As we know, KSP is soon™ to enter the pre-release stages for 1.1 which will hopefully mark the beginning of the end for the ‘search and destroy mission’ on bugs before the release.
As an avid fan and noob programmer (someone who has a good grounding in programming ideas and processes etc, but no mods under my belt yet) I’d really like to help out and do some testing, but since I have no real-world experience at QAing big software, I’d like to gather suggestions on how best to go about looking for bugs.
My first port of call was to read the page on the bug-tracker (http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/projects/ksp/wiki) which I found to be a great reference dealing with the practical aspects of reporting bugs such as the documentation required and keeping logs, screenshots, craft files etc. However, I’d like some community guidance on where best to look when in-game. The practical side of me says “well, just attach parts together and see if they explode in a variety of craft conditions” but having thought further, I’m guessing this kind of more basic, systematic testing (and considerably more!) is likely to have been covered extensively in the Experimentals by a team of specialists. I’ve tried to layout my thought processes in the form of questions:
“Where should we be looking?” - I appreciate the irony of asking where to look for hidden and often elusive problems, but is the testing meant to be on a SOI basis (test as much as is practically feasible in one physical SOI) or on a biome specific basis (the same but for an individual biome) or should we actually be doing the ‘test every part with every other part’ type testing? A reasonable assumption may be 'all of the above', but any thoughts would be helpful.
“Where would you start?” - Is it simply a matter of going about choosing a career type to focus on and going about daily Kerbal business until something wacky happens, or should it be more directed than that?
“Will there be more information made available?” - As a last question mainly to Squad staff, is there going to be further guidance posted on this nearer the time, or is it intended that anyone who is actively participating with the bug-hunt would have prior knowledge of testing?
I’m sure you guys will come up with answers, and probably better questions too, but this will hopefully be a jumping off point. I would like to add though, I don’t mean this to post to add to the steam/non-steam debate, those with AND without access to the pre-release have a wealth of knowledge which would prove invaluable in guiding the bug-hunt.
Much love y'all,
D.
Cheers very much for the replies guys, this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Since I usually play with mods, I'mma get to the 1.0.5 drawing board tomorrow and create some crafts in my stock version and have a cheeky testing session. That should give me somewhere to start so I know how these vessels behave. I also take the point about staying in communication with the forums during the process, I was/am interested in how this is to be co-ordinated, but that gives me a much clearer picture. Much appreciated
