Devs somewhere?
 

I'm feeling like abandoned ...

The bug thread is a messy bunch of posts, the Illwinter page is empty, the progress page is not updated, and after a short period K.O. is vanished ...

There are a lot of unresolved issues causing disappontment in the players and some of the historical forum followers are disappearing.

This game is beautiful but I think niche games like this should be folloewd more closely, else they fail.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I've given up on the bug thread in its current form. Without ruthless moderator action to delete or split every non-bug report post out of it, it's useless.

What I am doing is compiling a list of bugs as I find them and which I will later post as a large block so that instead of reporting things piecemeal, there will be 20 or 50 or 150 bugs in a single report. Especially if many of them are repetitive, easy to fix things, they might get addressed that way.

Edi

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Hopefully there are people like you ...
thanks

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

The Devs are out there, we got a patch not that long ago. However, they are not full time at this and do not tend to get involved too much in the forums. Quite some debate has raged back and forth about price and quality, but the reality is that this is an unusual game, the Devs are unusual guys and changes will come when they come.

One of the lead designers over at Paradox addresses this issue rather neatly in his signature when he quotes Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings. Something to the effect of “A Patch is never late, it arrives precisely when the Developer thinks it should.”

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

This reminds me the times when all awaited the exit of Dom 3. Whenever one asked "When will be out? I've payed for this!" a group of good boy to answer "Shut up unfaithful! The latter it will arrive the better so lots of things will added!". It simply does not make sense.

I'm watching lots of very good ideas in the forums going away and reappearing 2 years later and going away. I see a lot of effort put in the bug thread being messed up.
It is only a little complain, a little scratch on this beatiful game.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I'm not knocking the devs, they are great guys. However, the bug thread as it currently stands is rather useless for the reasons cited.

The IW guys deserve a break after the last patch, and I'm all for giving them one. Especially since it will allow me to finish my current projects and provide as complete lists of real issues and potential issues as possible.

Edi

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I've no problem with KO or JK making only rare appearances here (even if it'll be better if they were here often), but I also think that having a clean, up to date bug lists should be high in *their* priorities and it doesn't seem so... It shouldn't be a volunteer/fan effort, with all due respect.
Thx Edi for stepping up !

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I have to smile to be called “one of the good ol’ boys” and admit that in this context, my post was justifying things as they stand. Having been chased by the fanboys before, it is amusing to be perceived as one. Please consider my post a statement of the way things are, rather than a statement of the way things should be.

I should throw in that I am on the record as stating that paying normal market price for a game should lead to normal market value. I have no intention of re-opening the debate on what “normal market value” is regarding patches, graphics or expansion packs/new games; I got tired out by that argument.

I would prefer a lot of attention to problems now to a little bit of attention over the next three years, cumulating in Dominions 4. However, I expect the latter.

Sorry if I did not communicate that well.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I know Dominions_3 is only part-time work for the devs since they have regular full-time careers teaching/working. I noticed the bug thread was a terrible mess, even Kristoffer said the bug thread is no longer useful in its current state. I contacted some moderators and asked them to clean up the bug thread for the developers... the responses I received were quite lazy and uninterested. I even offered to provide them with a list of all the post numbers which were non_bug postings, yet still only lazy responses.

It's a tragedy none of the moderators are fans enough of Dominions_3 to clean the bug thread.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

The moderators are too smart to clean up the bug lists.
Nobody agrees on what is or isnt a bug. Surely you have all seen enough arguments about my posts to know that you dont want me doing major surgery on that list.

If anyone who is good at managing lists wants to offer a nice clean list and maintain it, feel free to do so. We can replace it as the stickie. (when weeding out spelling bugs please research to see if its an americanism being reported when the english dictionary spelling was used).

But any public bug list isnt worthless. Its a place for people to put the items they feel are bugs. It tends to not be the one and only bug list. Items posted there get considered, and some of them get put on the nice clean bug list in the beta area. And I fully suspect that only some of those get agreed on and moved to an even cleaner bug list in the developers area.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

That's not a tragedy. A tragedy is when I have nothing better to do on Valentine's day than post on the romantic Dominions 3 forum.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Yea I saw that post by Kristoffer so I don't even bother posting any of the numerous bugs I've found. Someone should really lock that thread, because people are investing effort in something that the Devs really don't care about.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

It's not that they don't care about the bugs we find, it's just that the current form of listing them is unusable to them.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

If you check the views on the bug thread you will see that every bug reported gets viewed many times. Its true that the bug thread became something different than the devs wanted but it definetly still serves its purpose.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

we are already at 3.06 wich means that the game was patched enough and devs are actually working.
But lots of bugs seem ignored from the start, maybe because they are tough to get rid of or judged of second priority.
So far im glad darkvision is fixed, miasma dominion, and we got Lanka nation and some new spells. You can say that there´s a lot changed since 3.00

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Yea, the devs have done a fair amount of work since the game has come out, we are already on 3.06. Also they already have our $$$ so do not need to do it. We have even had a new nation and I believe more will follow.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I was refering to the fact that they don't really care about the bug forum - not that they don't care about bugs. Telling people that posting bugs up to the bug thread is still helpful is misleading and wasting people's time when the devs said themselves the thread isn't helpful.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I fail to see how "Lots of views" = "Serves it's purpose". I thought the thread's purpose was to get bugs fixed?

(waits for the "there are two ways to look at this" Gandalf response)

Re: Solution?
 

If I were to create a proper bug management and bug reporting site do you guys think it would be used?

I have a bug tracker written in php5 that I did for a company a while back that could be extended for this purpose. I also have some empty space at a web host that I could use for the site if the community would find it useful.

Re: Solution?
 

I think it would be a good idea, because there is a rather desperate need for a cleaned up list of bugs just so we can see what issues are already reported and which ones are not and to get a good picture of what we can expect to be addressed quickly and which ones we are likely going to have to wait for.

Being able to see outstanding issues in a short form, much like the Dom3 progress page, would be great. So if you feel up to the task, go for it.

There are people like me around who are bound to find a crapload of minor issues during the course of documenting the game. The weapons list alone produced a score of minor issues, the unit list issues are going to easily number over a hundred, most of which will be minor and some of which are very annoying.

I'll be happy to report things I find, but I've my hands full with the documentation so I'm not taking bug list maintenance up on my own. I'm more than willing to keep track of typo reports, which is why I created the thread for them and which somebody even bumped to the top page recently.

Edi

Re: Solution?
 

That sounds like an awesome idea. However - you would pretty much need the Devs to sign off on it. If the Devs won't use it, there isn't much point in exerting the effort (unless you just want to keep players up-to-date on all the bugs).

Re: Solution?
 

Well, it would not be to much work as I would be adapting one of my existing sites.

If we could get people to start reporting bug in there in a organized manner we would probably be able to get the devs to use it, unless they already have something like internally. If the devs want to use it they would of course get admin accounts on it so they could reclassify bug and things like that.

Besides, I like to have a little side project next to my ordinary work and a bug tracker is something I will need on another project that I will be begin working on sometimes soon.

I think I will create a thread to see if I can get some opinions on what features that would be needed.

Re: Solution?
 

Im not sure that such a site would replace the bug thread. But if you used such a site and came back here to create a tight list, then it might be very likely to replace the thread here and get read more by the devs without the need for in-betweens to read and sort thru it for them.

A preferred result here is something like this....

crash bug

1. doing xxxxx crashes the game
link to discussion thread about this bug

2. not doing xxxxxx crashes the game
link to discussion thread on this bug

major bug
1.
link
2.
link

That makes it easy to read. Easy for devs to reply to (using numbers instead of having to quote). Easy to update. And keeping a link for each item can help keep it free of debates.

Of course there is still the big problem of bugs that arent bugs but thats a headache for whoever decides to takle this.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Lot of people with a second work make lots of effort recovering bugs and making improvement to big projects without my $$$ (Wesnoth, and hundred others). The fact IW has my $$$ make me think they should put more effort, not less.
Another thing is that 90% of the bugs are so small (but there are so many) that could me corrected only putting hands on data files. An example are the lots of little discrepancies in the descriptions, the bugs in the data files found by Edi, and so on. And if the devs think a trident is one handed and not two, it is not a problem, a line in the forum would delete the bug.
And do not tell me "then do it yourself by modding", I don't have time nor, more importantly, your $$$. And modding should be used to add contenent, or eventually, to resolve some banlancing issues not shared by the devs, but not to correct bugs.
Finally hearing that people find bugs and does not report them because K.O. does not look the thread anymore ... well, makes me sad.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Wesnoth uses the open software model, which is a perfectly valid choice - and yes, it does make it possible for many people to help correct "small bugs".

IW chose not to go this way (another perfectly valid choice), and as a result, they don't benefit from the direct help of players in squashing bugs.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Ok, but considering they have it for free, it seems a waste.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

To really get it for free (that is, with no or little extra work for coordination), they'd need to release the source and file format, at least to volunteers. Not exactly something developers of commercial software do easily.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

So for you a ordered and clean bug thread is a waste of time? Is testing worthless?

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Free programming help comes with its own pros and cons.
I can get free help working on my car, or fixing my electrical problem. But it doesnt mean that I want to. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

An ordered and clean bug thread is definetly not a waste. It would be a big benefit to the devs. It would even be a big benefit to the beta testers who are trying to port over the items in the bug thread so that the devs see it.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

An open source approach will pretty much invariably get better results as far as fixing bugs and such is concerned, but it does require giving up control. Not sure if I'd want that to happen, regardless of the benefits.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

I've not said I'd like D3 become open, I've only said a large base testing should not been wasted.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

It isn't being ignored and wasted, but there are always problems with large numbers of people. The main problem is that a lot of the time people will simply not think enough before they post, they will not go back and look whether what they want to say has been posted and they have shown a complete disregard for instructions on how to conduct themselves so that things will stay organized.

That's what happened to the bug thread. Time and again, there were requests to not report things that had already been reported. Time and again there were requests to post separate threads for bugs and then linking them from the bug thread so that the discussions stay elsewhere. Time and again people have reported bugs without testing them thoroughly or reading the manual and understanding the mechanics of the game.

I know I contributed some bug thread posts where I engaged in discussion but most of that was in order to squash sidetracks that belonged elsewhere. But the bottom line is that self-policing doesn't work beyond roughly a dozen people.

So, if there is to be an organized system for a large user base contributing, it needs ruthless, tyrannical, iron-fisted management with somebody being the top dog and calling the shots or at least setting procedure and then enforcing it harshly.

If we get somebody to compile a shortlist of bugs and then someone like Rasit managing it e.g. via an external website, it could work. It might also help the beta testers as a group and even shorten the patch cycle for some things.

But that also means that instead of just wringing their hands about it, those who want to see something done must roll up their sleeves and get cracking instead of waiting for someone else to do all the work. To make a point, the Weapons and Armor DB I posted two weeks ago has seen 219 downloads as of this post. That thing didn't exactly compile itself while I was looking the other way.

There are already quite the profusion of mods out there and I imagine most modders here are among those who downloaded it and are putting it to good use improving their own projects, which the DB was actually intended for.

With the DB project under way and actually much nearer to the end than the beginning, I'm not going to take more on my shoulders since I'd actually like to get to PLAY Dom3 at some point too. So the bug shortlist is going to have to be somebody else's project if anyone feels like contributing. If you look at people like Jack Trowell and Ballbarian, they've projects of their own that are going to help everyone in the community. It's the kind of stuff I couldn't do to save my life and I'm suitably impressed with both their dedication and work ethic in this. There's real, tangible results instead of just hot air.

JK and KO have done a lot and then some for us and are actually fairly accessible as developers of any given game go. I would love to see more of them here, but they have priorities such as work, their own lives and friends too. So give it time. We just had one patch so let them have some rest.

I guess this turned into something of a rant, but it's something I have to say because from where I'm standing, there's too much grumbling and complaining and too little effort.

Edi

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

oddly enough, this is as true of professional testers as it is of the public at large http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

As a long time test lead, I could show your bugs in our tracking database that would make your eyes bleed. (and not in a good way)

I've been pretty darn happy with what the devs have chosen to fix in the patches so far, and the overall quality of Dom3. There's plenty of stuff I'd like to see done, but most of what I want are feature requests, not actual bugs.

Sure, the bug thread as it stands is pretty darn unwieldly, but at least it does provide a central place to dump issues that stands a better chance of being summarized into something the devs might see than a random thread buried pretender-knows-where by the time the deves DO decide to check in )

Mostly i'm just saying that we shouldnt discourage people from posting their issues there, but we should ENcourage someone to go in and attempt to summarize that monstrosity someday (notit!) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

Thats another big problem with the "bug" list in my opinion. People who cant quite see the difference between a bug and them wanting the game to play differently.

It would be much easier if the list was compressed to allow the devs to spot things they consider to be bugs and things they can work on.

Re: Devs somewhere?
 

*Agrees with everything Edi said*