Dungeon Master Forum

I've been looking at this Bugs forum for a while, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a mess. I've no idea how George is managing to keep track of all this stuff, especially considering:

1) Subject titles don't always reflect the bug being reported
2) Same bug being reported in different threads
3) Bugs not referencing a version of the game

I'm as guilty as anyone for making these mistakes, but can we agree on a format for posting bugs that we can all stick to, to make George's life easier? George, is there a particular method that would work well for you? What does anyone else think? I know that if someone gave me this list of bugs at work and told me to fix them, I'd give them the list back and tell them to see me when they had compiled it correctly...

I agree, and ok I'm possibly one of the worst for going off on one in a barely related thread. Isn't there George's original posting at the very bottom showing how he'd want them posted?

Unfortunately some of the 'bugs' do get to be preference dependant. As it says in the forum what doesn't work as expected compared to DM, so alot becomes discussions on food/stamina or monster AI....so how do you regulate spread out discussions?

I propose:

Subject: problem [version/level]

In the message:

category: bug or difference to dm
type: graphics/sound/ai/items etc.
Description of problem.
How to recreate problem. (If not obvious)
Links to screenshots (If applicable)

for example:

subject: Poor sound [all/all]

category: bug
type: sound

Some sounds sound really crappy.

Listen to sounds x y z.

I think that covers all the needed points, and would make things easy to diagnose. If I missed any info that should be included let me know. Of course George gets to decide how he wants his bugs reported. He may even want to split this forum into two - one for bugs and one for differences. =p

- Amaprotu

It doesn't really matter to be honest as long as all the information is there somewhere. It would be useful if there was a brief (one line) summary and then a full description later (if necessary). it doesn't make much odds for me (as I'll read everything anyway) but it makes sense for all of you so you can quickly scan through and see if something has already been said before or not.

The only thing that would be really useful, as you've already pointed out, is to make sure that there's only one bug per thread. This is mostly for my benifit as extra bugs tend to get lost (for example the hot keys!) in the vast quantities of replies. If it's in a new thread and clearly labeled then I can't miss it and it will go in the next release.

Blimey, I just saw the date on the original post: March 2001! Have we really been going that long?.... wow!