Author Topic: we are in need  (Read 775 times)

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Offline Brok3n Arr0w

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we are in need
« on: September 16, 2007, 11:57:15 pm »
has anyone else noticed that 99.9% of the suggested help for fixing bugs is restart pc/reinstall soldat?  has anyone else also noticed that this generally doesnt work for 99.9% the people?  then next in line is updating drivers, but that doesnt work very often either.  does this bother anyone else, particularly those with bugs that hinder gameplay (like me)? 

has anyone ever thought about putting together a SERIOUS debug crew to test these things while including actual pcs with the problem, user input, and UPDATES ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING AND THEIR PROGRESS so the public has some insite and they know something is being done so they dont just walk away from the game? 

i think steps need to be taken towards this. 
There is no knowledge that is not power.

Offline PQ

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Re: we are in need
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2007, 11:20:59 am »
You really need to restart your system.
Get some sleep and take a shower. And you'll feel a lot better afterwards.
If that doesn't work: Stop drinking coffee.

seriously:
1. Restarting and updating the drivers does work 90% of the time. But most people are smart enough to think about restarting and updating drivers themselves.
2. Many people in the soldat community do know something about programming and games etc.
3. Soldat itself doesnt contain many hardware bugs so it should run fine when installed correctly, on the right PC.

#2Wai.soldat @ quakenet.org Soldat's heaven


Offline urraka

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Re: we are in need
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2007, 08:56:16 pm »
When trying to solve a problem you have to start somewhere. You don't know how much the guy with the problem knows, so you start suggesting basic stuff: reinstalling/restarting. It's not like nobody cares about his problem and doesn't want to help. And this mostly happens with unknown problems, or stuff you just can't reproduce in your own PC.
So you shouldn't be bother by this.

Also, there is people working for soldat, but this is a free game, nobody gets paid for helping here.
urraka

Offline chrisgbk

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Re: we are in need
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2007, 01:54:55 am »
The best way to find what a problem is, is to find out what it isn't first.

The reason that the same advice gets given is because 90% of problems that people experience are fixed with one of:

1) Restarting
2) Updating Drivers and/or DirectX
3) Changing settings in Soldat (or enabling compatability mode etc)
4) Clean reinstalls (this is the one most everyone screws up; they either install over top of the existing installation thinking thats good enough, or they backup settings and restore them without testing first, putting them back at square one. It's called a clean reinstall for a reason, everything needs to be removed)

Don't be mislead by what people say, either; I've told someone to update their drivers, then they come back and say it's still not working, then a day later they come back and say they fixed it by updating their drivers. I've invested time in helping people one on one, and get them to send me diagnostics from their computer, and they tell me their drivers are up to date but the diagnostics say otherwise, and a driver update resolves the problem.

Now, we are down to the remaining 10%, of which some will be actual bugs in soldat(or Battleye), with the rest being bugs in the latest available drivers for someones computer, or other software conflicting, or hardware issues. (Soldat doesn't do much checking for hardware capabilities, and uses features that require a somewhat recent graphics card)

Case in point: Quake Wars: Enemy Territory demo is out; my friend had very recent drivers (beta drivers from the release of BioShock, from 3-4 weeks ago), but in order to get the demo to work he had to update his drivers, due to a bug in them preventing the game from running.

Currently on the bug tracker, there are 17 unresolved issues that have been reported that MM is currently working on. Since the bug tracker was put up, there have been 100 issues reported total.

If you want to see the list, PM me and I'll link you; AFAIK  the bug tracker isn't public yet, but might be eventually. Rest assured, that things do get looked into, and they do get worked on.

Offline -Major-

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Re: we are in need
« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2007, 02:56:36 am »
why the help always starts with restart your computer and reinstall soldat is because it has the highest percentage of solving a problem. it would be really dumb to start talking about if windows maybe has a damaged .dll file or something in the registry has been changed or damaged.

because the bug helpers are not informed of the level of the bug reporter or what the bug reporter have tried to fix the bug. this is why we begin from the very basic in a bug report.

Offline GunPowder

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Re: we are in need
« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2007, 07:30:03 am »
First off, There's a stickied FAQ thread with solutions to the most common problems : http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=13.0, but no one bothers to read it.
Secondly, regarding the public-must-know part, the public bug tracker is available publicly now : http://soldat.pl/mantis