Difference between revisions of "Citan's Bug Reporting"

Latest revision as of 15:05, 22 January 2024

This Blog Post was part of the Gorgon Website blog. It was posted by Citan in early 2016 (Before April).

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Let me talk about the general answers first, and then answer your specific inquiries.

Our rule of thumb is "send bugs on everything, each time it happens." It's often impossible for players to tell which bug-reports are distinct and which overlap with other bugs they already sent in, because it often depends on implementation details you don't know. But better safe than sorry.

If it's a bug that happens many times per game session, you can just submit the bug a few times and explain that it happens a lot... we will send you an in-game message if we need you to report more instances.

Since we are a small indie team with no dedicated QA employees, we actually appreciate reminders of bugs that may have slipped through the cracks. So if your pet-peeve bug is still broken after an update, feel free to send another bug report saying that it is still broken. If it's a serious issue, this is probably an oversight. And if it's just something that we've decided is low-priority, we'll try to respond and say something to that effect.

Some people are worried that they are polluting our bug database with duplicate bugs. Don't worry about that. We have a two-tier system, so your in-game reports are sent to a ticket-manager, and those tickets are added to the bug database if they're new bugs. Once we know about a bug and have enough info to repro it, we just close any future report-tickets.

So that's the general answers! Let me address your specific questions:

Do you want to know every time a motherlode spawn is stuck in terrain and not useable?

I'm working on a general fix for this one, so I don't need to know every spot that they get stuck. But do please submit a report at least once after each game update so that I'm aware it's still a problem.

Do you want to know about any minor typos in NPC dialogue?

Yes, please report every typo or grammar issue as a bug.

Do you want to know that some AoE effects are blocked by stationary objects in Myco Cave?

Yes. This is another case like the motherlodes problem where I eventually want a universal solution. (In other words, I'm not going to manually tweak the myco cave to make visibility work... I'm going to tweak the visibility system until the myco cave works.) BUT, when testing it, I need locations that are broken, and I actually have a hard time finding these on my own, so getting reports of a bunch of specific spots is very useful. In these cases, it's most useful if you are standing in the exact spot (if possible), because your coordinates are included in the bug report.

What about suggestions? Do you only want major suggestions, or also commentary on drop rates, etc.?

The in-game suggestion system is ideal for concrete things, but not a good fit for broad-scope suggestions. It's not practical to do a lot of back-and-forth talking within the game, so if something needs discussion, it's best done on the forums. Some examples of good and bad suggestions:

Good specific suggestions for the in-game suggestion box:

- "Ability X should be able to be placed on the side-bar. Here's why: blah blah blah"

- "NPC X says he loves pies but he doesn't like cow pies. He should at least have a funny comment if you try this."

- "When you die, your tombstone should be more elaborate the higher your Dying skill"

- "The description text on item X is supposed to be funny, I think, but it's not funny. It should be rewritten"

- "Boss monster X has about 10,000 more hit points than other similar boss monsters and is a huge pain in the ass... please make sure that's not a mistake!"

Suggestions that are more general, and should be on the forums instead:

- "The skill X is too underpowered and you need to power it up"

- "You need to simplify NPC interactions because there's too much stuff to remember!"

- "I hate <game feature x>"

- "Why not add a new skill called Gambling to the game? It would unlock lots of gambling games"

The difference is really whether it's a concrete task or not. If I agree with you that ability X should be able to be put on the side-bar, I'll file your suggestion as a task, and it will end up on my to-do list some day, and : I'll directly implement it. No real need for discussion.

I can't directly act on the more general feedback. My to-do list will never have "make <game feature x> more fun" because that's not a task... that's a goal.

To be clear, it's still fine to send general feedback via the game... even if I don't act directly on it, it informs me that a player is concerned about something. And some players don't like posting on the forums, in which case it's fine to send any feedback from within the game.

But in a perfect world, in-game suggestions are something specific that can be implemented in a day or less. On-website suggestions are things that I can think about, hear lots of angles from different players, and eventually create some concrete tasks to address the problem after I've gathered lots of feedback.

And thanks for the reports!

http://projectgorgon.com/forum/community-questions-answers/2975-would-like-a-dev-comment-on-bug-reporting-please#15182