[L&D] Info about Testing Progress (Patreon)

Hello everyone, today just an update of how things are going with Law & Disorder.

We started Discord early group testing on June 28 for select features.

By Discord early group testing I mean a few individuals on Discord performing systematic, serious, precise instructions-based actions in game (in a new save prepared according to instructions) and reporting at length on results, just as systematically, seriously and precisely. This is nothing like playing or even play-testing, and is a step before play-testing (ie in our case, before the ‘betas’ open to patrons).

For the general 'path behind us' and 'roadmap ahead' of said testing:

HUGE THANKS to the people participating!!!!

The first goal was to test the process of committing, reacting, reporting, arrest and sentence for a major misbehavior – “Pyrocy” being the selected misbehavior for that test, and “jail’ the sentence.

We are still on that first goal - though just about to move on to the next goal (testing Non-capital, using Swiping for the misbehavior and Hat of Shame for the sentence).

This next goal should be quicker, because some systems are 'shared' across minor and major misbehaviors, and have therefore already been debugged.

Once we are through those two goals (ie testing the most complex sample of Major misbehavior + major sentence & same for Minor), testing other things should go even quicker (because the 'BIG' things are the core systems shared between all major misbehavior and all minor ones). At that point, in new small test groups we will address further goals (ie testing other offense + sentence pairs) one at a time until all is done.

Yields of testing so far

Some small additions have come to mind so far during testing as either 'would be nice to have' or 'actually necessary' , so these will be made also.

Since the start of the early group testing, a lot of issues big and small have been addressed, from fires not showing up on certain objects, to family members not attending trial, to those on good terms with the culprit accidentally rejoicing at said culprit getting sentenced. I also made a lot of alterations to the user experience to improve it. Needless to say, I expected things to go smoother than they did. But this is the entire point of taking these heavy testing steps - especially with mods which aims to spread further than ‘just the active Sim’, because as we all know, the game is not built to extend that far. Here, we have reporting sims, family members, ‘victims’ and their family - I want everyone involved to have a chance to react to certain things.

On the plus side, a lot of stuff is in fact going right.

For example, all screenshots below were taken by one of the testers.

A consideration

No way around it, the process could really use more testers - serious, dedicated, "I'm not here to play but to dedicatedly help you find issues by enacting the exact scenarios provided and reporting, so this mod gets to come out someday" testers. So, this is a long shot, but if you like this kind of task... Lmk on Discord 😂

I HATE to speak so bluntly, but considering what happens every time I offer Discord early testing, I must spell things out.If you think you should join Discord early testing because you 'just want files', I totally understand, but please abstain from volunteering. You wouldn't be getting what you want because there's no non-testing-oriented playable files to be had currently - in fact you'd just delay their emergence further by taking a testing spot you don't intend to use. The point of testing is to help development get to normal-playable file level, aka to get to the Sun tier open beta stage and then the actual release.In discord early testing, the files are cut to the exact functionalities being investigated and must be used in new saves only, and only following instructions, for the safety of everyone's games and the progress of development.

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That's it for today's info.

I understand the frustration waiting for this mod! And if I allowed myself to think about it I'd be tired of this infinite work to a level beyond quantification. But I want to remain positive about it and keep it a work of love as much as possible. Unfortunately 'it takes the time it takes' is the answer we all have to settle for no matter how much we want it over with.

Thanks to everyone supporting my mod work and this project .