Are bugs always addressed?

[aesche]

I think the main issues are the general BGA bugs, and not much excuses there. But nobody seems to see much wrong in 2 usually pretty small things to be fixed over a full month.

[FrankJones]

As usual, I agree with what Nik592 and Kayvon said.

I'm an unpaid volunteer here. I collaborate with Victoria_La to maintain The Terraforming Mars game and bug forum.

I am paid $0.00 and I have spent at least 100 hours helping during the 9 months since VIctoria_La invited me to join the team.

All she and I can do is find and fix flaws in the TFM code that are specific to the game. And there are vey few, because she is very talented.

95% to 98% of bug reports are nonsense, as previously stated. People do not read the rules, do not read the text on cards, do not view the game log, or just otherwise make mistakes and then demand we "fix" the problem.

This takes a lot of time and effort.

Victoria_La and I take pride in having very few open bug reports. I have closed at least 1000 reports since I joined. The only remaining open reports are of the type "translation" or "display".

When there is an actual bug, we fix it, and fast. As such, we have a highly functional implementation of TFM with few or no bugs, and with multiple expansions.

The paid developers get paid to program the game and then to program expansions. But as was stated by Kayvon and Nik52, the ongoing maintenance is basically volunteer work.

Players make all sorts of suggestions that have little merit, from implementing house rules to fixing non-existent problems. Meanwhile, people are demanding Venus, Turmoil, etc.

This takes work. There is opportunity cost.

Also, much to my ongoing angst, people incessantly report bugs of the type "access" or "block", which should NOT be a category for a game-specific forum. This never has anything to do with the game code.

Some of them get nasty, demanding that we restore their Karma or ELo. Umm,. no.

So, to answer the OP, yes, when there are dedicated volunteers working to maintain a game, bugs get fixed fast. Compare the implementations here to various train wrecks on other lousy sites (one of which rhymes with "cream".

All on a free site, or one that costs 10 cents a day for premium.

I play 15 games regularly, and every one of them is highly functional. The BGA system has great matchmaking, Karma, Elo ranking, game replays, etc. What more could people want? I love this site and I am happy to be a part of it.

[MarkSteere]

No, I don't expect developers to become lifelong indentured servants, indefinitely committed to solving their bugs.

I totally appreciate BGA developers, many of whom have helped me with my programs, free of charge. Actually, no one has ever allowed me to pay them, even when I insisted.

I was really just generalizing about one game I knew of - a simple abstract. In this case, the programmer had volunteered to do it for free. So he didn't take any money. But he did run away.

Soon after the game was released, complaints about major bugs started coming in. "Incorrect winner declared." "Opponent's move choices highlighted on my turn." Etc. All of these reports were completely ignored by the developer.

There were discussions about this in non-BGA abstract forums. There was an argument that the developer was no longer "supporting" the program. I found that to be *. If you call yourself a professional, and it's a simple program, you should finish the job and guarantee your work - I think at least for a month or two, if not a year. Don't just slap something together, call it good enough, and disappear.

As I said, I'm only an amateur developer. I have tracked down difficult bugs, but other bugs proved to be far beyond my reach. There's a whole class of bugs that I would never "learn" to fix, no matter how hard I tried - especially intermittent bugs that are related to undocumented, framework timing issues, that require workarounds. I don't know how to use a debugger... I sure would never attempt to fix someone else's bug. You couldn't pay me enough.

For those who have never attempted to write a BGA program, it's impossible to appreciate how vast the gulf is between the professional and the non-professional.

*Forum moderator edit: please refrain from using swears words, this is a family-friendly platform.

[FrankJones]

No, I don't expect developers to become lifelong indentured servants, indefinitely committed to solving their bugs.

I totally appreciate BGA developers, many of whom have helped me with my programs, free of charge. Actually, no one has ever allowed me to pay them, even when I insisted.

I was really just generalizing about one game I knew of - a simple abstract. In this case, the programmer had volunteered to do it for free. So he didn't take any money. But he did run away.

Soon after the game was released, complaints about major bugs started coming in. "Incorrect winner declared." "Opponent's move choices highlighted on my turn." Etc. All of these reports were completely ignored by the developer.

There were discussions about this in non-BGA abstract forums. There was an argument that the developer was no longer "supporting" the program. I found that to be *. If you call yourself a professional, and it's a simple program, you should finish the job and guarantee your work - I think at least for a month or two, if not a year. Don't just slap something together, call it good enough, and disappear.

As I said, I'm only an amateur developer. I have tracked down difficult bugs, but other bugs proved to be far beyond my reach. There's a whole class of bugs that I would never "learn" to fix, no matter how hard I tried - especially intermittent bugs that are related to undocumented, framework timing issues, that require workarounds. I don't know how to use a debugger... I sure would never attempt to fix someone else's bug. You couldn't pay me enough.

For those who have never attempted to write a BGA program, it's impossible to appreciate how vast the gulf is between the professional and the non-professional.

Exactly. I'm an amateur developer who knows only Java and Python, neither of which are used here. I can write blocks of code (perhaps in pseudocode) to make cards work properly, but writing code for an entire game, including front-end display? No chance.

I can use a debugger, but I'm only familiar with IntelliJ and Java. That being said, I feel confident that I could look at the code and se where the problem is. I can "read" blocks of code and see when and where the output is not what is desired.

To your earlier points, if a developer is not actively supporting a game, someone else should be permitted to step in and take over.

[MarkSteere]

I may have exaggerated my skill level, calling myself an amateur programmer. I took a C programming class 40 years ago and never programmed anything until I adapted BGA Reversi to one of my games. I just swapped out the game logic and graphics without seeing the forest through the trees. And I had a ton of help. Someone wrote all the hard parts for me. Several programs later, I started to get the overall picture.

If it's purely a logic issue, there's a good chance I can track it down. But like in Jokerball, the logic was fine, but the program was not highlighting some legal moves. This was a timing issue. A professional solved it by moving a block of code, unchanged, from one place to another. Something like that wouldn't occur to me in a million years.

There've been other cases where I narrowed a problem down to one line of code, and didn't know how to fix it. Like maybe I was using single quotes instead of tick marks. I learn every time something like that happens, but there's virtually no end to these little stumbling blocks.

I have written a few programs with no help or with just a few hints and suggestions. But most of them have had at least one blast proof, steel reinforced, concrete wall.

[FSKFSK]

For a popular game like 7 Wonders, it's extremely unlikely there still are any gameplay bugs.

For less popular games, bugs still get fixed, but not always. It depends if there's still an active developer working on that game.

There's also things that players think are bugs but the site disagrees. For example, in Stone Age, lots of players want a rule variant to increase the starvation penalty, to eliminate starvation strategy. But it isn't an official rule variant sanctioned by the game publisher, so it is not implemented. (Stone Age has a rule defect that the starvation penalty is too small, making it a viable strategy to not feed your people and never take food/agriculture, because the extra resources you get more than make up for the starvation penalty.)

For a popular game like Agricola, there are such variants implemented, such as banning cards that are generally agreed to be too strong.

There also are longstanding site flaws, such as the way tournaments are handled when a player runs out of time.

[nik592]

There were discussions about this in non-BGA abstract forums. There was an argument that the developer was no longer "supporting" the program. I found that to be *. If you call yourself a professional, and it's a simple program, you should finish the job and guarantee your work - I think at least for a month or two, if not a year. Don't just slap something together, call it good enough, and disappear.

*Forum moderator edit: please refrain from using swears words, this is a family-friendly platform.

If someone is a volunteer, they aren't under any obligation to continue, and if life gets in the way, or perhaps the undertaking seems harder than originally thought (maybe a nasty comment or dozen got to them), then they're free to walk away. If you put expectations on volunteers that they have to "see a job through" for several months or even a year after development is finished (for free), all you'll do is make some people who might volunteer choose to absolutely not volunteer. Furthermore, while some BGA devs might be professionals, I suspect many are not. I do work as a software developer and I do not choose to develop games on BGA - mostly because my life outside of work is busy with other things.

I get your disappointment, but as someone who also volunteers a decent chunk of time (in non-programming ways), recruiting and keeping volunteers is difficult. The community you are serving always feels the volunteers should be doing more, but frequently aren't willing or able to contribute themselves, and often complain loudly when they're not happy, but rarely offer thanks when they are. You want more volunteers who stick around? Appreciate their work and/or offer to help (even in non-programmer ways, as FrankJones does for Terraforming Mars).

[Meeplelowda]

The community you are serving always feels the volunteers should be doing more, but frequently aren't willing or able to contribute themselves, and often complain loudly when they're not happy, but rarely offer thanks when they are. You want more volunteers who stick around? Appreciate their work and/or offer to help (even in non-programmer ways, as FrankJones does for Terraforming Mars).

1000x this. This is why I get triggered when I see devs attacked in the forums, even though I'm not a dev.

[tinpan70]

I hear all your points and .... Yes I did post it as a bug. No I'm not imagining it and many more have posted the exact same bug recently so it's backing up. I really wasn't trying to say anyone should work for free or upset anyone. Was a genuine question. I should probably have phrased it more like. Does this website sometimes make changes that damage games and have no resources to fix their inadvertent mistakes? Just like to know if wasting my time going through the rather tedious steps of posting bug reports really. Not happy that can no longer play one of my favourite games but I guess unsubscribing and getting them to the real table more should always be a priority. Thanks to all the awesome peeps out their with the smarts to put these games out there for us.

[Meeplelowda]

I should probably have phrased it more like. Does this website sometimes make changes that damage games and have no resources to fix their inadvertent mistakes?

The answer to this is yes, sometimes they make changes that globally affect many games and they do what they can to address it as quickly as possible. But if it only affects a few games in an idiosyncratic way that's hard to reproduce, then it's hard to fix as well.

Also, occasionally there's a change made external to BGA that breaks things. It's all hands on deck trying to find a workaround, but it can take time.

But your original post seemed to be about a specific game. Are you saying you think there's a bug that's affecting more than just Keyflower?