Found this game a month or two ago and was immediately smitten by the concept. I’m old enough to remember what a disappointment Spore was and none of the games I’ve played that tried to carry that torch ever did it for me…until now I think Thrive could be such a cool teaching tool so I hope to find some way to contribute to the project as well. Programming never did it for me but I do have many years of casual experience testing and providing feedback for all sorts of projects (not just games) with a particular focus on core mechanics/functionality, UI/UX, and generally helping ensure that software is both easy and fun to use - I’m also old enough to remember the earlier days of Linux software where everything looked and worked like some college freshman’s programming homework and don’t think anyone should have to go through that again I think I’m a pretty good bug tester as well, but less hunting for new bugs and more taking one that’s already known and uncovering extra details to help the devs figure out what exactly is broken. Oh and I also write music and mess around with Blender sometimes.
I’d like to apply to the team at some point and do some good for the project beyond just posting on the forums once in a while but I wanted to get a better idea of what kind of regular time commitment (if any) would be expected first; also want to mess around with the game a bit more and get familiar with all its systems
Welcome. We don’t really have any specific commitments, but for a tester to be really useful testing is needed within 24-48 hours of a new pull request being opened.
It’d be awesome to have a relatively active tester on the team who I could throw opened PRs to and have them tested by the next day. This would help development quite a bit as now without active testers I need to do testing on PRs (or accept them as-is and risk major new bugs) instead of being able to put that extra time into making more features for the game.
That sounds like something I could do! I work full-time in a machine shop so unfortunately not really something where I could be doing testing on company time and there are days where I come home and just don’t feel like doing more work, but if an hour or so a day (most days ) to give something a decent shakedown and make sure there’s no major issues would be really helpful then that’s definitely something I could do!
Speaking of bug testing, I was just going through the process of signing your CLA for the application and wasn’t able to link my Github account for that part. Doesn’t matter much if the only thing I’d ever want to upload to Github is code (like I said, programming just isn’t for me) but it could be an issue (for someone somewhere who cares about stuff like licensing I guess!) if I ended up making music or art assets or something that also get uploaded there I just get that “An unhandled error has occured” message every time I click the link button. I’m using Edge (don’t judge me!) but I can’t imagine why my browser would be the issue here. Either way I’m just skipping that part and signing it for now
Well, the testing load is very variable. Most days there’s not much or even nothing to test. Sometimes it might be an entirely quiet week, but then all of a sudden new random people open 3 PRs during a single day.
Thanks for finding an issue. I just confirmed it also happens with Firefox. I’ll investigate tomorrow and try to fix this. I hope it hasn’t been broken too long (I made DevCenter changes a while ago and I tested the basic functionality of the CLA).
I’m fine with that if I can just check what’s there and work on whatever I think I can get done (properly confirm whether or not it works) with the time I feel like dedicating that day. If that works for you I’ll send an application within the next few days!
That would be helpful. How I previously did it when we had an active tester was that I requested review on PRs from the testing team and then Github notification emails would notify the people about the testing need.
Also I found the problem with the DevCenter and fixed it now (I used a wrong method for a single request to the server, which for some reason worked fine when locally testing).
If you already want to get started, we have 2 PRs waiting for testing currenctly:
Though it might be a bit more difficult to test before being a team member as we have an automated build system team members have access to which vastly simplifies the process of testing.
Apologies for disappearing. With the holiday season and a few unexpected life events there’s much less time than usual for hobby projects right now but I’m still committed. It’s been way too long since I’ve been able to be part of a project I really believe in
My next question was actually going to be about that! Having to do builds myself wouldn’t be an issue but if you’ve got a nice build system already in place it would probably be faster to just get that set up after I apply. I’ll get working on that email right now so we can get going!
EDIT I also redid the CLA and linked my Github to it, so no worries about future licensing issues
I think Thrive could be such a cool teaching tool so I hope to find some way to contribute to the project as well. Programming never did it for me but I do have many years of casual experience testing and providing feedback for all sorts of projects (not just games) with a particular focus on core mechanics/functionality, UI/UX, and generally helping ensure that software is both easy and fun to use - I’m also old enough to remember the earlier days of Linux software where everything looked and worked like some college freshman’s programming homework and don’t think anyone should have to go through that again 