Phase of Civ5 in 2010 March - Pre-alpha? Alpha? Beta?

[V. Soma]

Just what the hell is with this?
Can it be that Civ5 is still in pre-alpha state?

What can it mean precisely?

 

[Thyrwyn]

Not sure why it matters. . . .

 

[Chalks]

We know for certain that there are significant aspects that are not yet finalised. This would indicate a pre-alpha stage.

Whether or not this is what Firaxis calls it doesn't really matter. We know the reality of the situation, does it matter what label it gets?

 

[Shurdus]

Same here. Pre-alpha simply means that they did not add all the content yet, or if they did the content may still not work the way they intended it to work. Once the features are in and working the game becomes beta. This is however to my understanding the consencus in doing things amongst developers.

Now that the game is pre-alpha it means that they are still tinkering with the way the game should work and that they are still in the process of adding content. Pre-alpha sounds like they barely begun putting the game together, but that is snonsense of course.

 

[V. Soma]

yes, pre-alpha is nonsense at this time, that is why I am asking
- but folks at Pax East come telling this "pre-alpha" all the time...

 

[Shurdus]

They probably know what they mean by that even though we do not. They obviously do not care about what we know and do not know. For all we know they just want to tell us that the game is still in it's infancy. Whatever words they use to get that message across is not very relevant.

 

[Chalks]

Pre-alpha only sounds like nonsense if you don't understand what alpha means. Alpha and beta are testing stages, during development they have not begun full testing yet, thus it is called pre-alpha.

Call it what you want though, the state of the game isn't going to change.

People get too fixated on these names.

 

[V. Soma]

Call it what you want though, the state of the game isn't going to change.

I don't want to be nitpicking, but what do we use words like 'alpha' or 'beta' for?
To refer to the state of the game, I guess.

So yes, if you call it 'alpha', that means one state,
if you call it 'beta' that means another state - it's not all the same.

In other words: can a game being in pre-alpha realistically be released 6 months after it?

 

[Chalks]

I don't want to be nitpicking, but what do we use words like 'alpha' or 'beta' for?
To refer to the state of the game, I guess.

So yes, if you call it 'alpha', that means one state,
if you call it 'beta' that means another state - it's not all the same.

In other words: can a game being in pre-alpha realistically be released 6 months after it?

Certainly. Alpha and beta testing probably won't last 6 months. If they were already half way through alpha testing the game, I'd expect beta to begin in a few months and to ship shortly after that.

From what I've seen, I wouldn't expect the game to be delayed from their estimate of "fall 2010"

 

[Thyrwyn]

Only time will tell - they aren't worried and have never been late before. I am not worried.

They have also said that they game is far enough along that they have several all-AI games running continuously to test the game.

 

[CTH]

as it was mentioned before, alpha and beta is usually used in a testing context. Alpha test is almost allways internal testing of the game, testing of features and things like that. Beta is sometimes external and is more to find bugs, all features should be in. But there is nothing that say that they cant go back from alpha or beta test to the phase before if they find that some features dont work at all and needs a complete redesign.

I dont see any problem for a game like Civ to havent started the alpha or beta test yet (with a release 6 months away), much of the game is of cause tested during the development and because so little of the game is multiplayer the balancing is not that crucial. (not like starcraft 2 for example or a MMO) so the alpha and beta testing could go much quicker.

 

[Grubsnik]

Normally i'd split the stages up in the following groupings:
Alpha - The Groundworks is done, but not all key features are done yet.
Beta - Feature complete, but still buggy.

Pre-alpha in this context means that some aspects of the game are still undergoing design. This could be diplomacy, the combat engine or something else entirely.

This doesn't really mean they are critically behind schedule, if the game was in beta, but they realized they needed to redo the whole diplomacy aspect of the game, they would technically go back to being in Pre-alpha, then do a new design, which would land them in Alpha, implement it, and voila they are back in Beta.

 

[V. Soma]

OK. I stop worrying then.

I am just kind of surprised they may (as per pre-alpha) be not done with the features...

 

[CanuckSoldier]

as it was mentioned before, alpha and beta is usually used in a testing context. Alpha test is almost allways internal testing of the game, testing of features and things like that. Beta is sometimes external and is more to find bugs, all features should be in. But there is nothing that say that they cant go back from alpha or beta test to the phase before if they find that some features dont work at all and needs a complete redesign.

I dont see any problem for a game like Civ to havent started the alpha or beta test yet (with a release 6 months away), much of the game is of cause tested during the development and because so little of the game is multiplayer the balancing is not that crucial. (not like starcraft 2 for example or a MMO) so the alpha and beta testing could go much quicker.

Well I would disagree with you on your MP comment, the MP code in Civ5 is just as imporatant as any other MP game, and needs a good stress test, not at the level of an MMO, but by far a better effort has to happen than in past iterations of Civ.

Unless you consider it ok, to have major issues on day 1 like they had with Play the World(barely playable) or even Civ4(major lobby game list and player list issues). This is stuff that a small QA team can not reproduce internally as numbers of players are the only thing that can test this.

CS

CS

 

[pi-r8]

The game is 68.2523% done.
I know this with absolute certainty, however, i cannot reveal my sources.

 

[V. Soma]

The game is 68.2523% done.
I know this with absolute certainty, however, i cannot reveal my sources.

Since they started more than 2 years ago,
that would leave us with ca. one more year before release

 

[Hail]

In other words: can a game being in pre-alpha realistically be released 6 months after it?

of course it can be released. the question is in what state. i would guess post-beta

as someone mentioned else on this subforum, in firaxis's terms:
1) the alpha state of game is when all the code for all the features is written, but it can be not working
1.1) first debug substate
2) the beta state of the game is when the code for all the features becomes working
2.1) second debug substate

so i assume that the pre-alpha is a state at which even the code for all features is not even written. the point of testing the ai at this state escapes me.

The game is 68.2523% done.
I know this with absolute certainty, however, i cannot reveal my sources.

let's suppose you are right: so the game has been in development for 2.5 years or 30 months. with 6 months to go that would be 6 / (30 + 6) or one sixth of the time left. 68.2523% is about two thirds or one third of the work left.

so firaxis must complete one third of the work in one sixth of the time

 

[pi-r8]

let's suppose you are right: so the game has been in development for 2.5 years or 30 months. with 6 months to go that would be 6 / (30 + 6) or one sixth of the time left. 68.2523% is about two thirds or one third of the work left.

so firaxis must complete one third of the work in one sixth of the time

Well yeah, assuming that they actually release on time. These things have been known to get delayed...

 

[Chalks]

so i assume that the pre-alpha is a state at which even the code for all features is not even written. the point of testing the ai at this state escapes me.

That depends entirely on what features have yet to be written.

If the multiplayer code has not been written, the AI can easily be tested.

If all the modern units and techs have not been coded, the AI can easily be tested with a tech tree that stops before the modern era.

If the seafaring AI code has not been written, you can still test the AI is able to build cities and play correctly on a map with no sea tiles.

There are a million things that could be missing that wouldn't stop you from testing the AI.

 

[CTH]

Well I would disagree with you on your MP comment, the MP code in Civ5 is just as imporatant as any other MP game, and needs a good stress test, not at the level of an MMO, but by far a better effort has to happen than in past iterations of Civ.

Unless you consider it ok, to have major issues on day 1 like they had with Play the World(barely playable) or even Civ4(major lobby game list and player list issues). This is stuff that a small QA team can not reproduce internally as numbers of players are the only thing that can test this.

CS

CS

It may very well be true that it needs better testing than previously version of Civ, but nowhere near the ammount of testing as multiplayer focused games as Starcraft needs or many other games. The reason is not just balancing but that when you test single player civ you are testing a big part of multiplayer civ also at the same time (not all of it off cause but still) which is not possible in many other games that has a more specific MP part. And I agree with you that there should be some sort of stress test before launch (every game should have that) but I dont think that will happen in any large scale.