DevHeaven Issue Tracker

[fireship4]

I was wondering whether it would be easier for 1C to have an account on the DevHeaven issue tracker where bugs and issues in CoD can be more easily reported, discussed, sorted and dealt with. It is used for Arma 2, by the A.C.E. team and others, and seems to do the job very well.

Here is the ACE issues tab for those who dont know what I mean: http://www.dev-heaven.net/projects/ace-mod2/issues

Thoughts?

[Strike]

Yes, they need a bugtracker so that we can serve our true purpose as (beta)game-testers and submit bugs etc without flooding the forums. Assign a dude I guess to be in charge of approving bugs/issues and assuring there are no "double posts" of stuff. Then the developers can easily look at what bugs have been found in what parts of the game and keep easier track on stuff than having to rip apart the forums to find every single bug in each post :p

[Ivan Fooker]

Also made the same suggestion 4 or 5 weeks ago.
Guess these kind of suggests are drops on glowing steal atm.

[SG1_Lud]

+1

[Strike]

Or let me tell you about a little game developing company:

Back in the day, I used to play a lot of Half-Life, then the mods came around and there was Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Sven-COOP, Day of Defeat etc. Then came NS or Natural Selection. This game immediately became very popular because it combined Real Time Strategy with First Person Shooter type gameplay. One team was Marines, the other Aliens and each map had resource-nodes and various rooms that aliens could build more hives in. In 2001, a certain game developer that used to work on projects such as the RTS game Empire Earth, left the company and started off a new company. It struggled with the few donations from the Half-Life mod NS, because they can't charge players for a mod to a game made by another company.

So after developing the game and trying to build his company he finally finished building his very own game, namely NS2, in his own engine called "Spark" and he was in a financial crisis so he thought : "Let's offer the fans a game engine-demo to show what the game will look and feel like and let them have 1 gun to shoot target dummies around a single map, then charge a few bucks for it". The fans bought this and his company immediately earned like several ten thousands of dollars on it, motivating him and helping him continue developement and move into a new office/hire programmers.

After this it's all been downhill and they did the smart thing: They made a beta-version that costs the amount of the full game and gives fans and newcomers the ability to test, play and report bugs. They even incorporated the bug-reporting system into the game engine so that if you hit "F1" you are brought to the bug-reporting URL in your web-browser and you can immediately report it. They use this program : http://www.pivotaltracker.com/. What it does is it allows easy collection of loads of bugs and/or requests by the community/customers to allow quicker fault adressing, isolation and repair.

What it does it let the developers accept or reject bugs and/or requests and keeps track of it. Then it's possible to make a new "build" or patch out of these requests and bugs and share them within the developing team. After faults have been confirmed fixed, one can rule it out and call it "delivered" and all of this can, to the community's joy, be uploaded live to a website. So the community can see what's currently being worked on and monitor progress, access the complete list of bugs, add your own bugs, add requests and comment on everything to help the devs figure out what's causing the bugs.

I would highly recommend that the devs use a system like this. I would actually be surprised if they didn't.

Oh and if you wonder what the game looks like you can check out their site www.unknownworlds.com/ns2

[ATAG_Doc]

It all started with Wolfenstein for me. On my Tandy 1000 PC. I'd spend hours playing it at work (yes work) on the graveyard shift.

Of course this was all before the 3W's we have now. It was just ASCII based dial in BBS then using a 600 baud acoustic coupler for a modem.

Bug reporting was done via the automobile. You drove over there and for me it was just a few blocks away.

How times have changed.

[Strike]

The point is, we need a more accessible and tidy bugtracking system than randomly posting stuff everywhere in the forums. It's so much easier when you can file a bug, then comment the bug instead of commenting everything else.

Some threads initially bring up a bug, then it evolves into anything and everything. Sometimes more bugs are brought up in the wakes of the initial bug report, and other times the thread completely shifts topics. If we had a proper tracking system, we could all review the filed bug reports, then add comments on the specific bug, and if we uncover more bugs, give them each an individual report. So 1 report per bug, not 1 thread that covers 2-3 bugs each. Of course the devs would have the ability to interact directly with the people who are reporting the specific bug. Once the bug has been "fixed" it will be noted as "delivered" or such, then we can test the new build, and if the problem still persists we can "reject" the bugfix and it remains in the "To-do" list.

Other than that the developers can draw useful information from their own crashes in the office, and comment/share code etc regarding that bug and keep track on what's being done with that specific bug and how far it's on the way to be fixed. They'll set a goal for the next patch and add bugs and features to that list, then they can all see what needs to be done before the next patch, how much remains and share it via a live feed to us That way they won't have to constantly be annoyed by people asking how it's going and they won't have to write it manually into the forums, just listing stuff up and ending with "And a lot of other small bugs and fixes......" we would instead have a complete list of EVERYTHING that is reported and fixed.

[ATAG_Doc]

I concur 100%. Makes theirs and everyone else life / job easier.

[Strike]

Example of bug detection, process and dialogue for fixing it, and result:

An RPG-7 launcher with a special scope is not performing as per it's real counterpart as reported by a community member:

http://www.dev-heaven.net/issues/19987

I think this would suit perfectly for IL-2 CloD bug-squashing

[Ataros]

+1