by cybersphinx » 13 Aug 2011, 19:30
Asgorath wrote:For me as a player liking to test the new alpha versions and to support and help improving Warzone it is difficult to understand why new masters being released still contain lots of known bugs.
In general, every bug needs someone who cares enough about it and has the time to fix it.
Rendering bugs. Nice to know, but low priority to fix those bugs specifically, since the ongoing (slowly, like everything) work on the renderer will probably make the fixes irrelevant (compare it to writing a text, if you know that you'll rewrite a paragraph anyway, you don't need to go out of your way to make sure doesn't contain errors).
Missing translations. Also nice to know, in case an existing translation isn't used. If it's just untranslated strings though, it's up to the translator to fix them - or someone with enough time to manually merge strings from 2.3 to master and the other way around, and make sure no correct translation gets removed in the process. If you want to do that, I can automatically generate merge patches, but they need manual fixing.
Unsaved game state. Needs someone to implement that in the savegames (which means that it won't go into 2.3, since that'll break compatibility).
Strange things. Best give a "do X, then Y happens instead of Z" type of description to reproduce them, a savegame "see, it's broken" is less helpful (savegame to prepare for X might be helpful, though master isn't exactly stable in that regard, so those might need updating often).
Hm, the subtitle timing... when I tried the conversion script, it failed on some missing files. A fix for the script, or a patch of the complete converted timings might help. For future timing issues, having the game read
.ass files might be nice (discarding the formatting), so text can be timed and positioned in established programs like aegisub.
I was testing beta of Firefox 4, Firefox also had some sort of ticket-system like you use. Before releasing a new beta, Firefox first worked off every single ticket of actual beta and fixed it. Step by step, every beta contained less bugs.
Of course I know that people working for Firefox got paid for their work and that they didn´t leak off manpower.
But I think working like they did is much more effective. You don´t carry problems around, no matter if it is a big or small problem.
That works if you start from a bug-free base, in Warzone there is too much broken to make this feasible (and the potential to break things without noticing, because nobody plays the game, is too high). We do (hopefully) fix those regressions quickly though.
Just by writing "This release probably contains bugs, please report them so they can be fixed" I as a tester don´t know:
Which problems may they be aware of? Which tickets are they working on? Which tickets did they forget? What bug may they think is less important?
If you are releasing a new master containing known bugs or problems, could you please write them down? Maybe even link the tickets?
It would be nice if we had proper bug triaging to set priorities in trac. That needs time though, as would making a list of known bugs.
I think there would be two major pros:
- Testers would know which problems you are aware of, there wouldn´t be tickets need to be set to "dublicate"
- Progress of Warzone would be much more clearly and you devs always know what you still have to work on
We are, more or less, aware of all open tickets. trac is unfortunately missing some features to better handle duplicates, if it could merge tickets and then automatically have the merged ticket take the higher number, common problems would keep at the top of the list (if ordered from newest to latest), and the (somewhat frustrating for both sides) "oh, a duplicate" - "damn, it just got closed" process be changed to something nicer.
I know that working on every single bug before releasing a new master can take a lot of time and that it may take longer until a new master gets released, but therefore every new master is a huge improvement and a great step to make master being a stable version.
As mentioned, the master snapshots are not releases, but more like Firefox nightly builds (aurora or whatever they call them), i.e. the builds that people test to find bugs to be fixed before the next release.
[quote="Asgorath"]For me as a player liking to test the new alpha versions and to support and help improving Warzone it is difficult to understand why new masters being released still contain lots of known bugs.[/quote]In general, every bug needs someone who cares enough about it and has the time to fix it.
[quote]Like the new master_20110801, just from playing 3 matches I noticed 8 bugs being reported in tickets from former masters
http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/2468
http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/2576
http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/2635
http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/2732[/quote]Rendering bugs. Nice to know, but low priority to fix those bugs specifically, since the ongoing (slowly, like everything) work on the renderer will probably make the fixes irrelevant (compare it to writing a text, if you know that you'll rewrite a paragraph anyway, you don't need to go out of your way to make sure doesn't contain errors).
[quote] http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/2855[/quote]Missing translations. Also nice to know, in case an existing translation isn't used. If it's just untranslated strings though, it's up to the translator to fix them - or someone with enough time to manually merge strings from 2.3 to master and the other way around, and make sure no correct translation gets removed in the process. If you want to do that, I can automatically generate merge patches, but they need manual fixing.
[quote] http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/2752[/quote]Unsaved game state. Needs someone to implement that in the savegames (which means that it won't go into 2.3, since that'll break compatibility).
[quote] http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/2749[/quote]Strange things. Best give a "do X, then Y happens instead of Z" type of description to reproduce them, a savegame "see, it's broken" is less helpful (savegame to prepare for X might be helpful, though master isn't exactly stable in that regard, so those might need updating often).
[quote] http://developer.wz2100.net/ticket/748[/quote]Hm, the subtitle timing... when I tried the conversion script, it failed on some missing files. A fix for the script, or a patch of the complete converted timings might help. For future timing issues, having the game read [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_SubStation_Alpha].ass files[/url] might be nice (discarding the formatting), so text can be timed and positioned in established programs like aegisub.
[quote]I was testing beta of Firefox 4, Firefox also had some sort of ticket-system like you use. Before releasing a new beta, Firefox first worked off every single ticket of actual beta and fixed it. Step by step, every beta contained less bugs.
Of course I know that people working for Firefox got paid for their work and that they didn´t leak off manpower.
But I think working like they did is much more effective. You don´t carry problems around, no matter if it is a big or small problem.[/quote]That works if you start from a bug-free base, in Warzone there is too much broken to make this feasible (and the potential to break things without noticing, because nobody plays the game, is too high). We do (hopefully) fix those regressions quickly though.
[quote]Just by writing "This release probably contains bugs, please report them so they can be fixed" I as a tester don´t know:
Which problems may they be aware of? Which tickets are they working on? Which tickets did they forget? What bug may they think is less important?
If you are releasing a new master containing known bugs or problems, could you please write them down? Maybe even link the tickets?[/quote]It would be nice if we had proper bug triaging to set priorities in trac. That needs time though, as would making a list of known bugs.
[quote]I think there would be two major pros:
- Testers would know which problems you are aware of, there wouldn´t be tickets need to be set to "dublicate"
- Progress of Warzone would be much more clearly and you devs always know what you still have to work on[/quote]We are, more or less, aware of all open tickets. trac is unfortunately missing some features to better handle duplicates, if it could merge tickets and then automatically have the merged ticket take the higher number, common problems would keep at the top of the list (if ordered from newest to latest), and the (somewhat frustrating for both sides) "oh, a duplicate" - "damn, it just got closed" process be changed to something nicer.
[quote]I know that working on every single bug before releasing a new master can take a lot of time and that it may take longer until a new master gets released, but therefore every new master is a huge improvement and a great step to make master being a stable version.[/quote]As mentioned, the master snapshots are not releases, but more like Firefox nightly builds (aurora or whatever they call them), i.e. the builds that people test to find bugs to be fixed before the next release.