292 replies to this topic

[Scratx]

Zyllos, on 14 May 2013 - 12:34 PM, said:

That problem right there is why threaded applications are so difficult to mess with. One unrelated issue causing issues somewhere else which manifests itself as something unrelated.

Got to love programming...

Back to PLM/386!

True, but this kind of bug doesn't actually need multi-threading to manifest.

And on a side note, beer must be had as celebration for the squishing of this bug.

Edited by Scratx, 14 May 2013 - 06:25 PM.

[Mawai]

I just wanted to say thank you very much for a detailed and comprehensive description of the actual bugs and the resolution process. Finding bugs can be very challenging and a write up like this helps keep the masses calm as well as entertained

[IceSerpent]

Sand Lantern, on 14 May 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

As one programmer to another, that was an exciting story. I can just imagine the sort of brick wall head beating that was going on while tracking down that.

/signed. This story brought back a lot of "interesting" memories for me

[Tyler Hand]

Fantastic....though I did not understand half of what was being said, due to its technical nature, I really really really appreciate you guys, sharing this with the community. Explanations of how things work really helps us understand the monumental tasks of something seemingly simple as a HUD problem.
Kudos! Well done

[DaZur]

Sigh...

Tiffany cufflinks shat for the benefit of all and still the effort is wasted on a few.

And folks wonder why I find comfort in the company of dogs... Always appreciative and never judgmental. (Except for that one time when I ate a whole 32oz. steak and didn't offer any to my faithful companion)

Edited by DaZur, 15 May 2013 - 04:58 AM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

This... is the kind of thing that we have been harping on PGI for MONTHS to include in patch notes.

Sometimes we need "Story time." we need you guys to fill us in on what's going on in the background. This is something that, if you guy's had every now and then been like "Hey we're scanning the Scaleform Tree for checks and balances issues to see if we're getting an invalid callback related to the HUD issues." We would have been like "oh well, hopefully they'll figure something out."

Karl Burg and all other's involved in tracking down this bug. Believe me when I say, you have the thanks of the community at large. Some patches were worse than others with this bug, and, in fact. some never experienced these bugs, or would experience them very rarely to a point they felt non-existant, while a good fraction of the player base was experiencing them nearly every game.

My real curiousity, is what the problem was on the majority of these systems, what were the callbacks that soo many people were ending up with? Why was this issue cropping up on so many systems and flagging as it was.

It's a mystery we'll never have the answer to probably, but I'm quite happy that it was fixed.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

This bug was one of the largest sources of frustration in the game, and I sincerely appreciate the effort that went into eliminating it and then into explaining it. You're trying new things, breaking ground, and discovering underlying issues that have been buried since day one.

I think the community at large would have been OK with, "We know it's a serious, potentially game-breaking, issue. We have a team dedicated to finding the cause and fixing it ... in the meantime, a couple of other features are being delayed"-style updates, but the post-mortem is enlightening.

TL;DR: THANKS -- Talk to us more often!

[The FreyMan]

Great write up, thank you for the time it took to squash the bugs, and make the write up!

[jakucha]

Shumabot, on 14 May 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

Yeah, it says that Karl was hired late into the process and that they seemingly didn't want to get serious about fixing the issues until fairly recently. These bugs are as old as this game, this didn't get overnighted by a crew of astronaut gold medalists, it looks like PGI couldn't get its **** together and hired some additional talent when they realized they were out of their depth.

Except they just said Karl was working with them since the beginning of the game. Pretty clear you're just putting forth pessimistic speculation because you're upset over something.

Edited by jakucha, 14 May 2013 - 10:10 PM.

[xengk]

and this is why I dropped my programming major and went into business major instead...

[Ralgas]

jay35, on 14 May 2013 - 05:26 PM, said:

New bug since the hotfix patch that I've never had before: In the middle of the fourth match I played, the game screen goes black, game is still going on in the background. I cannot see anything but I can still hear the battle continuing. If I hit Escape, I can see the game cursor on the screen, but cannot see anything to click on it. Only way to get out of it is to Alt+F4.

This is playing the game in Windowed mode which is how I've always played it.

It's not new Jay, have had it happen pre the patch, if you let it go either get CTD or it's fixes itself at the end of game screen

[FrostCollar]

This fix has been a long time coming. Well done!

[Asmosis]

Very interesting read, its great to get a bit of insight into the specifics of what you guys do on a day-to-day basis

Shumabot, on 14 May 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

Yeah, it says that Karl was hired late into the process and that they seemingly didn't want to get serious about fixing the issues until fairly recently. These bugs are as old as this game, this didn't get overnighted by a crew of astronaut gold medalists, it looks like PGI couldn't get its **** together and hired some additional talent when they realized they were out of their depth.

If you had been around for the last year or two, you would have noticed on their main webpage (prior to closed beta, during and after) and also in multiple places all over the forums they have been actively trying to hire talent as they were (maybe still are idk) short-staffed on the development side of things.

So no its not a knee-jerk thing to recent outcry/issues. Also, it doesnt say he was hired to PGI for this, just that he was brought into this (possibly from another team within PGI working on something else like GUI 2.0 etc?) to work on this particular issue which already had multiple staff devoted to it.

[Snailio]

Quote

I was brought on to help resolve these issues relatively late in the process

Karl,

What date were you brought in to fix the issues? How long did it take you to identify and resolve the issue?

[LordDante]

great work ! the only Thing i understood that it was a pain in the General behind section to find that ****** ! so here u go !

[StandingCow]

Thanks for taking the time to explain to us all the work that goes into finding some of these bugs, shuts some of the folks up that say, "WHY DON'T THEY JUST FIX IT?!".

[ShinVector]

Good Job !! Kill'em Bugs !

[xenoglyph]

Great post Karl.

I have one question though: Is there anything more annoying than d3dcompiler_42.dll loading and unloading 20 times a second while debugging the client?

[Kataris]

Great job Karl, thanks for the post! Fascinating indeed, gj tracking down the bug.

[vettie]

Mike Forst, on 14 May 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

Yep. Karl has been on MWO from the start.

Hmmm

I am seeing an extra Danish on his tray in the coming mornings. Free coffee too

Charge it to Russ