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Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

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Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#181

Post by bedobi »

elliekelly wrote: post #25
cs702 wrote: post #21

Notably, of those bug reports, fewer than 1% (only 3 bugs) were specific to the Linux version of the game. That is, over 99% of the bugs reported by Linux gamers also affected players in other platforms. Moreover (quoting from the OP): > The report quality [from Linux users] is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a rep…

Are there any good articles on writing helpful bug reports? Whenever I submit a bug I try to give as much detail and be as specific as possible but I always imagine some dev somewhere reading it rolling their eyes at the unnecessary paragraphs I’ve submitted.

As a dev, I think

STEPS TO REPRODUCE Open foo click bar

EXPECTED RESULT saves bar

ACTUAL RESULT crashes with error x912344

MISC

is the best. It gives just the right amount of detail to get started, in a good, actionable format.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#182

Post by blackearl »

elliekelly wrote: post #25
cs702 wrote: post #21

Notably, of those bug reports, fewer than 1% (only 3 bugs) were specific to the Linux version of the game. That is, over 99% of the bugs reported by Linux gamers also affected players in other platforms. Moreover (quoting from the OP): > The report quality [from Linux users] is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a rep…

Are there any good articles on writing helpful bug reports? Whenever I submit a bug I try to give as much detail and be as specific as possible but I always imagine some dev somewhere reading it rolling their eyes at the unnecessary paragraphs I’ve submitted.

Usually sending just "help" and no other data is preferred. Don't send screenshots, don't make use of the ingame reporting tools (pressing F11), don't send steps to replicate.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#183

Post by rnotaro »

bedobi wrote: post #181
elliekelly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any good articles on writing helpful bug reports? Whenever I submit a bug I try to give as much detail and be as specific as possible but I always imagine some dev somewhere reading it rolling their eyes at the unnecessary paragraphs I’ve submitted.

As a dev, I think STEPS TO REPRODUCE Open foo click bar EXPECTED RESULT saves bar ACTUAL RESULT crashes with error x912344 MISC is the best. It gives just the right amount of detail to get started, in a good, actionable format.

Yeah, that was basically most of the bug template we were filling when I used to work QA at Warner Bros. Games.

    Summary :
    Steps to reproduce :
    Expected result :
    Actual result : 
    Build/Version :
    And a few more fields about platform, severity, etc. on Jira.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#184

Post by octorian »

Gigachad wrote: post #173
marcodiego wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conclusion: want good testing and bug reports of your game? Support linux.

Or have proper analytics. If a user emails you and says "It crashes after a few hours" rather than feeling bad for them, you ask them what their steam/game id is and you look them up in the crash reporter system and see exactly what happens rather than relying on a few programmer consumers doing the work for you.

But not analytics that are too good, or certain people will write a lot of inflammatory articles about how your software is nothing but evil spyware.

Seriously, though, having a robust and automatic crash reporting system very much helps track down bugs you're never going to get a good report on or be able to directly reproduce.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#185

Post by [deleted] »

Gigachad wrote: post #173
marcodiego wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conclusion: want good testing and bug reports of your game? Support linux.

Or have proper analytics. If a user emails you and says "It crashes after a few hours" rather than feeling bad for them, you ask them what their steam/game id is and you look them up in the crash reporter system and see exactly what happens rather than relying on a few programmer consumers doing the work for you.

[deleted]

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#186

Post by phendrenad2 »

It's a sci-fi 2D space mining simulator. It's already going to attract the type of user who files detailed and specific bug reports. If the author made a Call of Duty clone for Linux, would they get as many great bug reports? I don't think so.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#188

Post by pontus »

reginold wrote: post #92
JeremyNT wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, although my kneejerk reaction to the subject line was to expect another sad article about how it's not worth it to support Linux, this author seems very happy with the decision to do so. > Worth it? Oh, yes - at least for me. Not for the extra sales - although it’s nice. It’s worth it to get the massive feedback boost and free, hundred-people strong QA team on your side. An invaluable asset for an independent…

Maybe there's a better term to throw at this. "Even though just 5.8% of userbase, Linux users contribute 55% of helpful QA feedback"

Reminds me of a tweet from Yann LeCun a while back where he bragged that they take down more reported content than other social sites. While at the face of it, this seems good, what it really means is that their system is worse at proactively taking stuff down before it gets reported. If they took everything down that violated their terms of service before it was noticed by someone else, they'd have a 0% follow through on these take down requests.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#189

Post by terafo »

qayxc wrote: post #169
terafo wrote: post #121

It's worth noting that this game uses Godot engine, which is open source and built with Linux in mind, and most platform compatibility complexity was shifted to engine. Experience is quite different for big game developers that have their own engines and can't offload complexity to another layer of abstraction, supporting a lot of hardware/software combinations on Linux for them is quite hard. I presume that's why th…

For most AAA titles the reason is simply 3rd-party DRM and/or Anti-Cheat not working on Linux.

I'm talking about native Linux ports, not Proton compatibility. There is Linux port of Cyberpunk 2077 and we know it because there is Stadia version of game. And Linux versions of Hitman 3, Control, more than a dozen of Ubisoft games(they basically have Linux versions of all their major engines), two latest Doom games. And Denuvo DRM(which is basically only game in town right now) doesn't affect compatibility with Linux that much, DRMed games like RDR2 work just fine. Anticheats are bigger problem, but they are being dealt with. Biggest anticheat providers are now Proton compatible.

Re: Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux

#190

Post by throwaway984393 »

The Mac and Windows using developers at work never know how to file a bug report. I have to play 20 Questions to get them to give me the information I need to isolate the problem and fix it.

The Linux-using developers fix the problem for me.

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