CBT 3
The third Closed Beta-Test was the period between OBT 2 (Late 2008) and OBT 3 (Starting on August 15, 2009). During this private session, one had to ask cvet (developer of FOnline engine and of FOnline: The Life After) to be granted to play the game and see the game forums (located on www.fonline.ru at this time). Note that even if it was the third closed test of the FOnline engine, it was the first closed beta test of FOnline: 2238.
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Setting
During OBT 2, three servers were available for players, all of the three had the same content, commonly known as vanilla FOnline, which would later become FOnline: The Life After. At the end of the beta test (December 2008), the Rotators was formed and they began creating their own mod with cvet's help, called factions mod. Among the players that decided to join the CBT when OBT 2 ended, most of the Russian testers went on the mostly Russian server vanilla, and most of the English-speaking testers went on to test factions mod - which would later become FOnline: 2238.
Testers
Initial commitment
When OBT 2 ended, there was an announcement about OBT 3, that would take place "next summer" (2009). By then, most of the players just thought that they would come back six months later to play FOnline again. However, a lot of players couldn't just stop the game so fast and decided to join CBT, for different reasons: the will to help the first real multiplayer Fallout game and the will to keep playing it. A huge amount of these testers had been greatly addicted by FOnline during OBT 2 and really couldn't stop playing it as violently.
January 2009, the first CBT month, was more like an OBT (with lessen server population) than a CBT. Most of the testers were just keeping playing as they had done during OBT 2.
The weariness and the following routine
After a few months, maybe even in early February 2009, the majority of testers went weary: they had enough of playing FOnline with only few players, or they realised the development of a new game was a long work. One by one, most of them stopped connecting to FOnline or posting in the forum, and remained unseen until OBT 3 in the best cases.
With only a few players left, the changes were made more often; only committed testers posted in the forum and were able to perform accurate tests. During months a routine was followed, with changelogs, tests and bug reports, until August 15, 2008.
Testers list
Among the initial testing group, only a few committed members remained in August 2009...
- Izual, HawK-EyE, the rest of the french testing group: in fact all of them being Cajuns.
- Iguana Bob/RoadWarrior, one of the very few english-speaking testers that remained active all along.
- Burzum
- Tails
- Smartcheetah, later involved in 3D models development in 2010.
- Nails/Coliphorbs
- Bef1990, also author of the official FOnline: 2238's logo.
Development steps
After the second OBT, The Rotators (at that point: lisac2k, scypior and Ghosthack) created a brand new game; they had to chose a name, to create a website - at first, a blog - and of course to bring new contents and to fight the new bugs brought with this new content! There was also a merge of the Fallout 1 and 2 locations into a bigger worldmap of whole California and a consolidation of location maps. For example, the different Vault City maps became a larger one, for both technical and gameplay reasons. A major part of the developers work in the first time was to translate the game interface from Russian to English. During OBT 2 (from which the mod was based on), the only non-Russian texts were those from the Master.dat file from the players, like the name of the different attack modes and the interface (Skills index, character sheet, etc.). Bringing the game into English was a very important and long step.
SlimCharles joined the team in February 2009, offering his proofreading skills.
Lexx joined the team primarily as a mapper in April 2009, he had then already created the worldmap interface and the Cathedral map that was used in previous vanilla betas.
Atom joined the team in April 2009, originally to help with rewriting the combat system.
Developers implemented a lot of new features; the first huge new feature was the introduction of faction bases. Brand new dialogues, characters and quests were also released. It is also during CBT 3 that town control, crafting and factions systems were implemented, as well as the Fallout 1 towns (southern part of the map).
For more information, see the old factions mods forum.
Activities
Developers, as written above, coded new features, created maps, imported new graphics, wrote game manual, translated texts and fixed bugs.
Testers played the game, testing factions system for example, but also crafting system, town control, skills, weapons balance, safety level of guarded towns, combat, strength of different NPCs, reputation system, etc.
