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"At the end of last July, we were at a low because everyone here had to focus on the most stupid element--the save game," says Molyneux. "It had absolutely no effect on the actual game, but it just had to go in." If you think it's rather odd that the game didn't have a save feature until last summer, you'll be glad to hear that Molyneux admits he's a bit embarrassed by this fact. "I know, people are probably reading this saying, 'Well, that doesn't sound very much like a professional game,' but it's true." For months, Molyneux had been trying to avoid working on the save-and-load game system, a remarkably complex problem because the gameworld is so chaotic.
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Molyneux admits that he was in denial about the save-game routine. |
"A few weeks ago, our programmer Daniel Deptford came to me and said, 'Peter, where is the save-and-load feature? Don't we need one to go alpha?'" remembers Molyneux. Always one to keep morale high and downplay the problems, Molyneux responded with characteristic nonchalance: "Oh, don't worry, Daniel, I'm going to do that tomorrow evening." In reality, Molyneux had been in denial about the save-and-load problem. While he did get to work on it the next day, it took the entire programming team two complete weeks of development to implement the save-game feature. It had to be done, so 14 precious days of development were lost. Not surprisingly, on July 21, the team revised Black & White's ship date from September 23 to November 10.
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A whiteboard lists all the quests in the game. |
While the programmers worked to add the final features needed to take the game alpha, the testing department labored to nail down the single-player game. On a huge board in the testing room, each challenge is listed, along with a "fun rating" from one to 10, which is given by the testers. A quick look down the list shows a number of fives and sixes. Robson, also captain of the Lionhead soccer team, says the fun factor should be a bare minimum of eight on any challenge. If it doesn't meet the bar, the challenge needs to be tweaked. Already, the testers have changed some challenges. What is now a shark attack on a young boy in the final game started as a whale eating a boy. Similarly, the lost brother in the forest challenge began as a lost couple in the forest, asking you to guide them home.
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Test manager Andy Robson. |
In addition to playing the challenges, the testers also had to contend with the huge open-ended gameworld. While the concept of being able to uproot any tree or kill any villager sounds divine, it's quite another thing to test whether the game is prone to crashing with such open-ended circumstances. "We have to look at every possibility," explains Robson. "For instance, if I take a bunch of rocks and make a ring of them around a villager, what happens? The villager is trapped, but does that cause the game to crash or not progress? We have to look at all these issues."
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Robson works with the test team at Lionhead Studios. |
While Lionhead has a bunch of full-time testers, the company invites in a few outside guests to help with the game's development every week. Last August, two of those testers were 15-year-old Jeremy White and 16-year-old Roger Ingraham. Hailing from Stafford Springs, Connecticut, White and his family planned an entire European vacation around his opportunity to beta-test Black & White. Fifty to 80 e-mails a day come into Lionhead, requesting a spot on the beta-test list; the wait list is more than a year long. As long as you're willing to get yourself to Lionhead, you can come in. However, the Lionhead Web site warns that "14-year-olds can work only five hours a day--this is the law." According to Robson, the most requested feature among the testers, both young and old, is the ability for creatures to fly.
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After three days of forgetting to fill it in, a Lionhead employee finally updates the countdown thermometer. |
With the save-game feature finally working and the fun rating on challenges going up, Black & White was finally beginning to gel by the end of the summer. In fact, the game was getting so close to alpha that the team had created a huge thermometer on an office door, which was set to be colored each day the team got closer to its planned September alpha date.
Not surprisingly, everyone was so busy working on the game that no one had bothered to update the thermometer for three days.
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