A Busy Summer For “Pirates of The Burning Sea” Team

The developers of greatly anticipated Pirates of The Burning Sea over at Flying Lab Software have been partyin’ hearty this summer – between a trip to the “Game On!” exhibit at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center and and renting a whole theatre for the gang to see “Dead Man’s Chest,” it seems that working at FLS is nothing but good times and boogie nights.

Producer John Tynes assures us that they’re still hard at work on PoTBS, however. “WeÂ’re accepting about 50 new players to our beta test program every week,” he says. “But last milestone, we only put out a couple of beta builds because it takes a lot of hours to verify the builds for release to beta. I wanted to change that, so we could release a new beta build frequently without spending a lot of QA time ensuring that basic functionality was working. Thanks to fantastic work from our QA team, this is now a reality.”

New game builds are done every night. Automated tests are performed on the build overnight and error messages sent to team members via e-mail, so by morning, everyone knows what needs fixing.

So – what’s in the works?  “Our content creation team is busy working on missions for ranks 16-30.” reports Tynes. ” New missions and characters are going in all the time and itÂ’s great stuff. We recently added the ability for NPCs to react to a player emote, so that if you use ‘/emote bow’ before a noble we can have him acknowledge your action.”

New additions also include keybinding and the implementation of the “persistent ship system,” as well as some avatar tools. Now, when characters use an item (play a fiddle, drink from a mug, etc.), that object actually appears in the character’s hands. The art team is also busy creating town art, including a “scuzzy” pirate village, a shantytown on a volcanic island, a plantation town and a mining camp.

Members of FLS are planning to attend GenCon in Indianapolis next month, followed by the Penny Arcade Expo, so if you’re anxious to give PoTBS a try, show up!

Via MMORPG.com

The developers of greatly anticipated Pirates of The Burning Sea over at Flying Lab Software have been partyin’ hearty this summer – between a trip to the “Game On!” exhibit at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center and and renting a whole theatre for the gang to see “Dead Man’s Chest,” it seems that working at FLS is nothing but good times and boogie nights.

Producer John Tynes assures us that they’re still hard at work on PoTBS, however. “WeÂ’re accepting about 50 new players to our beta test program every week,” he says. “But last milestone, we only put out a couple of beta builds because it takes a lot of hours to verify the builds for release to beta. I wanted to change that, so we could release a new beta build frequently without spending a lot of QA time ensuring that basic functionality was working. Thanks to fantastic work from our QA team, this is now a reality.”

New game builds are done every night. Automated tests are performed on the build overnight and error messages sent to team members via e-mail, so by morning, everyone knows what needs fixing.

So – what’s in the works?  “Our content creation team is busy working on missions for ranks 16-30.” reports Tynes. ” New missions and characters are going in all the time and itÂ’s great stuff. We recently added the ability for NPCs to react to a player emote, so that if you use ‘/emote bow’ before a noble we can have him acknowledge your action.”

New additions also include keybinding and the implementation of the “persistent ship system,” as well as some avatar tools. Now, when characters use an item (play a fiddle, drink from a mug, etc.), that object actually appears in the character’s hands. The art team is also busy creating town art, including a “scuzzy” pirate village, a shantytown on a volcanic island, a plantation town and a mining camp.

Members of FLS are planning to attend GenCon in Indianapolis next month, followed by the Penny Arcade Expo, so if you’re anxious to give PoTBS a try, show up!

Via MMORPG.com