That depends on your definition of "Tester". I actually am a Professional Beta Tester, meaning I often get paid to test things, and not just games. In the last few years that I've been stuck working from home I've tested a wide variety of programs, games, and even some times the odd product or two for a unrelated testing institute. It is indeed true though as you say that the motivations are completely different. When I'm being paid to test a product, what that product is will determine what my motivations are. When you're being paid to hunt down bugs you have to be able to reproduce those bugs consistently and preferably find a work around. When a tester is being paid for Quality Assurance my only job goal is to find typos, graphical anomalies, glitches, test various settings and displays and display modes and other hardware configurations. When I'm tasting a particular product or game over a period of time I work under contract for that particular company for the length of that game's beta period. Some times my job as a tester is to make sure game-play mechanics work the way they are intended to and to give feedback and suggestions to improve it. Other times my job entails playing through the same part of a game or program Over, and Over, and Over, and Over again looking for the slightest glitch or slight light and shadow variations.

In all honesty, being a Beta tester is a LOT of WORK and it can get mind numbingly boring at times. It isn't about playing games or having fun. Some times though you do get lucky and get to have a little "fun" at work. Compared to what most people call "work" they just assume testing video games is a walk in the park and it's all "fun and games" which any serious tester will tell you.....It Isn't.

Compiling a progress report for a manager who's paying me is completely different then filing a bug report here on the Elemental forums. In fact most companies have a dedicated team of in house testers (though in today's economy the testers are usually company employees who do other things and are just drafted to test from time to time). Other companies out-source this work which is where people who do what I do come in.

If you're interested in getting your foot in the door as a real tester it's not as hard as you might think. There are plenty of web sites out there who help people find work testing all kinds of products ranging from Video Games, Business Applications, to even Toothpaste and Dental Floss. Two sites I recommend are BetaWatcher.com and GamesTester.com .

Once you do a couple of jobs you'll eventually be placed on a list of "Quality Testers" and companies will e-mail you or sites you have signed up on will notify you when there is a job available or you get a job offer. If you happen to already have a background in field involving computers, electronics, or gaming, then you've already got a advantage.

Does that include the global population? Thats the one thing I really think should be local. If a town gets wiped out it should be more impact than "I just lost 40 population".Also it could lead to things like having huge population centers on one end of a continent and only a small village on the other that could be used to output lots and lots of troops because they are drawing from a global pool.

Materials, etc. are defiantly fine the way they are.

Was just stating my opinion. I'm less concerned with the graphics being turned on/game being fun than I am with making sure the core engine is stable and fluid for single player. I've seen far too many games ruined by trying to balance it for MP and ignoring the single player experience. Not that you guys would of course... I'd just hate to see the SP game end up getting (even slightly) less attention because of a focus on MP. The other side of the coin of course is that by working on MP early you can ensure that MP isn't an "afterthought" and that the multiplayer aspect is still fun for those who like to beat each other up instead of a (hopefully and likely) good AI.

Well I'm gonna stop now before I dig myself into a hole... My apologies if my previous response sounded harsh - I just don't feel the engine is ready to move on yet - especially with all the save/load issues, and other core parts of the engine that really affect the core single-player experience.

Population is local. It keeps track of your global population but from a game mechanic point of view, they're city by city.

BTW, one of the reasons I'm anxious for beta 3 is that that is when I get to start seriously programming the AI.  

The longer it takes to beta 3, the less time I have for the AI.  The game's schedule itself may be fungible but mine isn't unfortunately.

Well, let's see 1z3 first. Hopefully it will be stable enough, so that we can move to phase 2. If we will have a vote about moving to beta2 or not [as it was planned so], and if I will still have lock-ups and problems like that, I will vote "no"...even tho I would like to see the gfx engine + tactical combat [beta4] as soon as possible.

I wasn't expecting to see Camp 1 suddenly back in play. I was just wondering what sorts of things might be on the Features At Risk list and thinking of one that I liked but could imagine being removed or radically revised, e.g. placing improvements manually on specific sub-tiles.

So ... does this mean that if we get Stability (Beta 1) and go onto Beta 2 .... does that mean we can actually start adding Game Mechanics? And Balancing them? Does that mean I can finally see a fully fleshed out Tech Tree with all the features in rough draft ... ready to pick apart and analyze for balancing concerns? If so, then Yippie! If not, then i am confused.

So what I am asking is ... in Beta 2 will the objects within the game stop being "placeholders" and start to be decent attempts at gameplay? Or, is that, sadly, still sectioned off for Beta 3?

In beta 2, we will definitely start talking about game mechanics a lot more.

But right now, there are key things NOT in the beta that effect gameplay massive. Just off the top of my head:

• You're all playing on one crappy map that I whipped up.
• Said crappy map doesn't even have crystal in it that's accessible so one of the main resources isn't available.
• Your units don't level up (only your champions do)
• There are no neutral cities in
• There are no neutral item shops in
• There is no current way for your champions to upgrade their equipment
• Making better units and more quantity of units (parties and companies) isn't hooked up
• Sieges aren't in
• Catapults aren't in
• Naval units aren't in

These are just a few things that are in our internal builds that you guys don't have yet because we're waiting for the beta 1 branch to be stable enough to insert these checkins into the main game branch.

And of course, we're ignoring the whole graphics engine part which is not checked into the public beta branch either.

One of the reasons people think the game won't ship until next year is because they think the public build represents the actual state of the game rather than simply the game units that have been released to the public beta testers.

Well .... I don't know about multi-person units not being available yet. In 1z1 (1z2?) I was able to build a whole regiment of "free" life-sap grunts .... yet somehow, instead of getting 250 soldiers I got 120-ish soldiers, and thus the massive maintenance costs I was preparing for, I wasn't hit with, so I had a lot of extra money per turn (needless to say).

Another thing I noticed ... was that for all intents and purposes, combat speed SEEMED to work in practice, yet in the combat logs I saw almost no effect (I always attacked 3 times, and they always attacked 2 times). I mean ... sometimes I could see a difference, but for instance having 5 combat speed and I still was only attacking 3 times every 2 times they attacked. Was the log wrong? Was my increased battle results merely a fluke- and combat speed is not working properly?

Or, perhaps is combat speed proprtioned with the enemy? So if I had 6 combat speed and they had 4, it would show as 3:2? If I get time this week I will try to recreate it ... however there is a vast different between slowly burning my time on/off the forums and entering the true time-sink that is Elemental (beta or no).

Which is why I laugh at people who are overly concerned about it not shipping in September. We simply do not have the info to judge one way or the other. And I am not really concerned because one way r the other, by September I know that even if the game is not shipping we are going to be having a riot and having a very fun and enjoyable beta. At this point, the only thing that would disappoint me is if we were still playing on the 2D map only in September. That would just be cruel and unusual punishment, and I don't think even you are that heartless Froggy!

Den, stop joking around. That is absolutely impossible.

Imo, we gonna reach beta 3 in 1 month [..if beta2 will last for 2 weeks], because it's possible, that we will need to have a 1z4 as well, who knows.

I'd go with 2 more 1Z betas just to be safe. Now you should also assume that they will need a few builds to work the kinks out of mp. So figure mid-late may maybe early june for Beta 3.

It is my fervent hope that "tomorrow" the next 1Z3 build will put us back on track + what 1Z2 should have provided (and in my case did not).

1Z1 had me at 200+ turns per game regularly and I could stretch that, with some care taken not to advance turns to quickly, or get map trapped, until the memory threshold was reached/max'd. Reloads were iffy.

With the advent of 1Z2, for whatever reason, and I read the "changelog" I am now restricted to 60+ turns max. with no discernible recourse to "take care" and reloading is still quite/super finicky, at best.

I get both memory out errors and or the game just disappears without warning or notice posted. It simply evaporates from the screen so cleanly as to leave me wondering if I was actually playing or dreaming it.

I am as gungho as the next to get to the MP (Beta2) side of things but at no point would it ever make sense to have it as is, or even just slightly less flaky, and say let's move on. And thankfully that point has been drilled home quite clearly from the Dev.

So if anyone can advance time quickly, let's dial up Thursday (or tonight for that matter) already.