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How to file a GameMaker 8.1 Bug Report

YoYo Games Game Maker Bug ReportSince the release of GameMaker 8.1 around 70 bug reports have been filed. Whilst feedback is obviously important to ensuring defects are identified and can be fixed, the poor quality of some of the bug reports just wastes everybody’s time.

Sticking multiple unrelated bugs in one report is not helpful. Neither is continuing to create new reports for an issue that already exists in the bugtracker such as the room editor scroll bar glitch.  There is a search.  Use it.

It’s pretty obvious, but apparently not to some of those giving feedback, that in order to fix a bug it first needs to be reproduced.  The number of times it has been necessary for the first reply to a report to be “upload the file which gives this error” or “please supply a sample” is much higher than it should be.

A report of “Sometimes Game maker 8.1 shows a “Runtime Error” at startup of gm8.0 projects (even if they don’t use any exensions)” with no additional information whatsoever is not going to be of help at all. Does Mike know what file(s) you attempted to load? What Operating System you are using?

This annoys me. I want to see GameMaker getting better and it is certainly heading that way as the quality bug reports are being worked on, an updated version 8.1.66 should be pushed out next week. Sloppily written, duplicate bug reports without detailed steps given as to how to reproduce an error aren’t helping anybody.

A set of bug writing guidelines (all common sense) were sent out to beta testers. I have reproduced the guide below.

Bug Writing Guidelines

Category:
Select the area of Game Maker in which the issue is occurring.
e.g. if the issue occurs whilst editing a Sprite, select “Sprite”

Reproducibility:
Select the how often the issue occurs for you
e.g. If the issue can be reproduced every time you perform a specific action, then select “Always”. If the issue only occurred once, but you have been unable to reproduce, then select “Unable to reproduce”

Severity:
Select how severe the issue is based on the following parameters:

Class A: Severe.
Select if the issue has caused Game Maker to enter a state from which it cannot recover, such as a Crash or Hang
Class B: Major
Select if the issue detrimentally affects the use of Game Maker, but still allows you to use the software.
Class C: Normal
Select for all other issues which negatively affect the end user experience
Class D: Minor/Wish
Select if the issue is something you wish to see fixed or added, but is not actually detrimentally affecting your use of Game Maker

Priority
Set this to ‘None’ as this will be set by the development team.

Summary:
Write a brief description of the issue starting with the game area followed by the description as below:

e.g: “Sprites: Unable to load Sprite from file”

Description:
Write a detailed description of the issue containing only the relevant information needed to allow a developer to understand the issue.

Below the description, add the exact steps required to reproduce the issue, known as ‘Reproduction Steps’. Ensure that you contain only steps relevant to the reproduction of the issue:

e.g:

On attempting to load a Sprite from a valid image file, the image will not actually load into the Sprite

Repro Steps:
1. Launch Game Maker
2. Select “Create new sprite”
3. Select “Load Sprite” from the attributes page
4. Browse to a valid image file and select ‘open’
5. Notice that on selecting ‘open’, the image you have selected has not appeared within the Sprite.”

Upload a File
To further describe an issue it is essential to include any material that will assist a developer in quickly understanding your issue.

These files include:

  • Game Maker Log files
  • Affected .gmk files
  • Screenshots with the specific issue highlighted by a Green or Red line box
  • Videos if essential to describing the issue.

All uploaded files must be below 10 MB

View Status
Select ‘Public’

Submit Report
Only when you have completed the above details, click ‘Submit Report’.

What do you think?

4 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Does “Priority: Set this to ‘None’ as this will be set by the development team.” still apply for all of us now 8.1 is out? I can’t remember ever having read this – maybe to avoid confusion you could disable changing the priority for everyone except the development team (if possible).

  2. You’d think that “search first” would be common sense, wouldn’t you? But there seem to be of people that disagree with me over at the bug tracker. 😉

    @xot defiantly, when you make your account, you should be forced to read this, and take a quick quiz, before you can submit a bug.

  3. Very nice. This should be required reading for anyone accessing the bug reporting system. Even folks who give decent reports could learn something from it.

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