We're a bit into July and long due for an update on the BB2020 project. Last time, I described a failed effort to make a structured test and project management process and hinted at a way forward in terms of project management.

What we did was a complete break from the structured effort and dropped everything that meant spending more time on getting people to work in line with a "project". Instead, we essentially cut the test team back to 1-2 people who did a majority of testing in direct contact with the developers. This turned out to be more productive than before, and we have made great progress towards getting BB2020 compliant.

The work has primarily been done by Candlejack, who has been a solid rock in the development effort and have taken the client to a point where BB2020 is essentially implemented. There are some gaps here and there, but we're getting to a point where an "open beta" is practically possible. All the major on-the-pitch features are there (updated passing, full skill support, prayers to nuffle, etc), and all rosters are available. Stars are currently not functional and are missing. They need to be added by the website (requires some coding), and will initially appear without their star-specific special abilities.

More or less, we're in a phase where broad bug testing is necessary to stabilize the client overall, and identify and fix bugs and rules mistakes within the client. I'll add some more about that later in this blog post.

On the site-side, there are a lot of things needing to be done. I have quite honestly been in a pretty deep hole of lack of motivation to work on the site (and this heatwave hasn't helped), but have properly got started with it recently again. As it stands, my current todo list is as follows:

* BB2020 Subsystems
- Connecting star players to rosters: as mentioned above
- Skill progression: BB2020 compliant skill choices and rolls
- Seasons: Implement the season and redrafting functionality (some of this is partially done)

* General Subsystems
- Gamefinder 2.0: A rewrite of the game finder to make it more in line with how people want to find games
- Blackbox rewrite: A rewrite of the blackbox scheduler to function with the updated division structure
- Manual entry of games (tabletop mode): A little more long-term project where I want tabletop leagues to be able to post match results (in L) for either fully tabletop leagues or mixed ones.

* Client API
- A couple of modifications on how the FFB server talks to the site, relating to BB2020 changes

The list above is obviously not in priority order, and I am currently working on the skill progression subsystem, which is proving to be a bit of a challenge. The new system is fundamentally different from the old, and it's fairly hard to maintain full functionality of the BB2016 system as well as all the various league options. I'm getting there though.

With that out of the way, let's get back to "open beta". In order to get the client tested a bit further, we need more eyeballs on the client. We need larger-scale testing to identify issues so they can be fixed. Now, with the experience of the train wreck that was the test process before, we've reorganized this somewhat and have a new structure in mind:

1. We have a small (2-3 people) number of people who function as the "internal test team". These individuals will be responsible for entering bug reports into our tracking system (Asana), running tests to reproduce the issues, and potentially add detail. They will also be responsible for validating that the bugs are fixed once a fix has been deployed.

2. A larger set of people who essentially just play games and figure out what works and what doesn't. This means playing games in the FFB Test division (which is currently locked to test mode), and reporting any issues found to people in the internal test team (see 1 above).

The intent here is to keep the structure as simple as possible, but still keep developers working on code rather than double-checking and reproducing bugs that may not be reproducible.

To pull this off, we need to find 2-3 people who can take on the role of the internal test team. The "requirements" here is a relatively high level of activity and Discord presence. Asana is a relatively simple piece of software and experience with it isn't necessary.

In addition to this, we need people to actually play games in the FT division and report issues they find to the internal test team. This can be done either through direct contact to a member of the internal test team, or through a post in the appropriate #ffb-test channel on Discord (ask a staff member to add you to the FFB Tester role on Discord to get access).

While none of the played matches in the FT division can be pushed onto the site, this is something we are actively working towards and persisted BB2020 games is high on our priority at this point. Some of the site-side stuff I'm working on needs to be in place for this to happen though.

Either way, get in touch if you want to help with the testing process, be it as an internal tester or just want to play around with the new client and help identify issues. You can of course also just make a team in the FT division and start playing with your friends (or against yourself) if you just want to see what's coming up and where the client is right now.