Minkata-alpha is up for general use

[rarified]

I am happy to announce that we appear to have resolved issues with the Minkata-alpha testing shard, and we are ready to open it up to the general community to explore testing Fan created ages.

Minkata-alpha is essentially a mirror image of the Minkata testing shard, but will have one or more fan created ages installed on it for very early testing in progress to sending it to Cyan for installation on MOULa. It also has a special client that allows ages to be visited without having linking books available in the general MOULa environment.

Instructions for accessing Minkata-alpha are available in this topic. The only exception to that description is that accounts on Minkata-alpha are not completely in synchronization with Minkata. Accounts on Minkata-alpha need to be manually copied from Minkata. I will try to do so shortly after each announcement for testing an age is posted, or periodically.

To create a Minkata-alpha account, you will need to first create a Minkata account.

I would like testing instructions for each age to be announced and described by the author of each age. When they feel their age is ready for testing and we have confirmed it is installed on Minkata-alpha, I hope they will post in this forum as a new topic.

Look for fan age announcements soon!
_R

[Emor_D'ni_Lap]

Doobes, rarified and all, after the 12/7 AGM:
I would strongly urge you to not encourage lookie-loos to "drop by" Minkata-Alpha to get advance glimpses of new content. 1) as you can see, people often do not grasp the concept of a shard not being a 'playing' shard: they go around collecting sparklies and Yeesha pages as if they were building something permanent and get upset when they're not. 2) I really don't want to see rarified get bogged down with newcomers who cannot negotiate the setup, the console commands and more, who are puzzled by seeing Ages in strange states of tech evolution, as we've seen recently (no, the Pub won't be the last time).
Shouldn't the main Minkata shard be the place where true beta-testing can occur? What rarified indicated today - and it makes sense since it will be equally true for the Cyan server - is that he plans on holding off on moving content to the Cyan Staging Server until we have a Content Hub of some sort to access that new content. However, Minkata Main can be that early access point for people to do true beta testing....even without such a Hub.

[Deledrius]

as you can see, people often do not grasp the concept of a shard not being a 'playing' shard: they go around collecting sparklies and Yeesha pages as if they were building something permanent and get upset when they're not.

Or reporting bugs that aren't even the focus of a specific test, as seen with the SDL state feedback on the patcher test Hoikas set up.

If MinkAlph is integration testing, then MinkPrime is the better place for playtesting of new Ages.

[PodHopper]

Doobes, rarified and all, after the 12/7 AGM:
I would strongly urge you to not encourage lookie-loos to "drop by" Minkata-Alpha to get advance glimpses of new content.

On the other hand, if something new is actually coming to Minkata (prime or alpha), now is the time to let people know. Most people at the AGM were not at the recent Minkata meetings and are not aware of any progress in Minkata. People tend to get enthusiastic when something new actually happens...

Or reporting bugs that aren't even the focus of a specific test, as seen with the SDL state feedback on the patcher test Hoikas set up.

True, but on the other hand, should we just ignore the bugs that we encounter only because they are not within the scope of a specific test?

If MinkAlph is integration testing, then MinkPrime is the better place for playtesting of new Ages.

In that case, Minkata alpha would be for age builders only. No need to advertise its existence then. It would be similar to the Destiny Shard. However, I get the impression that Rarified would prefer to get as much of the testing and fixing problems done in alpha itself, leaving Minkata prime in a more stable state.

Something could be said for each approach. I really don't mind which approach it is going to be. All I would want to say is: Now that the ball is finally rolling, let's work together to keep it rolling...

[Mac_Fife]

My understanding of the demarcation between Minkata Alpha and Minkata Prime was (and thinking on this may have evolved since it was first discussed) that Alpha would be used to integrate and test Ages, while Prime would be used to test client updates. In that way, if there's content and (unrelated) client updates all going on at the same time they could be tested simultaneously but wholly decoupled from each other. All of which perhaps assumes a busy pipeline for both, but hey.

[Emor_D'ni_Lap]

On the other hand, if something new is actually coming to Minkata (prime or alpha), now is the time to let people know. Most people at the AGM were not at the recent Minkata meetings and are not aware of any progress in Minkata. People tend to get enthusiastic when something new actually happens...

PodHopper, you were at the AGM so I know you heard it all announced. And you know that rarified and Doobes have been keeping folks apprised of recent progress on a monthly basis.

I certainly wasn't suggesting that no one should talk about what's happening. But telling folks about what's in the works is one thing; inviting one and all to do Alpha testing is another.
Of course, it's not my shard and I can only state my opinion in the matter. But from my (limited) experience with alpha testing, it's usually by invitation to specific individuals, usually for developers to check their work, and as we've been seeing recently with Minkata-Alpha, usually with very short cycles: this is where changes in both code and CG-app-to-Plasma-engine export errors can and do break things. Beta is where valued testers can find problems that devs have missed in Alpha (such as details in construction and user-end operation) that get reported to the developers, who can then do several requisite fixes at once, collecting them in new iterations to the Beta server - through Alpha if necessary. So the Minkata Prime server may have a much slower turnaround cycle.

Rarified has stated that he plans on having Age builders decide whether to invite people to view their work in advance of Beta testing. But if anyone who wants to can visit Alpha, then if a builder does not want their work seen during Alpha stages, I don't know how they would keep visitors out.

In any case, Korov'ev has done an excellent job of outlining the hurdles and limitations for the Alpha Shard in his AGM Summary: https://guildofmessengers.org/forums/to ... #postid-35

... I get the impression that Rarified would prefer to get as much of the testing and fixing problems done in alpha itself, leaving Minkata prime in a more stable state.

By the time Ages move from Alpha to Prime, they should already be in a more stable state. Community Beta testing on Prime, as described above, should then have a very low chance of actually breaking that server.

All I would want to say is: Now that the ball is finally rolling, let's work together to keep it rolling...

I'd suggest you check in to OpenURU's Discord channel <dev>, and you'll see that the ball has been rolling really well in recent months - thanks to Hoikas, rarified, Doobes, Deledrius, dpogue and others all working together.

[Korovev]

I’d suggest using this more specific link
https://guildofmessengers.org/2019/12/0 ... ata-tester

[PodHopper]

Thanks Emor and Kor,

I realize how passionate I can be. (And others too)

I’d suggest using this more specific link
https://guildofmessengers.org/2019/12/0 ... ata-tester

I see no difficulties for me in that list, although i have no experience with console commands. But I doubt it will be harder than writing in pascal, python, javascript or shell script, or configuring linux and bsd systems, is it?

[Hazado]

I haven't been able to find a list of the console commands.

[Hoikas]

Console.CreateDocumentation <filename> will generate complete set of console commands and their associated documentation. Be warned that many commands were primarily for use by testing inside Cyan and, in some cases, by specific developers inside Cyan. This means that some commands do things that cannot be explained without delving into the code itself. Further, many commands are abandoned or were broken from the transition from PotS to MOUL. Others crash the client under certain circumstances. Some do nothing at all. In other cases, the documentation is wrong.

At the present time, but ages available on Minkata-alpha crash the client and are being debugged. There is little point at trying to visit them at this stage...