Rebirth release date. - Part 2

Voyadjyer · Post by **Voyadjyer** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 13:46

Cycrow wrote:
Voyadjyer wrote:suggest Egosoft make possible the pre-order the game with early access to the beta version of the game. Fans of the game can get your game faster, and help developers in troubleshooting and help perfect game
or if you really want to help with the game, you could just sign up to be a beta tester

I'll be happy to do it. where this can be done?

Gazz · Post by **Gazz** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 13:48

Check your forum profile and scroll all the way down.

BarrenEarth · Post by **BarrenEarth** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 14:00

Gazz wrote:Maybe you're thinking of "feature freeze" where no completely new features are going to be added.
Freezing the code and then going through an alpha/beta test would be silly because fixing the bugs in code and assets is the whole point. =)

BarrenEarth wrote:No no no, not a victim... just giving you the chance, so later on when I get even more annoying I can say "well ya had your chance "
You're not nearly enough gangsta to be banned just for that. =P

I don't want to argue with you but in Software Project Management we call Code Freeze the point where no new untested code may be added to the source code in order to prevent unintended consequences on already tested parts of the existing code.

Hence, once you have a release candidate, you code freeze and begin working on bugs.

Feature Freeze is what we call the point where no new features may be added to the project as a whole, which normally dictates that Alpha testing may proceed to get us to the point where we can code freeze. Athough, sometimes feature freeze is used to define the point where a final beta is being released and nothing will be added to the game only cosmetic bug fixes.

Either way, if you are not to Code Freeze yet, in either your definition or the rest of the Project Management world, then you have a long long way to go for final retail release.

ldarkelfl · Post by **ldarkelfl** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 14:18

Gazz wrote:Check your forum profile and scroll all the way down.

Do you mean the X-DEVNET part?

Post by **Cycrow** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 14:28

ldarkelfl wrote:
Gazz wrote:Check your forum profile and scroll all the way down.
Do you mean the X-DEVNET part?

Yes, Devnet members are the ones that have beta tested the games.
enter you information to get level 3 access, then send the NDA to get level 5

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 14:30

DevNet FAQ.

Ratzsa · Post by **Ratzsa** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 14:50

Dupin wrote:
Ratzsa wrote:I just hope the game is out before june so I can play the hell out of it at Dreamhack.
I recommend expect for the game at the end of 2013 or early 2014, otherwise nothing good happens. We all must calm down and give Egosoft some time.

That's fine too. There's always Dreamhack Winter.

draba · Post by **draba** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 16:16

garthnok wrote:I am also glad to see egosoft really taking their time. I was there for the X3 launch and remember how buggy it was. They had it running smoothly in 3 months but they should have held it for those 3 months.

That's just the result of being a relatively small company working on a bigass game.
No matter how many extra months of development you throw at it,
the number of problems will not significantly decrease after a certain point.

Having separate, well-organized QA is a nice step towards the light,
but as BarrenEarth wrote earlier nothing discovers issues as fast as doing a beta/going live with loads of users.
He is a bit overly dramatic about Rebirth but definitely got this one right

softweir · Post by **softweir** » Fri, 22. Mar 13, 18:38

BarrenEarth wrote:
softweir wrote:
BarrenEarth wrote:Speak for yourself! I'd be seriously worried about my mental health if I started wasting emotional energy on the possible fate of just *ONE* game.

It's just a game. A very promising game from a great company - but it's just a game. I will be disappointed if it doesn't come out, and very surprised, and sorry for the developers: but that's as far as it goes.
Why did you attribute a quote to me that I did not say?

And I agree with LTerSlash... If it is released, 2014 at the earliest.

Sorry, I meant to quote a part of your post, and stupidly deleted ALL of it! It was the post where you said something along the lines of "we're all worried". *We* aren't - *you* are.

I haven't go ttime now, but I'll go back and fix my post later.

zurakx · Post by **zurakx** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 02:19

Cycrow wrote:
ldarkelfl wrote:
Gazz wrote:Check your forum profile and scroll all the way down.
Do you mean the X-DEVNET part?
Yes, Devnet members are the ones that have beta tested the games.
enter you information to get level 3 access, then send the NDA to get level 5

WARNING!!!!!!!

If you are using a common user name and password for this forum that you also use on others do not sign up to devnet. You are required to put in information such as full name and home address.

I use the same name and password for any forum or site i use that does not require personal or billing information. Its just easier that way. I also lose nothing if i get hacked. This has been sniffed/hacked before on some site other than this one.

I got a warning here that said i had a log in from an out of normal range IP xxx.xxx.xxxx.xxx. I typed it in to google and it was a China IP address. This also happened to several other places recently. Again I lose nothing but I now know my name and password are on a list that gets put into all sorts of websites to see what info they can get.

If you use the same terrible internet security i do for these forums I suggest making a new account and secure password and signing up for devnet with that account unless thats against the rules.. then just change your password to something hard.

Danielwhateley · Post by **Danielwhateley** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 02:57

i got all excited when i saw that a game website i usually buy games from actually has pre-order for x:rebirth, not that you can pre-order it yet because the price isn't there nor a release date, but this must be a sign that its not far from release.. also excited to know that everything is working out for the development of the game, looking forward to finally playing it when it does release

TonyEvans · Post by **TonyEvans** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 03:23

Did the thing to get lv 3, how do I send in NDA?

A5PECT · Post by **A5PECT** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 03:55

Go back to your profile page and there should be a link to the DevNet L5 application in place of the L3 one.

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 12:40

Danielwhateley wrote:i got all excited when i saw that a game website i usually buy games from actually has pre-order for x:rebirth, not that you can pre-order it yet because the price isn't there nor a release date, but this must be a sign that its not far from release..

I don't want to dash your hope, but pre-ordering X Rebirth on various websites and online stores is possible, since it was revealed. So you can't really make conclusions about the state of the game based on the fact that you can preorder it.

TonyEvans wrote:Did the thing to get lv 3, how do I send in NDA?

Below the L3 DevNet information fields there is a link to the NDA, which you have to sign. Also, if you haven't done so, you should read the DevNet rules and guidelines thread linked in the DevNet FAQ, which was mentioned by Alan some posts ago.

Night Nord · Post by **Night Nord** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 18:50

BarrenEarth wrote: Either way, if you are not to Code Freeze yet, in either your definition or the rest of the Project Management world, then you have a long long way to go for final retail release.

Code freeze isn't something that happens once. RCs are done all the time to show the progress for publisher (some studios are even sending nightly builds to the publisher) and each RC is "code frozen" (i.e. only bugfixes are allowed).

In our studio we trying to get with such scheme: each feature is developed in separate branch and frequently merged with "main" branch. As soon as feature is complete, it's merged again, tested and then merged back into "main". That way main is mostly-stable. If there are new-found bugs in main, then they are fixed in current RC branch, which is merged back to main after some time (and new RC spooned out).

You see: there are more than one possible scheme. If you are using DVCS - there are MUCH more.

I mean: that's quite silly to assume that everyone works like you. Especially if you are outside of industry.

sunu · Post by **sunu** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 20:08

BarrenEarth wrote:Before you go to beta you do what is called Code-Freeze

BarrenEarth wrote:If something was to get passed as a Release Candidate and subsequently be approved for Code Freeze

BarrenEarth wrote:"code-freeze" which is a step to get something from pre-alpha to pre-beta

BarrenEarth wrote:once you have a release candidate, you code freeze

BarrenEarth wrote:Alpha testing may proceed to get us to the point where we can code freeze

This is what happens when there is a big confusion in one's head or doesn't really know what he/she is talking about and just talks random hoping no one takes notice.

BarrenEarth wrote:Either way, if you are not to Code Freeze yet, in either your definition or the rest of the Project Management world, then you have a long long way to go for final retail release.

I don't know what world you live in, but in the planet called Earth, in what I presume the rest of us live, the stages of a software project, such as those from the Apache Foundation, are:

Stage 1 (Design) - determine and design new features for next release.
Stage 2 (Development) - Work on new features.
Stage 3 (alpha) - All new features exist, but there are bugs. May fail some unit testing. Feature Freeze (difficult in an open source environment).
Stage 4 (beta) - No show stopping bugs and all unit testing completed. Request outside developers to start working with release. Fix bugs.
Stage 5 (release candidate) - All known bugs have been fixed and the product is presumed stable. A wider audience tries the release. If not bugs are found in a 5-day period (suggested), the release goes final gold master. Source code freeze unless bugs found.
Stage 6 (Gold Master) - The release is final.

Source: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~michele/SP/final.doc

From the product manager of ColdFusion at Adobe: http://www.cfinsider.com/enclosures/Man ... r_SDLC.pdf and http://www.cfinsider.com/enclosures/Rel ... nning.xlsx Different terminology the same picture overall.

From a program of the European Commission: http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/defaul ... t_v1.0.pdf The same structure like the Apache Foundation analyzed to death. Summary: ... --> code freeze --> final release candidate --> if no new critical bugs --> release.

If you don't agree with the above, don't say that to me, I'm not on par with Knuth like someone here seem to believe for him/herself anyway, but write a letter to the Apache Foundationm, Adobe, European Commission, some of them, all of them, whatever you see fit, and tell them that they got it all wrong and they live in a different "project management world".

This is the first and last post from me in this thread. I've not bet my life on X:Rebirth. The ones that have really bet their lives on it are the Egosoft employees and I don't see/hear them complaining. When X:Rebirth will be out? It will be released when it will be released (it is done when it is done). Anyone that has written even a single line of code, whether he/she boasts about it or not, should know that. Oh, but you will say, in the real world there is always a strict timetable, a schedule that has to be met. I will say that a timetable only binds those parties that have set it under a contract, no one else apart from them. So I guess you see the pattern by now, it is done when it is done.

Anyone who wants more from me on this subject, correspodence throuph PM only.

BarrenEarth · Post by **BarrenEarth** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 22:18

This is devolving into a bickering fight. I would point out that if one were to follow Sunu's development cycle that you would run into massive problems.

Code Freeze and Feature Freeze are often confused. Now, you are talking about the game, and I am talking about the source code, engine and backbone development.

When I say Code Freeze, I am using the universally accepted project management term that includes having your source code to the point where future changes would effect development of features.

Feature Freeze is what you get when you finish alpha and you have a complete game (which still contains bugs) and you are ready to test said complete game in open or closed Beta.

When the devs said they have no got to Code Freeze, I believe they understood what I was saying in universal terms that they are not yet ready to start development of features, the source code is not finished.

Thank you and have a nice day.

BarrenEarth · Post by **BarrenEarth** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 22:22

In your PDF explaining the adobe life cycle using SDLC they use this:

 Requirements Freeze (RF)
 Spec Complete (SC)
 Spec Freeze (SF)
 Functional Freeze (FF)
 Functional Business Validation (FBV)
 Functional Testing Complete (FTC)
 Acceptance Testing Complete (ATC)
 Code Freeze (CF)
 Full Regression Complete (FRC)
 Integrated Test Complete (ITC)
 Ready for Release (RFR)
 Release Date (GA)

They are using the term Code Freeze as meaning no more coding or bug fix. What we would call Code Freeze is the same thing as Functional Freeze, since they are not developing a seperate engine for something that they pre-developed in universal use of their projects.

Understand that different software development systems call it different things, but you have to freeze the source code in order to use it to develop the rest of your program.

Whatever I will just call you dumb and I am sure this will all get deleted.

BarrenEarth · Post by **BarrenEarth** » Sat, 23. Mar 13, 22:24

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/723 ... in-effect/

This is a good example of Code Freeze before Beta.

eladan · Post by **eladan** » Sun, 24. Mar 13, 02:55

@BarrenEarth - seriously? You're right and everyone else is wrong?

What you call code freeze clearly seems to be what others call feature freeze.

And perhaps, just maybe, there are even multiple possible development paths that can be considered good practice.

You don't own a monopoly on dev best practices, so how about keeping an open mind.

Incidentally, you might want to rethink some of what you've posted, lest it get you into trouble.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Rebirth release date. - Part 2