Shannon V. OKeets
Posts: 22095
Joined: 5/19/2005 From: Honolulu, Hawaii Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: khucke Is there any reason why this bug doesn't warrant to be at least looked at? No downloads of the saved game files! For some of the NetPlay bugs, I can recreate them using saved games that I have already created on my own. Of course, if the problem involves optional rules, I prefer to have those from the players since my saves might have different optional rule settings. I'm not sure about this one though. There are 4 reorganization phases, so I am not certain to which one you are referring: one of the three at the end of an impulse, or the Use Oil/Final Reorganization phase which is part of the end of the turn. I'll look at your save games - maybe that will answer my questions. --- My productivity on fixing bugs is undercut by the time I spend on investigating bug reports. For instance, reading and replying to posts (such as this one), downloading information and saved games for bug reports, assigning them numbers and logging them into my system. That all has to happen before I even begin to look at what the program/code is doing. In general, I do these tasks in batches. I'll read through and reply to posts in the general forum, the WIF School forum, the Tech Support forum, and the private Development forum (where the beta testers report on new versions that have not yet been made official Updates). Then I go through all the various emails I get, assigning numbers to them. Then I update my copy of Paul's spreadsheet for the bugs reported in Tech Support. After I download the attachments to the emails, my wife processes them, sorting out duplicates and giving them a preliminary categorization. Later I methodically go through the emails and refine the categories, removing some while highlighting others for further analysis. At some point I need to tie all three data streams (posts, emails, Paul's spreadsheet) into groups so I can more efficiently work on bugs. For instance, in December I spent a week or so working primarily on production planning. I am gearing up for working on Supply this week. NetPlay bugs are the other major category for this coming week. The joke is that when I put my head down and focus on a specific bug, running tests to see where and how the program fails, looking at the code, making changes, and confirming that the bug is fixed, well, while I'm doing that, there are new posts from players, more emails arriving, ... If you make a post just before I spend several hours reading through posts, then you might get an answer in minutes. But if you miss that window and I'm on to other things, then I might not get back to reading your post for a couple of days. The beta testers are a great help in replying to questions from players. Indeed, sometimes other players can help clarify situations ("I have the same problem." "The rules state that ..., so the program is correct."). Most of the time they can answer concerns faster than I can. Frequently they download and run saved games, to confirm that the reported bug is an actual bug that needs to be fixed.
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Steve Perfection is an elusive goal.
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