Jump to content

very quick question about MG status


Silvz

Recommended Posts

Is it me or after the last apocalypse, most of the members did not come back? The forums seem a lot empty these days. Wouldn't it be good to spam a little on facebook/twitter/site that it is back?

That is not the main question, though. I was going through Mangagamer's project status page and I saw, finally, some changes in Umineko's entry. Now the answer arcs are in testing!!!1 But what does that mean?

Then I realized I don't know how the status of them work. Besides translation and editing, they have scripting and testing, beta testing (kind of get it).

What do scripting and beta testing stand for? Can I hope for a release of When They Cry 4 soon?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scripting is basically putting the text into the game, making sure it fits the screen etc. A lot of VN engines have line count limits and stuff like that, so you'll often see lines go out of the textbox etc. Scripting is basically making sure all the lines fits the box and all that.

Beta testing is, well, a beta test. They have people check for bugs, look for typos, make sure everything works and so on.

How long these two takes depends on the game. For instance, if there is a large amount of troublesome lines in scripting, or if there is a game breaking bug that needs fixing spotted in testing, it will obviously mean it will take longer. A bit hard for anyone outside of MG to make any estimate on that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Scripting is basically putting the text into the game, making sure it fits the screen etc. A lot of VN engines have line count limits and stuff like that, so you'll often see lines go out of the textbox etc. Scripting is basically making sure all the lines fits the box and all that.

Beta testing is, well, a beta test. They have people check for bugs, look for typos, make sure everything works and so on.

How long these two takes depends on the game. For instance, if there is a large amount of troublesome lines in scripting, or if there is a game breaking bug that needs fixing spotted in testing, it will obviously mean it will take longer. A bit hard for anyone outside of MG to make any estimate on that.

Hmm, so testing comes after scripting, right? And considering they did not change the game to use textboxes, I hope it will not be a problem for them if they still need to script it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Silvz said:

Hmm, so testing comes after scripting, right? And considering they did not change the game to use textboxes, I hope it will not be a problem for them if they still need to script it.

I'm not 100% sure on how they do it, but I would personally think that scripting comes last, since you'd want the final draft of the text for scripting. Seeing as some changes could be made after testing, that's my guess.

But, I don't know for sure in what order they do those two in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scripting comes before testing. Testing and beta testing are the same thing. Beta testers play on an actual build of the game and their duties involve proofreading and testing for stuff involved in script implementation, like lines that display incorrectly, are cut off, that kind of stuff. They also test the program itself, making sure that there are no bugs or crashes. You need the script in the game to do this or else there's not much point.

The main effort involved in "scripting" is making sure the game works with English text on a English locale computers without any issue. Sometimes, this actually involves rewriting the entire game engine from scratch. This is often what's happening when a game is stuck in "scripting" for a long time. Another reason for it to be stuck there is sometimes the Japanese developers actually handle all the technical work and the process of requesting features/changes and waiting for Japan to implement them can take a very long time depending on the company. MG not wanting to rely on this process is one of the reasons they started reprogramming many games with their own engines in Unity.

Once the programming groundwork is laid, updating the actual game script into a live build of the game tends to be not much effort at all, so there's no real reason for them to wait until after proofreading to do that tech work. This is true sometimes even with amateur projects. On Dracu-Riot, it takes us no more than a minute to get the game running on the latest version of our scripts.

Edited by Decay
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...