OpenArena Message Boards

How to write a good bug report

What's the reason of writing a bug report?

Writing a bug report is to give the developers information and bring to their attention a problem that was previously over looked or not aware of. As with many bugs the Developer wont know about them unless someone points it out. So writing a bug report is essential to fixing problems for later releases.

Why write a Good Bug Report?

Writing a good bug report is easy, and by doing so it makes the Developers life easier. Allowing him to find and resolve the bug quicker & more effectively. Giving the Developers more time to make cooler content.

How do I know I've found a Bug?

If you think you have found a bug you should report. The worst case scenario is that it's an actual bug. However if it is not a serious bug, then someone will point out, how to resolve or avoid such problems.

Before reporting a Bug.

Do a search on the forums to see if someone has already posted. You may be able to find a solution to your problem. Or you'll find the bug will be fixed on the next release.

What should I Title the Bug?

A bug title should be a clear, concise description of  what the bug is causing. For example: “Bug: Players collide, sticking.”, and not “OMG, Broken Game”.

What Should a Bug Report Have?

A Bug report should have as much information about the bug as possible. As OpenArena is multi-platform it requires as much information as possible to determine the cause of the bug. When writing a bug report you should always:

State which version of Open Arena you are running. E.g. “0.7.7”
Which Operating System your running. E.g. Vista, XP, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Mac OSX, etc...
Hardware Specification this requires you to state: Processor, Graphics card & RAM specification.

A description on how to repeat the bug. E.g. Running directly into the opposing opponent causes you to “stick” to them.

Post up the crashlog.txt, this gives more detailed information on more severe bugs. It can be located in your /.openarena directory. If the bug does not cause a crash then there is no need to post this file.

Open Arena is continuously under development in a multitude of areas. And not all bugs & problems can be resolved by the developers first time. By posting detailed & well explained Bug Reports your helping the progression & improvement of Open Arena.

.. and finally. Send your bug report to fromhell and you will get a warm fuzzy feeling at the next thing you read :)

Seriouslly, where do you send bug reports, is there a link I can't see?

isnt there a template or anything you could simply report it with something like...

VERSION :
OS :
ETC :

i guess posting that info in a thread in the "technical snafus"-section with a title describing the bug would be a good place.

nice summary kit89

all those things would help troubleshooting and debugging instead of questions like "openarena doesn't work, what's wrong?" :D

yes (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?action=post;board=49.0)

ignorance is fun isn't it

I don't  have intensity that high, how about something like this for a bug fix. I even specially picked one of the colors from the main page for consistancy

a:link
{
   color: #8F6B00; // if you like the grey they just change the current hue a little
   text-decoration: none;
}
a:visited
{
   color: #8F6B00;
   text-decoration: none;
}
a:hover
{
   color: #FF9601;
}

/* Navigation links - for the link tree. */
.nav, .nav:link, .nav:visited
{
   color: #8F6B00;
   text-decoration: none;
}
a.nav:hover
{
   color: #FF9601;
   
}

A programmers dream... Will it ever come true? Only time will tell xD

yeh, the link colours really are stupid, i can barely see them, if i read at a slightl angle my lcd monitor makes them identical to the usual text colour :/

edit: nevermind, i reverted to the red/orange theme

These additional comments including the patronizing responses should officially become known as 'complimentary slaps'. I know many of us have been rather suprised of this unusual behaviour so we should become custom to them and make new members aware that it is standard issue. Hopefully this will make the community less grim on arrival.

By your assumptions I am ignorant, you remind us frequently how busy and important you are. You are not ignorant.

Well I am busy, I maybe a grunt here but I still have things to do, I have to be dynamic and so does my interface. Right now the OA forum in front of me is my interface.

Please make the links visable. Feel free to issue a complimentary slap, but please do so AFTER the links are FIXED. Please do NOT make me post a screen shot and embarass us all  further as a community...   shoop shoop.

ps. I dont wanna go find how to change template and I wont, if this is the default forum

Now back to the bug reporting issue.

If the technical forum is the place to report bugs then I probably have many unanswered reports without a satisfactory explanation. I know people don't get paid, boo hoo, neither do I. However, I do get complimentary slaps, so this unpaid time could be used more efficiently.

This means that this is misleading...


I would suggest changing this to..

ie. http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?board=49.0

(http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/6630/200808131053551280x1024si0.th.png) (http://img379.imageshack.us/my.php?image=200808131053551280x1024si0.png)

How do i write a new post, if there is no navigation at all? In posts itself i see the “Reply  |  Notify  |  Mark unread  |  Send this topic  |  Print” bar, but in the forum sections i only see “| | |”. And what is it with this number? Now i see

“Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.
Total time logged in: 2 hours and 35 minutes.”

but in the sections or in the overview i only see a number. [edit: now its 250]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820 Firefox/3.0.1


[Edit: Ah, okay, i selected “German” as prefered language, because i’m german. so the theme was somewhat messed up because your German language file is ... well ... not present?]

I don't think you get the reference.

why not use bugzilla? But I dont see how any of the bugs could be fixed since OA runs on ioquake3...

why use bugzilla?

Apart from the mouse and IPv4/IPv6 there are not much that are tied to ioquake3 (at least nothing that bugs are filled about). Most reported bugs are shader, maps or game logic related.

how about where to send it if you dont want every troll to know it and start using it to avoid being kicked on servers?

I would email the maintainer of whichever part of the source you found that has this bug, ie the ioquake3 team. Good luck