Here's a screenshot to make this less boring:
Okay, I searched around the main site for information about playtesting, but didn't find relevant information, so I apologize if there's a standard method for this and I overlooked it.
TL;DR: I don't talk to people much at all, I've made an 80% (or so) completed long quest with a lot of new scripts, and tested on my own a lot, but think I should have more people playtest and bugtest before I eventually release it and don't know how to go about recruiting. The poll shows most of the possibilities I could think of.
I have a quest I've been working on steadily for about a year plus (plus being bits of scripts I've messed with/developed myself since about 2012). It has a finished overworld, a mostly-finished second overworld, and 13 completed dungeons out of a planned 18 (the largest dungeon so far is a full 8x8, and the first four are only about 20 rooms). And a loooooot of newly scripted content, like, 36 B Button item slots and almost all of them are newly scripted items, and a character switching mechanic, and a bunch of new enemies and bosses.
The quest mostly focuses on item puzzles and custom enemies, with very little story, only a couple of cut scenes. For scripting, I reinvented the wheel and didn't really use anyone's stuff, because it was interesting to self-teach and confusing to learn other people's stuff. I asked the venerable quest maker Moosh for advice once, and then hid under a rock for over a year instead of following up, for no good reason. A forum member called Justin told me how to use for loops once, which was extremely helpful.
I've tested everything myself (repeatedly) to see what works, and I think it all works okay up until the fairly late parts of the game that I haven't made yet, but I'm not confident in my ability to catch everything, or to make fun design choices, so I'd be very interested in getting some playtesting help.
However, I'm not too sure about stopping to refine my project into a coherent demo- a tidy package that ends at some clear point, excludes spoilery stuff like late-game content/avoids leaking 80% of the entire game, and teases the audience into further interest, etc. I'd much rather just gradually continue my march through beta stages of the quest than try to organize a proper demo like that.
Nor am I sure how best to make use of the Quest Project feed. I have started setting up a hidden project experimentally, but I don't know how people feel about rough 80% done betas being openly posted, or how people feel about playing them.
Nor am I sure about how serious of a thing "leaks" are; I'm not super worried about people seeing the unfinished quest, but I know if I'd be killing enthusiasm for the final product with a mostly-finished version, and I don't know if stealing is a particularly likely thing or what the standard precautions would be, or generally what best practices would be.
But basically, the thing is, I've been doing all this hiding under a rock, barely coming to PureZC or anywhere else to talk about my project. I have relatively few friends I keep in touch with at all, and I tend to socially vanish for long periods of time. So, what would be the best means of recruiting playtesters for my project? And is it important to make a refined demo, rather than just sharing my as-is beta that hits an abrupt cliff of unfinished content?
(Any playtesters will be credited, unless they ask not to be.)
Edited by Mitsukara, 09 May 2016 - 08:31 PM.