There I was, anonymously submitting BM bug issues to Bitbucket. Watched as some 20 of them were tagged as “resolved”. Everything’s been fine for several weeks. I ramped up my submissions. Earlier today, I could no longer submit or access the issues page. Thinking there was a change in the policy for submissions, I signed up as a member at Bitbucket. Happily, I was once again able to view and submit bug issues, and did so. But within half an hour, I received an email stating “that the bugs I was reporting could not be fixed” and was asked to “stop submitting bugs related to clipping issues”, even though some of my bugs that had been “resolved” were clipping related. Immediately thereafter, I was again blocked from viewing or accessing the issues page, even after repeated attempts.
I’m trying to do my part in giving back and doing the little that I can in improving BM and this is the thanks I get for my efforts. Needless to say, this has left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Are/were you submitting bugs anonymously, or are you a member at BitBucket? I hope your assumption is right. I’d hate to think it’s something specifically related to me.
Yeah, as with everything on this forum, wait until you have some facts before you draw the wrong conclusions. I can’t for one minute think you’d have been specifically banned. If your feedback is at least as good as it is on TEXT’s stuff then I’m sure it’s gratefully received.
You are not banned from submitting bugs. I closed off the bug tracker until we can work through the 30+ bugs someone submitted which we could do absolutely nothing about.
I should add that placing myself in your shoes, I can see how you thought these are fixable issues, but I replied to a huge number of bugs you were posting telling you that either you assigned them to the wrong category or that they just aren’t fixable. That should have set off some red flags and caused you to stop posting bugs and come here to ask about what we wanted people to look for, rather than ignoring our messages and continuing to post away.
The clipping issue that you mentioned is the following:
Player can clip through entire upper portion of the fallen antenna tower.
I am pretty sure that John marked this as resolved for one of two reasons: A) We couldn’t fix it or B ) They just added a player_clip around the object in question. AFAIK, I didn’t see John post a resolution of what was done to fix it, so he’ll have to weigh in here.
Any static props that are placed inside geometry like that ARE bugs and we can fix those. Let me repeat, this only applies to STATIC props, meaning props that you can’t push around and can only be moved by a level designer.
So I don’t know how that medkit got into that position. If you found it like that, then it is a bug and we need to have a level designer fix it by rotating it. If you put it in that position yourself, then it is not a bug we can fix. In games, we can’t build super-fine collision models around objects because simulating physics on those would take up a lot of processing power. The area of collision around the medkit is probably a simple box around the entire thing. You can view these by doing
Another one we can’t fix. A physics_prop clipping into a static prop will always result in minor clipping issues. This is normal. I will talk to an artist about the model on model collision issues you have posted to make sure I’ve given you the right information about model clipping, but I am inclined to say they will agree.
I thought someone was trying to fuck with us after seeing this + the 30 other emails for bug reports, so please forgive me if I seem irate. As I said in one of the posts here / on the tracker, bugs like the one just above are not helpful, and it slows us down from reviewing the real issues (such as crashing, broken entities, etc).
To your credit, you marked this next one as an enhancement, not as a bug. I can get behind this one as something we should consider: Picture
This next one I wasn’t clear on from the description; It was marked as an enhancement: Picture
My gut tells me we can’t fix this either.
A bunch of issues that were posted revolved around realism and such. The issue with video games is, we can’t make them perfect. You’d be shocked at how much trickery goes on to give you an in-game experience. We have to resort to that in some places because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get the game to run at a decent framerate. Sometimes we have to compromise for less than perfect due to time constraints or technical reasons.
To close, we do appreciate and recognize that you took the time to comb over our work with a fine toothed comb. All I ask is that you read what I wrote above and keep that in mind as you report bugs. We ask that you don’t approach issue finding from a ‘real-world’ perspective but from a gameplay / mistake perspective (mistake meaning misplaced map elements and the like, as shown above). We at a stage right now where we want to fix major, gameplay affecting issues first. When we get those resolved, we’ll do a polish pass.
Once you reply and we can talk, I’ll re-open the bug tracker for you
Even after getting official word on this, I feel like I should answer - I hadn’t actually used the bug reporter before I got the “Don’t have access” message. I tried accessing it anonymously, then registered for an account. Same result both times, hence why I figured it was just locked down for the time being.
Also, @your-name-here; I’m getting an XML Access Denied error on all of your links. I’m not sure if that’s because they’re intended for Dadster, but figured I should mention that if that’s not the case.
Thanks for your response.
I can’t view any of your exhibits. I get the following error message:
This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below. AccessDeniedRequest has expired1484625E2EC52ECD2013-03-06T11:36:52ZkUdnNwhtU+wl0NjQ+u3Baj4QTawEjmtnkBBhOE4lxvwgT8pEIBNoLxjg+ZAAo1vO2013-03-06T17:06:36Z
It was never my intention that my bug reporting would result in being a burden to you and your team. I thought it best to report what I felt were basic, common-sense, immersion breaking flaws and let you decide which ones should be addressed. It’s not a case of me trying to “show you up” or profess that “I’m better than you”. You need to know they exist, to fix what fits into your present realm or scheme, and to use the feedback going further in future endeavors.
Going forward, I’ll certainly be mindful of your bug reporting outline in my future posts. To that end, please correct the issue of me not being able to view the exhibits you posted, so that I can fully understand your guidelines. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Thank you, and I remain committed to assisting you in making BM as believable an environment as possible.
First, I want to thank you for your politely worded post. I’ve seen things like this go south very quickly. Because the links I pasted earlier had an expiration date, you’ll need to give me some time to go back and fix them. I will post new examples in this message instead for the time being.
I will now address your post.
While I can get behind this reasoning, a large number of issues you posted were not issues that were seen easily by the naked eye. You went out of your way to find some of them. Here is a great example:
You noclipped in order to view this (you are much higher than the tram). If you use cheats to view things at angles that aren’t normally visible, of course you will find issues like this. Normal players will not even notice issues like this (I certainly didn’t, and I have played Black Mesa for much longer than you have).
I don’t know why you thought I or anyone else would feel that way. If we felt this way every time people reported a bug, we wouldn’t have even used a public tracker in the first place.
If our userbase consisted of people who played the game and looked at every single prop from every possible angle, then yes, you would be absolutely correct. However in reality, this is not the case and most people wouldn’t notice many of these issues. To us, they are just noise that we have to sort though (which is coincidentally why a bunch of your bugs were set to ‘RESOLVED’ / ‘WONTFIX’. Not trying to be rude, that’s why we did it.
Not really much of an outline but more common sense. Just ask yourself before you report a bug whether or not it is appropriate to report.
Unfortunately, not possible as those pictures were stored on the amazon cloud. I don’t have time right now to go back through the list of bugs to find the ones that I quoted. If you find them, feel free to PM me and I’ll post up the pictures again. For now, I will post some bugs below for you.
This statement worries me because we aren’t trying to make BM as believable as possible. I am not entirely convinced you understand my reasons for closing the tracker down. Our number one goal is creating a fun experience. If we have to compromise in believability, we will. This is why we’re less interested in misplaced caution signs and electrical panels and more interested in issues you had with the jumping puzzles / level flow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dadster View Post
Thank you, and I remain committed to assisting you in making BM as believable an environment as possible.
This is, of course, working within the bug reporting parameters set forth in your previous post.
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Concerning labeling issues as “resolved” even though they haven’t been, out of politeness, this sends the wrong message don’t you think? A person would be motivated to search out even more bugs, seeing that they are being fixed and that he’s/she’s making a contribution/difference. Maybe the better tact would be to label them as “won’t fix” with an explanation. This would also give reporters useful feedback as to what kinds of problems are most likely to be addressed and which ones won’t.
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Let me show you some bugs that I’ve found, and you tell me if they fit within your “legitimate and fixable” category.
Odd death poses (also, arm clipping into handrail) https://i.imgur.com/CEQamy5.jpg. Gravity dictates this scientist should’ve fallen to the ground, as he’s more off the desk than on and his shadow is wrong (I know, engine related issue) https://i.imgur.com/zFnEXMT.jpg
So immediately, I can tell you what NOT to post. I looked through your post history, you enjoy posting about clipping issues. The only clipping issues I want to see outta you follow a single type: Solid geometry on solid geometry. As I spelled out in my previous post, this means if there is any map geometry that is misplaced and can’t be moved by running into it, you should report that. Here are some acceptable bugs (in my view) that we would take action on…
Stuff we care about:[/SIZE] Sandbags clipping into the wall
You can’t move the sandbags as they were placed there by a level designer. Therefore, this is a bug that requires a fix by the team.
Road barrier clipping into curb
Again, you can’t move the barrier or the road it is clipping into, therefore it is a bug that requires action from the team to fix.
We also care about lighting issues. You reported some of those and we will definitely look into them. Here are some examples (for everyone else reading):
The above are probably related to the VRAD pass (though I could be wrong). We will ask our mappers to look at these. The z-fighting issues are probably OK as well, unless you used cheats to get to those as well. We want your main focus to be on gameplay or crash issues over anything else. Those take highest priority.
We really don’t care about the following issues:[/SIZE] No collision detection between objects
There is no normal situation in game where you would place a drill, an unknown object and a battery inside a toolbox. Therefore, we’re not going to spend manpower to fix this.
Caution sign partially concealed
This is what crosses the line into nitpick territory because it is opinion based (which is fine), but does not solve a problem that anyone actually cares about (save the reporter). We don’t want this stuff polluting the tracker.
All spotlights in rocket silo not attached
So you used cheats to get to this. In my opinion, if you have to noclip to get a bug to manifest when it would normally go unnoticed, it’s probably not worth fixing. We have much bigger fish to fry (crash issues).
Bug reporting protips:[/SIZE]
If you have a correction to make to a bug report, EDIT THE ORIGINAL BUG THREAD. Don’t make a new one! We have enough duplicates already.
Before reporting, ASK YOURSELF if the issue you are reporting is actually a bug. If it isn’t, ASK YOURSELF whether or not it is even worth spending time to fix.
I use noclip, not only as a means to show you the existence and severity of the problem, but to also provide a useful angle in the screenshot to give your team an idea as to the location in the map where the problem resides. I don’t want them wasting their valuable time searching for them. I try and craft my screenshots carefully, so it may mean me having to use noclip to give your team the most informative view.
In the case of the floating floodlights in the rocket silo, some of them can be seen doing so from a normal perspective. That’s what caught my eye in the first place.
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Further to your useful post #16, specifically concerning clipping issues, stationary objects clipping/through into other stationary objects is fixable, such as fence posts clipping into walls and pipes clipping through tunnel frame supports? Just want to be clear on this area.
Also concerning your post #16, again, I can’t view any of your image links. Bitbucket tells me “You do not have access to the issues”. Grrrrrr!
Obviously I can’t speak for the devs on whether issues like these are ones they’ll pursue, but generally issues with static props clipping through each other are fixable. The only major barricade I can think of would be the scale of the props and the size of the area (for instance, if you have a pipe connected to a wall that’s clipping through another pipe, it might be unfixable because if you move either one of them they’d clip through the walls into the next room).
You are correct, they should have been set to won’t fix. That’s our bad on our part. Though anyone getting messages from a bug tracker should probably have that looked at
It looks like most of these are on the tracker. This is what a bug tracker is for, not a forum. When John and I have spare cycles, we will review them.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
