sh4bugs.com bug tracker is online!

[minsc_tdp]

Status
Users: 227
Bugs: 170 (View List)
Top Submitter: andrea
Server Status: Online

sh4bugs.com is a BugZilla-powered bug tracking system created specifically for this community. I've seen a lot of game community forums but you guys are a different breed. I also love the SH series and wanted to help.

List of open bugs, ranked by Severity (or just click Search twice and click Severity column to see the same list)
*NEW: List of fixed bugs (also includes closed/dupes/invalids)

Getting Started

Go to the site, register and add bugs. Registration is automated, the usual email method.

Bug Fields

Component: The affected area of the game, such as Career, Menus and Options, Multiplayer, Museum, War Patrol, etc. You must click one or it will whine at you.
Severity: The normal bugzilla severities are used. Critical should be reserved for crashes or equally serious gameplay issues (do not use critical one lightly!) "Crash" removed, all Crash bugs changed to Critical since the red highlighting applied to Critical made it seem more important than Crash. Set the severity you think makes sense for the bug. It will likely be tweaked by others later. Please don't be offended if I lower your bug severity. I'm using only my flawed judgment and I hope the Voting feature will supercede the need for this at all.

Hardware: Enter the hardware you're using. If you really think it's "All" then choose all, but only if you're very sure. Ultimately it is better to just pick the hardware you saw the bug on, and the number of votes by people will tell the developers whether it's a hardware specific thing or not.

Voting

There's a link called "Vote for this bug" on each bug page. This link shows you all current votes. You can vote eithe a 1, 2, or 3 value on any bug. The more votes you set on a vote, the more important you think it is. There is virtually no limit on the total number of votes you can allocate to all the bugs in the system, but each one can only be voted as a 1, 2 or 3.

You can see the number of votes on any bug list you get via search by clicking "Change Columns" at the bottom (took me a while to notice this, I was hacking at Advanced Search and the URL bits for half an hour, lol..)

Helping Organize Bugs

If you want higher level access to help organize the bugs, just ask and I'll hand out such access liberally, since I don't want to do all the work.

Update Keep up the good work! Be sure to vote for bugs you think are important!
Server is up again. I nearly blew a gasket today with the overclocking... thought the RAM voltage was too high so I dropped it a lot, big mistake... wouldn't even boot in BIOS recovery mode! I nearly crapped myself. Fortunately these components are top notch and after a little rest it was able to boot at the low voltage and I was able to increase it again. I'm hoping the current voltage is right but who knows. As my pennance for teasing y'all I will enter 20 bugs tonight. This weekend I will probably have time to move this to my permanent web server, as it will require a little reconfiguration and time to transfer the whole thing.

Is This Worth Your Time?

A few people have expressed concern that they might invest time in this system without any assurance that the dev's are on board or even looking at it. This is not an UBI supported project and there's absolutely no indication that this is on the radar of anyone at UBI or the dev's, yet.

Consider this: If you worked at a dev house that used email/forums for bugtracking, and out of the blue proposed BugZilla, what do you think the response would be? It would be "good idea, go do it, come back when and show us that it's useful."

This thread is sticked at the top of the biggest online forum about SH4 that exists. Dev's have invited people to post bugs in the nearby "SH4 1.1 BUG THREAD", because that's the only way right now. I think if they're willing to sift through 500 forum posts to set their bug priorities, they'd embrace BZ if we do. If we force them to sift through the forums, they just won't do as good a job.

If we embrace this as a community and work to fill it with bugs, make it useful, stand behind the voting and rankings, then we can present it to UBI and it'll get on their radar. It has to prove itself.

Waiting to hear that the devs are on board before committing your time is the wrong idea. The dev's will get on board only after we've all spent the time to fill it with bugs and make it a useful resource for them.

I assure you I'll stand behind the system, and I'm confident the dev's will embrace it - it is left only to you to do your part. This may sound lame, but if everyone submitted 2 bugs or so, carefully checking for duplicates, we'd easily have the ~500 bugs or so that are currently in the main bug thread.

[Gizzmoe]

Stickied.

[Fat Bhoy Tim]

Originally Posted by minsc_tdp

I've seen a lot of game community forums but you guys are a different breed.

Backhanded compliment? :rotfl:

[novafluxx]

This hopefully will help speed fixes along

[minsc_tdp]

I think it will help but only if we enter bugs like CRAZY. We'll worry about cleaning them up and organizing them later. There's currently only 17 in there and I know there are hundreds.

Sign up, do a quick search for whatever you're about to enter, and if it ain't there, bang it in.

[-Pv-]

"...I think it will help but only if we enter bugs like CRAZY. We'll worry about cleaning them up and organizing them later. There's currently only 17 in there and I know there are hundreds.

Sign up, do a quick search for whatever you're about to enter, and if it ain't there, bang it in..."

There aren't "hundreds." I've been reading the entire 1.1 bug thread here and half or more of what gets reported are user errors or lack of understanding of the interface and WWII history. Even if you include everything in that thread, there aren't hundreds. Maybe 25 that get reported over and over. I'm seeing a lot of people report stuff that many others are not seeing, so maybe system related, or there is a combination of events or clicks needed to get them to happen.

-Pv-

[uniquemind]

Hi,

Great idea btw, however although I signed up I have not received the email I am supposed to get

UM

[Torcher]

Same, no email. 2 hours and waiting.

[vois2]

I've spent several hundred hours with Bugzilla during the last several months on the development of Business Gauges, and Bugzilla is a great platform for the situation where bugs are being reported and fixed concurrently. Unfortunately, that won't be happening on this particular Bugzilla (no concurrent updates/fixes from the development side). Patches will <hopefully> fix several items at a time, and each item tested by the community for eventual removal from the Bugzilla. The big ape in the room is that these popular Subsim forums actually provide a quicker, broader access to bug reporting in threads such as this one. (Yes, albeit with many repeats.)

Given that, I don't know how many people will be willing to report bugs in isolation to the Bugzilla at hand. sh4bugs.c o m is a great idea, but I'm wondering if Bugzilla is the right format. This is not to criticize the work at hand. However, I am wondering if sh4bugs.c o m couldn't be used in a much more targeted way to garner a higher popularity and functionality for every user. Perhaps something like: "sh4bugs.c o m: Top SH4 bugs and how they affect your gameplay." Then small page sections showing how and what.

Bug #1 could be 'Chronometer doesn't measure target speed' ... followed by short explanations on how to get around that and measure target speed anyway.

Things such as this. I'm sure many willing members, including myself, would write the various sections, with appropriate images or charts, etc.

Just a thought. And thank you.

[simsurfer]

If I had the game I would help ya But I think I will wait patiently for my vacation to end, by that time hopefully for you guys out there the second patch will be available.

[minsc_tdp]

Originally Posted by vois2

[..]Bugzilla is a great platform for the situation where bugs are being reported and fixed concurrently. Unfortunately, that won't be happening on this particular Bugzilla (no concurrent updates/fixes from the development side). Patches will <hopefully> fix several items at a time, and each item tested by the community for eventual removal from the Bugzilla.

The bugs will stay open until a new version is released then they will all be regressed and the bugs updated. If a user submits their own patch (like a simple CFG file update) then the bug may be noted as having a workaround but would be closed only when fixed by an official patch.

The big ape in the room is that these popular Subsim forums actually provide a quicker, broader access to bug reporting in threads such as this one. (Yes, albeit with many repeats.)

Right now I scan two forums - here and ubi - for bug info. Ain't easy. My pet bug (1280x720 support) is hard to search on, so it ain't exactly quick. It's only broader right now since there's a large community here.

Don't look at the BZ as a new community or forum system - look at it as a tool that these community members can use to organize their thoughts.

Community members need some way to vote and rank the bugs. Forums don't solve any of this. Yes, right now, the threads are the best place, but that's only because the bugs aren't entered into BZ yet. When every known bug is entered and ranked and voted on by many people, BZ will shine.

I expect that bugs will always be entered into the forum first, vetted out by other users and then submitted into BZ by anyone who feels it is affecting more than one person.

It would also help trim the forums a bit by allowing the moderators to link to the bug # at the top of new threads when people come in and ask about the same crash over and over. This is not better or worse than linking to other forum areas already opened on the same topic. It's just a tool.

Given that, I don't know how many people will be willing to report bugs in isolation to the Bugzilla at hand. sh4bugs.c o m is a great idea, but I'm wondering if Bugzilla is the right format. This is not to criticize the work at hand. However, I am wondering if sh4bugs.c o m couldn't be used in a much more targeted way to garner a higher popularity and functionality for every user. Perhaps something like: "sh4bugs.c o m: Top SH4 bugs and how they affect your gameplay." Then small page sections showing how and what.

I don't intend for the bugs to be entered in isolation, meaning only into BZ and not discussed on the forums. Forums are for discussion and are good at that. BZ is for bug tracking/voting/ranking/searching/sorting/reporting as is good at that.

I'm not interested in running a full-on website. I'm only interested in tracking bugs, ranking them democratically, and sharing workarounds or community-developed patches.

In the forums, bug importance is a mix of how many people discuss it (can you give me a count for any given bug that was dumped into the middle of the main bug thread?) and how big the font is and how many angry smilies people use when reporting it. Also, some important stuff drops off the main page so quick it's ridiculous.

I'm not getting defensive here, just addressing your questions. It really wasn't much work to set it up (literally less than an hour of total work), the real work will be by the users to enter bugs.

Bug #1 could be 'Chronometer doesn't measure target speed' ... followed by short explanations on how to get around that and measure target speed anyway.

I do need to find a clear way to differentiate between bugs that have workarounds and those that don't. But if people are interested in certain ones then they will read the discussion thread and the workarounds will be noted there. Some will be acceptable, some will not, so it may not be feasible to have a global flag that says "workaround here".

Things such as this. I'm sure many willing members, including myself, would write the various sections, with appropriate images or charts, etc.

Attach stuff to the bugs. I'm not sure if that's working, I think I limited attachment sizes to null. I'll check it. Refer to your attachment in the comments, and you've got all you're asking for here (ability to author sections). While I welcome workarounds and user-patches and expect that to be a big part of the system, I want to focus on ranking/prioritization to get them fixed by Ubi.

Just a thought. And thank you.

Thanks for the input. You have many valid ideas but given the choice between continuing to track bugs using a forum versus a proper bug tracker, I hope people will see the logic in the latter and give it a shot.

(Of course, what we really need is forum software with bug tracking built in Now there's a money making idea. heh)

[vois2]

The ranking is a good idea, as well as the idea to somehow report in an accessible manner (to all) when a global workaround has been achieved. I would actually suggest adding a (free) content management system to a subdomain of your website (such as DotNetNuke, on workarounds.sh4bugs.c o m ) so that users are an easy click away from getting to workarounds, instead of needing to look through the list of Open/All BZ list for a particular workaround.


I use DotNetNuke for this site, and it allows me to really quickly add new and formatted content with no pain.

[minsc_tdp]

Server's up and working but email notification (required for signup) broke sometime between now and when I tested it yesterday. Working on it...

I've used PHPNuke before but only on Windows, would be a pain to set up on this dedicated BZ Linux VM. I'm leaning toward trying just the BZ in conjunction with the forums and see how it works out.

EDIT: Email notification is working. I accidentally banned my own IP on my server when trying to add a last minute exception to ensure I didn't get banned. Heh. If you signed up for an account, you will need to sign up again as I am deleting all the user accounts - the forgot password button will not retrieve it! Also check your Junk/Spam folder as it might get flagged.

[plaice]

Game running slow. also mouse is not working as it should. In comparing it with SH3 the two games on working are miles apart. If the game can solve some of these problems it will be great. Anyone have a problem like this ?

[vois2]

Originally Posted by minsc_tdp

Server's up and working but email notification (required for signup) broke sometime between now and when I tested it yesterday. Working on it...

I've used PHPNuke before but only on Windows, would be a pain to set up on this dedicated BZ Linux VM. I'm leaning toward trying just the BZ in conjunction with the forums and see how it works out.

OK, if you change your mind (about workarounds.sh4bugs.c o m) then I can provide you the bandwidth on a Windows/ASP-hosted content management system, so that you would not need to actually set anything up. (In other words, a click on your website of "Get Workarounds" would actually lead to page views hosted at my site on DNN with ASP.) You would have full editing access, of course, in the content management system. You would need only to switch over to your Windows XP environment when controlling content on such pages.