Reflecting on AIS R11 and HS2 R6 (Patreon)

Now then, this release turned into more of a lively serving than I had hoped, so join me, as I reflect on what happened here, and what may be learned from the event at hand...

I started work on these two repacks basically the hour I were able to after being bedridden post the second covid vaccine, with a projected release on the 9th, so that I hit nicely, good on me, though the reception was mixed.

So, what caused the reception to be hit..?

Testing?

For each of the main games, I poured in about 12 hours combined in testing, that would be 24 hours, and then poured in about 5 in each of the studios, that would add up to a 34 hour testperiod, so clearly the time I put in didn't avoid this. It allowed me to catch several other problems and address them, but it didn't allow me to catch EVERYTHING as that singular missing DLL kinda fucked up my weekend in the end. Testing in and off itself isn't at fault, so... the methodology? 

The problem was caused by a string of events leading up to the pack.

1. The original creator of BonesFramework has been busy IRL, so his plugin development has been slow. Not a bash at him, this happens.
2. In response, the plugins has been further developed by others in the community, and then bundled as a part of BetterPenetration. I then removed the old plugin from my pipeline and added the new as part of BP.
3. BP migrated to ModBoneImplantor. No longer using BonesFramework, the replaced new version of BP in my workflow lacked the file in question, and I failed to take note.
4. I got "lucky" and none of the clothing spot testing I did utilized said plugin, and none of my test cards utilized it either, resulting in both games passing testing after the most extensive test I've done in over a year.

Now, this failing is 100% on me. I could've manually split out BoneFramework from BP as to make sure that no changes in BP would cause problems for my pack, though that itself could backfire if somehow the BoneFramework version bundled no longer were compatible and caused problems.

There's no use here trying to assign blame, I'm the one you all depend on to catch stuff like this to avoid any irritating problems post release, especially when it's a plugin that affects a lot of clothings and even uncensors, as such this is something that I need to learn from and turn into a opportunity for continual improvement.

I have already started work on releases targeted for next weekend, but tomorrow, I will give those a break to reevaluate my testing methodology, create new cards for all the games I pack for with more diverse mod usage so that failings will have a harder time to slip by, and basically pray to higher powers that it suffices to improve the testing.

Now, does that mean that I will deliver perfect releases at all times? Embarrassments like AIS R11, HS2 R6, KK RX4 (Yes, I remember that very well, hard to forget that I managed to ship a pack with several vanilla voice files missing) will stop happening? Unlikely, but that doesn't mean I should just throw my hands in the air and declare "shit happens". Failings will happen, and I will continue to learn from it and improve my testing.

For those of you that have the patience to deal with my occasional dumbassery, I'm grateful for your patience... for those that don't... I'm sorry...

These games have a vast amount of mods available, and the interplay between them can sometimes be something of a mess, and on top of that I am human too, and will occasionally be a dumbass.

So in conclusion; my testing failed, and that needs to be addressed. Fuckups will still happen, but I learn from them and apply continual improvement to my workflow.