Getting Started With Fixing Bugs in Published Game

[Zeimyth]

Race for the Galaxy has some old bugs filed, but hasn't seen any bug fixes in a while. This affects me directly, and in fact I ran into an extremely annoying issue just today while playing the game. That's what brought me back to attempting to be a BGA developer: I want to fix these bugs since no one else is!

However, I am having a difficult time getting started. From the Bounty Hunting page, it seems that BGA's normal policy is to give developers a way to somehow "clone" an existing game into a new project of the developer's own creation rather than giving access to the published game project directly. I tried my best to follow the steps listed there. I created my own project (using the same project number as it listed for Race for the Galaxy; convenient that that game is used as an example on the Create New Game page!), but I can't use the Overwrite functionality on the Manage Game page because "Source and destination projects don't have the same game status". I can't help but feel like I am going about things entirely wrong, since shouldn't every game that a Bounty Hunter tries to work on be in a different game status than the new project they just created?

Also, is there a particular reason that Race for the Galaxy has gone so long without bug fixes? Why isn't it listed on the Licenses page? Is BGA discouraging developers from working on this game anymore?

[Tisaac]

Race for the Galaxy has some old bugs filed, but hasn't seen any bug fixes in a while. This affects me directly, and in fact I ran into an extremely annoying issue just today while playing the game. That's what brought me back to attempting to be a BGA developer: I want to fix these bugs since no one else is!

However, I am having a difficult time getting started. From the Bounty Hunting page, it seems that BGA's normal policy is to give developers a way to somehow "clone" an existing game into a new project of the developer's own creation rather than giving access to the published game project directly. I tried my best to follow the steps listed there. I created my own project (using the same project number as it listed for Race for the Galaxy; convenient that that game is used as an example on the Create New Game page!), but I can't use the Overwrite functionality on the Manage Game page because "Source and destination projects don't have the same game status". I can't help but feel like I am going about things entirely wrong, since shouldn't every game that a Bounty Hunter tries to work on be in a different game status than the new project they just created?

Also, is there a particular reason that Race for the Galaxy has gone so long without bug fixes? Why isn't it listed on the Licenses page? Is BGA discouraging developers from working on this game anymore?

Race for the Galaxy was probably developped before the création of the studio, you will need to ask admin to create a local copy over there.
I see the game in the license liste, you juste have to click the checkbox "show me released games as well"

[Zeimyth]

As an update, I reached out to the admin email a month ago and still haven't heard anything back. Maybe this is the reason why Race still has these bugs? Is it possible to get in contact with the admins easily through the forums instead of the admin email?

[Tisaac]

As an update, I reached out to the admin email a month ago and still haven't heard anything back. Maybe this is the reason why Race still has these bugs? Is it possible to get in contact with the admins easily through the forums instead of the admin email?

Try pinging them again, they are understaffed so sometimes your message Can fall into the void

[JeroenDemeyer]

Any news so far?

I've also worked on bugfixing an old game: Seasons

I got access to the game pretty quickly (that was in january 2022) and fixed many bugs and made many improvements. But now I don't manage to get into contact with BGA studio devs to actually deploy the fixed release (I just contacted BGA studio a third time today). A really frustrating experience.

[ufm]

BGA is always understaffed. Only 1 person is in charge of the BGA studio management. Really.
Thus, your mails can be lost among many others pretty frequently.
Sometimes you have to ping a lot (the docs recommend 1 per 3 days).
Or, try other contact methods like direct message (I recommend Discord).

Also, is there a particular reason that Race for the Galaxy has gone so long without bug fixes? Why isn't it listed on the Licenses page? Is BGA discouraging developers from working on this game anymore?

Isn't current maintenance developer of RtfG active? At least I think so. Contact him if needed.

[Zeimyth]

Thanks for the help. I will contact the admins again a few times if trying to reach out to the dev doesn't lead to anything.