Hello everyone! With less than a week to go (assuming everything goes according to plan), it’s time we expanded and elaborated how things are going to be handled- what the beta is for, what’s going to be included and what won’t be included.
What do we mean by Beta?
Recently many companies and people have misused the word ‘Beta’ and used it to mean something it doesn’t – a glorified early access for a basically finished product.
When we say Beta – we mean an actual beta. The lingonaut beta is going to function as a testing ground for specific features, bugs, security vulnerabilities, streak importing and more.
This means that far from a finished product, the beta may have:
- Missing features
- Unfinished parts
- Missing animations
- Minor or Serious bugs
- Spontaneous crashes
- Rapid and often updates
- A lack of polish
- Limited content
Remember – right now we’ve just got a partial Czech course to help with debugging! Courses can only start being made once the Lingonaut beta is out so that contributors can actually test their courses.
So, what’s actually going to be included in the beta?
- Streak importing for everyone
- The Tree
- Support for the ten question types
- Viewing Guides
- Levelling, xp and stars
- Profiles
- Practice
- Anti-cheat
- (Maybe) Sentence discussions
These are the things that (should) be available at the start, with more features rolling out as they need testing,
Bug Reports
We’re going to need all the help we can get when it comes to getting all the bugs out! When you encounter a bug please fill out the following form:
And please make sure you fill out one form per bug, if you encounter 5 bugs in a session, fill out the form 5 times, one for each bug. This will help is triage and fix each one.
Who gets in and when?
As a reminder, below is when each wave goes forward:
| Date | Wave | Eligible Testers |
|---|---|---|
| 31/03/2025 | 1 | Venus Tier Patrons (1 key) Terrestrial/’Super’ Parity Patrons (1 + 1 key for a friend) Max Parity/O.W.L Buster Patrons (1 + 2 keys for friends) |
| 8/04/2025 | 2 | Mercury Tier Patrons Translatonauts |
| 18/04/2025 | 3 | First come first served up to 1000 people |
| 28/04/2025 | 4 | First come first served up to 5000 people |
| 05/05/2025 | 5 | Everyone can join! |
It’s important to keep in mind this timeline is in the event that no glaring issues are found – suppose a scaling issue is found between wave 1 and 2, wave 2 will get delayed until we can figure out what’s going on and how to fix it.
I know people are eager to get started with Lingonaut but it’s better we take things slow now so things run well when opened up for everyone later rather than it all crashing down when there’s lots of people using it.
When and how are the Keys being sent out? Sending them will be down to the wire but they’ll generally be sent via discord, unless you’ve individually been told otherwise.
When are new courses coming?
We’re currently working on Creatonaut 3 , which brings a sweep of much needed changes to the course building process
- Multiplatform for Windows, Linux and macOS
- New automation that lets course creators make skills, lessons and questions in a matter of minutes instead of a matter of weeks
- Much more efficient .cn3 course format system which will cut loading times in half
- A slick, intuitive and easy to use interface that has far fewer bugs or quirks – letting contributors focus on build the course and not on the software.
To make the contribution process even faster and more organised we’ve also brought on a second Translation team Liaison which should make the process of vetting faster and are building up an entirely separate second server to make working together even better!
Finally, after a lot of feedback, we’re working on Launchpad 2 where people can get up to date information on the courses they’re most looking forward to and how progress is looking!
That’s all for now, thanks for reading!
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