Playtesting and bug reporting

[ElderTroll]

Do you think there should be a dedicated forum section for playtesting? Can we share save files between players easily? If so, how? Is there an exporter feature? Is it simple enough to go into some OpenMW folder, locate and copy the file? An export button in the launcher or in-game save screen would be useful, but surely low priority.

Pros:
- A place for fans of the project to congregate and discuss workarounds for current limitations.
- A sort of staging ground before bugs are submitted to the bugtracker.
- More detailed explanations than on the bugtracker.

Cons:
-Redundancy (why not just submit to the bugtracker in the first place)?
-Potential for bugs to discussed, but not actually registered on the tracker (I think this is unlikely).

It would be great for bugtesters to say, "In this specific place, there is this specific problem, here's what to do to activate the problem and here's what the problem looks like" and then have the savefile available right in the forum post for other testers to download and run to confirm the error is present across multiple machines. If that's a possibility specific bugs could be confirmed very quickly.


Also, wouldn't it be useful to identify what version of OpenMW playtesters are using and which version of Morrowind (localized versions, physical cd's, steam version) and their hardware and OS configurations? Could this be in our profiles at the bottom of the page?


I am playing through the mages guild quest line. I installed MGO 3.0 on my Morrowind installation. In OpenMW it appears some features are working, some simply do not or cannot be loaded. Is running Vanilla Morrowind the priority right now? If so, I can do a fresh install. Also, a conga line of inexhaustible slaughterfish is terrifying to be fleeing from at night. No wonder Ajira why wouldn't go to the lake herself. She could have at least warned me.

[Zini]

Save games can be shared, but only if they come from the same version of MW (including the same localisation) and only if they are made with the same version of OpenMW (this restriction will be lifted after 1.0).

If you want to share a saved game file, it might be easier to share the whole character (that's one directory). Otherwise when importing, you need to recreate the character's directory on the target machine.

I am conflicted about the idea of adding saved game in/exporter features to the launcher. It might help extremely tech-adverse people. But anyone who can use a file manager, does not need this feature and I would like to keep the launcher as minimal as possible. Having this feature in-game seems like a bad idea (we would among others require some kind of file system browser, so the user can select where to put the save files).

I don't see the point in having a separate section for playtesting. I doubt it would improve the quality of error reports (which is admittedly needed badly). We already have the support forum.

Generally sharing saved games for bug testing isn't a great idea, because there are too many different versions of MW out there.

Which version of OpenMW is used and which OS are essential information in a bug report. As is any info about localised versions of MW. Differences between physical CS and the steam version are usually irrelevant. Hardware info may or may not be relevant, depending on the problem.
I don't know exactly what you mean with "Could this be in our profiles at the bottom of the page?". At the bottom of a posting?

All content that does not require/involve external binaries should work on OpenMW (minus the bugs that are on the tracker).

[ElderTroll]

I am conflicted about the idea of adding saved game in/exporter features to the launcher...Having this feature in-game seems like a bad idea (we would among others require some kind of file system browser, so the user can select where to put the save files).

Okay, I see your point. Would it be possible to have save files organized by the character. So all my saves for my Argonian Assassin "JubJub" would be separated from my Breton mage "SirFancyPants"?

[on a separate section for testing]. I doubt it would improve the quality of error reports (which is admittedly needed badly). We already have the support forum.

Maybe a subforum for testing purposes in the support forum for testing?

Which version of OpenMW is used and which OS are essential information in a bug report. As is any info about localised versions of MW. Differences between physical CS and the steam version are usually irrelevant. Hardware info may or may not be relevant, depending on the problem.I don't know exactly what you mean with "Could this be in our profiles at the bottom of the page?". At the bottom of a posting?

I mean like an automatic footer or signature for all board posts from the same user. For example, Br0ken has the quote "Well, not even last night's storm could wake you. I heard them say we've reached Morrowind, I'm sure they'll let us go."
So in some place there would be something like this for myself:
Win 7 64 bit, Morrowind: Steam English Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, (mods installed or vanilla), Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz, RAM 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 800MHz (11-11-11-28), Motherboard ASRock Z77 Extreme4 (CPUSocket), Graphics 2047MB, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti (Gigabyte), 932GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-00RKKA0 (SATA), Audio Realtek High Definition Audio

[Zini]

Okay, I see your point. Would it be possible to have save files organized by the character. So all my saves for my Argonian Assassin "JubJub" would be separated from my Breton mage "SirFancyPants"?

That is already what we are doing.

Maybe a subforum for testing purposes in the support forum for testing?

Again, I don't see the point in splitting anything up. At least for the time being support is pretty much the same as testing. What I can see a point in is splitting up the support forum into a section for stable releases and WIP builds (nightly builds and such). But that would be a post-1.0 thing, because right now even releases are technically alphas (soon betas) anyway.

I mean like an automatic footer or signature for all board posts from the same user.

Obviously people are free to add these information to their signature. Wouldn't hurt, as long as it is kept reasonably short.

[WeirdSexy]

Okay, I see your point. Would it be possible to have save files organized by the character. So all my saves for my Argonian Assassin "JubJub" would be separated from my Breton mage "SirFancyPants"?

That is already what we are doing.

I am not at my computer right now, so I cannot check. But I think he means give the save files unique names according to the character so that they are easy to find in the file manager. Last I checked, this was not being done.

[Zini]

I considered that, but came to the conclusion that it isn't worth it. Too many potential problems .e.g. no guarantee that the name is unique and the possibility that the name contains characters that have special meaning to the file system. We could work around that, but the feature just isn't that useful.

[Sslaxx]

I considered that, but came to the conclusion that it isn't worth it. Too many potential problems .e.g. no guarantee that the name is unique and the possibility that the name contains characters that have special meaning to the file system. We could work around that, but the feature just isn't that useful.

So what is the console save command doing right now?

[ElderTroll]

@WeirdSexy that is exactly what I meant. Thanks.

@zini Okay, I've created several characters and I see what you mean that save files are grouped by the character. That will be a really nice feature. After trying to use this feature none of my save files are loading. Which is fine.

It would be nice if characters directories could be shared among users for playtesting purposes. I was thinking, for example, if someone playtesting noticed a dialogue problem partway through a dungeon quest with an NPC that blocks completing the quest that to confirm the problem it would be nice as another tester to load up their character and save file.

For many bugs I teleporting to the location in question via the console works.

[Zini]

@Sslaxx: I do not know what you mean by that. What console save command?

@ElderTroll: As mentioned before for OpenMW testing/debugging this is not feasble, because of incompatible Morrowind.esm versions. For content developers it might work though. What we have now should be sufficient, but we can look into improving it after 1.0.

What do you mean by "After trying to use this feature none of my save files are loading."? I thought we had sorted out all saved game format problems.

[ElderTroll]

@Zini
I was playing through the game with only a single character and I had multiple save files. After we talked on forums I created a couple new characters to see the way character saves were organized. At this point that I noticed the following: Of my original character's 7 save files the most recent 3 saves would not load. I believe the 4 working save files were made prior to creating additional characters. Not sure if that's related.

My second character had only two save games and neither would load. My newest character's single save game does load.

Here's what happens when I start up the game: There are the four options for the menu pop up New, load, options, exit. If I choose one of the broken save files the music stops playing and the screen darkens. The game does not crash and I can attempt to load other saves.

If I load one of the working save files I have the following options in my menu; Return, new, load, save, options, exit. If from that point I try to load one of the non working save files the music stops, only the terrain remains visible (static objects disapear). Also the return button is no longer present in the menu.