Why so much bugs remain in new releases ?

[Justin Kerbice]

Hello,

I'm really wonder what the QA team really do, or don't do, it there is actually a true QA team, as it's almost unacceptable to have so much bugs still there in the released content.

They have either:

- to be less influenced by dev team (testing your own code when you're a dev is always biased by your own thoughts and the way you choose to make your code), people who do actually code will know what I mean. So I can guess the QA team have some "test plan" or "orders" to do their testing, which left a lot of issues triggered when you go out of the path like all crazy KSP fans can do.

- be more thorough and test (the most of) everything in (the most of) every kind of situations.

Most obvious example: "impossible bankruptcy" easily done by one player. Another one is the new big decoupler with "physicsignificance" set to 1, how could it be possible no one get issue BEFORE release ?

Or... people was used on purpose as testers ? With the drawbacks of having tons of useless reports and an angry community.

Of course some people could always defend the team (who don't ask anything to them) by claiming their usual "it's an alpha" or "there is so much new features added blah blah blah", but the fact is

0.23.5 => release => quite a bunch of bugs go through

0.24 => release => a lot's of bugs now (a lot more than before)

+ 64b was released just because one guy succeed to sneak under Squad watch and they seems to don't really appreciate the intrusion into their shoes, this version was obviously not mature enough for a release, adding it was a big mistake IMHO.

As tech tree in 0.23, contracts are kind of a joke, just to make people who don't know how to enjoy a sandbox game busy until next release, which lead to a lot more talks, criticisms, fight and bad feelings than no contract at all or delayed release.

You have chosen the wrong way guys, your rocket start to tilt down and you have a little time to do the right thing... ignore this, or let the window close itself, and you'll just get the same result as the Ariane "the most expensive firework" 501, with KSP.

Pessimism ? We'll see...

[Roastduck]

You really needed to make your own thread for this, rather than find one of the multiple other threads complaining about KSP being buggy?

[Trollsama]

it's almost unacceptable to have so much bugs still there in the released content.

You must be new to Alpha/Beta early access games. Based off what you have said thus far that is likely a good thing.

KSP is one of the smoothest running Alpha/Beta games i have ever played. (most of my games are Alpha/Beta)

There is going to be bugs, sometimes, there will be more bugs than others. sometimes there will be less.

Making a thread to complain about it fixes literally 0 of them.

if you are finding a frequent bug.

here are the "do's":

Go to the bug report section and see if there are other common reports.

> > If not, Post a detailed thread explaining what happens, and how to reproduce it, attach a bug report and save file where possible.

> > if there is a thread in progress, look to see if there is anything you can add.

And here are the "Do Not's":

See OP.

Of course some people could always defend the team (who don't ask anything to them) by claiming their usual "it's an alpha" or "there is so much new features added blah blah blah",

I will defend the team, yes. you are after-all, getting upset that there Alpha/Beta game that YOU purchased, knowing it was unfinished, is unfinished, and has some of the common issues found in Alpha/Beta games. AKA Bugs.

And just because i defend them, does not mean i have no expectations of them.... it just means I can differentiate between a finished product, and a WIP. and have chosen to keep that in mind during interactions with the community and developers.

Edited July 21, 2014 by Trollsama

[John FX]

I`m actually quite happy with the latest update. A lot of the bugs in the 64 bit version are from unity. It was not meant to be completely stable on release but so many people wanted it that they released a test version.

All of us are testers. At least now the 64 bit client will be run on lots of different hardware to show all the ways it blows up so they can be reduced.

In previous cases of many bugs in an update there have been hotfixes in the past shortly after release.

Also bugfixing can be a game of whack-a-mole and the update has to be released at some point.

99 little bugs in the code,

99 little bugs,

squash one down compile it out,

127 little bugs in the code...

I imagine if you just wait to play until V1.0 then there will be hardly any bugs left...

[Trollsama]

99 little bugs in the code,

99 little bugs,

squash one down compile it out,

127 little bugs in the code...

hehehehe, I always get a good laugh every time i see someone post that >.>

its so true tho

[jwenting]

haven't encountered any major problems (and precious few minor ones) apart from the odd kraken attack back in 0.22 and before...

[Boomerang]

Can we please not have another "I know nothing about game dev/software design but erryone listen 2 me rant boot bugs!1!' thread that drags on for two or three days?

[KvickFlygarn87]

Lots of bugs? Lots of bugs?

OP, you are one silly man. Name 10 non-unity issues with the 32-bit version.

[Monkeh]

An alpha piece of software has BUGS! NOOOOOOO! Whatever shall we do! Start a petition, call the president, demand justice for all of us who bought an alpha game and got BUGS. HOW VERY DARE THEY!

[vexx32]

If you think this is a lot, you should see how many the Experimentals team take down, write up, and send to the devs for a hopeful fix every two days in the weeks leading up to release.

Also, at least they aren't game-breaking. This is Early-Access software, after all; nobody's claiming there won't be any bugs. Just that there will be a concerted effort to avoid releasing a new version with any seriously game-breaking bugs.

Edited July 21, 2014 by vexx32

[jwenting]

Can we please not have another "I know nothing about game dev/software design but erryone listen 2 me rant boot bugs!1!' thread that drags on for two or three days?

that's the problem with marketing software to people, people have this weird notion that they're experts on something because they once long ago did something completely different...

[BudgetHedgehog]

I do kinda agree with some points in the OP.. I mean, the big decoupler bug was pretty quickly found upon 0.23.5 release and all it takes is a 30 second cfg edit to fix - they didn't do this for 0.24 for some reason. So the bug remains, when it could be fixed incredibly quickly and easily.

Another issue is the tiny chutes on quickload. I don't know how easy that would be to fix but again, it was found soon after 0.23.5 release and it's still here. There's no need for a QA team to find either of these bugs because they are already known.

That said, game's still an alpha, best alpha I've seen, yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill.

[vexx32]

I do kinda agree with some points in the OP.. I mean, the big decoupler bug was pretty quickly found upon 0.23.5 release and all it takes is a 30 second cfg edit to fix - they didn't do this for 0.24 for some reason. So the bug remains, when it could be fixed incredibly quickly and easily.

Another issue is the tiny chutes on quickload. I don't know how easy that would be to fix but again, it was found soon after 0.23.5 release and it's still here. There's no need for a QA team to find either of these bugs because they are already known.

That said, game's still an alpha, best alpha I've seen, yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill.

Well, to be honest; the decoupler bug is a small one , and only causes an issue some of the time. Even if you don't do the cfg edit, it's avoidable, if you build a little carefully when you think you might run into it. It's not a big issue. A lot of the bugs that get priority are ones that throw serious exceptions and cause complete game crashes. The decoupler bug has neither of those particularly nasty errors associated with it.

The tiny chutes is an edge case; saving in the middle of descent on a parachute isn't exactly something a lot of people do (as far as I'm aware). Fixing it might take considerably more work than is immediately apparent. Some of the least harmful bugs (lithobraking notwithstanding) may require complex solutions -- you just never know till you start looking at the problem code.

Those bugs remain because leaving them unfixed doesn't make the game unplayable; they can be worked around in the meantime. More serious bugs are the ones most of you will never see; the testing teams track those down and get them fixed before they see the light of day.

[Tuareg]

hehehehe, I always get a good laugh every time i see someone post that >.>

its so true tho

not with a competent developer :/

[BudgetHedgehog]

Don't get me wrong, I know there's bigger bugs to fix and as Bender said 'when you do something right, people won't know you've done anything at all' so the lack of major game-crashing bugs is something that not many people notice, but it's the little visible things. I remember reading somewhere here where a game devoted a single update to the little things that kill - they asked the community what little visible things annoy them/are bugs and fixed them - stuff like moving some text to the side in a menu. It's the little things the majority of players notice and get annoyed by - while the large decoupler bug only happens sometimes, the 30-second fix ensures it never happens (that reminds me, must go fix it, brb).

[Vanamonde]

KSP is not a new release. KSP is a pre-release. You were told it was not finished before you bought it. As they continue to work on the game, new bugs will be created and old ones will be resolved. There will be times when the game has more bugs than it has now, and there will be times when the game has fewer bugs than it has now. None of this should be cause for surprise, complaints, or recriminations, if you actually read the terms you agreed to before you bought the game.

[Claw]

You guys also realize part of the point of doing alpha/beta testing and early release is so that YOU, the general mass early KSP consumers, can assist in finding bugs.

We want you to help out and find stuff that's broken or needs adjustment. But we don't want a bunch of anger and hate thrown around at each other. Software bugs are a fact of life. If all of the testing was left to the pre-release testers to catch every bug, you'd be waiting a lot longer for each release.

Personally, I WANT to get my hands on KSP early. I love digging in and playing with the new features, finding bugs, and ways to fix them. Then I can post on here and help out others.

Professionally done bug reports and balancing feedback is accepted MUCH better than rants and anger about "MY STUFFS BROKE." I get frustration/anger when a bug eats a gloriously built mothership. There's a reason why so many of us highly recommend keeping periodic saves in a separate area.

Just my personal two cents, unrelated to being a moderator.

[jwenting]

not with a competent developer :/

so you're claiming Squad are incompetent. Nicely veiled insult, kiddo.

They're not, there is no bug free software. Even if your own software has no faults you wrote into it, its interaction with operating systems, hardware, other software, plugins, mods, hacks, will cause problems all of which the punters will blame on your software.

Or they use it incorrectly, things work differently from what they were expecting, and they scream BUG!.

Think the fools who hack config files, then complain that the software no longer works...