As you may know, creating content, updating games, or changing things already working can be tedious work. Many devs strive for the most stable release of each update. One way the BeamNG.Drive devs could speed up development a bit is to allow community beta testing. If devs want to hide some content from the rest of the community, a waiver could be in place that the user must abide to. There could also be notice upon each startup that the update is in beta and that users will likely encounter bugs. I believe this is a good idea as it takes away some of the tasks of devs fixing issues, while giving those excited for the next update a little sneak peek. Many games do this including (but not limited to): Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six | Siege, Counter Strike:Global Offensive, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and many more. Doing this also gives devs a more in-depth view of where bugs may lie. I'm making this post because I recently viewed the Devblog and read about all the new features the incredible devs are working on and find myself very excited. In the past (forgot which update) I experienced a bug with my game would randomly start to render the map West Coast USA at a very low framerate (from ~60fps to ~10fps) Give feedback on this idea and maybe us community members can help out the devs.
Ever heard of modsgaming/worldofmods? Updates would be released to the public far too soon on their websites. Also, getting a polished update totally by surprise is always fun. Getting an unpolished version earlier ruins the fun of getting an update for me, personally.
good concept, bad people. what i mean by that is if the game is released/ given to ANYONE besides the devs, it could get into the wrong hands (just because you sign/follow a waiver for a bit doesn't mean its not gonna get stolen) also people will brag on the forums and the devs will be bombarded by everybody to become beta testers, further adding to their work load. I like your idea but it needs to be refined.
Well usually such things work out of sight, including contracts of keeping things hidden etc. So you would not even know if there would be such system and applying would probably never happen for such. For example I have been at inner circle of other game and there they contacted me if I would have chance to be part of their beta testing team, then they sent papers which I had to sign and sent to them, that was a legal contract that was required, there was all kind of clauses about keeping things secret etc. and it was devs of that game that did contact me, not other way around. Most developers have inner circle of people doing testing and those people will never tell they are beta testers, because they are legally obligated to be quiet about those things for obvious reasons. That is pretty much what I can tell and that 'job' was quite many years ago.
I agree that we're all beta testers here, so no need for multiple Steam branches because that'd ruin the fun, and put BeamNG.drive in development hell. Even the devs IMO are testers... Testing their work, wondering what's possible within a computer... Drinking coffee like us and dreaming about flying pigeons endlessly around a scale Moon in BeamNG.drive. And our AI robot, Nadeox1, is the one processing it all for them; https://www.beamng.com/threads/update-speculation-thread.20246/page-607#post-892066
From what I am aware of, if this was to go ahead, you would need to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement with the Dev team that holds you legally responsible for any actions if something gets leaked out there say something DOES end up on World of mods or modsgaming you would be in deep trouble...
I mean, it does not have to be like that. I've been beta testing for city car driving a couple of times, and never had to sign anything.
If this were to be done, I would want it only with a very select group of people that the devs themselves choose, who could be trusted... as mentioned before, leaks with something like this would make an incredible mess in terms of development. That and there would need to be an official way for the devs to communicate to their Beta testers that would be much more direct than just some thread like this or even the PM's... something like a private discord server or something so that the devs could stay on top of their testers and make sure everyone was on the same version when testing, making sure they were all using updated content, ect, ect, ect... you get the point. Their would also have to be an official way to properly report the bugs or issues that are found rather than just saying something like, "WCUSA is slow on my computer, fix it" as that would literally help no one... what version are you using, are your drivers up to date, what's your hardware, what vehicle were you using, did you have any other programs running in the background, so on, and so forth... Honestly they would have to hire someone just to keep track of everything as Nadeox1 already has enough to do as is... nevermind manage all of that as well. Off topic: @Nadeox1, I remember when we were learning how to model in blender from Dega back in RoR... you must have completely gone the extra mile though to go and turn yourself into a computer ... I just learned how to model on a computer... you learned how to be the computer!
I feel what you have said here sums it up, it needs to be a set of trusted members, I mean people in good standing on the forum that seems to help out other members when the moderators and the dev team can't help, that's what is needed and as for testing. As for bug testing and software related bugs I feel people on the autistic spectrum would be good for that because I have found myself is that I tend to find bugs. The one example I use is that the game lacks of proper UK imperial units, which I have modded into my game and also adding in additional pressure units as well, if the devs want to see what I have done, I will gladly send them the modded files for them to look at and if they want to implement it they can, also I have modified a few other in game Apps to provide a cleaner detail on the way the data is presented to the user I feel it could be a good thing, but I would make it a rather large beta team that has a vast range of skills from Map makers to car mod makers, so ranging from LUA to JS code, to JBeam as well as Blender for car model improvements in there too and also that could provide a good basis for a team to help out with the devs on certain projects. Those are some of the people I would looking for and sometimes looking for a wide range of skills can be helpful in getting small bugs fixed in maps and cars I feel I have covered what I needed to say, if it needs more information feel free to ask
