HotM:Instructions For Testers

So, you're private testing the game. Please read the following instructions before anything else.

What Are You Expected To Do?

• Play the game for at least 2-4 hours within the first 3 days of getting access to it.
  • But life happens, you know? If something comes up, this isn't a giant crisis and you don't need to feel bad at all.
• There are specific questions below; please leave those data points in the specific linked butracker tickets.
• If you have some constructive feedback, feel free to leave it in the bugtracker.
• If you have some half-formed thoughts that are not actionable items, and you want to discuss it with other testers and what they think, then there's a private spot on discord for doing that.
  • This is a great way for you and others to talk about your thoughts, and then for someone to eventually bubble up an actual actionable item into the bugtracker.
• Beyond that, play more or don't play more as you wish. This is not a job.

What To Expect From Me

I am a solo dev at this point, which means my time is incredibly limited.

I Can't Engage In Long Conversations Or Read Long Writeups

• Any time I spend reading feedback or conversing about things is time that is directly taken out of development.
  • In past games, just reading and responding to format has taken me 4-6 hours per day.
• I have a lot of stuff to finish in the coming months, so I can't afford to do that, or even close.
• Thank you for understanding.

Others Will Help Triage For Me

• Hooded Horse is providing some professional QA assistance to help read the longer unformatted feedback and get that into the bugtracker for me.
• My dad is also going to be helping with that.
• Based on this, I'll spend more time working on the key things people bring up which are surfaced to me, and then content development. This is where you want my time to go.

Your First Play Session

• Please don't read anything from the wiki other than this page.
• Please don't read any of the other tester's thoughts or comments.
• In general, the more blind you can go in, the better.
  • I get more of your thoughts, then, rather than those of the crowd.

Sessions Beyond Your First

Please do as you like. This isn't your job.

If you don't enjoy the game and want to bow out of testing, that's absolutely fine. If you just can't get enough of it, also fine.

Please Take Notes On These Specific Things

Use The Bugtracker

The majority of your feeback will go in the bugtracker, here: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view_all_bug_page.php

• You will need to sign up for an account. However, you can use your steam login rather than your email address to make it very quick to do.
  • To use the steam login, just click Log In, and then click the image that says "click here to log in through steam.
  • If you instead click "signup for a new account," that's fine, but it's going to use your email address and is slightly more steps. Ultimately both methods are great.

Actual feedback requested

• If you are confused by something, please note that down.
  • What did you expect to happen, and what happened instead?
  • This info goes on the bugtracker, ideally not in a duplicate ticket of someone else with the same idea: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view_all_bug_page.php
• If you experience actual bugs or glitches, please upload those to the bugtracker.
  • Ideally with a savegame that can duplicate it quickly: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view_all_bug_page.php
  • Again please search for duplicates first.
• If there was a clever idea you had, but the game wouldn't let you execute on that.
  • Please log that as a suggestion on the bugtracker, ideally with a savegame where you were all set to do the thing, but were unable to.
• Please note how long it takes you to reach the following milestones
  • Specified in game time (hover the turn-change button in the center of the radial menu in the bottom right of the game:
  • How long to complete the prologue, please specifically note that here: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=28176
  • How long to get to the part of chapter one where it says "goodbye solitude." That goes here: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=28177
    • If you can say both the total time it took you to get here, and the difference from finishing the prologue to here, that would be super ideal.
  • How long it takes you to get to the part of chapter one where the Contemplate ability becomes available. That goes here: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=28178
    • If you can say both the total time it took you to get here, and the difference from the prior milestone, that would be super ideal.

Information For You To Keep Private (Important!)

• If the information not on the steam store page, then please don't discuss it outside of the Arcen discord prior to June 4.
• If I have not discussed the information in the public part of the discord, then please don't discuss it in the public part of the discord.
• Discuss anything you like on the bugtracker, or in the private tester section of the discord.
• After June 4, discuss anything you like up through chapter one. Please do NOT share information about chapter two until a date yet to be decided.

What A Good Bugtracker Report Looks Like

• It has a concise title.
  • Thus anyone else searching for duplicates of what they want to report can find it easily.
• It includes a savegame that shows the issue, or where you'd like some new feature, or whatever.
  • Those are located in your install folder of the game, in /PlayerData/Saves/[your profile name].
  • If I have to spend hours to recreate the conditions of your report, that's a giant waste of resources.
  • For things that are just text-based, I don't need a savegame. Just make sure you have the exact text, so I can search for it.
• It includes your logs if you got an error.
  • Those are located in your install folder of the game, in /PlayerData/Logs/HeartOfTheMachineLog.txt
• If it is a laundry-list of items, they are all DEEPLY related.
  • For example, if you have a big list of typos, feel free to just dump that in one ticket.
  • Or for another example, if there are a bunch of locations that all have a similar sort of inconsistency with how clicking works or something, then all those go in one ticket.
• Otherwise, it's one ticket per actual item that needs changing, please.
  • When I am going through and (closing/fixing/resolving) issues, I can't do that by partial-ticket.
  • So in other words, if you have a 5 minute fix, one thing that is already working as intended, and one thing that will take me 4 hours but is super low priority, I can't remotely deal with that as one ticket. Normally I would fix the first fast, close the second with a note, and then mark the third one with the appropriate status to get to later. But when they're all in one ticket, it doesn't work.
• It is actionable in some way. It's not discussion-oriented.
  • If you have something you want to discuss, then please do that with other testers in the tester section of the discord.
  • Where actionable items result out of some sort of consensus, one person can then put that on the bugtracker.
  • If I need to be involved in the discussion for some reason, then I can be pinged about it.
  • Discord is great for discussions; the bugtracker is not.

Other Ways You Can Help

• If there are reports on the bugtracker that are marked as "feedback requested," then I'm looking for either more information, or a savegame that reproduces (repros) a problem. If you can provide that, awesome!

• If there's a discussion on the private part of discord where other testers are grappling with some issue, trying to decide how best to ask for something, or if to ask for something at all, please feel free to get involved there!