2026-09-22
ArcadeStudio has spent its latest development cycle in internal beta testing. Until now, much of that work has happened in a controlled demo environment, close to the machines and tools used to build it. We are now preparing the next step: installing and testing ArcadeStudio in fresh Windows environments that behave more like real arcade cabinets.
This is not an open beta announcement yet. It is a progress report for anyone who likes to look a little deeper than the screenshots.
What we tested internally
The internal beta has combined automated checks with hands-on testing:
- clean GitHub checkouts on a separate Windows test machine and user account;
- Release builds and a growing suite of well over 300 automated checks;
- navigation, keyboard use, dialogs, status messages, and reduced window sizes;
- installation-package inspection, including native hardware libraries;
- a physical LED color cycle on an Ultimarc Ultimate I/O controller.
One complete QA run reached 319 of 319 passing checks on its tested revision. More importantly, the manual tests found problems that a green automated run could not show us.
What the beta tests caught
The first clean checkout revealed that broad ignore rules were excluding source folders named Packages, Publish, and Release. Those files existed on the development machine but had never reached GitHub. That is exactly the kind of problem a second machine should find, and the repository rules have now been corrected.
The UI smoke test also exposed several visible inconsistencies in Data Pack Center. Installed-package totals could disagree after filtering, installed rows could appear empty, and package cards could combine states that did not make sense together. Create/Export content was too wide, Recommended setup did not always follow the selected package, and smaller windows clipped important controls.
These were not crashes, but they made the product harder to trust. The relevant status handling, layouts, loading state, and keyboard focus behavior have now been revised.
Hardware and installer work
ArcadeStudio’s LED support depends on native libraries supplied for the controller hardware. A developer machine can hide packaging mistakes because those libraries may already be installed locally, so we now treat them as part of the product rather than a machine prerequisite.
The installer is checked for the Ultimarc PacDrive and LED-Wiz libraries, their notices, and the matching ArcadeStudio provider modules. On physical Ultimarc Ultimate I/O hardware, the test cycled through red, green, blue, white, and off successfully. LED-Wiz is the next classic PC-controlled provider; its packaged integration is in place, while testing on a physical LED-Wiz controller remains a later hardware step.
Moving beyond the demo environment
The next beta phase is deliberately less comfortable. We want to test from the installer instead of the developer tree, on fresh accounts without local SDK files, and on systems with different displays and cabinet configurations.
The focus will be on show stoppers first:
- does a clean installation contain everything needed to start;
- can ArcadeStudio discover and communicate with supported hardware;
- do saved settings survive restart and reach the runtime correctly;
- are failures explained clearly enough to recover without development tools;
- do the main workflows remain usable on ordinary cabinet displays.
This approach keeps test runs focused and avoids repeating expensive full passes when a narrower check can answer the question.
Current status
ArcadeStudio remains in development and is not yet available as a public download. The internal beta has moved us from proving individual features to proving that the complete package works away from its original demo setup.
We will share more notes here as those external-environment tests produce useful results.