Effective Bug Reporting

If you've played a good amount, chances are you've encountered some kind of bug: a broken interaction, or a feature that doesn't work the way you think it was intended to. You may go on to mention this bug in IRC or Discord; while this is fine, it almost certainly will not result in the bug being fixed.

The only real way to get your bug fixed, other than fixing it yourself, is to report it on our GitHub repository' issue tracker. Yes, you will have to create an account. It is free. Please ensure your GitHub username corresponds somewhat with your Discord or Byond key. This makes it a lot easier for people to get in touch with you for more information if you forget you've submitted an issue.

The first thing you should do is search the issues list for your bug using the search box. It's possible it's already been reported before. For example, if your bug is that toolboxes are missing their wirecutters, you might want to search for 'toolbox' and look though the issues.

If you've found no issues that appear to match your bug, then it's time to open a new issue, which is done from the green New issue button.

I'll explain the purpose of each of the fields you will be presented to fill out below. Some are rather self-explanatory, but they're all pretty important if you want your bug fixed in a timely manner. Please take a moment to read all of the comments on the form on the issue report itself!

Title

• The title should be short and sweet. While 'Every toolbox in the game is spawning without wirecutters, including ones bought from supply' is more descriptive, 'Toolboxes are spawning without wirecutters' will suffice. You can give us that other information in the body of the issue.

Description of issue

• This is the 'meat' of the issue. What's wrong, and why you think it's wrong. This is where you can elaborate further from the title.

Difference between expected and actual behavior

• This section is to explain in more depth what exactly you think has gone wrong, but for simpler issue reports this might be as short as 'It shouldn't do that'.

Steps to reproduce

• This section is extremely important if you want your bug fixed! If you know exactly how to reproduce the bug, it will make it much easier for us to figure out what's gone wrong and where compared to just hoping we can get it to happen.

Specific information for locating

• The name of the broken item, area, etc. Other useful information is things like chat messages or screenshots.

Length of time in which bug has been known to occur

• This lets us narrow down the time frame, and using the commit history and other git tools, see if there have been any changes to relevant files recently that may have caused your bug.

Client version, Server revision & Game ID

• Found with the "Show server revision" verb in the OOC tab in game, or the !revision command on IRC/Discord. This serves much the same purpose as the 'length of time' field, but also ensures that you're playing on the most recent version of the game.

Issue bingo

• A series of checkboxes that give us some more miscellaneous information. Lying in these helps no one.

Thanks for reading. Contact @developers on discord if you have any questions.