Bug tracker

When the alpha, beta and perhaps final arrive in the hands of people there is, at least in the first two cases, the need for a bug/issue tracker to be available for people to, well, post issues.

Is Uber planning on making such a thing publicly availble to testers or players of the final game? Or just during the beta and alpha period and not the final?

Obviously PA is being developed in a very open way but does I am curious if it will include keeping public a list of issues found by players.

It would be nice, however...

• have you ever used a bug tracker with 8,000 people... most of which don't understand how they work, how developers see them on the other end of the system, or could spell their way out of a wet paper bag?

For this to be more benefit than hassle, there needs to be a thorough tutorial on how to file tickets. Don't title them with "Game broken" or "Bug found." Hell, Uber may need to hire staff just to filter out unhelpful tickets.

The secret is to have the bug tracker do a core dump, so at least there's a chance of finding something.

LOL, well just make it readonly for all and only editable for devs/Uber people.
Maybe some community members who have proven to give good/accurate and well formed feedbak
At my work the testers can only view the workitems, but new items and assignments are only added by the team leaders. (and we devs can add tasks to items)

But being able to see that a bug is already known is usefull. Maybe some voting to give bugs a higher priority would be nice (only by members to track their history)

I would also like an Bug reporter for the finished game, at least for the beginning.

Of course. But I think you overestimate the amount of people that actually make enough effort to file bugs. But other remarks made are all options.

You can have a full issue tracker where everyone can create them.
You can create them automatically on crashes with dumps along.
You can let only devs make issues (private/public) and let everyone vote AND/OR comment.

There are all sorts of options. But in all cases, I think it would add something to the community.

I think some system for bug tracking sounds useful.

With almost any kind of bug feedback the devs are depending on some useful and descriptive bug sightings, it isn't bug tracker specific. I have seen games where they tried to track bugs via forums, it's a horrible mess. Also, it tends to upset the community, because it often looks like no one is reading their bug reports, even if it's not the case.

Although a public bug tracker sounds nice I know very well from my work how bug reports from (now please don't take this offensively) nonprofessinal developers and testers look like.

Check the first post from this web http://forums.untangle.com/off-topic/15 ... types.html which describes very well the stuff such people are capable of writting.

From my experience I can confirm that most people will give you such reports and it requires a lot of effort to actualy get some useful info from these reporters.

So if there was a poll included that I would vote that only a subset of people is selected based on reports filed using a dump handler which usualy includes a field for steps to reproduce and such.

EDIT: Also if such people are selected they will need a full test specification with test cases and their expected behaviour. Sure you can write a crash report, but without the test cases you will get "bug" reports that are actualy features designed like that but the tester didn't know or forgot about.

Many bug trackers are developer-centric. When you are collecting public bug reports from normal people, focus on usability. You don't want to scare them away or annoy them. In fact, since it takes a lot effort to submit a useful bug report, you have to encourage and perhaps even reward them.

• The design of the front-end should be intuitive and attractive. Lower the barrier to entry. Make the forms as simple as possible, avoid terminology. Hide all buttons and options that are irrelevant to the public.
• Consider allowing anonymous reports. Don't require people to register an account before they can report a bug, which is a chore in its own right.
• Browsing and searching reports should be simple and effective. Otherwise people may not bother reporting. They generally know duplicate reports are a sin. If searching is difficult and there are many report they'll give up and assume the bug has already been posted by someone else.
• Detect and prevent duplicate reports. They'll confuse and frustrate both public and developer. One idea is to compare stack traces.
• Status/feedback - even a simple acknowledgement is reassuring.
• Allow public conversation on reports (like on a forum). People may help each other out or provide more details.
• Try to automatically collect data (traces, logs, saves). Ideally integrate a bug report form in the application.
• Encourage writing guidelines, but don't punish. If necessary let employees clean up the titles and reports. However, the reporter must still be able to find his original report.
• Archive fixed bug reports for future reference. File them by application version.

I would be very much up for a proper bug tracker. As an IT professional, one of the most frustrating things about alpha/beta testing games is that bugs just disappear into the ether with no way of seeing if they've been picked up - very much not the case in my job!

Yes, people can create some truly awful bug reports, but any public service supporter will tell you that will happen anyway! We have forum mods, I'm sure the community can self regulate a bug tracker.

There are already services (GetSatisfaction etc) that offer this kind of service. Plus we have a limited pool of people getting involved in the backer-led closed alpha/beta. I don't think it would be a huge problem.

Bug Report #1 - I've looked everywhere but can't find the download link for this game. Please fix ASAP.

New status: Closed. Resolution: Won't Fix.

Comment: Thank you! Have a nice and productive day!

on that note



(http://xkcd.com/583/)

:shock:

Asgo, you are a bad bad man.

Why this reminds me of my previous project I had the misfortune to work on?

Quoting bug report:

Bug 123: There's no <PUT_NAME_HERE> feature
My reply: This feature hasn't been planned for this release and thus is not a bug.

Half of the bug reports looked just like that...

And the project manager wondered why I started to lose my assertivity near the end of that development cycle...

It's important that alpha and beta users can report bugs properly. But it's important to educate those users on how to do so.

Can I suggest a set of simple guidelines on "how to post a useful bug report" be made and put somewhere obvious (like at the top of the 'report bug' screen)?

If it's not easy and intuitive, people won't do it.
If it's not visibly being looked at, people won't do more than one.
If it's not properly policed, devs will get annoyed at the repetition.

Seems like we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't...

Either way, putting in reports is the whole point of Alpha and Beta access - it's not there so we can play, it's there so we can point out what's buggy and the team (who have already kicked enough @ss by making the game) can fix the bugs they've been too busy to spot on the first pass...

Bumping this up as I think the issue of tracking all the bugs that will come in from Alpha needs some thought.

I think at the very least you'd want a separate forum (possibly backers only as well) for us backers/testers to report too. Otherwise the other forums will just get swamped with reports.

Also need to make it clear to search for a bug already listed first, duplicate reports are a pain in the 'a' - spam spam spam

I have a couple of suggestions for bug tracking, first is a guide sent out with your alpha/beta keys on bug reporting.
Another;
Using the chrono-cam to take a short capture of just before a crash occurred & included in the guide on how to edit & provide a short video, say 5secs of a bug. (note i don't know if this would be possible due to limitations of the chrono-cam or not & how far along it is, it might not be ready for alpha or beta)
to me it just seems easier to identify bugs, at least in game ones if the dev can see it rather than rely on people with limited technical knowledge to try to explain it.

Prison architect from introversion is using an bug tracker for their alpha users. I think it's actually working quite well to document the bugs. They've got a bunch of community volunteers herding the tickets (marking duplicate tickets, closing incomplete ones etc).
I've found it quite enjoyable posting bugs I've found, reading through tickets and verifying other submissions, and i'm certainly not alone.

Certainly you might have a lot of noise initially, but with such a dedicated community it would be manageable. Abuse would be pretty straight forward to deal with since people would presumably be using their uberent account.