That right, I’m prepared to declare Dapple: BETA!

Ok, I do have a looser definition of Beta than most big games companies. In the past, big companies I’ve worked for usually have had a definition that goes something like: “A minimum of X hrs has passed with no must-fix bugs found by QA”. They usually define something called “Dev Beta” as the “First Zero Bug Build”. In my case, since I don’t have any QA, I’m declaring my first zero bug build as Beta.

Basically, I’ve fixed all the bugs that I know to exist in the game. Yesterday I squished a bunch of bugs and I tracked down the last of my memory leaks (Oh Instruments! What a fantastic tool you are for developers!) I must say, the game’s looking pretty slick. (I’m so modest)

Yesterday I also created a game icon for the iPhone home screen and the corresponding 512×512 artwork that iTunes will use. I also discovered something, which is apparently a known issue: if you try to use your big image saved as the “iTunesArtwork” file, that the Apple docs tell you to do for an ad hoc build, it can prevent your app from installing on a device. Spent over an hour last night trying to figure out why my beta build wouldn’t install on my iPod. Turns out it’s because I decided to try to include my new artwork with the build. Well, I guess my beta testers get the game without the fancy new artwork then…

All in all, feeling pretty good about things. Hopefully I’ll submit to the app store by the end of next week, pending any horrible bugs that come up.

I’d feel a lot more like celebrating if a whole bunch of my friends and former coworkers hadn’t just lost their jobs yesterday:

• Disney Confirms Cuts, Consolidations (www.kotaku.com)

Sorry to end the post on a down note…

Owen

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 6:59 am and is filed under Art, iPhone, Misc, Technical, Testing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.