[March 23, 1999] - GK III Progress Report
The quality assurance (QA) process has started in earnest. For the last
four weeks, our QA team has been beating on the latest builds and doing a
great job of uncovering many problems in game logic and in code. Getting a
fresh perspective on the game has really helped solidify the product. We
are currently averaging a build a week. Our builds consist of both an exe
and a barn file. The barn is created by compressing all of our resources
into one huge file. During the process of building the barn some
pre-processing is done on the data files to detect errors and to help
speed up game execution.
We also have been working on our test plan. The interface for GK3 is very
different from the previous installments given that it is a real time 3D
environment so we wanted to get feedback as early in the testing cycle as
possible. The external testing cycle will be broken into three phases. The
first phase will focus on Day 1 game play as well as general interface
issues. The second test cycle will focus on Day 2, Sidney interface, and
all of the fixes from the test feedback. The final testing phase will be
the complete game (minus a few pre-rendered cut scenes).
The game has made a lot of progress over the last few months, and we are
looking forward to getting some player feedback.
Steven Hill
Producer, Gabriel Knight 3
