From the desk of Robin Bradley, Team Quality Assurance Lead June 2-6, 1997 Monday, June 2, 1997 It's a beautiful spring day in the mountains. I awake before the 6:00 AM alarm. Today is a good day! Today is the 1st working day since I re-vamped the Dragon Fire web site. The fans have had a chance to view the new and much anticipated web site for one entire weekend. I make the left turn to work with no problem, without a moment's hesitation (a right turn takes me into Yosemite, nuff said). The moment of truth has arrived. What will the folks think of the new web site? What great amounts of mail await me? I access my qfg mail account and wait for the numbers to appear. 0 messages. I stare in mute amazement. 0 messages. OK, must be a problem here. I'll access the account again. 0 messages. Naturally, I contact the people I have the account with. They claim there isn't a problem. Everywhere I look, no problem. With alarm I access a board on a popular site and ask if anyone is having problems contacting our account. It remained all quiet on the western front for the rest of the day. Tuesday, June 3, 1997 Coding is developing on schedule but I am unable to test as yet. Spent most of day acting as liaison between fans and Lori Cole, i.e., expressing their ideas and viewpoints. Everyone wants so much for this game! I think this is the first game I've worked on here at Sierra where the fans truly have a hand in the design. There are some great imaginations out there. Still no mail from the fans. I'm starting to feel lonely_ Wednesday, June 4, 1997 Another flawless morning. I accessed my Quest for Glory mail account with some trepidation. Trepidation to joy in a heartbeat! But then the messages climbed to over 100 and my heart sank. But it wasn't the hate mail I expected. The majority of the messages were subscriptions to the Famous Adventurer's Correspondence school. Before I updated the web site FACS subscriptions had dwindled to almost zero. This is good news indeed! I talked at great length with Chance Thomas, our Dragon Fire composer, about some of the themes in the game. Chance's music is awesome and it is difficult not to feel humbled in the presence of it. However, I voiced some of my concerns about retaining some of the original themes from past Quest for Glory titles particularly the opening theme and fight themes. In my opinion, those tunes are synonymous with Quest for Glory and should only be embellished or embroidered but not changed. It appears that the majority of the fans agree with me. As I get ready to check out for the day I noticed that Lori Cole had answered almost all of the fan mail I had forwarded to her. Thursday, June 5, 1997 Found this morning that the web boys in Seattle liked the Quest for Glory logo on our new web site so much that they put the logo on the front of a T-shirt. A nod to Terry Robinson for the logo. Speaking of Terry, Terry was instrumental in designing the new web site. Today is a long day as every day is on this project. So much to do! A little bit of time devoted to the demo takes time away from the game, and so on. It's an incredible juggling act. The days don't appear so much long - it's that the days appear too short. Received 20 new subscriptions to FACS. I'm currently working on my next newsletter, which already is almost over due. Friday, June 6, 1997 I'm finally getting some feedback on the new web site. It appears that I achieved one of my goals with the web site, which is to help head off the incredible mountain of mail I receive by answering the most frequently asked questions at the web site. That's what the news portion of the web site is all about: to keep the fans up to date with the latest developments without having to wait for the newsletter. I'm devoted to my occupation, which is Quality Assurance. But, sometimes things slip by me. What can I say? I'm not perfect. Thanks to the fans that pointed out some of my typos on the new web site. I must admit, I was in somewhat of a hurry to get the web site updated. Hence, mistakes made in haste. But rest assured I'm in no haste when I test the quality of any product the fans are going to spend hard-earned buckazoids for. Most of the problems I encountered today concerned the music samples at the web site.
Found solution (dohe!) and fixed problem. The demo isn't finished yet but every time I
have a spare moment I fire it up and just walk ego around, watching day fade to night,
winging fireballs at everything and generally enjoying the ambiance that is Quest for
Glory. Ahhh, what a tough job. |
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