The team behind IL-2: Great Battles is pushing towards the end of development on three titles that the team announced nearly a year and a half ago with IL-2: Battle of Bodenplatte, Flying Circus Vol 1, and Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka all now looking to cross the finish line. Jason Williams, the Lead Producer for the team, is looking for a team of special beta testers to help them push things across the line. Do you have what it takes? The team wants to hear from you if you do!
Become a beta tester
I’ve done some beta testing in the past and I want to let people know right away that it isn’t all that fun and it doesn’t really give you the preview of the software that you sometimes might think it is. Beta testing means trying the same thing, often repeatedly, until something breaks. Then you document it and file the bug. That’s the life of a beta tester and even community ones tend to spend a lot of time doing the same thing.
That said, it can be fun in its own way and certainly its rewarding to help push a product across the finish line. Especially one that is near and dear to many hearts and minds.
If you’re interested here’s the introductory message from Jason Williams and a link to the forum where you can get in touch.
Everyone,
We have way too much content and new features to test in our final push to complete BOBP, FC1 and TC. So we need to expand our Beta Team and I need to form Special Teams to focus on certain things. I need FRIENDLY and MOTIVATED individual volunteers and and Squadron-based groups who can focus very intently on specific items. You must also be able to follow directions and not make this a campaign for some issue you feel passionate about. This is about finding bugs so the sim works for everyone.
Please post in this thread if you can devote several hours a week over the next few months for focused testing on one of the areas listed below. You will be tasked with testing that particular content or feature until final release. If you do a good job you can stay on when we move to our next Dev. Cycle.
Jason Williams on the IL-2 forums
There will always be something to test.
Interested in being a part of the process? Check out the IL-2 forums for more!
Where did you get the screenshot? Have been waiting for new screenshots of the BP map forever:)
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It was included in the last developer diary update.
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If I had the time, which I don’t, I still wouldn’t do it, especially for free. I too have done it in the past and like you said it tends to be tedious with very little fun to be had.
The truth is, though, that nowadays we are ALL BETA TESTERS one way or the other.
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Indeed. I think the main message is that beta testing is tedious rather than a fun preview of what’s to come.
Some may have the wrong idea.
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Exactly, I’m really not sure why I’d do that for free. But if they find volunteers, why not, and it seems there are plenty of them in that thread (hopefully they get free DLC in return, at least).
I have done that in the past too, for an open-source free MMORPG project, where it’s justified to ask help from users. It’s an insane amount of work and frustration, especially when one has to test and collect info from people who are not experienced in reporting bugs. To the point I hope they’ve already done enough internal testing, otherwise it’ll probably be more work to process the incoming reports than doing the beta-test themselves 😀
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Likely the stuff they need tested will shake out in a larger group purely based on problems. The detailed beta testing will still happen with a closer knit group.
People in this small community love to help. I think that’s fantastic. They just need to temper expectations on what a beta test is and is not – something Jason’s doing in his comment and I’ve reiterated.
For some people this is going to be fun.
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