So, you've decided to become an Empires Tester. God help you. There's a few things to go over, so take the time to read through all this and take the information in. Before we switched to this closed testing system, we were using an open one, which actually got us less players, so the general intention of closing it off is to try and get more testers. 1) Empires testing is currently delivered via Steam content. This means that it is downloaded via steam, you won't need any extra applications. All the information for downloading and setting up your test version of Empires, can be found here: https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/guide-how-to-download-the-new-empires-beta.17240/ 2) The Empires SVN system is still active, however this is only required if you are a developer (be it in the team, or a 3rd party mapper/modeller). Details on this can be found here: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?p=389079 Again to remind you, you ONLY need the SVN system if you're a developer of some kind, regular testers will have no need for it. *NEW THREADS PENDING* 3) Testing will be split into 2 types of tests. A "PLAYTEST" and a "BUGTEST". In a PLAYTEST, the general idea is to simply play the game, much like an Empires pug, and then give feedback afterwards. It isn't for sitting around in your main testing random shit and not helping your team, because you'll ruin the rounds if you do that. You're there to play a proper game for PLAYTESTS, and give feedback afterwards, especially balance related. The general idea is that we'll need at least 30 people for these tests. In BUGTESTS, whilst a round may be played seriously, the general intention is to test specific issues, be they things we've updated, bugs that are still in, new bugs, new features etc. The general idea is that we'll need 5-10 people for these tests. PLAYTESTS will probably be held on a Saturday night at a pug-like time, given that we're hoping to run them like a regular Empires pug, only on the test version. BUGTESTS will be held on a Friday and/or Sunday, possibly an hour earlier than we would run the Saturday night tests. They probably won't last as long either. 4) Whilst we don't use specific details to limit tester access (i.e. per user accounts), please don't give the details out. It's important that every tester gets access to this forum so we can keep tabs on who shows up, so giving the details to your friend without him signing up to the forums and asking for access, won't help us. We have no reason to refuse any testers, albeit we might not give access instantly. But we need to know who we can get for tests. 5) The testing server will be hosted by me on the EPIC box. I'll give the RCON out to those who prove responsible enough, because it'll be RCON only, no Sourcemod or admin systems. It won't always be up but if you need it for an impromptu test you want to organise, I'll try my best to get it up for you. 6) Make sure you're in the Empires Tester steamgroup. Most of you are, but it's invite only and I haven't managed to get in contact with the original group creator, so we can't make it public. As far as I know, anyone can invite to the group, but if that's not the case, give someone a shout from the admin list, preferably myself. The group can be found here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/emptesters
