Community X Rebirth bug tracker

Luke1410 · Post by **Luke1410** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 04:00

I've been playing with that idea for a long time and finally got it up and running:

A Community Bug Tracking system for X Rebirth.
http://www.luke1410.de:8090/issues/?jql ... 20%3D%20XR (homepage: http://www.luke1410.de)

So what's the purpose/aim for this bugtracker?

Egosoft provides already two ways for the community to report issues:
- by mail (to info@egosoft.com)
- via their official Forum (for beta tests: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=141 and for released versions: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=128).

That's certainly more than what some other companies provide their players with, but I was always bothered by a few culprints of these systems:
- Forums are really hard to search for bugs (issues are being lost in discussions, in a single thread multiple problems are being discussed, bugs are being mixed with support requests, etc.)
- No real feedback on the progress of an issue (was a reported bug fixed in a certain patch, was it rejected, was it invalid, etc.)?
- No way to help the company with better prioritizing on important things (it's basically good luck, if a really interesting idea is making it to the ears of the developers).

Given my experience with bugtracking software in the past decades, I thought that why not simply putting up a bugtracker for the community... so here we are.

What I hope the bugtracker will become and help all of us players in the following weeks:
- You can create bugreports in the tracker as well as list your own ideas/feature requests there.
- You can vote on existing issues, so to raise the priority of an item.
- You can search the database for existing bugs and look-up if there is a known workaround for ur problem.
- You can get in touch with other players who have the same problem, so maybe work together to find a way around.
- You can reference the bugs in the Forums and also send the links to Egosoft, so that they can look-up the details in a structured way.
- If you see that an issue is voted quite much/high, you can point that out in ur mail to info@egosoft.com, increasing the chances of that it would be dealt with (at least, I'd assume it'd be a good argument for something to be given a higher priority

)
- See which bugs were fixed in a version (and during Beta tests, which ones are being worked on).

Please understand however, that the current set-up of the bugtracker is really just the first step. Most of the things are just quickly put together so I could get things up and running before the end of this week.

And most importantly don't forget that if you just enter a bug into the bugtracker it won't get automatically reported to Egosoft. You must still let Egosoft somehow (aka: either via the forums or by mail) know of the bug, so don't forget that step. The Community bugtracker is NOT an official channel to report bugs.

[edit]Updated link to bugtracker[/edit]

Senner · Post by **Senner** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 09:23

Sounds like a great idea. Although, I'm sure that Egosoft are aware of the bugs. As to why they're not correcting them, who knows?

Post by **linolafett** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 10:04

When we dont answer threads here doesnt mean we didnt register/read the bugreports.
To get a bug fixed as fast as possible we need usually a savegame from before the bug happend and how we can reproduce the issue step by step. Otherwise its is pretty difficult to locate an issue in a timely manner.

Archaeosis · Post by **Archaeosis** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 10:52

I think this is a good idea, I just don't know if it will catch on without any official support. We'll see, I suppose.

The bug tracker used for Prison Architect is an example of how something like this can go well. Introversion publicised it very well and a lot of people use it, helping the devs see what the most significant issues to their playerbase are, and providing an easier-to-navigate centralised area where discussion of issues, how to reproduce them, possible resolutions, and all that can take place.

It improves communication between developers and players. Granted, Introversion have a much smaller dev team and their development process might be different to Egosoft's, but I do think Egosoft doing something similar could be much more helpful than just having this forum here. Of course, if it takes a lot of work and only ten players on here regularly use it, it wouldn't be quite so worthwhile - Prison Architect does (according to Steam Charts) have roughly 6x the regular playerbase Rebirth does.

Whether or not Egosoft have explicitly chosen to keep their bugtracker under wraps for their own reasons (or more likely because making it publicly viewable and interactable would be a right hassle), it would be interesting to hear what they'd make of a more public design like this.

ianrobo75 · Post by **ianrobo75** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 12:46

linolafett wrote:When we dont answer threads here doesnt mean we didnt register/read the bugreports.
To get a bug fixed as fast as possible we need usually a savegame from before the bug happend and how we can reproduce the issue step by step. Otherwise its is pretty difficult to locate an issue in a timely manner.

linolafett: Are you adding to your [nternal] bug reports from this forum or do we need to specifically detail them in the tech support forum (+ beta forum if applicable)?

pref · Post by **pref** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 13:38

Nice work, but ES would have done the same if they had wanted to.
Maybe if you got enough people to use your site instead of the beta forum they would take a look at it once in a while, but still then i would not count on it.
You should sign to devnet if you want to help them further i believe.

Silla · Post by **Silla** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 14:34

Wow well done!

It is kind of sad to see so that this has to be done from someone outside

I suggested an offical feedback or bugtracker to egosoft back than as well (German)
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... highlight=

One of the moderators said that their is a bugtracker as part of DevNet so I guess EGO didn't see much sense in making a new one.
Still I find this kind of unhandy and dissapointing ... at least I never seen a big link somewhere ...here "Join our BUGTRACKER" (Also I never searched for it

). Compared to other companies EGO is abit old fashioned I assume.

I will mark the link to it and participate if I find some time to play. I very much hope that this will be sucsseful ... maby this also helps EGO to rethink some of their ingrained habits.

PS: Mantis is also a nice tracking system from the little I experienced with it

Cabrelbeuk · Post by **Cabrelbeuk** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 15:25

linolafett wrote:When we dont answer threads here doesnt mean we didnt register/read the bugreports.
To get a bug fixed as fast as possible we need usually a savegame from before the bug happend and how we can reproduce the issue step by step. Otherwise its is pretty difficult to locate an issue in a timely manner.

Having a little thing to see if you have seen the bug report and how progress the fixing might seems not important for you, but it is. The fact to know that our bug report/idea has been at least read encourage us (the community) to contribute more and help more in bug tracking and game evolving.

This is the narcissic aspect of the community, maybe, but it does matter. You have the luck to have a really strong community who really want to get involved in the game and help you, this topic is a strong clue. Take care of it

!

pref · Post by **pref** » Mon, 30. Jun 14, 15:35

I'd call this a natural aspect of human communication instead of narcissism. It takes at least a minute to post 'confirmed'/'failed to reproduce' in there. Which could result in further investigation on the tester's side if necessary. Even if it's futile, it makes testers feel a bit more appreciated (which could be important as they do free work instead of ES, and it would be a cost-free method to keep em going a bit longer).

But it's the same as with pre-release testing anyway, no surprise.
Wonder if they realize how this looks from the outside... 'we will only reply when we feel like, but just work your *** off for us if you wish. Only the customers have obligations here!'....

Luke1410 · Post by **Luke1410** » Wed, 2. Jul 14, 22:20

The past days I've made several changes to the Bugtracker especially with the focus on making it more suitable for the X Rebirth related bugreports.

For instance there's now a set-up process to transit issues from new -> Confirmed -> Reportd -> Resolved -> Closed

Issues which haave been reported to Egosoft can be marked as such and the given reference from ES (if any) can be recorded in the bugtracker (or alternatively a link to the thread where the issue was reported here).

The dashboard was also updated and provides now a direct overview of the recorded (unresolved) issues, the top voted ones and the last updated bug reports.

There's more to come in the next days, but I hope that these changes already make the bugtracker a bit more useful for everybody and also a bit easier to access/work with.

pirke123 · Post by **pirke123** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 00:14

If they're not even posting on the forum to mention they're gonna fix something, why would they use that bug tracker when they already have their own?

Luke1410 · Post by **Luke1410** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 05:33

Maybe they are not, maybe they are... But that's not the main purpose of the tracker. The main purpose is for us players to have an easy way for us to look up bugs and their states. That we can manage ourselves... Eventually I'll also forward bugs reported in the tracker to ES directly and as stated in the initial post the tracker is not a replacement to not forward bugs entered there to ES. That should still be done.

Maybe at some point that process can be automated however, though for the time being it still needs to be done manually.

plynak · Post by **plynak** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 09:08

Will we get paid for it? If not, I see no reason doing for free a job that 300 testers were already paid for.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 13:49

plynak wrote:Will we get paid for it? If not, I see no reason doing for free a job that 300 testers were already paid for.

Which testers were those? Certainly wasn't the ones Egosoft had via DevNet, who were all unpaid volunteers.

Nosscar · Post by **Nosscar** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 13:55

Yes I heard the testers were volunteers, and how about reporting bugs to help the game improve, so everyone benefits who plays.

Zetoss · Post by **Zetoss** » Fri, 4. Jul 14, 07:01

I think most here seem to be missing the best point of it all: a new and efficient way of letting ES know what bugs or other issues irritate us players the most and what we want them to put priority on. I've played actively for over 700 hours and I do so because I mostly really love the game, my biggest downer right now is the problem with station sections that revert to unbuilt and I want a way to at least feel like I can let someone know that's a very big problem for me. Devnet is great and any volunteer who devotes time to help a game improve is someone worthy of appreciation but the broad mass of players that don't want to get extremely involved should have a way to just express their opinion. ES already has 100% workload at all times because it never ends (fixed all bugs? next game!) so bugs will be sorted in the same amount of time, this whole bugtracker is probably not more than a way to possibly squish the most hated ones first and a way for us to rapidly share workarounds while we wait but personally I think it's an outstanding initiative.

On a sidenote I don't think ES wants a voting system on their own site relating to "what aspect of their masterpiece sucks the most", that's really bad PR so that should probably be avoided to be honest. Also, sometimes we should remind ourselves that the game is actually really good and becoming even better all the time, otherwise most of us wouldn't bother with this forum and instead of taking our frustration out on each other it would be great if we could keep discussions constructive.

Sam L.R. Griffiths · Post by **Sam L.R. Griffiths** » Fri, 4. Jul 14, 07:25

@OP: Like the idea, it is similar to what I have talked about on numerous occasions.

If it does take off fully, then it could turn out to be ALOT of work for you to manage. From personal experience, you will probably need to keep an eye out for duplicate tickets as the average person typically does not understand ticketing system discipline plus it is very easy to abuse such systems (intentionally or not). These are probably one of the reasons why Egosoft have not exposed a similar system to us (can be easier to manage one independently).

Saying this, I do wish you luck and hope it achieves what you expect it to.

As for voting systems, there is already a voting system on this very forum - it is called Polls.

Silla · Post by **Silla** » Sat, 5. Jul 14, 05:26

Roger L.S. Griffiths wrote:@OP: Like the idea, it is similar to what I have talked about on numerous occasions.

If it does take off fully, then it could turn out to be ALOT of work for you to manage. From personal experience, you will probably need to keep an eye out for duplicate tickets as the average person typically does not understand ticketing system discipline plus it is very easy to abuse such systems (intentionally or not). These are probably one of the reasons why Egosoft have not exposed a similar system to us (can be easier to manage one independently).

Saying this, I do wish you luck and hope it achieves what you expect it to.

As for voting systems, there is already a voting system on this very forum - it is called Polls.

Managing and moderating this can be indeed hard for one person allone. But what I not get is why the way EGO does it now should be in anyway better. The forum tickets here expect alot more disciplin of the average person than on a feedbacktracker as every thing on a tracker has its own field that tells you what to enter! Secondly duplicates are alot more likely the way it is now as the search options here (forum, as I remember) is kind of sucky and it has to still to be compared and added on the devnets' tracker. And every system can be abused ...but like on this forum people can be banned ^^ for misbehaving

So why is EGO actually not doing an puplic bugtracker which could be acessed when youv got an account on EGOs website? Scrap the DevNet tracker scrap the forum for reporting

- one proper system is enough and the managing cost will be the same if not less!

yoyolll · Post by **yoyolll** » Sat, 5. Jul 14, 06:38

Oh cool, pay $60 for a "game", let it sit for a year, and then you get to bug test it for free! Well **** Wolfenstein, I'll just do this until my semester starts.

Okay, despite the bitter remarks I'm still very glad there's so much effort from the community to help fix the game. Keep up the good work, guys.

Luke1410 · Post by **Luke1410** » Tue, 8. Jul 14, 00:50

A few more days past, and several things were done in the issuetracker:

- alltogether counting now 31 entered bugs/issues (several old ones were updated)
- the dashboard was updated and contains an overview of fixes in past versions (atm only 2 entries of issues which were fixed in 2.20) and also contains a list of issues which have reportedly fixed already and might go into a following patch (atm counting 10 bugs here):
Possibly fixed issues in an upcoming patch: http://www.luke1410.de:8090/issues/?jql ... %3E2.20%22
Fixed issues in 2.20: http://www.luke1410.de:8090/issues/?jql ... %222.20%22
- several small improvements (mostly related to the workflow)

Regarding the list of issues fixed in >2.20:
Please take this list with care. These issues have just been reported as fixed by ES before they underwent the actual QA-process. That means that it can certainly happen that an issue might be reopened (if it wasn't fixed completely). The list also doesn't suggest any timeframe on when a patch is going to be released and it doesn't also necessarily mean that all of the listed issues are going to be fixed in the next patch. What the next patch actually contains and what we'll see when the patch is released.