Board Game Arena

Hello !

We all know the feeling, we play game XYZ but there is a frustrating bug and it has been there for months/years and we have to work around it.

Sometimes the bug can be nasty and would require half of the game to be rewritten to be solved but sometimes it's probably not all that difficult to solve.
So, if there are some benevolent devs that could take up maintenance of some of those games and see what they can do, it would be very welcome. And even if they cannot solve it, a confirmation of the bug or a mention that it would require to rewrite all the module z would already be welcome.

I'm thinking of :

• Great Western Trail : building 12b (https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=132409, https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=142564 and like 30 other copies of that bug)
• Ultimate Railroads : Timing of coin income tile (https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=66180)
• Small World : Some tricky issues with timing of conquests and some combinations of powers that would first require to understand what exactly is going on... ( https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=139043, https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=152879, https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=145481,...)
• Barrage : Problem with architect and undos (https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=78493)
• Path of Civilization : visibility of simultaneous actions is profoundly affecting gameplay in a manner that incite slow play and more (https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=127847, https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=174875, ... )
• Age of civilization : not actually a bug but lack of logging makes people think there are bugs ( https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=80367 )
• Rallyman: DIRT : Major problems in specific situations (https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=123652 , https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=155714 ... ) (This game is a mess)

I also take the occasion to remind people that most games are developed by devs who are doing it on their free time. And some are implemented by devs who are paid by the publishers but only for a limited time.

Have you signed up to help yet? Be the change you want to see in the world. If so, awesome! Share some of that experience to help entice others. If not, don't ask something of others that you're not willing to do yourself.

Here's the link:
https://studio.boardgamearena.com

I help with test and translation. I'm an analyst not a coder.

Unfortunately, that's the reponse I get nearly 100% of the time from people requesting (or demanding, in many cases) free volunteer work. People push back because they don't know how to do BGA coding.

The little secret is that nobody knows how to do BGA coding before actually learning it. And, yes, it's not easy, which is why very few people do it. But it's very much a Be The Change You Want To See In The World situation. It's hard to convince people to do something that you're not willing to do yourself.

(I say this as someone who actually does volunteer to maintain a couple dozen BGA games)

It took me approximately 4 months to learn java at a functional level to the point where I would likely be able to repair bugs in game code if it were written in Java. And another month to learn Python at a similar level.

So, it does take some time, and to actually repair code on BGA, I would need to learn a different language, but I've been told the language BGA games use is not significantly different from those 2. Code logic is transferrable, for the most part.