Beta testers wanted for NZ-made games (urgent)

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sknightly

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#64218 11-Jul-2010 09:14

We need beta testers for three awesome locally-made student games - and feedback by this Thursday 15 July.

Three teams of Media Design School students presented at this month's Game Developers Meetup and we were pretty impressed by the quality.

MDS' Graduate Diploma of Game Development ends with a 6 month practical project, where teams of programmers and artist work together to make a game. ?This year they've opened the games up for a public beta - the challenge is that they need (intelligent) feedback by Thursday 15 July (or earlier) as Friday is their deadline.

You can download the Betas here: http://www.mediadesignschool.com/game-testing

Someone described the games as:
Dead Steel: Modernized Alien Breed
Guardians of Eldvery: World of Warcraft meets Tower Defence
No More Gentleman: Left 4 Dead in Victorian England

They're all big PC downloads, made from scratch. ?It's the only 100% games-related degree in NZ, so give some feedback and support the next generation of Kiwi game developers.

magu

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#349878 11-Jul-2010 09:31

Sounds really interesting. Downloading the bottom two games and forwarded to a list of friends who gather for gaming every Thursday.

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freitasm

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#349887 11-Jul-2010 09:58

Tried No More Gentlemen now, on a Windows 7 Ultimate PC.

It tried installing NVIDIA PhysX. This laptop already have it installed (thanks to Steam), and don't need it because I am running an ATI video card anyway.

Then it created a readme document on the desktop but did not create the shortcut on the desktop as requested.

When I clicked the Start game option at the of the install I got this:

Note I am already running an account in the Administrator group. There's no way I will elevate a game to run on my PC, so the test ends here for me...

jamesyb0i

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#349917 11-Jul-2010 12:44

*Reserved* Ill give them a go. My brother goes to that school and im a computer science major

Tel69

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#349920 11-Jul-2010 13:45

Guardians of Eldvery (Windowed mode)
Pushing Escape in the game brings up the menu, but the game continues on in the background.
No way to find out the controls of the game or change them.
Auto Attack changes target OFTEN.
The one time I managed to hit something I wasn't actually trying to. (Once again I didn't know how to attack)
Icons for spells, etc too small.
Changing resolution doesn't work.
Charging straight at the door the baddies come out and waiting there of seems to stop them doing anything.
Tutorial mode should have some popups explaining what your meant to do and how.
*** EDIT ***
Game installs itself as Krustallos.
Hitting escape to bypass the logos when you start the game makes the game close.
Uninstalling the game leaves the Krustallos directory with a log file on the hard drive.

Paulthagerous

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#349921 11-Jul-2010 13:47

Tel69: Guardians of Eldvery (Windowed mode)
Pushing Escape in the game brings up the menu, but the game continues on in the background.
No way to find out the controls of the game or change them.
Auto Attack changes target OFTEN.
The one time I managed to hit something I wasn't actually trying to. (Once again I didn't know how to attack)
Icons for spells, etc too small.
Changing resolution doesn't work.
Charging straight at the door the baddies come out and waiting there of seems to stop them doing anything.
Tutorial mode should have some popups explaining what your meant to do and how.

+1, except for me changing resolutions worked. Couldn't figure out how to attack etc. Sure you hit the 'Apply' Button after chosing resolution?

Tel69

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#349923 11-Jul-2010 13:55

Paulthagerous:
+1, except for me changing resolutions worked. Couldn't figure out how to attack etc. Sure you hit the 'Apply' Button after chosing resolution?

I've just double checked, there is no apply button for me at all.
Full screen and the shadows didn't work either.

jamesyb0i

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Master Geek

#349936 11-Jul-2010 15:26

ahhh i wrote a long review and i can't submit it cos the forum says it has bad words but i can't see any and it doesn't tell me what they are, honestly this forum is fail, wouldn't let me post images or edit my first post

http://projectitzcold.blogspot.com/2010/07/bug-testing-for-game.html

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Tel69

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#349937 11-Jul-2010 15:38

Dead Steel

Installation a lot nicer, standard terms pages and todo's you'd expect for a beta.
Installs to a directory your expect.
Asks if I want to create the directory.
Start Menu location understandable.
It didn't try to install C++ Runtime, NVIDIA PhysX (Which I had installed anyway)
So all told a VERY nice installation.

Had a major problem with DX10, multiple resolutions (Everything was yellow and red), but DX9 worked fine.
In the Tutorial, Perk Selection screen overwrites the text your meant to be reading about what perks are.
XBOX 360 controller option didn't work with my Logitech controller.
Holding down 2 directions (W and A for example) intermittantly does not result in a diagional move.
The controller selection should be a part of the general game options from the main screen, not on a per game basis. (Personal opinion)

AI intelligent and able to cope with what I did,

Full screen got blocked by my firewall, (As sometimes happens), however it did not allow me to ALT-TAB or CTRL-ALT-DEL back to windows to tell my firewall to allow it, every time I got a flash of windows it went back to full screen.
The game should check if it is the active window before trying to continue as people will want to ALT-TAB out of the game once in a while back to windows.

Changing resolutions should be an option thats changable in the game, not when you start it.

Uninstall left behind multiple folders and files on the Media Design School\Dead Steel directory.

But overall well done.

Tel69

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#349938 11-Jul-2010 15:41

jamesyb0i: ahhh i wrote a long review and i can't submit it cos the forum says it has bad words but i can't see any and it doesn't tell me what they are, honestly this forum is fail, wouldn't let me post images or edit my first post

http://projectitzcold.blogspot.com/2010/07/bug-testing-for-game.html

Perhaps one of your filenames has said bad word.
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/8270/holy.......png

jamesyb0i

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Master Geek

#349939 11-Jul-2010 15:45

ah that'd be it, hah

Tel69

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#349945 11-Jul-2010 16:09

And when I say "XBOX 360 controller option didn't work with my Logitech controller. ", I would have been surprised if it had worked. I think you should not just support 1 single controller, but be very generic.
However you can't test every controller thats the "same as" an XBOX one on the PC.

I can't test the XBOX controller function, but if it works fantastic.
Doing something more generic with the windows calls would open it up abit, BUT if it works with an XBOX controller your doing good work.

freitasm

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#349950 11-Jul-2010 16:23

jamesyb0i: ahhh i wrote a long review and i can't submit it cos the forum says it has bad words but i can't see any and it doesn't tell me what they are

Good feedback. We now show what word(s) caused the post to be rejected.

jamesyb0i: honestly this forum is fail, wouldn't let me post images or edit my first post

You can post images if you switch to the full text editor and click the Image icon then you can easily add an image. IF your image filename contains a bad word it will be blocked. Nothing wrong there.

As for "edit my first post" we lock edit after 15 minutes. We have reasons for that.

Tel69

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#350050 11-Jul-2010 22:47

No More Gentlemen.

Setup didn't ask me if I wanted to create the directory I wanted to install into.
Copying Aug 2008 DX files to it's installation directory?????
Trying to re-install DX10, PhysX and the VC restributible as noted above by Mauricio.
Also as noted ALL these 3 games require elevation to run?
WHY is that?

ALL 3 games also open up a TCP port (supposedly for multi player), but they should not be opening that port unless they are running in multi player mode.
I would normally deny ANY program trying to open a TCP port on installation unless I expected it (But since this is in a sandbox, well hey).

Installation into a non standard directory causes the icons on the start menu for the game not to be created and no desktop icon.
(I do however have the Word document, the web link, and the uninstall link in the start menu.)

Starting it locked my mouse into it's window until I ALT-Tabbed my way out of that window and even in notepad I have to alt-tab my way to other programs.
Once again not looking at the active window. Even minimising the active window this game takes control back.
If it's NOT the active window, then it should not be taking focus.

Whilst alt-tabbing to write this, the game (in the options menu) now won't let me click on anything and I had to kill the process.

For game play the shooting seems to be a bit off (Direction wise).
I lost on the first stage and I could not use the menu after that. (I personally don't think the game liked me changing the resolution)

Great Graphics but the game play has a lot to be desired.

ringbearer

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#351800 15-Jul-2010 11:32

Played NMG, great game. A few things I noticed, in a quick play through:

Same problem as freitasm, but was easily solved by opening the game though the start menu link.

I found it difficult to tell what rate the weapons were firing at, as the muzzle flash didn't seem to match the sound.

If I ran out of ammo, and reloaded automatically, I couldn't continue firing until I clicked the mouse again.

Just a few minor details.
Cheers