Reporting Bugs inside the game?!

Started by abstauber, Wed 12/02/2014 07:47:23

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abstauber

Hey,
I don't want to hijack this thread any further. But do I get this right? You guys are reporting bugs directly inside the game?? And this happens in "The Forge" as well?

Does this really work better than noting bugs on a paper sheet?

EDIT: Argh, I posted it in the wrong board. Could anyone move this please to Adventure Related Talk? Thanks!

Monsieur OUXX

#1
I don't know how they do it in Forge.
Here is how I see it:

During beta test phase

- missing an interaction in a room? If you're the beta tester, then click on a special beta-tester button on the side of the screen, and a bug report will be automatically filled with the room you're currently in, and the last interaction you tried. A small text box allows you to type the dialog you'd expect to happen. I expect that to greatly speed up the development process.
- bad translation? Translations can be very difficult to do when all the sentences ar eout of context. With this, you just play the game, and correct them "live".
- graphical glitch? Same thing: the room number is automatically filled in, alongside with the player's settings: resolution, hardware acceleration, etc.
- Hundreds of bug reports? All the bugs get numbered automatically and compiled inside one big text file -- therefore, when you have tons of them, you can sort them easily "by beta tester", "by room", etc.
- game-blocking bug? All the player's actions history get dumped alongside with global variables. This way you can trace in what order he completed the quests and find out how it differs from the working scenario.

After game release :
- game-blocking bug? All major puzzles/quest trigger a named global variable when completed. Suppose some players can't complete one of them because of a bug (think "Heroine's quest"). Then they must wait for us to compile a new version of the game, and they have to start the game over because a new version breaks the saved game. Fear not! 1) They just keep playing with the broken game version. 2) We ship a small "autorun" script file that the player places in the game's directory, and it sets all the wanted variables automatically when he/she runs the game (for example: placing them in the right room, or giving them the missing object, or unlocking the missing dialog option). 3) They load their saved game: it gets loaded perfectly normally, except the broken quest gets unlocked automatically and they can continue playing the game seemlessly.
 

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