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QA Automation Engineer

Atrium601

Landlubber
QA Tester
Provisional
Hi all,

I've recently come into contact with PA by word of my good friend (and already PA member) @Bleash
I'm not a developer per se, but I'm a QA automation engineer, and I would love to be able to contribute with my knowledge and experience in automation for both QA and continuous integration.

My friend has mentioned that you're mainly recruiting for Unity development, on which I have no experience. Mind you, I'd love to learn Unity but, to be honest, I feel I'd be much more helpful around the QAE/CI topics, at least for the moment...

Anyway, looking forward for your feedback!

Cheers,
Atrium601
 
Hey @Atrium601,

Good to see you finally registered.
Hope you find this project as interesting and fun as me.

Lets see what the coordinators have to say.

See you soon,
Bleash
 
Ahoy @Atrium601, welcome aboard mate!

We do have a QA team, of which I am currently the coordinator, and we are always looking for people willing to help ways to improve that process. We welcome anyone who is willing to contribute to our project, experience is certainly a big plus, but the only real requirement we have is a willingness to learn and to contribute! If you have not done so yet, please download a couple of our latest demos and have a look through them, and then post a review of your experiences with them here in this thread. Also, please provide the system specs of your test rig. You can get the demos from our IndieDB page here : Downloads - Hearts of Oak: Conquest of the Seas

I would recommend downloading and playing the Hearts of Oak Pre-Alpha 1.9 Demo .Zip download first, and then have a look at HoO_Combat.1.12.16072.0 download - Hearts of Oak: Conquest of the Seas. If you have the time and have not done so yet, I would also recommend reading the associated articles for each here : Articles - Hearts of Oak: Conquest of the Seas

Thanks mate, your interest in our project is greatly appreciated! :onya
 
Hey all,

First of all, thank you @Bleash and @Thagarr for the welcoming messages and directions.
At first, moving around the numerous versions and names can be a bit confusing, so your links were most valuable.

I've given a go at HoO pre-alpha 1.9, HoO 1.8 (with the steerable ship!!) and HoO Combat.
Here are my thoughts:

HoO 1.9

In "fantastic" mode, the graphics are awesome, specially the water - being a seafaring game, this is something I was curious about, and it is indeed really beautiful. Something weird about the scene was that the water seemed very fluid (and did I already say "beautiful"? I think so!) but the seagulls above were really dragging around. Also, the movement of the character - in his underwear! - was really slow and laggy. No doubt this was due to my not-particularly-recent rig, so I went directly to the "low" graphics.
In "low" mode, the water was still pretty neat and the seagulls gliding about as supposed to. The character's movement though, still felt really heavy, though not so laggy.

HoO 1.9 seems to aim at showcasing a bit of the dialog mechanism, as well as a port and small village. I'm yet to read the articles... my bad.

The dialog mechanism seems to be in it's early stages.
Pardon me if I'm mistaken, but here's why:
- hoovering the mouse over the Mayor offers no visual hint that it's an object you can interact with;
- when the Mayor has two sentences, the first one rolls in word by word, but the second simply appears after a while (it's probably rolling in somewhere, but only shown after completion)
- the text is kind of unstable, increasing and decreasing it's size at several occasions.

Regarding the village and movement, a bit of wandering around off-road got me stuck in several places, and while still in the road/pier, trying to jump while walking would regularly get me under the road/pier, often unable to get back up. I'm not versed in Unity, but it could be something related with collision detection or irregular meshing.
The design of the village was cool, and the different levels are well achieved as they make for an interesting walk about the dock.

All in all, it looks good, even in "low" mode, but there's something about the movement that heavily hinders the experience.

H0O 1.8

What a difference! The character runs, and feels manoeuvrable as does the ship - OMG, the ship!! And when that first barrage of canon balls is fired at the barge... awesome! I don't think I've landed a single cannonball in the barge, but what the heck, what a felling to fire those cannons :D
There was something weird with the mast flag though, which was going around as crazy. Also, after a bit going through the positions in the ship, I got a black screen, although the game was still "going" since I could fire the cannons.

HoO Combat

It is interesting to be able to punch people around, but that dude with the sword, if he were to use it, would be the end of me.
This game mode is really tricky, as it risks being too frustrating with the current character controls - but hey, it might be that I'm just not used to the controls yet, so pay no mind to these lines!


Regarding the QA, I would much like to know what the current process is like, and what automation is in place.
I imagine these are sensible topics, so we should probably discuss them in private.

Well, this is all for now!
Sorry for the long post, and I look forward to hearing from you :)

Cheers,
Atrium601
 
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Thanks for taking the time to evaluate the demos, it is greatly appreciated! I will respond to a few of your points directly.

The dialog mechanism seems to be in it's early stages.

Yes, this is a very early test of the dialog system.

Regarding the village and movement, a bit of wandering around off-road got me stuck in several places, and while still in the road/pier, trying to jump while walking would regularly get me under the road/pier, often unable to get back up. I'm not versed in Unity, but it could be something related with collision detection or irregular meshing.

Yes, this is the collision detection, we have an internal only build that is making tracking down these collision issues much easier!

H0O 1.8

What a difference! The character runs, and feels manoeuvrable as does the ship - OMG, the ship!! And when that first barrage of canon balls is fired at the barge... awesome! I don't think I've landed a single cannonball in the barge, but what the heck, what a felling to fire those cannons :D
There was something weird with the mast flag though, which was going around as crazy. Also, after a bit going through the positions in the ship, I got a black screen, although the game was still "going" since I could fire the cannons.
Since that demo, we have been concentrating mainly on the island scene. @Bleash is currently working on a brand new ship and cannon script, it is not related at all to the 1.8 demo. I think you will really like his efforts! :onya

HoO Combat

It is interesting to be able to punch people around, but that dude with the sword, if he were to use it, would be the end of me.
This game mode is really tricky, as it risks being too frustrating with the current character controls - but hey, it might be that I'm just not used to the controls yet, so pay no mind to these lines!

Yes, we have a long way to go on the controls, and the ragdoll physics was intentionally left a bit loose. things should better in the next release!

Regarding the QA, I would much like to know what the current process is like, and what automation is in place.
I imagine these are sensible topics, so we should probably discuss them in private.

You will find that much easier to do now, as I have added you to the QA Team as a provisional member! Welcome aboard mate!

You should now have access to the Development Forum. When you get a chance, please feel free to take a look around, organization is not exactly our strong suit, so things may appear a bit messy. You may now also read and download the internal releases, and feel free to post your experiences with them in the appropriate threads! I will send you a PM when I get the chance in regards to the automation.
 
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