Bug reporting help & guidelines - Read before reporting bugs

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Psyringe
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Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 am

Bug reporting help & guidelines - Read before reporting bugs

Post by Psyringe »

Welcome to the Wagic "Bugs" Forum!

If you find any bugs in the most recent Wagic release, please report them in this forum. We can then analyze and (hopefully) fix them.

However, before you write a bug report, there are a couple of things you can do, to check whether the behavior you see is really a bug, whether it's already known or even fixed, and whether you're reporting it at the right place. You don't have to check all these possibilities - but please be aware that if you don't do it, someone else has to. And the more time you spend for making sure that your bug report is as good as possible, the faster we can fix the issue, because then we won't need to spend time to check all these other things before.

So, here's what you can do to make your bug report as useful possible:

Index:

- 1. Is it really a bug?
- - 1.1 Missed effects
- - 1.2 Misunderstood rules
- - 1.3 Misleading card texts
- 2. Is the bug already known or fixed?
- 3. Am I reporting the bug at the right place?
- - 3.1 Official vs. user-created content
- - 3.2 Release vs. SVN version of Wagic
- 4. Which info do we need in a bug report?
- - 4.1 Good bug description
- - 4.2 The test suite
- 5. Link list
Last edited by Psyringe on Thu Oct 29, 2009 12:39 pm, edited 12 times in total.
Psyringe
Posts: 1163
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 am

Post by Psyringe »

1. Is it really a bug?

1.1 Missed Effects

Make sure that you observed the in-game situation correctly, and that you didn't overlook something. The game is quite complex - the power / toughness of a card may be influenced by half a dozen of other cards, and it's easy to overlook one. If you see something that looks like a bug, please check that there really isn't a card on the table that explains the behavior you're seeing.

Example: I see the AI playing three Relentless Rats. Each of these should have a P/T rating of 4/4 now, but actually they show 5/5. I wonder if this card has a bug, but then I realize that I have "Bad Moon" in my battlefield, which boosts the rats as well.


1.2 Misunderstood rules

Due to the complexity of the game, it's very easy to misunderstand some rule detail. Also, the rules of the game are in constant flux. Wagic tries to adhere to the most recent rules. This means that Wagic might include some rules changes that you're not yet aware of, especially if you haven't played the card game for a while.

You can check the current rules on the official rules page. This page is constantly updated. Another benefit of checking this page is that you can simply copy the rule in question and paste it into your bug report.

Example: I tap 10 lands for mana, then I see that I can only use 8 mana. The two remaining mana just expire when the next phase begins. I wonder why I didn't incur mana burn. Then I check the rules and see that mana burn has been abolished.


1.3 Misleading card texts

Over the years, many old cards have been updated with new texts, subtypes, or abilities, to reflect rules changes. These updated texts are the basis for Wagic's implementation of any card. However, if you are playing the game with images of these cards, then these images might show the older, now obsolete text.

There are two places where you can check the card texts:

- In-game, you can press "Triangle" in many screens to switch between the display of images and the card texts as implemented in Wagic (or you can tell Wagic to never load any images at all, in the Options screen.

- Out of the game, there's the Gatherer. This is the official database for cards, and it always shows the most current rules text ("oracle") in a card's data sheet (note that the card picture in the Gatherer may still show the old, obsolete text; it's the data sheet / oracle that counts!). Just search the Gatherer for the name of the card that you suspect to be buggy, and check the rules text.

The Gatherer also has additional explanations for some cards' rules, mostly to handle specific cases or common misunderstandings.

Alternatively, you can also check the MagicCards site. It contains most of the information from the Gatherer, but uses a slightly different structure and may load quicker due to being less script-heavy. However, if the information on MagicCards is in contradiction to the Gatherer, then the Gatherer (as an official source) is assumed to be correct.

Example: I see that Wagic updates the Nyxathid's power and toughness each time my opponent draws, discards, or plays cards. I always thought that the card would receive a fixed P/T value when it comes into play, instead of continually tracking the state of the opponent's hand. I check the card's text and the Gatherer page without finding a definitive answer, but on MagicCards I find a detailed explanation, which confirms that Wagic's implementation of the card is correct.
Psyringe
Posts: 1163
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 am

Post by Psyringe »

2. Is the bug already known or fixed?

Sometimes the bug you're about to report is already known, or has even been fixed already. It's usually a good idea to check this before writing a bug report - who wants to go through the effort of preparing a detailed bug report, only to hear "Known issue, thanks"?. If you want to make sure that your bug report is indeed describing a new issue, then here are some places you can check:

Wagic bug list - maintained by the dev team on the Wagic Wiki. Green items are already fixed for the next release.

Googlecode bug tracker - this is where the devs report and track bugs and fixes.

Forum Search - Just enter the name of the card in question, and check whether it has been discussed in the forum already. The link leads to the "Advanced Search", you can also use the Quick Search provided in the upper right corner of every forum page.

SVN Source code repository, Sets data - Sometimes a buggy card can be (and has been) fixed by correcting its code in the respective _cards.dat file. This is something you can check and do yourself as well:

- Check which set the card in question belongs to, and what this set's code is (see 3.1 for help on this)
- Open "Res\sets\(setcode)\_cards.dat" in Notepad and search for the name of the card
- Go to the link above and click on the set code in the left window
- Click on "_cards.dat" in the right window. Search for the name of the card.
- Compare the code from the link to the code on your machine.
- If there are differences, then make a backup of your original _cards.dat, change it to the code shown in the version on the net, and run a test.

Note that this cannot work always - for some fixes to work, you'd also need to download the current Wagic source code and build a new executable. But it's often worth a try.

Official Wagic FAQ - not updated as often as the links above, but worth a check from time to time

The Wagic bug thread - of course, reading this thread will also update you with regard to the most recent reports and fixes.
Psyringe
Posts: 1163
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 am

Post by Psyringe »

3. Am I reporting the bug at the right place?

If you're reading this post, then chances are that you have already found the right place - the bugs forum. ;) However, please note that this forum is only meant for bugs in the latest official release of Wagic.


3.1 Official vs. user-created content

Many users have created additional content for Wagic - which is great, however we can't provide support for bugs in these additions. If you find a bug in them, please report this in this addition's dedicated thread. You will usually find this thread in the forum's subsection User-created content, or in the Index thread stickied there, or by using the Forum Search.

In case of cards added by other users, it may not be immediately visible whether the card was added by a mod, or is part of Wagic's official release. In order to find this out, you can:

- (if you play with images) check the card's expansion symbol and compare it to this list. Then check whether this expansion is officially supported by Wagic (link following further below). This won't work for old cards (which had no expansion symbols printed on them), see the next paragraph for those.

- If you play in text mode, then each card mentions the set from which it originates, in the lower left corner. If you play with images, you can press "Triangle" in many places in-game to toggle between image and text mode.

- You can also search for the name of the card in the current list of supported cards (link following below) to see whether it's supported by the current version of Wagic. Note that it will still be good for your bug report if you can tell us from which set the buggy card is, since many cards are part of several sets, and only one implementation in one set might be the buggy one.

Link: List of all currently supported cards and sets


3.2 Release vs. SVN version of Wagic

If the bug you observe only happens in the SVN version of Wagic, then please report it in the dedicated thread for SVN bugs. If it also occurs in the release version, please report it in the dedicated thread for bugs in the release version. If it only occurs in the release version, then there's usually no need to report it, because apparently it has been fixed already. :)

If you don't know what an SVN version is, then don't worry - in this case you'll have the Release version. (In short, "Release" is the program that you download from the homepage, and "SVN" are intermediate steps in development, which people can compile by themselves, if they want to use them.)
Psyringe
Posts: 1163
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 am

Post by Psyringe »

4. Which info do we need in a bug report?

A good bug report enables us to reproduce the reported issue quickly. In order to achieve this, and to prevent misunderstandings, it's very helpful to have the following information:

4.1 Good bug description

- If you're reporting a card-specific bug: The name of the buggy card, and the set from which it originates.
- On which version of Wagic does the bug occur? On which operating system did you play it?
- If possible, please describe steps with which we can reliably reproduce the bug.
- Please describe as precisely as possible how the game should behave in your opinion, and how it currently does behave for you.


4.2 The test suite

If you want to make us completely out-of-bounds happy, you could also try to operate our Test Suite. This is a program feature that enables us (or you) to create very specific test scenarios by means of a script. Once we have such a script, we can simply tell Wagic to run it when we want to reproduce the bug, or when we want to check whether an alleged fix really does fix the issue.

If you're interested in learning how to operate this test suite, check these pages:

Test Suite reference
The testing Suite 1 by wololo
The testing Suite 2 by wololo
Psyringe
Posts: 1163
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 am

Post by Psyringe »

10/29/09 - updated post for Wagic 0.9.1.
11/04/09 - changed link to bug list, now points to wiki instead of blog.
12/26/09 - updated for Wagic 0.10.1.
Psyringe
Posts: 1163
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:53 am

Post by Psyringe »

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