First of all, I do know that, despite the inflammatory headline, many users do in fact report bugs, and those users are a valuable asset and are appreciated. But without any way to know specific numbers, I’d guess that maybe 75% of the bugs that are experienced by C:SI users go unreported.
This is especially frustrating because I have on many occasions heard people – either first-hand or through stories related by very close friends – saying derogatory things about C:SI developers (and me specifically) because of the bugs. This is pretty unfair in my opinion, and such people are a part of the problem they are complaining about.
Not everyone says nasty things, of course, probably most people simply don’t say anything at all. I guess I can’t fault people too much for that, it is after all not their job to spend their own time helping us with a product they had to spend money on, though in some cases it is only the end users who are in the position to see a problem.
For instance, there was apparently an incident last night (on Meiji?) that was reported to me by my buddy Zai, where several people had their C:SI weapons break in a short period of time. This seems to be the same problem that has been discussed several times recently both here on this blog and the C:SI forums, and which is so sporadic and uncommon that no dev has been able to reproduce it.
Every time I’ve written about it, I’ve asked people to report when it happens, with as much information as they could give, and only a few people have responded to the call (a special THANK YOU to those that have!!!!), certainly fewer people than have experienced the issue.
For whatever reason, though, of the supposedly several people who experienced the problem last night, so far as I know at this point only Zai has reported it. It may be that the others have reported the problems to other devs, I don’t know yet, but I do know that only one person reported it to me personally.
Because I know Zai in real life, I was able to discuss the problem with him and ask him questions in real-time over the phone, and I think that the information he gave me was very enlightening. For instance, he is the very first person to my knowledge to describe the actual symptoms of what it means when the "weapon broke".
According to him, after the script errors occurred, people could still attack with the swords, but while the weapon would still play the attack animations, there was no damage, no blood sprays, and no sounds. In addition, it didn’t seem to be happening to the Wave (or at least not to him personally). I have yet to find another person to validate that information, but if it is true and is what most people who experience the problem are seeing, then I believe that it tells me at least which one of the scripts is most likely to be the culprit.
If the info he reported is correct, then I am pretty excited to know that I can localize the problem to a (hopefully) single script and start really looking into it. This is the first big break we’ve had on this bug in terms of locating the offending code, though thanks to Darien we might know *what* is happening, just not where.
So I’m asking again, please, we really do want to fix this bug. If you experienced this issue or experience it in the future, please send us a notecard or IM with as much information as you can remember about what happened. Did it happen during a fight? Did it happen drawing the sword? Could you still attack, was there blood, sounds, etc? You never know what important details might be critical to fixing the issue, so please please please send us any information you can.
24 Comments
Okeys so some more info on those script error avie names, times, and dates I gave you in yer last post about this.
I can confirm the symptom of “blade anims play, no bloodspray, and no damage taken/given” in one case but I forget if there was sound or not. That was freebsdd Allen’s Cursed Spirit in Meiji (or maybe Tokugawa *before* the mats moved to Meiji). freebsdd had the exact symptoms and could attack but couldn’t damage me or anyone else and couldn’t take damage.
The errors from Djinn were with Heart of Darkness but that’s all I know. I dunno the actual symptoms of anyone else in that list I gave you.
Hrm…poke Malachi or Zero cuz they were the ones who called “stop match” during the TFS 3vs3 cuz of broken blades…maybe they can give you better symptoms for Djinn, Lumiere, and the other one who broke?
Oh and like +1 for yer blog not eating my comments as spam anymore. ROFL
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
Aimee, thank you so much for responding! I’ll have cookies or something for you later
The information you gave previously was pretty helpful, though limited (it’s no less appreciated for that).
YES!!! Sweet, this confirmation is more valuable than you probably would guess!
Well, the information you have given is probably going to be very helpful! In fact, Zai reported that he didn’t think the HOD was experiencing the problem, so even that’s more information than I had before.
I’ve been messing with spam protection plugins, since I’m starting to get a whole lot more spam comments. I guess that means that my blog is becoming more well-known, lol. In any case, I’ve stopped playing with the plugins, and you should have less problems. Sorry about that!
Random thought: next time *anyone* sees this happen please turn on showtrans and watch for sword bullets and guards rezzing and report to Robby if the broken blade is rezzing stuffs. Just a thought! xD
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
Oh and yeps, glad to be of help! Like…I didn’t think to report the actual symptoms before cuz my thought is if you blogged about it you must know about it and must have gotten the symptoms already. LOL
So yah…I’ll be more verbose in stuffs I send you and assume it’s a new bug unless you tell me you already know the symptoms. xD
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
I have no information to add about this bug, as I’ve never experienced it (and it’s looking like the reason is because the Wave is by weapon of choice). But I do have some thoughts about the general question “Why don’t users report bugs”, and I’ll throw in my responses to them too.
I’d guess the number one reason is they assume they are not the first to see the bug, and so it must have already been reported and reporting it again will just annoy the devs. But as we’ve seen from this current bug, telling the devs about bugs they already know about is still helpful as it can give them additional information about the circumstances and how often it’s occurring.
Another reason might be that people decide it’s a problem with SL and not the swords themselves. I think it’s still a good idea to let the devs know, since they can determine that better and even if it is a problem with SL, they might be able to change some code to work around it.
My last idea, which I’m not sure if anyone actually thinks this, might be that they know it could be months before the next version is released, and so it’s not worth bothering to report it if it isn’t going to fixed immediately.
I think it might be useful for both the devs and the users if there were an issue tracker set up. I’m guessing this has been discussed before by the devs. If it’s the difficulty of getting something like bugzilla installed and set up that’s stopping you, have you thought of doing something like creating a project on Google Code Hosting or (probably not as good an idea) Sourceforge? Of course, you’d have to actually have some open source code being developed if you didn’t want to risk the project being deleted. Maybe you could throw together a desktop app to fetch stats or something XD
Colin’s latest blog post is : My Little Pony Troll
There *is* a bug tracker setup but we all just forget about it. =^.^=
http://www.combatsi.com/e107/e107_plugins/bug_tracker/bugs.php
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
Oh noes! My comment with a URL to the bug tracker is awaiting moderation! LOL Ha just go to the CombatSI Web site and click on Bug Tracker on the right. xD
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
So much for the +1, huh?
That is a pretty great idea, I wonder why I didn’t think to mention that..
Oh yer still +1 in my book cuz moderating posts with URLs is a good idea. xD
But yah…the bug tracker on CombatSI…should we use that? I mean…it’s there so obviously at least *one* of the devs put it there for us to use.
Did you get a notice saying I submitted bugs? If not should all the devs get added to some list where they get poked when a new bug is filed?
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
I think using the bug tracker is a fantastic idea, but I actually haven’t received any notices of bugs entered, and in my ignorance in thinking I would be notified I assumed nobody was using it.
I’ll look into fixing that right now!
Let me try again:
XD I didn’t even realize there was already a bug tracker set up on the website.
Colin’s latest blog post is : My Little Pony Troll
Another one from tonite. XD \o/ More info!
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
So it’s actually naming the script now?
Wow, that’s SO MUCH BETTER!!!
Oh… Hey…. It names the object too, neat. Why the hell is that behavior so inconsistent?? Just a couple days ago Zai said it wasn’t naming the object *or* the script… Curious.
Yah…that’s the first I’ve seen it spit out script and object names! XD Maybe that’s a new feature in the new server code that went out yesterday?
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Leaving Yakuza and going clanless for a while
Archanox and Esprite have seen this now, and I’m sure they’ll pass it along to Ayame as well. Thanks for posting that! Last I heard Archanox even thought he had a pretty good idea where to look for the source of the problem
Two nights ago, Lamia Jun commented that her Red Sunset “broke” with math script errors. She immediately reunpacked another one so I don’t think she got any symptoms.
Well, for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry to hear about all these problems people are having
At least now we have more information than we used to, and can begin to try to figure it all out.
In my mind, this weapon breakage thing has been more of a nuisance than anything. In-world, we just have to reunpack, and we restart the spar for exmaple. You devs certainly have a ton on yor respective plates now, and I hope we (the C:SI user community) continue to show some patience and continue to try to help you all.
Well, thank you for that
We really would like to get this solved, though! Obviously something has happened on the server side of things to cause this error to be much more frequent, and I wouldn’t bet a single cent that we can rely on LL to find and resolve the issue from their end, so the only way it is likely to improve is if the C:SI devs can find a work-around.
Yah, what Solace said. We all know how flaky SL is so I keep backups of product boxes so it’s easy to rerez a blade. Keep up the awesome work but don’t stress about it too much! xD It’s *just* a game…but a fun one I’m horribly addicted to! LOL
Aimee Congrejo’s latest blog post is : Various Inworld Issues? Duh.
The Nagi is not Immune either
bloodlines
6 April
YenNhi Babi – reattached her nagi and got this
Flamee Naginata (combat ver. 1.5.2) [script:Sensor Slash]: Script run-time error
[17:40] Flame Naginata (combat ver. 1.5.2) [script:Sensor Slash]: Math Error
Meiji
7 april
Juliana Holmer
was fighting , during a spar my nagi stopped making sounds and didnt give the opponent any damage. pulled a new one out otf the box and started over.
[5:18] Flame Naginata (combat ver. 1.5.2) [script:Sensor Slash]: Script run-time error
[5:18] Flame Naginata (combat ver. 1.5.2) [script:Sensor Slash]: Math Error
That is the first time I’ve heard of the nagi having this problem. Very interesting… And it’s in a different script, apparently.
THANK YOU FOR THE INFO!!!