Blank screens and clock ticking

[slimy_asparagus]

I am in my 6th game in this tournament. https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=219977 However for this game the screen is blank. I have tried pressing F5, incognito mode, different machines etc. I have commented on a related bug https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=117361 . I have messeged the tournament administrator. What can I do?

[nik592]

I don't see a blank screen, but I don't see pieces on the board, which I assume I should - not being familiar with the game, I'm not totally sure. It does look like the game is bugged. Unfortunately, unless a fix is deployed (which depends how active the developer is - and it just says developed by BGA, which may imply there isn't an active developer associated), there's little anyone, including the tournament administrator, can do. It's poor luck for you and absolutely not fair, but if nothing resolves before your time runs out (or the game runs to maximum time, if your opponent doesn't/can't boot you), it's probably going to result in you losing the game.

[slimy_asparagus]

Yeah I do see a board just no pieces. I was trying not to start a new bug report. BGA does not seem to have anyone one can escalate issues to.

[nik592]

You can contact through the link at the bottom of the page, but BGA admin are typically not the game developers, and the responsibility for fixing bugs in games (as far as I understand it) is via volunteer developers. So I'm not sure escalating will get you any further anyway.

The other point with bugs (as someone who writes software), a bug can be a one line change you spot immediately and deploy, or it can be the kind of thing that can take a week to dig out and/or require serious rearrangement of the code to fix. Even if a dev was looking at it (and it would seem no one is), there's no guarantees it would be fixed in time to let you continue playing.

[slimy_asparagus]

I get all that, but I have some further points.

1. Looking at the bug report it seems it could be a webserver issue. Possibly particular resources having lost their permissions or being deleted. That ought to be something their paid web developers could look into. If this is correct it could just be bad luck it is only impacting one fairly obscure game.

2. I presumably will get penalized for this. Seeing as it is not my fault and that this is a tournament, I think there ought to be something they can do about it.

[ErikLevin]

The game is "Developed by: Board Game Arena" in this case, so not a community volunteer.

It would be good if tournament organizers had the ability to act as, you know, actual tournament organizers. So they could restart matches that break and so on.

I would contact BGA support. Even if the chances are very slim that they can fix your match or your tournament standings, perhaps they will do something about the karma. IMO BGA should give back karma hits caused by confirmed game-breaking bugs.

(IMO BGA should also put games with too many bugs back in beta or alpha so it's clear to everyone that the game is not stable)

[slimy_asparagus]

I did raise a bug: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=117701 but still there seems to be no way to just ask for help in a general way. I can understand the need to filter out noise but this feels kafkaesque. I am paying and there is nothing I can apparently do.

[ErikLevin]

I did raise a bug: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=117701 but still there seems to be no way to just ask for help in a general way. I can understand the need to filter out noise but this feels kafkaesque. I am paying and there is nothing I can apparently do.

I don't understand whether you have contacted support or not. Contacting BGA support is with "contact us" at the bottom of the page, not the bug portal. Apologies if that's what you have done and I misunderstand you.

[slimy_asparagus]

Depending on which link you clink on you end up at the bug reporting mechanism. So now I have both submitted a general website bug (https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=117701) and the more emaily one. The latter I titled "Please urgently address a broken Tournament."