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Subforum Changelog


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  • Community Manager

Hi all,

If you've been paying attention around these parts over the past weeks, you might have seen us making a few changes to this subforum. This has been a part of our initiative to overhaul our bug reporting process and to centralize these reports on the forum. Below is a changelog for this subforum to help you all keep track of the changes being made and the reasoning behind them:

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Changelog:

- Added Bug Reports archive for pre-v.0.1.2 reports. Some reports may be pulled out of the archive if still relevant, but the majority will remain untouched.

- Added recommended tags/prefixes: Hard Crash, Construction, Environments, Flight & Map, FX & Audio, Performance, Parts & Stock Vessels, Saving & Loading, Tutorials, UI & UX, and Other. These categories will greatly assist internal bug tracking, but also helping players find relevant threads to what they may be experiencing.

- We've added a new Member Role: Bug Hunters. These are hand-picked members of our community who have contributed heavily to bug reports thus far. These members are given a special title, as well as permission to help us organize this subforum - including archiving, merging, adding tags/prefixes, and highlighting messages as solutions. Our first Bug Hunter is our very own @Anth12- who I've been working closely with since I started making these changes.

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There's more planned, but there are some technical roadblocks for now that we're working on getting past, so I can't share anything past the above for now. But rest assured, we're working diligently to improve this workflow to ensure we get the best information we can and you all are able to stay up-to-date on bugfix progress.

If you have any questions or suggestions on how to improve this subforum from a user standpoint or to make it easier to submit your own bug reports, feel free to reply to this thread.

Thanks,

Dakota

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This sounds great. 

Rather than just tags, would it be possible to put the various types of bugs in subforums themselves, which would make searching easier?  Also, I would think that if I come across a reported bug that I have also experienced, it would be better for me to reply to the original thread rather than start a new one.  Is that the case?

 

In the original Squad bugtracker, there was an indication when the bug was "confirmed", meaning a developer had seen it, reproduced it and was hopefully working on it.  Is there any way to do this--perhaps just with a tag on the post? 

 

Edited by Klapaucius
grammar
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  • Community Manager
34 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

Rather than just tags, would it be possible to put the various types of bugs in subforums themselves, which would make searching easier? 

Invision (the forum software we're using) has a "fluid" forum mode that allows for subforums to feed into one big category like this:

image.gif

It's possible we may use that feature or something else to help categorize reports. The technical roadblocks need to get resolved before I can fully start to implement the features that will make this a whole lot easier.

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34 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

I would think that if I come across a reported bug that I have also experienced, it would be better for me to reply to the original thread rather than start a new one.  Is that the case?

Similarly, the platform has a feature to allow for upvoting on threads and responses - so I think most would just upvote the thread to imply "I too have experienced this", and perhaps reply to the thread if they'd like to provide more information. See below for a small sneakpeek:

image.png

image.gif

Individual threads can also be merged very easily, so we can keep things organized if a user can't find the original report.

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34 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

there was an indication when the bug was "confirmed", meaning a developer had seen it, reproduced it and was hopefully working on it.  Is there any way to do this--perhaps just with a tag on the post? 

Definitely. I don't know if we'll go as in-depth with "reproduced" or "working on it", but the plan is that we'll mark/reply that it's been seen and again once it has been fixed. A tag could also be a solution. Or the Bug Hunters could mark the latest reply by a dev so it's pinned to the top of the thread, as seen here:

image.png

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Still figuring out how this all should come together, and definitely need these roadblocks to get resolved before I can start implementing the kinda "next-level" part of this - but appreciate the feedback and ideas. Hopefully this provides some more insight into my general thinking into these improvements.

Dakota

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5 minutes ago, Dakota said:

A tag could also be a solution. Or the Bug Hunters could mark the latest reply by a dev so it's pinned to the top of the thread, as seen here:

image.png

 

Tag + reply seems like the best solution here, I think it should include tags just because thats viewable without clicking on the report itself

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@Dakota Wow, that is looking a lot more comprehensive than I realized from the original post.  This looks like a great step forward.  I was never sure if I was reporting my bugs effectively and, to be honest, stopped doing so. I think this will encourage me to get back on the wagon. 

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  • Community Manager
4 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

@Dakota Wow, that is looking a lot more comprehensive than I realized from the original post.  This looks like a great step forward.  I was never sure if I was reporting my bugs effectively and, to be honest, stopped doing so. I think this will encourage me to get back on the wagon. 

The solutions in the above screenshots aren't 100% locked-in. I'm still trying things out and coming up with ideas on how to make the process as painless as possible for the userbase, but also for us. We need to be able to take-in these reports in an efficient manor, so have to make sure all the internal stakeholders are on-board as well. I just wanted to provide a peek behind-the-curtain into what's possible, our general thinking for this initiative, and to show that progress is being made in this area.

Glad to hear the work might inspire you to contribute again. That's the point!

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  • Community Manager
1 hour ago, Strawberry said:

Is it expected for QA people to post bugs they found here or will there still be a private bug tracker alongside this one?

 

They have their own internal tools that they'll keep using. Again, still need to lock everything in.

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On 5/31/2023 at 1:47 AM, Dakota said:

Our first Bug Hunter is our very own @Anth12- who I've been working closely with since I started making these changes.

All hail @Anth12!image.png

On 5/31/2023 at 1:47 AM, Dakota said:

There's more planned, but there are some technical roadblocks for now that we're working on getting past,

Could this maaaybe be related to forum maintenance? :)

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Woo, some people should be pleased with this. Those are good first steps towards a public bugtracker without making a separate public bugtracker.

But yeah the Acknowledged ("we saw your report")/Confirmed ("we're aware of the bug on our side")/Resolved ("it should be done and ready for roll out in next patch") info is very important for us players - just so we know what to do. Like there's little point in keeping reporting the same thing if it says it's been fixed already, right?

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  • Community Manager

Work over the few days week:

- Cleaned up the Bug Reports Subforum and enabled a "fluid" view - giving us a sidebar filtering box for the various categories.

image.png

- Added new feature to the forums for colored tags and prefixes. Easier on the eyes when skimming.

image.png

- Added a custom indicator if a developer has responded to a report

image.png

- Added bug report form. Supports file uploads.

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- Added bug report form link to main page

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- Automated form->report for quality-check

- Updated a whole bunch of css and custom code on the forums backend to make all this happen.

- Added some new moderation tools to ease the approvals process.

- Probably a lot else I'm forgetting.

 

Progress!!!

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  • Community Manager

As seen in today's Upnate, this project continues to move forward. Still cleaning things up and figuring out how to wrangle this old-school forum and teach it some new tricks. Feel free to give feedback on the process thus far or how things look. Appreciate ya!

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27 minutes ago, Dakota said:

As seen in today's Upnate, this project continues to move forward. Still cleaning things up and figuring out how to wrangle this old-school forum and teach it some new tricks. Feel free to give feedback on the process thus far or how things look. Appreciate ya!

Upnate? Is that a typo or a very clever portmanteau? Don't lie!

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Great work Dakota! This seems like a really solid and well-considered system, and it's exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see from all game development companies.

With the fluid view, this might be one step better than Wube's system, and they're bug assassins. :D

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43 minutes ago, Mitokandria said:

The next best thing to a separate public bug tracker. I'm greatly looking forward to any form of implementation along this line. Will also likely start reporting bugs again if something like this is implemented.

What do you mean by that? The public bug tracker is this subforums.

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6 minutes ago, Spicat said:

What do you mean by that? The public bug tracker is this subforums.

I have a habit of cutting filler words when typing so that may have come out differently. I meant "This is the next best thing to a separate and dedicated (aka not a forum) public bug tracker". "This" being the in-progress sneak peak we were given.

 

Did that come across better?

Edited by Mitokandria
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12 minutes ago, Mitokandria said:

I have a habit of cutting filler words when typing so that may have come out differently. I meant "This is the next best thing to a separate and dedicated (aka not a forum) public bug tracker". "This" being the in-progress sneak peak we were given.

 

Did that come across better?

Oh okay, got you. It's probably me to be honest, I read "The next best thing is a separate public bug tracker" and thought you wanted something else.

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  • 2 weeks later...

+ for cleanup effort but what if a bug from an older version persists? "Search before posting" doesn't work when you can't comment on something because it's locked. And I bet you don't want duplicates even between versions.

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