Update - 2 January 2017 (Patreon)

This week's image

If you've played the beta then you may have seen this image in the victory suite. If so, sorry, I will have new images to show you soon! In the meantime, though, the next PAL update isn't slated to have any new pictures other than a couple that were accidentally left out of the last release. It's all bug fixes now, really.

I think this is a pretty good butt pic, anyway. For those of you who haven't seen the scene, can you tell whose butt it is?

Pervert Action: Timelapse

I hope you saw the announcement I made for my next big project, Pervert Action: Timelapse the other day. I'll be revealing more about the game soon!

Where was last week's update?

I don't know if you noticed, but I skipped the usual weekly, patrons-only update last week. This was because:
- Christmas kept me busy this year,
- Since the game is in beta it's a little hard to show you new images,
- I released a public update just a few days before that I thought was pretty good, and
- I didn't really have anything new to add after that update - I was still just continuing to work through bug reports.

Updates are resuming as usual this week. I won't make a habit of skipping them, even if I'm on holiday. I just felt like an update this Monday really wouldn't add anything.

PAL v0.15.1 released for $5 patrons!

If you didn't know, I released a version of PAL for $5 patrons this week! It's the second beta, which will be the only release for $5 patrons before the public release because... well, I'm getting close to the public release. Also I only just recently changed the reward tiers, so that's why it's a bit different now.

Anyway, it's got a bunch of bug fixes from the last version, but not a lot of new content because this is the beta stage, which is all about testing the final build and giving it the polish it needs to make sure it's bug-free.

Beta testing

I've been testing all this week. It's been going fine but you'd be surprised how much work a proper beta-test takes. Obviously throughout the process I've received bits of feedback if people encounter really blatant problems. Making a game (at least, a game like this) really seemless requires it to be thorough and responsive to commands. When you type something you should get a relevant response, and wherever possible an interesting response. More importantly, things shouldn't screw up just because you do things in an unexpected way or in an unusual order.

Therefore real beta testing is needed in which testers vigorously try to 'break' the game. They deliberately attempt to do things that I might not have thought of, then they take notes of all the results. When something is reported I make it a rule that I try to fix almost everything. If someone tries something and finds it to be odd or apparently faulty then I think generally I should try to fix that. Not necessarily in the way they tell me to fix it, of course, but in a way that at least addresses the root problem in some way. I would say I usually wind up fixing about 95% of what testers report (although sometimes I've already done it because testers do double up reports).

The best at this is A. Bomire, who produces really substantial reports. In fact, I really don't know what I'd do without him! I've had other great testers before but they've mostly retired from testing - A. Bomire's still in it and still doing a great job. That's not to say he's the only one giving useful and helpful information, though; there are other people being thorough and it's always good to have multiple viewpoints. I just happen to know that A. Bomire will check every object, try to go everywhere, do everything, turn over every rock and stick his fingers in every power socket. That also means I have a lot to work through, though.

Now, I should mention that I think I probably could get away with being lazy about the beta test and just releasing the game as it is, with a few functionality bug fixes (so that all the content can be accessed and there's no significant bugs that lock stuff off). I do, however, have higher standards than that. I intend for the 1.0 release to be as close to flawless as realistically possible so I don't need to release any later patches. I don't have Steam or other auto-update software so I can't get lazy like normal developers do. :) I also really like you to be able to try something weird and obscure but perfectly logical and still get a response that at least makes sense. That's good gameplay.

Got a question or comment? Leave it below! I always appreciate it!