Groove Agent 3 Development Phases
Aug 8 2007 – worldwide shipping commences!
Today Groove Agent 3 begins shipping to our worldwide reseller network. Some might say that it’s a late vintage, but if it is, it’s also a mature one. We’d like to thank all our customers, dealers and distributors for their patience with the delivery date for Groove Agent 3.
Now that Groove Agent 3 is shipping, we’ve updated the pages on the main Steinberg site. There’s a video showing the new features, and we’ll also regularly be adding new audio demos in the future.
With the end of the 3.0 development cycle now reached, this also means that this will be the last entry in the Groove Agent 3 blog for now. We’ll be hosting a new blog for the next development cycle, though, where I’ll be regularly keeping you up to date with progress.
Until then we wish you a lot of fun with Groove Agent 3, as well as success with your music projects!
Helge
Aug 2 2007 – Mass Media
Our comparison of the master DVD with the sample happened a bit later than planned, on Wednesday. The test result, though, was as expected, namely that there were no problems or issues. This means that, since yesterday, the Groove Agent 3 DVDs are being reproduced!
The production of the installer media should be finished by Friday, after which the final product boxes are assembled and packaged by a company that specializes in exactly that. There’s a lot of stuff that ends up in the box, like manuals, installer media, license information, registration and activation code cards and so on. The so-called material lists are several pages long, and detail the contents of the different versions of the product: full retail version, upgrade from version 1, upgrade from version 2, educational versions etc.
With a production run of thousands of shrink-wrapped packages, you really don’t want something going wrong. So we get a fully packaged sample copy of each of the different ‘flavours’ and check them to make sure the contents are the way they should be. Only then is the whole production run given the green light to be packaged. And shipping will commence on August 8!
See you next week,
Helge
Jul 25 2007 - Golden Master disc in production
The last few weeks have seen a lot of hard work, and the last installer problems have been fixed. Now we’ve got a reason to celebrate, because the so-called Golden Master is now in production and is due for reproduction at the press works. Our developers Dave and Micha are now on a well-deserved holiday, hopefully under palm trees somewhere and with no computers in the immediate vicinity…
The first production run of the actual media will be completed on Monday, and we get a sample of those. We then compare the sample with the Golden Master right down to the last bit. If the comparison is absolutely 100% identical, then we give the whole run the green light. Normally there are no problems with this phase of the process, and if there are it’s at the press works. But even this is extremely rare. The DVDs are then printed with labels and packaged together with all the other components as a finished product that’s ready to be shipped.
We expect to be shipping Groove Agent 3 on August 8th! We’ll let you know next week how the testing with the production sample went.
See you,
Helge
Jul 13 2007 - Master disc creation, testing of installer DVDs
The Groove Agent team is in crunch mode: Monday, July 9 saw the first installer DVDs being created, with one for the "normal" version, and one for the Groove Agent 3 upgrade version. Together with the installer files, these are now subjected to a final round of testing on the largest possible number of computer systems and on different software platforms.
What does the term "test" mean in this context, anyway? It refers to the testing of a full installation on Windows XP, Windows Vista Ultimate and Vista Home Premium, as well as OSX for PPC- and Intel-based machines. We also conduct a new round of tests under VST, AU, DXi and ReWire on so-called “fresh” systems. A fresh system is one which has only a new, clean install of an OS present. And there’s a lot to watch out for when you’re building Groove Agent 3 so that it will install smoothly on different platforms without any hitches.
Back to work… See you!
Helge
June 28 2007 - Testing of release candidate begins
It was a moment we've been working towards for a long time, and it finally arrived last week: the first Release Candidate was built for Groove Agent 3. This is a very important milestone for the whole team, because it puts us on the home straight towards the final release. During this new phase, Groove Agent 3 has to prove itself to be robust and capable under pressure. During this process, our test team does things with Groove Agent 3 that you’d probably not normally do. These sorts of test cases go beyond normal usage scenarios, and are necessary to make sure that GA3 has the necessary stability.
I’m often asked how it’s possible that a software product can suffer from massive delays in its release. I read the only sensible answer to this question about 10 years ago in an interview with the chief developer of a famous game software company: “It’s done when it’s done”. This deceptively simple piece of software development lore has seldom been more appropriate than for the complete rewrite of Groove Agent 3.
Anyway, the building of the release candidate means that the finishing line is in sight. Our developers, Dave and Michael, as well as our Test Manager Götz are sure that “it’ll be done by the end of July”. The translation: we’ll be shipping in August.
Bye and ‘til next week,
Helge
Jun 15 2007 - Final Beta Phase continues
Our developers are working flat out and we’re close to beginning the next development phase. In the past week Dave and Michael have been working on optimizations, while resolving 15 further issues. Because the VST version of Groove Agent 3 is looking really very good, they’ve been working on finalizing the AU and DXi versions since the beginning of this week. Members of Steinberg’s development team have been helping the core team out with that.
Next week will see the begin of the next phase: the first “release candidate” will be “built”. This refers to the first version that could be used for the final DVD. The release candidate then undergoes heavy testing. It’s not unusual for several release candidates to be built before the final version enters production.
What new drum kits have we got in Groove Agent 3? We have a total of four new kits, each sampled with incredible attention to detail to make it as realistic and “playable” as possible. One is an outstanding new vintage kit from the 60s, which we recorded in a tiled room with a very nice (and, of course, variable) ambience. It pleasantly reminds you of famous drum sounds from that decade. The other is a wonderfully dry, punchy kit, one for real connoisseurs. Because the kits are highly detailed and built in GA3 with alternating samples, all four of the new kits sound very lively and dynamic.
See you next week!
Helge
Jun 7 2007 - Final Beta Phase continues
We’re making good progress with Groove Agent 3! In the weekly GA3 meetings we discuss the current status and generate action items. In our meeting yesterday we decided that while the number of known issues is being steadily reduced, we will extend the current phase a bit in order to further improve product stability. The developers will also carry out the last round of finalization and optimization on the actual program code. We’re confident that we’ll be able to ship in August.
So who are the developers behind Groove Agent 3? Our lead developer is Dave Brown from Scotland. Dave is somewhat of a legend in the VST plug-in scene, being one of the first people to develop third party plug-ins for VST, back in 1997. His colleague is Michael Spork, who also worked at Steinberg before working together with Dave on Groove Agent 3. The two are a great team and have completely redeveloped Groove Agent 3 from the ground up, breaking through limitations with the previous version and rebuilding the core engine to make it easily extendable in the future.
Bye and ‘til next week,
Helge.
May 30 2007 - Final Beta Testing and Development Phase
Welcome to our Groove Agent 3 blog! It’s been quite a long time getting here, but we’re now in the final stages of development towards the release of Groove Agent 3, which we currently project for August 2007. The graphic above will be updated to show you each of the last phases of GA3’s development right up until it’s released. As each new stage begins, the timeline will be updated to show what we’re currently working on. I’ll also be updating this mini-blog at regular intervals, keeping you up to speed.
The current phase is Final Beta testing and Development. Following on from the previous phase, in which all the features for the version have been incorporated into the software, this phase is all about making the software as stable and reliable as possible before it goes into production.
Catch you soon,
Helge Vogt
Groove Agent 3 Product Manager
