Zugg Software :: View topic

Apprentice Joined: 20 Jul 2001 Posts: 127 Location: USA

7.13 marks the fifth public version zugg has put out this month. I haven't looked at betas in a while, but when looking at the version history of thes five public releases, most every change is a bug fix (except the spell checker, and thank you for that!)

Anyhow, maybe these need to be in beta a little longer? Just seems like the public versions are a little rushed. Thanks for the updates, even still... I'm glad zmud still gets attention

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 9:36 pm

The versions are getting tested as much as they ever have. There are always bugs in software. If you read the various forum posts you'll see that these bugs only effected a small number of people. So even though there was "beta testing" time with people on the forums before the versions were made public, the bugs were obscure enough to not get caught by the testers.

Instead of complaining, perhaps you should be grateful that I dropped my other projects to update zMUD and then do the work that was needed to clean up the problems.

And there is more than just the spellchecker. Replacing Microsoft MDAC with SQLite was a major addition and not a bug fix. And all of the bugs listed on the 7.10 version were long-time bugs in zMUD listed in the Bug Tracking system that some people have been waiting a long time to be fixed.

Besides, if you look at the older history of zMUD, releasing several new versions in a row like this isn't unusual.

Apprentice Joined: 20 Jul 2001 Posts: 127 Location: USA

no one is complaining... i'm just noting an observation, and suggesting a resolution... forget i said anything

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 5:04 am

Well there you go...I released yet another new version for you tonight. I take pride in fixing bugs quickly and it doesn't bother me to release a lot of new versions. I'd rather get the new versions into players hands so they can play their MUDs without bugs rather than just waiting for more beta testing. In fact, the bug I just fixed has been in zMUD for several years, and it took that long for someone to finally post a reliable way to reproduce it.

When you get a program as mature as zMUD over such a long period of years, beta testing just isn't the right answer (unless some huge new module is written, or some big change is made). Some of the bugs being fixed are so obscure that it takes thousands of people playing zMUD over many months to find them. As I learned when doing the last round of beta testing with v7.0x, there just are not enough beta testers available to find these kind of bugs.

Just look at v7.10. It was out for several days on this forum with only minor issues. It wasn't until I released it to all zMUD users that the bug reports finally started coming in.

It's not like this stuff is easy.

Apprentice Joined: 16 Dec 2002 Posts: 114 Location: USA

Also, in zugg's defense, muds are dying down alot *for now*. You should be thankful that he took the time to even consider us as players and know that we still depend on clients like his. There are two clients on the market that I use... Zuggs for windows, and kmuddy for linux (though, I can promise that zmud DOES work through wine, as I have PERSONALLY configured it before), I just find it easier to run native clients. Rather than complain about bugs, find ways of reproducing the error, and giving as much detail about it as possible. That is the *fastest* way of helping a developer track down the specifics that cause the error. Once again, thank you zugg. I know I have had my issues on these forums in the past, but I am happy to see that you are still backing your products, and your work with time and devotion. Kudos :)

Also, if you need more beta testers, count me in. As I am a work at home person, I have tons of time to tinker. :) If you need, contact me via aim or icq: demoneyoungblood/147397810.