Jamul
12-30-2001, 04:00 PM
(applications are due January 6th)
Hey everybody, it's finally that time! Do you like puzzle games? Do you like working extremely hard for virtually no compensation? Well then I have the job for you!
There's been a lot of interest in beta-testing, so we can't accept everyone who applies. That also means we get to be really picky and rigorous about the rules! And we shall be. First of all, here is the compensation you'll receive if you do beta test and follow all the rules:
1. A free copy of the game when it's released, of course.
2. Your name in the credits under "Testing", surprisingly enough.
3. The opportunity (not to mention obligation) to play a game before it's released.
4. a T-SHIRT!
Before we proceed I will point out that at present, there don't exist any T-shirts, so worst case is that you might receive a very simple cheesy one from CafePress, but it will have something to do with Hamumu Software. I know we're not offering terribly much, but I think there are enough fans who are really interested enough to do it for the above rewards. But before you jump on that bandwagon and start grabbing for your free stuff, read all of the following rules and requirements very carefully. Because:
** IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW ALL DIRECTIONS COMPLETELY FOR THE DURATION OF THE BETA TEST, YOU WILL BE REMOVED FROM TESTING!! **
That's serious stuff! But it's my experience that unpaid workers, for some odd reason, tend to not work very hard. And since I need to ensure I'm releasing a quality product, and my livelihood depends on it, I need dedicated, hard-working testers. So here are the rules and directions:
1. DAILY EMAIL
This is the biggest and nastiest requirement. You are required to email me every day that you do any testing of the game. This email must contain the details of what you did that day - which modes you played, how long you spent at each different thing, and of course any problems you encountered. I expect extensive notes and details on everything, including seemingly trivial things like which modes you aren't enjoying (but are playing anyway to give it a thorough testing, RIGHT??), which ones are loads of fun, what seems a little unclear, what's hard to remember, what's hard to control, what's too easy, what's ugly graphically, what sounds bad, what sounds good, what's really funny, anything like that. We're testing not only for bugs, but for playability and fun as well.
Now I mean serious detail in these reports. I expect to be able to tell exactly which levels you played on any given day and know which ones gave you trouble and which ones were really easy. I'd also like to know which ones seemed just perfect. It helps my ego.
2. FIVE DAYS A WEEK
I have to receive five emails from you a week minimum - one for each of the FIVE days per week that you test the game. You are required to keep up with that. You can use the weekends to help out if you have a lot to do during the week, but there are only two weekend days, so you still must test three days during the week. This is a serious requirement. Working all day saturday and sunday doesn't make up for doing nothing during the week. You can certainly work much less on weekdays than weekends if you need to, but I need to get those five emails, containing actual information, every single week. You're not disqualified from testing if you have a vacation or illness or something that will interfere with a week or something, you'll just have to let me know in advance (well, probably not for illness...). If you plan to be too busy to test for more than a week, you are not eligible to test.
3. TOP SECRET
Obviously, you can't share your copy of the game with anyone else. It is given to you ONLY for the purposes of testing it out, and is quite top secret! Anybody caught sharing or pirating is obviously out of testing, and possibly getting in trouble with the law. But more than those major legal issues, there's the simple matter of the game content. It wouldn't be illegal for you to tell people who the secret characters in the game are, but it's still not allowed, and it will get you kicked out of testing! Part of the responsibility of testing is keeping it all a big secret so the players can discover it for themselves.
4. THE FORUM
The Beta-Testing forum will be reopened (still password protected, of course!) for the use of communication between testers. You can share stuff on there as you wish, but don't forget your daily email to me! I'll also post messages on there announcing the new versions coming out and such (which will happen often - I hope you're ready to do a lot of downloading) and listing the changes I make to fix the bugs discovered and so on. You are responsible to be checking the forum every day that you're testing so that you know what's going on. It's an important part of the communication.
5. THE FUN PART
In addition to all the hard work, I accept ideas and such from the testers. Understand that there's a 90% chance that I won't put in anything you come up with (mainly because I've already mostly finished the game, I don't want to put more work into it!), but I do want to hear the ideas, because there will probably be some that I do find I want to put in, and they'll make it a better finished product. And of course, much more than ideas for new monsters or something (which there will NOT be in Stockboy!! Four monsters is it!), if you have ideas for tweaks to game rules, or controls, or menu options, that kind of thing that will tweak the game to make it easier or more fun to play, and won't add much work, then I'm very interested in those.
6. THE OTHER FUN PART
This is unique to Stockboy. There will be 52 levels in StockRoom mode, which is the general puzzle mode. Creating those levels is the one major task I haven't done so far. I will be hoping that the beta testers can crank out some great levels that I can include in this mode - as always, I'm pretty burned out on level design already! There's no requirement to make any, and if you aren't interested in testing but would like to make levels, you can contact me for that as well. I'd appreciate some credentials for that, like for instance being one of the great Dr. Lunatic add-on makers! If you don't have credentials, you'll probably have to be a tester to earn the right to be a level maker. Of course anyone who creates levels gets bonus credits in the game (under "Level Design"), and maybe there will be other more significant rewards, but right now I can't think of any, so don't hold your breath.
7. LISTEN TO HAMUMU
Initially, I will just ask everyone to go ahead and play the game as though they had just bought it, and see what they can find wrong, and what's good and what's bad. But I will also have directions to give throughout the process, via email and in the forum. You have to follow these directions! Makes sense, really. I will also ask on at least one occasion, a big old survey including all kinds of probing questions like "What one major change would you make to stockboy if you had complete control?". You have to fill out the survey and email your response to me. I'll share the responses with everyone in the testing anonymously. I did that for Loonyland testing too, and it was fun!!
So those are the rules. Here's how to apply:
Email jamul@hamumu.com with the answers to the following questions. How many words you use to answer the more essay-like questions is up to you, but try to give good solid answers without rambling - after all, we're deciding whether or not to let you test our games (and thusly send us written reports) based on your answers.
        1. Your real name
        2. Your name(s) on the Hamumu forums
        3. Your email address
        4. Your age
        5. Your location (city, state, country?)
        6. What you do for a living
        7. Why do you do that for a living?
        8. What Hamumu games you own, and which others you've played the demo of, or played someone else's copy of or whatever.
        9. What your favorite Hamumu game is and why.
        10. What your favorite computer/console/arcade game is and why - no Hamumus allowed unless you don't play anything else at all.
        11. What makes a good game?
        12. What's your computer expertise level?
        12a. Know how to use ZIP files?
        12b. and move files around from directory to directory, and delete them, rename, etc? E.g., if I told you to download the file fred.bmp and put it into the graphics subdirectory, would you know how to do that?
        13. Think hard about this one. If you could make a major change to an existing Hamumu game to make it better, what would it be (and which game are you talking about?)?
        14. What kind of computer(s) do you have that you'll be testing on? Details please. Don't forget your internet connection.
That's all! Now, we want to keep the number of testers relatively low, if only so that there will still be some people left to SELL this game to. So we will pick testers based on the responses to our questionnaire (that will be fun!), and if you're not picked, we'll keep you in mind for an alternate if somebody has to drop out for some reason, and we'll keep you in mind for our next game's testing if you're still interested then.
We hope to get lots of interested parties, so please tell all your friends to apply if they have any interest. Besides, my biggest fear is that nobody will apply. My ego would be crushed!
WE WILL PICK ENTRIES ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 6! SO SEND YOUR APPLICATION IN BEFORE THEN!!
Mike Hommel
Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software
http://www.hamumu.com
jamul@hamumu.com
Hey everybody, it's finally that time! Do you like puzzle games? Do you like working extremely hard for virtually no compensation? Well then I have the job for you!
There's been a lot of interest in beta-testing, so we can't accept everyone who applies. That also means we get to be really picky and rigorous about the rules! And we shall be. First of all, here is the compensation you'll receive if you do beta test and follow all the rules:
1. A free copy of the game when it's released, of course.
2. Your name in the credits under "Testing", surprisingly enough.
3. The opportunity (not to mention obligation) to play a game before it's released.
4. a T-SHIRT!
Before we proceed I will point out that at present, there don't exist any T-shirts, so worst case is that you might receive a very simple cheesy one from CafePress, but it will have something to do with Hamumu Software. I know we're not offering terribly much, but I think there are enough fans who are really interested enough to do it for the above rewards. But before you jump on that bandwagon and start grabbing for your free stuff, read all of the following rules and requirements very carefully. Because:
** IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW ALL DIRECTIONS COMPLETELY FOR THE DURATION OF THE BETA TEST, YOU WILL BE REMOVED FROM TESTING!! **
That's serious stuff! But it's my experience that unpaid workers, for some odd reason, tend to not work very hard. And since I need to ensure I'm releasing a quality product, and my livelihood depends on it, I need dedicated, hard-working testers. So here are the rules and directions:
1. DAILY EMAIL
This is the biggest and nastiest requirement. You are required to email me every day that you do any testing of the game. This email must contain the details of what you did that day - which modes you played, how long you spent at each different thing, and of course any problems you encountered. I expect extensive notes and details on everything, including seemingly trivial things like which modes you aren't enjoying (but are playing anyway to give it a thorough testing, RIGHT??), which ones are loads of fun, what seems a little unclear, what's hard to remember, what's hard to control, what's too easy, what's ugly graphically, what sounds bad, what sounds good, what's really funny, anything like that. We're testing not only for bugs, but for playability and fun as well.
Now I mean serious detail in these reports. I expect to be able to tell exactly which levels you played on any given day and know which ones gave you trouble and which ones were really easy. I'd also like to know which ones seemed just perfect. It helps my ego.
2. FIVE DAYS A WEEK
I have to receive five emails from you a week minimum - one for each of the FIVE days per week that you test the game. You are required to keep up with that. You can use the weekends to help out if you have a lot to do during the week, but there are only two weekend days, so you still must test three days during the week. This is a serious requirement. Working all day saturday and sunday doesn't make up for doing nothing during the week. You can certainly work much less on weekdays than weekends if you need to, but I need to get those five emails, containing actual information, every single week. You're not disqualified from testing if you have a vacation or illness or something that will interfere with a week or something, you'll just have to let me know in advance (well, probably not for illness...). If you plan to be too busy to test for more than a week, you are not eligible to test.
3. TOP SECRET
Obviously, you can't share your copy of the game with anyone else. It is given to you ONLY for the purposes of testing it out, and is quite top secret! Anybody caught sharing or pirating is obviously out of testing, and possibly getting in trouble with the law. But more than those major legal issues, there's the simple matter of the game content. It wouldn't be illegal for you to tell people who the secret characters in the game are, but it's still not allowed, and it will get you kicked out of testing! Part of the responsibility of testing is keeping it all a big secret so the players can discover it for themselves.
4. THE FORUM
The Beta-Testing forum will be reopened (still password protected, of course!) for the use of communication between testers. You can share stuff on there as you wish, but don't forget your daily email to me! I'll also post messages on there announcing the new versions coming out and such (which will happen often - I hope you're ready to do a lot of downloading) and listing the changes I make to fix the bugs discovered and so on. You are responsible to be checking the forum every day that you're testing so that you know what's going on. It's an important part of the communication.
5. THE FUN PART
In addition to all the hard work, I accept ideas and such from the testers. Understand that there's a 90% chance that I won't put in anything you come up with (mainly because I've already mostly finished the game, I don't want to put more work into it!), but I do want to hear the ideas, because there will probably be some that I do find I want to put in, and they'll make it a better finished product. And of course, much more than ideas for new monsters or something (which there will NOT be in Stockboy!! Four monsters is it!), if you have ideas for tweaks to game rules, or controls, or menu options, that kind of thing that will tweak the game to make it easier or more fun to play, and won't add much work, then I'm very interested in those.
6. THE OTHER FUN PART
This is unique to Stockboy. There will be 52 levels in StockRoom mode, which is the general puzzle mode. Creating those levels is the one major task I haven't done so far. I will be hoping that the beta testers can crank out some great levels that I can include in this mode - as always, I'm pretty burned out on level design already! There's no requirement to make any, and if you aren't interested in testing but would like to make levels, you can contact me for that as well. I'd appreciate some credentials for that, like for instance being one of the great Dr. Lunatic add-on makers! If you don't have credentials, you'll probably have to be a tester to earn the right to be a level maker. Of course anyone who creates levels gets bonus credits in the game (under "Level Design"), and maybe there will be other more significant rewards, but right now I can't think of any, so don't hold your breath.
7. LISTEN TO HAMUMU
Initially, I will just ask everyone to go ahead and play the game as though they had just bought it, and see what they can find wrong, and what's good and what's bad. But I will also have directions to give throughout the process, via email and in the forum. You have to follow these directions! Makes sense, really. I will also ask on at least one occasion, a big old survey including all kinds of probing questions like "What one major change would you make to stockboy if you had complete control?". You have to fill out the survey and email your response to me. I'll share the responses with everyone in the testing anonymously. I did that for Loonyland testing too, and it was fun!!
So those are the rules. Here's how to apply:
Email jamul@hamumu.com with the answers to the following questions. How many words you use to answer the more essay-like questions is up to you, but try to give good solid answers without rambling - after all, we're deciding whether or not to let you test our games (and thusly send us written reports) based on your answers.
        1. Your real name
        2. Your name(s) on the Hamumu forums
        3. Your email address
        4. Your age
        5. Your location (city, state, country?)
        6. What you do for a living
        7. Why do you do that for a living?
        8. What Hamumu games you own, and which others you've played the demo of, or played someone else's copy of or whatever.
        9. What your favorite Hamumu game is and why.
        10. What your favorite computer/console/arcade game is and why - no Hamumus allowed unless you don't play anything else at all.
        11. What makes a good game?
        12. What's your computer expertise level?
        12a. Know how to use ZIP files?
        12b. and move files around from directory to directory, and delete them, rename, etc? E.g., if I told you to download the file fred.bmp and put it into the graphics subdirectory, would you know how to do that?
        13. Think hard about this one. If you could make a major change to an existing Hamumu game to make it better, what would it be (and which game are you talking about?)?
        14. What kind of computer(s) do you have that you'll be testing on? Details please. Don't forget your internet connection.
That's all! Now, we want to keep the number of testers relatively low, if only so that there will still be some people left to SELL this game to. So we will pick testers based on the responses to our questionnaire (that will be fun!), and if you're not picked, we'll keep you in mind for an alternate if somebody has to drop out for some reason, and we'll keep you in mind for our next game's testing if you're still interested then.
We hope to get lots of interested parties, so please tell all your friends to apply if they have any interest. Besides, my biggest fear is that nobody will apply. My ego would be crushed!
WE WILL PICK ENTRIES ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 6! SO SEND YOUR APPLICATION IN BEFORE THEN!!
Mike Hommel
Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software
http://www.hamumu.com
jamul@hamumu.com