Zugg Software :: View topic - Help me prioritize the bug fixing for the 2.15 public version

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:11 am

OK, I need some help from everyone...

This is really the last week I can do any serious bug fixing. Next week I'll be updating some of the help files, and dealing with the heavy email support load that always comes right after a public release. That will allow Chiara and I to take off a couple of weeks around Christmas when we don't answer our email.

So, this Friday really is the Public Release deadline. I'm pretty happy with the current state of the beta. Looks like the major problems with Alarms were solved in 2.14a and I'm not seeing any reports of odd hangs or thread lockups. I haven't seen anyone mention if the Vista install issues with the VirtualStore are fixed or not.

But what I'm asking is:

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

I think the only thing that absolutely prevents me from using 2.14 right now is the COM bug the affects usage of %map. Any other bug I could go around, although I promised myself I wouldn't. Things like my recently reported expresion bugs I can easily recode as !="" expressions. The reason I promised myself I wouldn't code around bugs was because my scripts became incomprehensible, even to me, with bug dodges.

Even though I got all my old scripts imported I am finding that they need complete rewrites before they can take advantage of speed gains in CMud. At this poiint I am largely just writing portions of the old scripts out into functions.

Other testers are the best to assess what is most critical to be fixed in order to be online.

Apprentice Joined: 26 Apr 2007 Posts: 113

I've not noticed anything too severe lately, but I'm very happy to use Cmud 2.14a and could live with it as my main client. It is a huge step up from 1.34, which annoyed me to no end, 2.x once I got past all of the updates and changes (Yes, and bugs.) has been much more enjoyable to use.

As for bugs, I don't think I've been able to unearth any that weren't my own doing. In my own opinion, I'd recommend focusing on the things most commonly used. It would be better to work for the "average" Cmud user, rather than those more advanced. Average users will often gauge the client's worth off of their first experiences with it, and it is those I'd hope you want to convince that Cmud is a marked improvement over Zmud on.

I'll go through the recently reported bugs and see if there's anything in particular I'd recommend.

EDIT: Actually, someone mentioned < [ etc coming up on the compatibility report even if it's tilded being a minor annoyance. This might prove more annoying to "new" users of Cmud. I think Vijilante mentioned a method of fixing it, though I am not too sure how possible that is.

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:26 am

I think this time, I'm going to endeavour to keep this thread clean and split off any posts about new bug reports. Please try to keep to the question at hand.

Also, to Asilient's comment about working for the average CMUD user, he's right, especially because this is the kind of person without the knowhow to work around whatever bugs they encounter. Unfortunately, they're very underrepresented on the forums, so it's difficult to guess what they're most annoyed by (or even if they know it's a bug).

I remember that thread about the compatability report, too, but in order to not defy my own post, I won't talk more about it here. It's a pretty simple task anyway.

EDIT: Compatability Report discussion is here.

Apprentice Joined: 26 Apr 2007 Posts: 113

I'd also recommend the more aesthetic bugs get fixed, for instance I've come across one with %ansi I'll throw a thread together for in a moment (after checking if it has/has not been reported.)

If you get rid of the more "obvious" bugs for the public release, wether it be aesthetic or something small/trivial it would reduce the number of posts complaining about smaller bugs, that while might not matter, will offend people's sense. (People -do- care if something looks pretty or not, after all.)

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:12 am

I should probably mention that the following are already fixed in v2.15:

1) The bugs with cache of the string list hash table that is causing scripts to overwrite the wrong string list when using local variables. This bug also ends up causing various access violations and other crashes because of the corrupted memory pointers.

2) The problem with setting the %ansi color after the default style, especially at the beginning of the line is fixed.

3) Even though I can't completely remove the Theme Engine until January, I have removed the menu options for changing the theme in v2.15. This should minimize posts about theme errors.

4) The improvements to the Compatibility report should be easy. If people give me (in the other thread) the proper regular expression, then it's like 10 seconds to update the Compatibility report code. The hard part is always getting the best regular expression.

I agree about making sure CMUD works for the average user. However, I *really* want 2.x to be very stable and useful for advanced scripters too. v1.34 failed in this regard, so very few people ported their existing zMUD scripts. I'm hoping that v2.15 will be good enough for people like Larkin to produce CMUD-specific versions of their script packages. A lot of average users depend upon scripts written by "experts" and until the experts convert their scripts to CMUD, many average players will stick with zMUD.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

The stringlist hashtable bug was the thing that was causing CMUD to consistently crash for me, so with that fixed and the theming gone too CMUD feels pretty solid.
It's definitely far better than 1.34 already.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

Okay folks here I am. It's me the average joe user. Cool

Zugg, first let me say 2.14a is working great! You finally fixed all the alarm problems. I love it!

Now on to the topic at hand. As Arde mentioned there is a problem with buttons that showed up. This is the only bug that I have encountered. All of my toggle buttons ended up being reset a couple times and I had to go back in and add the second state. Once this happened when I exported something to XML and the other I don't have any idea. It happened after I closed CMUD and then reopened it and all my toggle buttons changed back to transparent and I had to go back and add the on state to each one. There is no explanation why that I could reproduce. I'm thinking it is mainly when doing the exporting to XML OR I also moved my toolbars around too. Come to think of it I believe that might be what happened where I closed CMUD and reopened it and it happened.

Example of one of my buttons:

Apprentice Joined: 03 Nov 2007 Posts: 132

I'll test vista installation today. I'll also test xml importing and exporting a little more as I ran across some odd behavior that I want to try to replicate.

Apprentice Joined: 29 Jul 2003 Posts: 101 Location: USA

Version 2.15 sounds attractive to me. I use alot of the %ansi colors to help me parse the mud input to me.

2.14a is stable for me. I've only had a couple of shut-downs, and that was one offs where I think I coded something stupid.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Well, I'm far from the average user but.

If the hash tables are what were causing my session to crash, and it sounds like they were, these are the bugs that I would look at for the 2.15 version.

The events name and id being swapped in the display. This as I mentioned in the thread where I found it can cause people to think their events are not working when they are.
After all if they get a script from someone else and import it how are they supposed to know that the name and the ID are backwards?
I would think this would be an easy fix.

The read only being set on a package that has more than one window. This one paired with the above one was enough to annoy me to the point that I just stopped playing.

If I were playing on my old Avalon session I would be Terribly annoyed with the toggle button states disappearing.
This is something that many of the novice users that don't use many of the more complex options of Zmud/Cmud are likely to have in their sessions.

Apprentice Joined: 13 Aug 2007 Posts: 166

I haven't been following the threads lately, but I'd say that the most important ones would be those that make the program more stable (less crashes) and those that are making the zMUD commands/functions not work properly.

D

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

I am actually using 2.14a for my mudding. The only bug that is interfering with play is that the #state command is always setting state to 0 instead of what I want. I've been busy this week or I would have already bumped this bug up again. Otherwise, it is working far better than 1.34 and I do want to see this put out to the public! The new features are great and I want to everyone to get hold of them.

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:36 pm

I know this probably minor (so I understand if it doesn't get done), but I use it alot. Could we get the stand alone application CMUDHelp updated as well? I haven't seen any show stoppers with the latest version. It's been my primary for sometime.

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:38 pm

Yep, once v2.15 is released then I will try to compile the CMUDHelp application too.

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 698

I just downloaded 2.14 to find those issues that makes CMUD unusable. Haven't tried any of the other versions - sorry, zMUD was just too easy to not give up.
Something that is VERY MINOR and yet something that is extremely annoying: The command line loses focus when clicking on other applications and clicking on the output window doesn't consistently return focus to the command line. Furthermore, clicking on the command line does return the focus to it, but the text it holds is no longer selected. This is my only complaint after 8+ hours of using 2.14. In my opinion, this may keep zMUD users using zMUD.

That is all I have. I haven't imported any scripts, settings or otherwise. This was from a fresh install and a brand new character. Thank you.

Apprentice Joined: 26 Apr 2007 Posts: 113

Did you try closing then reopening Cmud? I found this problem in 2.14, but a close/reopen fixed it just fine for me.

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 698

No, I did not. Thank you for the suggestion Asilient_1. I guess I have no big issues then at this point. I haven't tried writing large scripts yet, but as a basic tool to play muds, CMUD is exceptional. Thanks again and thank you Zugg for your great software.