Dev Diary: How we fix bugs

Normally I’m too busy fixing stuff to actually tell you all what we’ve fixed, but with Act 1 launch behind us, this seemed like a good time to go through what we normally do to find bugs.

Step 1

The first step is reporting bugs. Usually they come in through email or the forums. (If you’ve found one, you can email us at support@adventurecow.com.) Once we get a bug report, we record it in two places: The roadmap so you can see what’s happening, and Mantis, our trusty bug tracker, so we can see what’s happening.

The roadmap. Nice and green for launch.

Mantis: Cluttered, but functional

Why two places, you might ask?

Well, the roadmap is short and to the point. A description of the bug, who found it, and whether it’s fixed yet.

Mantis is filled with other details, like whether we’ve been able to determine the cause, who’s working on it, what act it’s on, etc. In addition, it’s also home to the numerous bugs we find (which are sometimes very boring), mysterious error messages, or other inside lingo.

Anyways,

Step 2

Once we have the bug written down, then we sit down and fix it. This involves, creating a “repro case,” where we attempt to recreate on a consistent basis the behavior described in the bug…

For many this is probably a satisfactory amount of explanation. If you were expecting Step 2 to be the whole post and are interested in hearing more technical things, ask Chris anything on this thread!

Step 3

Once we’ve figured out and fixed the bug, then the next step is to test it. We don’t want to send out an excited email saying “hey! everything’s fixed now!” and get a response saying “no it’s not! did you even try this?” That would be suboptimal.

Instead, what we do once we’ve tried the fix on our own, is we move it to our beta server. We actually have two copies of Adventure Cow, each with its own, separate copy of all the software that makes adventurecow.com run. That way, when we want to try a fix or experiment with something, we can “push” it to beta, and we and our readers can use it on beta without breaking the game for everyone else in case we made a bad fix.

Anyways, here is a long list of (most of) the many bugs we’ve fixed for the official launch!

Still curious about some other aspect of the development process? Ask us via tweet or email, or join the conversation on the forums.

Chris

Chris is the CEO and lead developer at Adventure Cow.