“And now you want to know how I can fix her.”
Sinon Quade, interview from 16B4, Virgon Administrative Maximum Facility
First, a warm welcome to all of the new players that have joined the Battlestar Galactica Deadlock community lately. We have had an influx of new players resulting from the recent Steam Summer Sale - it’s good to have you aboard in the ongoing fight against the toasters.
Since the release of Sin & Sacrifice, the development team has been hard at work developing the Command Update, the first feature update for Season Two currently in closed beta. We’ve previously talked about the changes to the interface to streamline giving orders to your ships. In this post, we’ll take a look at how we run betas, and the progress we’ve made in recent months.
Since putting out the call for beta testers, 117 players have signed up and assisted with testing the latest improvements. Combined, these testers have reported over 150 bugs and made dozens of suggestions.
When a bug is submitted, it’s given a priority based on the impact it has on players. An issue that prevents playing the game is more important to address than a minor graphical glitch.
We then work through the list, fixing the most important/impactful issues first.
“PCMs” by SirWagglepussIII
We also ask beta testers for feedback and suggestions for improvements - both for new features and the changes we make to existing functionality. As developers, we spend all day every day looking at the game, so getting an outside perspective can be really helpful. Whilst we have plenty of ideas for the game, where possible, we also want to fulfil community requests.
An example is a new search feature we’re adding to the fleet builder screen. Commanders that play a lot of skirmishes or multiplayer tend to make a lot of fleets. One of our testers made a request to add a search feature to the fleet list to help with this. As part of developing the Command Update, we assessed this request and its impact as a QoL improvement. Once we decided we’d like to pursue the feature, we wrote up a design spec for the addition, and spent some time creating the component and adjusting the appropriate UIs. Not all requests are as easy to implement, but we are proud of the improvements we
have made, and continue to strive to make this the best Battlestar Galactica experience possible.
“Viper Flyby” by TeacherGalante
We’ll let you know when the Command Update will be available as soon as we can!
Good hunting.
