A bugtracker?
 

As some of you have noticed there are a thread where some members of this forum are voicing their opinion on the sorry state of the bug list thread. My personal opinion is that there is no way a thread like that can stay organized but I have potential solution. I have a bug tracker website that I created for internal use for a company some time ago. I should easily be able to adapt it and turn it into a bug report/bug management site that this community could use. I also have access to a host so that would not be a problem.

I am aware that the developers and the forum users might not use it but I will have to update it sometimes soon anyway so I figured that I might as well let you guys use it, a community of a game like this certainly deserves some support.

The basic features that would be needed would be the following.

• Bug category. (Spelling error, crash, graphic bugs, etc)
• Bug status, like "open", "confirmed" and "fixed".
• Ability to cross link bugs, so if a bug already was posted a moderator could close it and have a big redirect sign to the relevant bug.
• Links to any shrapnelcommunity threads that are discussing the bug.
• Bug index numbers so it would be easier to refer specific bugs.
• Listing for relevant bugs, so if there is some suspicions that several bugs are just a facet of a specific bug I would be easy to display that bug post.
• Perhaps a option for two threads for each bug, one for the general talk about how to reproduce the bugs and one for the any eventual code talk if the bug is dealing with a mod. A separate invisible thread could also be available for the developers/mod owners if they want to use it.
• Subcategories for mods so bugs can be reported for a mod.
• E-mail notification for any potential mod owner.
• Support for specialized moderators. A mod owner should be a moderator for those bug that are reported in his mod, another moderator might only have control over the bug category.
• Severity ratings, one that the person reporting the bug can set and one that the other people reading the bug list can vote on.
• A easy way to sort the bugs and filter them according to severity rating, category, etc.

Is there any other features that the community wants? If it would be requested I can also add things like a bug assignment system or color coded bug categories.

Re: A bugtracker?
 

That sounds impressive!

Re: A bugtracker?
 

If it has an option to output a shortened list that could be posted here then that would be great.

Re: A bugtracker?
 

Bugzilla, Trac, or something else? In any case, it should be Illwinter that set up the bugtracker, because otherwise the devs will never look at it.

Re: A bugtracker?
 

They wouldnt need to look at it if a shortened list can be generated from it for posting here.

Re: A bugtracker?
 

Sorry for my lack of replies, a couple of co-workers called in sick so I had to cover for them.

Depending on how these forum are built it should be possible to set up a post that update every day at 00:00 with a bug number, title and a short excerpt of the message. I will of course have to ask the forum owners for their permission.


Something else.


From what I have seen Illwinter is a two person development house developing a game that are not making them a lot of money. Judging from their website they also do not have a lot of HTML knowledge and since they are not a major development house I doubt that they will neither the cash nor the in-house expertise to create or setup a bug tracker.



I am perfectly aware that this project might turn out to die from lack of use but it was originally designed for a homogenous computer environment consisting of IE6 as per client request so I have decided to update it anyway to valid XHTML and fix up some of the IE6 hack.

So at worst case I will have at least a few user notifying me with html problems, and at best I can refer to this project in a cv.

Besides, I like this game and since it is not open source I can't help them with the code but I still want to try to help Illwinter where I can. If they decide not to use it I at least made a try.

Re: A bugtracker?
 

People who want to sit back and wait for Illwinter to do things that the person thinks they should do are in for a long wait. I see that in alot of threads. We can leave them twiddling their thumbs. The maps, the mods, the manual, the tutorial, the stickie threads, the reference and documentation materials have all been done by players ever since Dom1. (Illwinter did do a couple of maps and docs early on)