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January 17, 2006
Meeting Announcement: Tuesday, January 31st, 2005
Speakers:
Leander "Lan" Hasty - Programmer, 1st Playable Productions
Six Million Dollar Tester: Making QA Better, Stronger, and Faster Through Automation
Bret Dunham - Designer, Vicarious Visions
Albany Chapter Mod Project - Presentation and Planning Discussion
Location:
DeJohn's Restaurant & Pub, 288 Lark Street, Albany, NY 12210
Date & Time:
January 31st, 6:00 PM (presentation starts at 6:30 PM)
At the January meeting, Leander "Lan" Hasty, a programmer from 1st Playable Productions, will be giving a presentation based on his GDC 2006 round table discussion entitled Six Million Dollar Tester: Making QA Better, Stronger, and Faster Through Automation.
Following Lan's presentation, Bret Dunham, a designer at Vicarious Visions, will give a brief talk about the Albany Chapter Mod Project. Please attend the meeting if you would like to learn more about the mod, including how you can participate in its development, or if you simply want to be a part of the planning discussion.
Read below for details on Lan's presentation and the Chapter Mod Project led by Bret Dunham.
Six Million Dollar Tester: Making QA Better, Stronger, and Faster Through Automation
Presented by Leander Hasty
Presentation Description:
Quality assurance isn't just for testers anymore; as the industry is expanding and the next generation of development begins, there is an ever-increasing need to avoid problems early, decrease iteration time, deliver better data about both the state of production and the mechanics of the game, and generally allow both testers and developers to spend more time focused on the quality of the end product. This presentation brings to light three areas into which teams can invest tools and automation efforts: prevention, detection, and analysis. Using this framework, teams should be able to identify and prioritize opportunities for future effort, assess techniques and tools used by other members of the industry, and hopefully arrive at a base set of common "best practices" for any game genre and team organization.
Idea Takeaway:
Quality assurance provides a rich potential for tools and automation to supplement, extend, and to some degree replace the traditional duties of test staff, allowing each tester to shift his or her attention to qualitative feedback, and decreasing the iteration time for key members of the development team. By establishing a QA tools and automation "roadmap" with a few distinct categories -- prevention, detection, and analysis -- test engineers can ensure their efforts cover all opportunities, and identify areas of high return for low initial effort. Attendees should leave with an understanding of automation practices in teams throughout the industry, and a framework in which to order and evaluate these in the context of their own projects, as well as specific ideas.
Presenter Overview:
Leander has been working on tools and development support structures for approximately five years. He was the first QA engineer to be hired by Electronic Arts LA and was embedded into the THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE-EARTH team before moving on to support multiple teams at EALA. He also provided build and server support for Taldren during the development of BLACK 9 and the extension and improvement of SHADOWBANE for the Korean market. In August 2005, Leander went to 1st Playable Productions, where he supports a number of handheld and mobile game titles. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Philosophy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Albany Chapter Mod Project: 'Holy Strike'
Presented by Bret Dunham
Bret's description of the mod project, taken from his post on the Albany IGDA forum:
Hello everyone. Kicking off the new year is a game mod project for anyone that is an IGDA member. It will have opportunities for anyone that would like to make a video game and is intended to help expose many of you to processes and methods required for a present day quality product. How we measure this quality will outlined later.
The project will be based around the source engine (valve software). The subject matter will be a Counter Strike variant involving 2 asymmetrical teams (they use different tactics and weapons). This will of course be multiplayer only.
We will attempt to re-use as much original Counter Strike content as possible and focus on game play rules changes to create effectively an entirely new form of game play.
Game play will involve one side that uses conventional military weapons and tactics (grenades, rifles and handguns) versus the opposing team that will use unconventional tactics and weapons. This side will be referred to as the "Holy men". This holy side will use suicide bombing, RPG's, swords and finally "Holy magic" to counter the conventional side.
This core concept has been established and will not change. The supporting rules and game play are currently subject to creation and/or change. Any one joining the team will be given a chance to take part in the final Game Design Document (some having more say than other).
The goals of the project are actually simple. First to start and finish a mod project with in a 6 month time period (this is paramount). Second, delivery quality work with in the time frame. Third will be a product that we feel is worthy of our time spent on the project. This to me means I would be happy playing this game 2 years from now and have pride in the team that did it. Actually, the reasons that inpired this was a growing feeling that the IGDA Albany chapter needed some "buzz". And this is my response. (:
Regular milestone meetings will be held (some call this green light meetings). It is possible for the project to be cancelled before completion if the team believes the goals will not be met (no ones getting paid). On that note I would also tell you we will use a 2 tier approach for work assignments and responsibilities. Tier 1 team members will be assigned mission critical jobs while tier 2 team members will be assigned non critical assignments. All leads will be tier 1 while new comers OR members that feel they are unsure they can be 100% committed will be tier 2. Members will be allowed opportunities to adjust this based on THIER needs. This project is not meant to run your life (:
Any one interested may contact me at Demonhill[at]mac[dot]com
Posted by IanStead at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2006
IGDA Albany Chapter Mod Project
Bret Dunham, a designer from Vicarious Visions is starting a chapter game project in 2006. The project is in the early planning phase right now. Following is Bret's full description of the project (copied from this forum post):
Hello everyone. Kicking off the new year is a game mod project for anyone that is an IGDA member. It will have opportunities for anyone that would like to make a video game and is intended to help expose many of you to processes and methods required for a present day quality product. How we measure this quality will outlined later.
The project will be based around the source engine (valve software). The subject matter will be a Counter Strike variant involving 2 asymmetrical teams (they use different tactics and weapons). This will of course be multiplayer only.
We will attempt to re-use as much original Counter Strike content as possible and focus on game play rules changes to create effectively an entirely new form of game play.
Game play will involve one side that uses conventional military weapons and tactics (grenades, rifles and handguns) versus the opposing team that will use unconventional tactics and weapons. This side will be referred to as the "Holy men". This holy side will use suicide bombing, RPG's, swords and finally "Holy magic" to counter the conventional side.
This core concept has been established and will not change. The supporting rules and game play are currently subject to creation and/or change. Any one joining the team will be given a chance to take part in the final Game Design Document (some having more say than other).
The goals of the project are actually simple. First to start and finish a mod project with in a 6 month time period (this is paramount). Second, delivery quality work with in the time frame. Third will be a product that we feel is worthy of our time spent on the project. This to me means I would be happy playing this game 2 years from now and have pride in the team that did it. Actually, the reasons that inpired this was a growing feeling that the IGDA Albany chapter needed some "buzz". And this is my response. (:
Regular milestone meetings will be held (some call this green light meetings). It is possible for the project to be cancelled before completion if the team believes the goals will not be met (no ones getting paid). On that note I would also tell you we will use a 2 tier approach for work assignments and responsibilities. Tier 1 team members will be assigned mission critical jobs while tier 2 team members will be assigned non critical assignments. All leads will be tier 1 while new comers OR members that feel they are unsure they can be 100% committed will be tier 2. Members will be allowed opportunities to adjust this based on THIER needs. This project is not meant to run your life (:
Any one interested may contact me at Demonhill@mac.com
A formal meeting will be scheduled soon. I would like to have it happen before the end of next week but may need to accomodate college schedules.
As the team forms up I'll be handing over public announcements to other team members. So my postings here in the forum will be limited and further contact information may change.
~Bret Dunham
Posted by IanStead at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
Meeting Report: Thursday, November 16, 2005
On November 16th, 2005 on a rainy Albany evening 31 people met to hear Mike DelPrete talk about his mod for Half-Life 2, Plan of Attack.
A few highlights of the presentation: Mike talked about his teams approach to mod making, promoting their mod and keeping their fans happy.
Thanks to Mike and the folks from Agora Studios for putting together this excellent presentation. Thanks to David Allen for taking photos at the meeting.
Download Mike's power point slides from the presentation here.
Additional links:
www.planofattackgame.com
www.agorastudios.com
www.agoragames.com
www.american-sk8land.com
Posted by IanStead at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)