How to submit bug reports

Excellent question! (+1 Karma)

Additionally: Do you prefer bug reports or actual gameplay opinions and suggestions?

I would assume that it is of larger interest trying to break the system, instead of discussing the preferred background colour of the channeler's rally flag...

AFAIK both are welcome. Beta 1 (and the alpha for those lucky enough to get in) are going to be pretty rough, and things aren't finalized in terms of a lot of the balance and even some of the mechanics. If there's things that the testers find just don't work out that well in practice, good feedback on that should be useful too.

Color on the rally flag might not be a high priority item though.

I am guessing since they have developed a few games, they probably have a process in place of making sure all the testers know how to get them the information they want. My guess is for alpha they will send out emails that will have all the details of what info they want.

I assume this as well.  Thinking about this and discussing it for even the Beta 0 release would be good, though.  There will be a TON of feedback, so I just hope however we can submit bug reports, enhancements, etc. it can be in a bit more of a structured path than just posting on the forums.  Those tend to get lost and aren't as easy to track over time.  Something like Bugzilla (but easier to use) would be sweetness.

It would also be cool for the Devs to say "We've has 2000 bug reports since the release of Beta 0.  We've fixed 200 bugs so far, are working on fixing another 100, looking at confirming another 500, etc.".  Having stats to backup next releases seem like a good idea.

Here's a developer idea- how do you guys track bugs currently?  Undoubtedly you have some sort of tracking system, but how does it work and how can the community help/view info in there?

If Stardock operates as they have for past betas, then the bug tracking won't be available to the beta testers. For instance, in the Demigod beta mostly the reports went into the forum. Same for beta testing of expansions to GCII (to be fair, was only part of testing Twilight of the Arnor).

Perhaps it'll be different for Elemental, but I haven't seen anything so far suggesting that we'll be working with bug tracking software.

Well, this came up before. When I was in the Entrenchment beta, it was pretty helpful to have a post explaining where to find the minidump files and what to do with them (they were well hidden in Vista). For Demigod there was a lot of log files with connection stuff, but it took a while before someone explained which ones they wanted to see.

So I figured having a single thread for that info (once we get it) would be helpful for testers.

It woudl definitely be cool if they had a KB or some other bug tracking system so that we don't duplicate effort, or it would be nice to go into an existing bug and be able to add information (Not modify existing obviously) but if you saw the same bug but the steps to reproduce or environment was different. If they ahve just done it via forums in the past though - it must get the job done for them.

Kryo will be the bug/issue tracking system. He'll be sifting through the forums and have a locked running thread constantly updated with unique reported bugs and other issues.

Is this some IRC gossip you caught? We have no assigned moderators for Elemental yet, and I've long been fretting that these boards will lack Kryo's deservedly-paid presence when the teeming masses start pouring in their posts. IMO, he's been an exemplary mod over at GC2 and the long-haul effort for Elemental could only gain from his formal inclusion in the Stardock team.

It's not IRC gossip so much as that's what his role has been during the Sins and Demigod betas. I did joke about it on IRC and he commented on how fun that will be, so I'm assuming his role is not going to be changing.

It's not and they won't. The "moderator" list at the bottom of the forum listings is basically a formality/convenience. The only significant function it really has is determining who gets the emails from the report function. But since I noticed that Zoomba had forgotten to even put me on the list for Demigod, I'm now set get all the reports from all the sites without needing to be assigned to them explicitly (I already had global mod power).

You must have picked this up from a quest, because I don't see this as being available for research.

Will there be a specific forum just for bug report posting?  (not that some people won't post non-bug reports in there, anyway, but still...)

Probably.

Yeah, we'll add a beta reports category when the time comes.

Huzzah!

Kryo- how do you keep track of all of this stuff?  You moderate tons of forums and act as a personal, filtering bug reporting system.  Whew!

I think it would be pretty sweet if we could submit bugs into an official system.  Why?  There's a lot of back-and-forth communication that goes on with just a regular bulletin board.  For instance, if it was similar to the support request form where you needed to include your OS, frequency of the occurance, etc. I think it would help provide a lot of initial detail instead of:

Elemental crashes when I click on a town.

There's a LOT of basic info that could get submitted from the get go.  Now, discussion of the bugs themselves would be handled well via the forum.

Kryo- do you also put forum posts into a bug format?  How do you convey to the devs things that need to be addressed in a good way to track progress on it?

(This would be a good dev diary topic, FYI.  I run a helpdesk and couldn't live without our request tracking software, so I'm naturally interested).

Based on past experiance...

Kryo, essentially, will run through the threads and note any discussions and comments of worth, and sum them up in a running summary thread.  Ocassionaly this thread will get truncated, because otherwise his enourmouse, overgrown OP causes the forums to break.

Lets say that thread XYZ has a useful post "Bla bla de-blah, bla bla".  Kyro will note it in his own thread with <date> <link to XYZ "XYZ" < quoting "Bla bla de-blah, bla bla">.  Or, if the only useful part of the post is "Bla bla de-blahb", he'll trunace the extra stuff off and just quote the quick tidbit.  Long detailed discussions will remain in the original thread, he'll only 'lift' important, short, quick and to the point stuff.

Thanks for the explanation, Ron.  I figured it was something to that effect.

My concerns is the stuff left out along the way.  Kryo's attention to threads is amazing, but if recording info is still a manual process on his part, that's a TON of posting that needs to be monitored/sifted through.

He is Kryo!  Faster than a speeding flame, able to leap entire forums in a single bound... it's Supermod!

if you say his name 3 times he appears.   Maybe not right away, and IRC you have to see his name over in the list of people in the room.   but it works!sometimes you can even misspell it "kyro"

Maybe he's just a bot, programmed by Brad...

I have faith in Kryo and SD, but as SD continues to grow, I'd think the responsibility to maintain good communication in the forums would, too.  Having a dedicated bug tracking software people could directly submit bugs into could help with time and scale.

He took the IRC pinger off kyro So you actually have to spell it right!

i dont see a bug report thread yet and i have a couple of bugs to report.. am i somehow missing this forum thread?

 i think a few different threads .. one for bugs that actually cause the game to crash or freeze up,.. one for bugs that cause wierd or non crashing behavior,..one for suggestions for gameplay enhancement and balancing , such as ideas for economy, city building etc.. also listing stuff you do not like about the game,.. and finally one for suggestions for making the game atmosphere and any other issues not covered in the other threads better .. if everyone could post in the relevant threads accordingly it would make kryo and the devs jobs alot easier

Well, it isn't actually a bug report thread, but a whole new sub-forum. You can find it over here.