Bugs are no fun. They are the opposite of fun. They literally take fun, bite into it, and infect it with rage. So, in the great words of ‘Starship Troopers’, Kill them All!
I have been making it my personal mission to track down and eradicate every single multiplayer related bug I can find. I have been pulling logs from the offical servers and parsing them for errors, playing LOTS of multiplayer games, and doing silly things to try to replicate issues I have seen before. I am even pulling old Sunday Funday videos for reference in finding the issues.
All this is great and I have already tracked down a large number of ‘fun ending’ bugs, but I can use a bit more help. If you run into a bug in multiplayer, please report it! Sometimes I need the logs from the server and multiple players to be able to accurately track down and issue and solve it!
Aside from becoming an exterminator, I have been doing some more long term planning for MAV. I will be attending PAX South again this year [I swear I will be more prepared!] and am even looking at hosting a panel at PAX East! [Any topic ideas?] If you are going to be at either of these events, let me know and we can meet up!
In a general state, I am hard at work on the December update. Normally I am very open on what I am working on, but I have found that with this release schedule it’s very hard to talk about everything that is planned. For starters, not everything goes to plan. At all. In every update, had I talked about what I was planning, the actual update would have likely disappointed rather than made people excited. This is kind of by design as well. The monthly updates force me, as a developer, to be my own producer and make choices on what the cut and prioritize the most impact changes. Secondly, I actually work on multiple updates at the same time!I have branched the development of MAV into 3, allowing me to work on long term features, short term content, and stable hotfixes, all at once! Each release these get merged together to form the current update, but all restrictions on what gets pulled in and what doesn’t. This allows me to work on a feature that will take 3 months, but still maintain the monthly releases! It’s also what allows me to go back and create hotfixes for a build that I have already moved on from!
Overall I feel like it’s been a success for the players and more so has allowed me to get more done, at a faster pace, with much less stress. Not having to deal with Steam only makes all that even better! [Sorry steam lovers, it’s a fact]
So with all that said, I am going back to squashing bugs [like the silly siege team switching bug that I just crushed!] and making your Christmas presents 🙂
See you next week!
Comments 1
Got a chuckle out of that. Great movie. Need to re-watch it.