'm running my mods in it, I've done twitch streams using it and showing it off to people, I'm not really noticing problems so I haven't really had the opportunity to post issues in the tracker.
Is that not working? Do you really need people in #zatesting? Was I told something wrong or did I miss some information?
What more can I do?
Last edited by TerminusEst13 on Sat Jan 10, 2015 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#25

Post by Mr. Repo » Sun Jan 11, 2015 2:28 am

Since Term brought up his experiences with 2.0 as a modder, I figure I'll throw my hat into the ring as well.

I too have also been exclusively using the 2.0 binaries to test any sort of development work with. I actually have made it a habit since the days of Skulltag 98e to use the testing versions instead of the current releases to maximize compatibility for whatever I'm working on further down the line. This also has lead to some strange behavior between versions, but it's a pretty good way of isolating if the new version caused the problem or not. I've definitely experienced more than my share of quirks and bugs, which I have reported as I was able to narrow down the cause. Thankfully it seems most things I've encountered have been fixed by the time I make my way into the tracker so that works out nicely.

The thing is we can't be the only modders using 2.0 to develop with and test concepts on. I know for a fact that there's at least a few mods out there waiting for 2.0 to be released so they can publish their mods, and not to mention the other mods out there already with features planned/coded with the newer binaries that they can't yet release. They at some point definitely had to use 2.0 to test whatever they had worked with to get an idea if the concept worked or not. We all know how folks feel about joining testing servers so releasing anything prematurely before the official widespread release is sort of a moot point here.

What I'm trying to say is yeah, there may not be a whole lot of public playing or large group testing going on with 2.0 to fully test all the new features in a more realistic player environment, (especially considering all the bandwidth optimization going on among other things) but the releases are far from being ignored. Perhaps a widespread release is the best option for that, but overall it's rather unnerving to hear that we really "don't care about Zandronum being moved forward with ZDoom" when there are in fact folks who use & report issues with 2.0.

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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#26

Post by Torr Samaho » Sun Jan 11, 2015 11:08 am

Arco's statement was well-meant, but formulated a bit too broadly. Let me elaborate our view on testing.

First, it is great to hear that mod authors use 2.0 for mod development. This is very important for the development of Zandronum and I remember quite a few tracker tickets that certainly result from this. I greatly appreciate this and can assure you that this helped 2.0 development significantly.

What Arco was referring to is another, equally important aspect of testing, that, to the best of our knowledge, is severely lacking: people playing under real world conditions. In other words, real people playing their favorite game modes or mods with friends or strangers online to have fun. For instance, this bug was a serious problem with client side prediction and went unnoticed for almost 1.5 months till it was reported by a dev. This are the kind of bugs that are very unlikely to be noticed during mod development, but should pop up very soon when playing for a while.

But I think we should stop complaining about lack of testing and instead ask what we, the developers, can do to make you, the players, use beta builds on a regular basis when playing for fun. One thing that comes to my mind is the automatic testing feature. It allows the launcher to conveniently switch between the latest stable version and all official beta builds. If we'd convince server admins to host 2.0 testing servers for all popular mods and game modes, would you use them? What other things can we do encourage you to use the latest beta build?

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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#27

Post by Lollipop » Sun Jan 11, 2015 11:45 am

I have for a long time wanted doomseeker to allow for multiple zandronum paths.
My idea is that it should get the version from the server and boot the correct zandronum version.

I think the real problem is a lack of convinience, I have time and again heard people say
"Because I don't want to change the zandronum path all the time" or similar things.

Or, it could be made more attractive with more mods released for 2.0 only. Then if people wanted
to play them, they would have to use 2.0.
This, on the other hand, would require that it is broadly understood what the difference is from 1.3
to 2.0 from a modding perspective.
Many seasoned modders with lots of experience and who have most likely followed development of
new features on both ports for a long time will easily manage this, such as Term or Repo.
On the other hand, there are also a large quantity of newer modders who have no idea what it really
involves to bring zanny up to zdoom 2.5.0 in terms of features. for them using zanny 2.0 will just be
something they have to resort to when they make a thread asking about a feature that won't run in 1.3.
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Torr Samaho
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#28

Post by Torr Samaho » Sun Jan 11, 2015 11:57 am

Lollipop wrote: I have for a long time wanted doomseeker to allow for multiple zandronum paths.
My idea is that it should get the version from the server and boot the correct zandronum version.
This is more or less exactly what the automatic testing feature already does. I introduced it in Skulltag 98a, but for some reason it never gained momentum.

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Hypnotoad
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#29

Post by Hypnotoad » Sun Jan 11, 2015 12:13 pm

Torr Samaho wrote: One thing that comes to my mind is the automatic testing feature. It allows the launcher to conveniently switch between the latest stable version and all official beta builds.
This sounds like a great idea, but what is defined as the latest stable version, the latest beta on the downloads page of zandro.com? If so, I believe doomseeker/ide already grab these automatically, the problem is most of the time we need to test a much more recent build than that, and it's harder to get people to test if they have to download the build themselves and then either disable the 'testing' feature on these browsers, or create a very specific folder name and put the new binaries in there so that the testing feature works with these new builds; at this point casual users tend to not bother, and testing numbers are reduced.
If we'd convince server admins to host 2.0 testing servers for all popular mods and game modes, would you use them?
Definitely.

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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#30

Post by Edward-san » Sun Jan 11, 2015 12:57 pm

I want to state a great problem here: some people, who made relevant mods (for the community), don't want to investigate the problems they find in zan 2.0 (but also old problems in zan 1.3, btw). If you ask them to try to reduce their problem and/or check if it happens in old and/or new zdoom, they say: "No way!", "I'm too lazy for that", etc. I won't make names, because that would be so pathetic.

I'm sorry for what I'll say: I hope that their mods will break so much when we'll release zan 2.0, they will enter in contact with the hardness of the development.
Last edited by Edward-san on Sun Jan 11, 2015 12:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Torr Samaho
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#31

Post by Torr Samaho » Sun Jan 11, 2015 1:22 pm

Hypnotoad wrote: This sounds like a great idea, but what is defined as the latest stable version, the latest beta on the downloads page of zandro.com? If so, I believe doomseeker/ide already grab these automatically, the problem is most of the time we need to test a much more recent build than that, and it's harder to get people to test if they have to download the build themselves and then either disable the 'testing' feature on these browsers, or create a very specific folder name and put the new binaries in there so that the testing feature works with these new builds; at this point casual users tend to not bother, and testing numbers are reduced.
The automatic downloading of the testing builds only works for the official beta builds, i.e. those found here. We could make official beta builds more often to make this more convenient for the users. The extra effort on our side only makes sense though, if people actually use them for playing then.
Edward-san wrote: I'm sorry for what I'll say: I hope that their mods will break so much when we'll release zan 2.0, they will enter in contact with the hardness of the development.
I feel the need to stress that this is your personal opinion and by no means the view of the dev team as a whole. To the contrary, we are doing our best to ensure that everything that worked in 1.x still works in 2.0.
Last edited by Torr Samaho on Sun Jan 11, 2015 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#32

Post by mifu » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:07 pm

Torr Samaho wrote: If we'd convince server admins to host 2.0 testing servers for all popular mods and game modes, would you use them? What other things can we do encourage you to use the latest beta build?
I think we are in luck. I recently purchased a couple more server boxes so I can host 2.0 once I get them set up. Frequent beta builds would be awesome too though it would not matter for me as I normally get and build via source code anyways.
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RE: Testing team needs you for Zandronum 2.0's release!

#33

Post by Torr Samaho » Mon Jan 12, 2015 7:16 am

mifu wrote: I think we are in luck. I recently purchased a couple more server boxes so I can host 2.0 once I get them set up.
Sounds great! The next beta build should be ready soon.

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