[TRENCHES] Thursday, July 25, 2013 - Folivora
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Folivora
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/folivora
The Benefits of Seniority
AnonymousEvery studio handles QA differently, and with that comes a different handling of bug reporting. Some places just need a general description, some places require screenshot, and some places will allow you to make the titles of your screenshot funny, like “splat_crater.jpg” or “no_more_burritos_for_this_NPC.jpg” or other silly stuff, so long as the intent is clear and the repro instructions are solid.
One company I worked for had a QA department reminiscent of Metropolis or 1984. They’re earned a reputation for having great QA, so they were determined to hang onto it, and the way they did that was regimenting QA down to a set of machinery that merely required human cogs. Every test case was exhaustively outlined, every activity set to a checklist, every step of the bug report regimented to the smallest detail. Every single bug- more than twelve thousand during my time there- had screenshots in the format [First Initial][Last Name]_[Build Number]_[Bug Number]_01.jpg, with the occasional “02” or “03” when you needed a sequence to demonstrate something. Deviation simply was not allowed, and would get you a reprimand for the smallest change.
Cue one bug I found while doing an environment run-through, just making sure all the trees were actually in the ground, puddles actually had water in them, et cetera. The pirate-infested beach was looking pretty good, until I noticed a gangplank going from the beach to thin air. I get ready to screenshot the missing pirate ship when I notice an odd bit of color out of the corner of my eye. I look up, and apparently the pirate ship had perfect X and Y coordinates, but the Z coordinate was off by a few hundred units of measurement, which meant that far above the water, a fully-crewed pirate ship at full sail floated in the sky. I dutifully reported the bug, only to get a notice minutes later that my lead had added a file to the bug report, which was extraordinarily odd. I pull the bug up and the Koopa Airship theme from Super Mario Brothers 3 begins playing, with a simple note from the lead reading “Sorry, I had to…
”
If it had been one of the newer testers like myself their ass would have been canned on the spot, probably, but I don’t think the lead ever even heard a word about his creative addition besides a few chuckles. Benefits of having worked the Trenches longer than some of the actual devs had been at their jobs, I guess.
Posts
Yes, this. Perfect touch. Sometimes, when you stare into the sloths, the sloths stare back.
As to the Tale: Maybe he actually had to add the music because of some obscure rule? From the description of the QA department I just imagine they have a super-thick leather bound tome of rules. Chapter IX, Apendex C, Section 6, Paragraph 2, Line 4: "If a tester should, in the course of his duties, encounter a programmatic error resulting in the suspension of a large sea vessel above the vertical Field of View he shall duly include in his report a sound file of the Koopa Airship theme from Super Mario Brother's 3. If the tester himself has failed to comply with the obligations of this section responsibility for compliance falls to his intimidate superior."
How dare you sir.
Also, I want those Sloth-Kin to be an actual thing. They're WAY better than Pandarians.
I knew there was something weird about that story...
ETA: Not in the "I call bullshit" sense, just the "There's something lurking just under the surface that's weird..."
I assume there are other pirate ships that do not have gangplanks (i.e. if one was out in the middle of the ocean), so it kind of makes sense. They only put them in when they want the player to be able to walk onto the ship from shore (also I'm sure there are height differences to account for depending on if the ship is, say, next to a dock vs. the beach, or whatever - they'd have to adjust the gangplank angle or use a different gangplank asset).
Personal guess is that everything was setup right by the map maker, and then someone accidentally fat fingered the Z axis after the ship was placed (as I'd guess you'd need to place the ship to know where to put the gangplank)