[engine] Ingame quick bug reports

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SFault
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[engine] Ingame quick bug reports

Post by SFault »

Few times I've wanted to report something I consider a bug or highly needed feature, and every time I had to browse through the website to find where, how and whutnot to report these things. I was wondering if it would be possible to include bug report feature in game. For example, under menu there could be a report feature. This would then open a form with selection for type of feedback bug/suggestion/other, selecting the type engine/interface/gameplay and possibility to include screencap/error log, and naturally the description. I assume the game does know the version, OS and such that can be submitted automatically. Of course if the game crashes it's impossible to use but otherwise it could be handy to report smaller bugs. Also, I would assume this to be clearer for developers when bugs are forced into categories and associated version, OS and error information is included.
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revolting_peasant
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Re: [engine] Ingame quick bug reports

Post by revolting_peasant »

What would be the significant benefit over switching to a browser window and visiting the forum or the GitHub issues page?
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Pentarctagon
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Re: [engine] Ingame quick bug reports

Post by Pentarctagon »

It would allow for certain details to be gathered automatically - OS, hardware information, a savefile, etc.
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revolting_peasant
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Re: [engine] Ingame quick bug reports

Post by revolting_peasant »

Pentarctagon: Well, it's not my coding time that goes into implementing this feature. So, if you feel that helps you, knock yourselves out...
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Iris
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Re: [engine] Ingame quick bug reports

Post by Iris »

It doesn’t primarily help us, per se. It helps the development team only by means of making it easier for players to report certain information that otherwise tends to take some extra effort to gather, or ends up being overlooked or forgotten — plus most players won’t create a GitHub account to report a bug anyway since that’s a chore that gets in their way. So at the end of the day, this would benefit players first (because it’d be easier to report bugs), developers second (because bugs would get reported more consistently), and players last (because the developers have a chance to find out about the bugs and deliver the required patches).

Unfortunately, I believe you won’t find a single developer who has been against this kind of thing in the last 5 years, so it’s really a case of “patches welcome” — most of the dev team is focused on other things that deal with the game directly and not with integrating it with 3rd party applications/websites.
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