61 replies to this topic

[Pyrrho]

When ever I read patch notes that include the phrase "-Numerous front end bug fixes" or "-General bug fixes" I get a little sad.

These lines do not belong in your patch notes. What does belong is the content of those fixes. When you make a change to improve your code, you know why you are improving it, how it was improved, and why this is better now than it was before.

Granted, I don't know how PGI tracks their workload, but someone is doing this work and they should be documenting it. These things need to be relayed to us! It could be lines and lines of technical jargon, and maybe most people won't understand or read it all, but when you don't say what you have changed and how, you are not being honest with your community.

I don't read "General bug fixes" in the notes and go:

"Oh thankee, thankee! Those general bugs are gone!"

I go:

"What the $#!+ did they FIX?!?!"

Please, bore us (read: me) to death with all of the minor details. I want to know what is what without any run-around and it is your job (whoever compiles the notes) to tell us!

Agree or disagree, this is what I would prefer to a vanilla "we fixed a few things" generalization.

Edited by Pyrrho, 15 January 2013 - 03:20 PM.

[superbob]

I think their time is better spent working on the game than typing up a long list of bugfixes.

If it's not the coders who would be tasked with writing down every little thing they fixed, someone else would end up going through their bug tracker and looking for bugfixes in commit notes and code. Not being the person who coded that however, they might have a problem understanding what happened and more importantly, how to put it into words that the general audience would understand.

That said, I wouldn't mind if PGI supplied us with some raw dump of things marked as fixed or resolved, separately from the official changelog file. Of course, that would also need to be proof-read and redacted not to leak anything that the PR dept. wouldn't want leaked, like upcoming surprises or changes regarding experimental features that they wouldn't want to hype-up in the community.

tl;dr putting together very detailed patch notes would be time-consuming and more complicated than you might think.

[Odins Fist]

superbob, on 15 January 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

I think their time is better spent working on the game than typing up a long list of bugfixes.

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As such a list would exist anyway, what would be the point of withholding any info..??
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What, would they fix something, then "NOT" document it..?? No, that doesn't happen... NEXT

[superbob]

Odins Fist, on 15 January 2013 - 03:52 PM, said:

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As such a list would exist anyway, what would be the point of withholding any info..??
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What, would they fix something, then "NOT" document it..?? No, that doesn't happen... NEXT

It's documented alright, in whatever bug-tracker or source control system they use, also likely to be scattered across coders' inboxes and plastered as post-it notes on their monitors. But getting it from that form to what they could present to us isn't as simple as doing copy-paste a few times.

[ElmoWithAGun]

superbob, on 15 January 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

I think their time is better spent working on the game than typing up a long list of bugfixes.

This shouldn't be a problem as any professional program team would have documented what was worked on for each push to production. A simple copy and paste isn't hard.

[Tarman]

superbob, on 15 January 2013 - 03:59 PM, said:

It's documented alright, in whatever bug-tracker or source control system they use, also likely to be scattered across coders' inboxes and plastered as post-it notes on their monitors. But getting it from that form to what they could present to us isn't as simple as doing copy-paste a few times.

And such a haphazard backwoods method of keeping track of workload in a group project kind of explains why the game is so sketchy. I'm kind of worried by your complacency about PGI's glaring ineptitude at putting together a list of things that their employees did while they were at work. Managing to fail at producing a text file of things you know you just did inspires zero confidence in people. Unless of course your point is that there are so many bugs and problems that they simply don't have the time to write anything down at all. Which is still a bad thing.

[Odins Fist]

superbob, on 15 January 2013 - 03:59 PM, said:

It's documented alright, in whatever bug-tracker or source control system they use, also likely to be scattered across coders' inboxes and plastered as post-it notes on their monitors. But getting it from that form to what they could present to us isn't as simple as doing copy-paste a few times.

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So let me get this straight.... They don't have a "BOSS" that reviews what work has been done, and what bugfixes have happened..?? Nah, doesn't make sense, it wouldn't take 15 minutes to consolidate, and post.."PERIOD"
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"NEXT"

Edited by Odins Fist, 15 January 2013 - 04:09 PM.

[superbob]

Odins Fist, on 15 January 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

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So let me get this straight.... They don't have a "BOSS" that reviews what work has been done, and what bugfixes have happened..?? Nah, doesn't make sense, it wouldn't take 15 minutes to consolidate, and post.."PERIOD"
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"NEXT"

What I'm trying to explain to you is that what the "BOSS" sees may not be suited for your eyes due hell-knows how many policies governing information flow. And the programming "BOSS" may not be required to know what parts of the weekly report he can freely post on the forums, rather, told not to.

I dunno how many management levels separate Matt Newman from the lowly coders, but chances are what we see in the patch notes is pretty much what he got to see in his weekly report, submitted by the collective programming "BOSS". With some other stuff that was too technical or detailed for him to care to translate it for us.

I don't mean minor UI tweaks like moving some click-area 2px to the left in mechlab UI, rather stuff like a pointer that wasn't initialized to NULL in some oddly named class' method that caused some barely noticeable game assets to be loaded when needed on screen rather then pre-loaded during map init. bad example I know, PGI coders wouldn't make such silly mistakes... Stuff that, even if most people could understand what it means, wouldn't actually tell us much except that progress is being made on the game. Unless of course we got an in-depth post explaining each of the little changes that PGI coders make, with a heart-warming little story about why it mattered.

That said, I really would like to see the full reports somewhere, to better understand how MWO's development is doing, but realize that getting it to us may not be a straightforward process. Think stuff like:
1. information release policies (technical IP, upcoming content, game internals, IGP's information policies)
2. sorting out the stuff we don't need to see (overly technical, irrelevant, experimental/uncertain fix that would create premature hype)
3. getting someone to put the list together, someone to proof-read and redact secret things, someone up the chain to approve info release

All for our reading pleasure and transparency, mainly feeding forum trolls who would then complain about evert single fix (too late or doesn't work or not whet they wanted or otherwise trolls know better). Mind you, this would also put more pressure on the programmers, since then the world would be reading their every changelog.

Am I saying it is impossible? No. I'm saying this would be a process rather then someone copying and pasting a list of fixes.

Do I want more detailed changelogs? Hell yeah!

So.. Am I angry abut not getting them? A little, but I understand PGI might not have the resources to spare to get it to us.

Of course, if a lot of people *kindly* asked for more minor changes being listed in patch notes, this whole matter might become more important to PGI and maybe then they could justify putting together a complete report of what was done since the last patch. Right now, it seems that most people here want more bugs fixed in MWO rather than more changes posted in patch notes, but if somehow that were to change, I'm sure PGI would prioritize and ease up on actually fixing the game, post longer lists of stuff that was done.

Edited by superbob, 16 January 2013 - 04:01 AM.

[elbloom]

Superbob, please, PLEASE stop whiteknighting. Instead do this :

go to http://www.mwlldownload.com/ - read the "Revision" tab and learn how a quality/professional dev-team handles patch-notes.

also please keep in mind those guys have a much smaller workforce but *still* get it done much much more better in this case.

also, friend, why should we start to *kindly* ask them to be more professional with us when they clearly should have been right from the start away ? Your logic(?) sounds a bit alien to me... but whatever

edit: re-reading your post I have the impression you don´t really have the smallest clue what you´re talking about...

Edited by elbloom, 16 January 2013 - 04:19 AM.

[siLve00]

All i do notice are way less disconnects ( seems like less bugs + the no more cbills / xp for discos are the reason ).

i hadn´t yellow screen / 4 fps bug


so far.. well ir is running smother atleast what i did see in 50 matches so far.

[Tarman]

siLve00, on 16 January 2013 - 04:18 AM, said:

All i do notice are way less disconnects ( seems like less bugs + the no more cbills / xp for discos are the reason ).

i hadn´t yellow screen / 4 fps bug


so far.. well ir is running smother atleast what i did see in 50 matches so far.

Wish that was the case for me, plenty of DCs post-patch, followed by the inevitable "please kill me I'm operating at 4fps" classic.

[Pyrrho]

I thought I was being quite kind in my request.

[Pyrrho]

superbob, on 15 January 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

I think their time is better spent working on the game than typing up a long list of bugfixes.

PS: To me, working on the game includes being able to track your updates.

[Odins Fist]

elbloom, on 16 January 2013 - 04:13 AM, said:

Superbob, please, PLEASE stop whiteknighting. Instead do this :

go to http://www.mwlldownload.com/ - read the "Revision" tab and learn how a quality/professional dev-team handles patch-notes.
edit: re-reading your post I have the impression you don´t really have the smallest clue what you´re talking about...

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Well I would have put it a different way, but, yeah pretty much...
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Any production job that I "HAD" when I was younger, my "BOSS" had to know "EXACTLY" what was being done, and we had to fill out paperwork to show what "EXACTLY" was done, and if any improvements were made, or suggested, he was responsible for reporting that to "HIS" Bosses higher up... I won't even get into what goes on in the transportation of HAZ-MAT related items, or the production of Propane, or Medical Oxygen plants, the amount of meticulously tracked, and saved paper work would probably make most people say ... "No thanks".
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I can't believe that anything "PROFIT DRIVEN" would lack the monitoring of progress...

Edited by Odins Fist, 16 January 2013 - 12:50 PM.

[Tabrias07]

The lack of details in patch notes is what leads to these forums thinking you're not getting anything done. Don't just say "numerous front end fixes" tell us you can double click things in the mechbay now.

By the way, YOU CAN DOUBLE CLICK THINGS IN THE MECHBAY NOW YAY.

[Protoculture]

superbob, on 15 January 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

I think their time is better spent working on the game than typing up a long list of bugfixes.

If it's not the coders who would be tasked with writing down every little thing they fixed, someone else would end up going through their bug tracker and looking for bugfixes in commit notes and code. Not being the person who coded that however, they might have a problem understanding what happened and more importantly, how to put it into words that the general audience would understand.

That said, I wouldn't mind if PGI supplied us with some raw dump of things marked as fixed or resolved, separately from the official changelog file. Of course, that would also need to be proof-read and redacted not to leak anything that the PR dept. wouldn't want leaked, like upcoming surprises or changes regarding experimental features that they wouldn't want to hype-up in the community.

tl;dr putting together very detailed patch notes would be time-consuming and more complicated than you might think.

There are people whose jobs it is to let us know these kinds of things who are not directly working on the game. I can think of at least two.

Pro tip: Look at the Dev Tracker sticky thread.

[Jasen]

ElmoWithAGun, on 15 January 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

This shouldn't be a problem as any professional program team would have documented what was worked on for each push to production. A simple copy and paste isn't hard.

Pretty much all source controls have checkin comments...

We take these comments and give them directly to QA so they know what to test... funny thing.. auto builds can even paste out these changelogs right there in the email talking about the build.

Don't see why they couldn't be used as patch notes with small edits for clarity...

[Matthew Craig]

We appreciate there are those that may want to know the gritty details though for most users it would just be jargon or worse just creates a lot of confusion and arguments on the forums.

I think we'll see what we can do in the future to have a full version somewhere, for now if there's something specific you'd really like more info on just ask I'll try and clarify.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Matthew Craig, on 23 January 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

We appreciate there are those that may want to know the gritty details though for most users it would just be jargon or worse just creates a lot of confusion and arguments on the forums.

I think we'll see what we can do in the future to have a full version somewhere, for now if there's something specific you'd really like more info on just ask I'll try and clarify.

It's quite hard to ask something specific with no record even in laymans terms of what you have changed

[Matthew Craig]

DV McKenna, on 23 January 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

It's quite hard to ask something specific with no record even in laymans terms of what you have changed

The patch notes are the abridged version of what changed so start from there and ask what you'd like expanded?