Saga Beta Pushes On

IceFire has posted an update on the progress of the WC Saga beta. He discusses some of the methods that the ongoing test has used and some of the issues that have been found so far. There's also a few colorful new pictures.

The kinds of problems you tend to have more on this project are gameplay related. Here are a couple of examples:

• On one of the missions a Terran carrier arrives at a jump point along with its battle group. The carrier is last to arrive and unfortunately was following the same waypoints as an escorting destroyer. Due to game engine considerations the carrier arrives "through" the destroyer and proceeds to fly its waypoints unharmed. Fixed!
• In another mission a group of AI piloted Thunderbolts is supposed to attack a couple of Kilrathi destroyers. The AI instead attacked any enemy craft. Order priorities needed to be altered to make the Thunderbolts do what they were supposed to do. Fixed!

Other problems include issues with the 3D model data resulting in problems with the arcs of turrets such as laser turrets firing through the ship they are mounted on. Identifying the problems is a huge part of the battle. Corrections are made, tested and introduced in the next build of the project.