Thread: access to high-level characters of different classes for testing on Bullroarer

Not sure this belongs here, but I don't know where else to put it. (I'm having a busy day today... )

When we build certain kinds of plugins, we really can't test them thoroughly (or even unit test certain things) without the right characters to test with. I kind of doubt that pretty much anyone has a full compliment of level 75 characters of every class, but I know I don't even have one.

It would be super helpful for testing purposes if we had access to pre-built, fully-leveled (at least with every skill and ability unlocked - even things that normally require TP to unlock) characters of every class on Bullroarer, both MP and FP. This would just be for testing purposes - they wouldn't even have to save status. They could be reset every night at some fixed time or something if that was a concern for some reason. Turbine must have something like this internally - I just want them to bring us into the fold just a little bit so that we can produce quality work too.

The community is great, and you'll usually get these unknowns ironed out eventually, but I really don't like to put out code that I can't unit test myself, and without access to such characters it's impossible for something like KillTracker.

...

Actually, as I'm re-reading this, I realize it wouldn't really be an issue if we had official API methods that we could rely on to code against for all of our needs. As long as we're still cobbling things together from chat parsing and running with outdated documentation.... So, maybe the correct solution would be to build out the API further, at least to cover most of the things that we would want to parse out of the chat logs, and keep both the game and API documentation more up-to-date...I want those things in any case. Would still be helpful in many situations to have access to these characters though...better to test it yourself than code by theory.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out there a couple people around with a full set of 75s.

The basic idea is good in theory. I'd note a couple additions that'd be useful.

1) Characters of any level. Some of the skills get replaced by improved or advanced versions - knowing how the basic version behaves may be important for some plugins.
2) Bullroarer might not be the best test bed, since my understanding is, it's not up all the time. Additionally, asking plugin authors to download and find space for another couple gigabytes in order to have access to that sort of testing ability might not be terribly reasonable.

Originally Posted by moebius92

It wouldn't surprise me to find out there a couple people around with a full set of 75s.

Heh, you're probably right...I'm a lot late to the party.

Originally Posted by moebius92

1) Characters of any level. Some of the skills get replaced by improved or advanced versions - knowing how the basic version behaves may be important for some plugins.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. Ideally, I think it would be more like an auto-leveller. I'd be willing to bet that's what Turbine uses internally >> "Roll me one of these."

Originally Posted by moebius92

2) Bullroarer might not be the best test bed, since my understanding is, it's not up all the time. Additionally, asking plugin authors to download and find space for another couple gigabytes in order to have access to that sort of testing ability might not be terribly reasonable.

I don't know, it's probably not reasonable to ask for anything more - they clearly wouldn't allow it in the regular game world, and I doubt they're going to bring up a whole new environment for this humble band of tinkerers. Not everyone will need/want to test this way, but for those of us that do, I think it's reasonable to require that we have some extra disk space to support it. Pretty sure most of us with the need are already in there anyways.

Originally Posted by K1R4D3L

I don't know, it's probably not reasonable to ask for anything more - they clearly wouldn't allow it in the regular game world, and I doubt they're going to bring up a whole new environment for this humble band of tinkerers. Not everyone will need/want to test this way, but for those of us that do, I think it's reasonable to require that we have some extra disk space to support it. Pretty sure most of us with the need are already in there anyways.

Mmm... either way, I think you'd be asking for an extra server - like I said, I don't believe Bullroarer's up all the time - or even all that much of the time (I don't actually know, up until a week or two ago, I didn't have space on my drive for a second copy of LotRO), so if you wanted the test server up all the time, that'd pretty much be an extra server that'd have to be running.

Also, thinking about it further, there's no reason to use Bullroarer - Bullroarer has a separate client because it's running a different version of the code base - you'd probably want to be testing with the current version of the code base, not the release candidates of the next version.

Good points.... Sigh...well, guess it's not very likely they'd give us a dev server. Oh well, was a nice dream.

For what it's worth... A couple of us do have beta access (Bullroarer) and actively use/test "our plugins" on the toons there.

Although, Lua testing is usually a "side effect" of other activities.

The nice thing about the E&G is that you can create characters for any level. And, at least, probably, until ROR goes into beta, the Characters created are persistent there.

One "trick" which I use, that should work under Windows as well as it does under Linux and OSX - I use Codeweavers CrossOver (WINE) to run LOTRO -- link the PluginData directory (Folders) across all your accounts/servers.

PluginData/<userid>/<server>/...

This allows the same plugin information to be available across all toons. It is a useful technique.
(I happen to have multiple accounts - 2 founder and 1 F2P with toons on 5 different servers; they all have access to the same information.)

Under <userid> rename "Bullroarer" to Bullroarer-old; create a link from your main server to "Bullroarer"
You can do the same with "AllServers" as well.

Note that this will also cause the Turbine Plugin Manager to propagate the same settings across all servers.

Originally Posted by Valamar

The nice thing about the E&G is that you can create characters for any level.

Whoa, I hadn't heard about this at all. I have beta access, but had missed the news about the E&G tavern - I was able to transfer my characters, but due to the nature of the testing I need to do, they're just not sufficient. I just found the guide about the E&G...I'll be trying it out the next time Bullroarer is available. This could answer all of my needs, once I can get in!

Originally Posted by Valamar

One "trick" which I use...link the PluginData directory (Folders) across all your accounts/servers.

I've never been able to figure out how to create such links under Windows. I've seen it in place on servers, but despite some attempts to figure out how to do it, I still don't get it. How do you "create a link"? I only have one account that works for both prod and beta, so I don't really have the issue, but I'd still like to understand how this is done.

Originally Posted by K1R4D3L

I've never been able to figure out how to create such links under Windows. I've seen it in place on servers, but despite some attempts to figure out how to do it, I still don't get it. How do you "create a link"? I only have one account that works for both prod and beta, so I don't really have the issue, but I'd still like to understand how this is done.

I've never done it myself, but I'd start with mklink. I'd use hard links or directory junctions (probably a directory junction to link your regular server's plugindata (i.e., PluginData\<account>\<server>) to Bullroarer's). So that'd be "mklink /J Bullroarer <server>" while in PluginData\<account>.