Items disappeared from inventory!!!

[var]

I think that the only one who should definitely get his towel replaced is Nard, because he was the one who made a proper bug report with the exact conditions which lead to the problem (the reports by Jael RD and nelson6e65 were very misleading). Without that bug report it would not have been possible to find and fix it.

Seriously, good bug reports should be held in high regard, because a good bug report can save hours of development time.

No, unless you want to gift everybody that will find and found a serious bug, it's the most unfair statement that i read so far, he just tested something that somebody else posted, the dev team could do it too. Quoting the other posts, How could you exactly say that he didnt test it in his personal server and he still owns a towel?


Now this has been a fault of the developement team so the developement team must take the responsability of it, do not punish the players for your fault.

You could fix this if you want.

If there's a recent backup before the bug was introduced, take it and count the total number of towels owned by the players in the database, dyed and non dyed, it would be N, then count the total number of towel that are actually in game N-Nlost, the difference N - (N - Nlost) could be (if nobody delete the char or throw the towel in the floor after the backup, which is hard to believe) the total number of people that lost the towel due to that bug so give just to that players the towel back. It should be 4 or whatever, you can even know who owned or didnt own a towel as well. Stop with this we cannot tell who owned the towel, if you want you can know. Period.

Up to the dev team and the admin now.

[Nard]

Crush i would say that the methodology for reporting a bug is not at all obvious. Considering that, the forums are the next logical place to report. I would recommend adding a link on the main page that simply says Report Bug.

A permanent link on the main page is a good idea. I see it like "GM Community Suggestions" with a reminder about the correct way to report a bug and a link to Mantis too. I suggest a wiki page on bug reporting too. This page should include directions for Mantis use, and informations on the classification you developers are using, because I didn't find it that obvious.
I think both Mantis ( intended for developers ) and Forum (intended for developers AND users) are good. I used IRC, because I was advised to do so by some ( wise) developers and because I felt it was an emergency because it could tarnish the developer team image and complicate GM's task a lot . It seems that some others confuse #tmw-cafe and #tmw-dev and joke on the second :/

Thank you for your trust, Crush. I think the report by Jael RD and nelson6e65 was misleading because they had several actions in short time interval, which was not my case. surely, they saw the problem some time after the action, an misinterpreted the initial condition. When I saw the towel disappeared, I thought first that it went undyed and I was going to dye it again. Fortunately for me and all of us I had no oranges in inventory and was warned by Nami that someone had his towel disappear, thus I could describe the problem precisely.
I am not claiming for anything as I know this game is open source and relies on goodwill, and nobody is perfect. The decision of replacing or not is up to Administrators. If I am offered one I will not refuse, but I think Jael RD, AlukarD, and nelson6e65 haven't less merit than I have.

The last bugs what happened enlighten the necessity of the creation of a non developers testers team. Every new or modified script should be tested by someone different than it's author.

Cordially.
Nard

[Crush]

No, unless you want to gift everybody that will find and found a serious bug.

That's a good idea, in my opinion. We should encourage high quality bug reports. Why not reward reporters with otherwise unobtainable ingame items?

[var]

No, unless you want to gift everybody that will find and found a serious bug.

That's a good idea, in my opinion. We should encourage high quality bug reports. Why not reward reporters with otherwise unobtainable ingame items?

because of this

i found another issue in rauk,
you need 2 pink flowers to make a concentration potion, if you sell them you get 100 gp, if you make a concentration potion you can sell it for 250

file: world/map/db/item_db.txt

#ID, Name, Label, Type, Price, Sell,
565, PinkPetal, Pink Petal, 0, 100, 50,
568, ConcentrationPotion, Concentration Potion, 0, 500, 250,

https://gitorious.org/tmw/tmwa-server-d ... txt#line70
https://gitorious.org/tmw/tmwa-server-d ... txt#line73


file: world/map/npc/011-1/alchemist.txt

set @COST_PER_CONCENTRATION_POTION, 2;

mes "\" To make them, I'm going to need " + @COST_PER_CONCENTRATION_POTION + " Pink Petals per Concentration Potion. How many Concentration Potions would you like?\"";

https://gitorious.org/tmw/tmwa-server-d ... xt#line310

can i have my gift now?

so the players will just hunt for bugs to get free items instead of playing the game..... that's why i said that. of course you can gift items, but do you really want that players will find something only to get a gift?

[Crush]

so the players will just hunt for bugs to get free items instead of playing the game.....

You mean like they are supposed to?

Remember, TMW is officially still in beta. Finding bugs is the purpose of a beta test.

Also thanks for the report, I am sure the content developers will find this balance problem really interesting.


You seem to have the misconception that developers are happy with people shutting up and playing the game. This isn't true. The developers want to create a good game. And high quality bug reports are a great help while doing this.

[o11c]

Re: Pink Petals
Of course a manufactured product can be worth more than its components. Now, if there were a shop that sold PInk Petals, there would be an exploit (like what happened with Small Mushrooms - which were exploited quite a bit before being reported - maybe if there had been a reward for fixing bugs, it would have been effective?).

Also - in practice, mantis is really not an effective way to keep track of things; I never look at it unless someone gives me a link. The forums are something I actually look at - but, it definitely makes a difference what kind of quality there is ("help! my itens has disappeared while I was afk" is not credible, "my warp towel got replaced by an orange" is useful).

[Crush]

Also - in practice, mantis is really not an effective way to keep track of things; I never look at it unless someone gives me a link. The forums are something I actually look at

So you don't look at mantis because it is useless, and it is useless because you don't look at it?

Seems like circular reasoning to me.


When I was still involved in the development, I found mantis to be a lot better bugtracking tool than the forum, because forum topics immediately fall out of sight when people stop posting in it. Mantis tickets, however, stay in sight until they are resolved. Also, the signal to noise ratio is a lot lower on Mantis, because the ticket discussions are much less likely to drift into debates on principles (like it's happening here right now).

[DefinitelyNOTMrWho]

Hey guys, I think I was the victim of the Towel bug aswell. I had 23 towels and now I have 23 oranges, you can verify this anytime, I can post a pic of my 23 oranges. I worked hard on getting this high number of towels and now all my hard work is in vain.
I would like my towels back.
Thank you.

[o11c]

So you don't look at mantis because it is useless, and it is useless because you don't look at it?

Point, but one of my real problems with mantis include the mess of useless categories, and nobody seems to have the knowledge and permissions to fix them.

Though in any case, "looking at a bugtracker" is not likely to ever be on my list of things to do every day, whereas looking at the forums is.

When I was still involved in the development, I found mantis to be a lot better bugtracking tool than the forum, because forum topics immediately fall out of sight when people stop posting in it. Mantis tickets, however, stay in sight until they are resolved.

This can be a motivation, to me, to fix the bug early (which is doable in most cases, such as this one)

And, unless the ticket is assigned to me, it does not stay in sight - there's too much noise in the Mantis system.

Also, the signal to noise ratio is a lot lower on Mantis, because the ticket discussions are much less likely to drift into debates on principles (like it's happening here right now).

Agreed for individual bugs, but mantis in general has a lot of noise left over from before the Mana project split. See earlier point about needing categories.

[nelson6e65]

When those first 4 people who are currently known would receive a free towel, how many people would appear who claim that they were also victims of this bug? I don't want to imply that all of them would be liars. It is very likely that there are indeed several other victims. But there is no way to tell who is lying and who is telling the truth. Why should those 4 people be compensated just because they had the luck to be mentioned here, while several others are not?


I think that the only one who should definitely get his towel replaced is Nard, because he was the one who made a proper bug report with the exact conditions which lead to the problem (the reports by Jael RD and nelson6e65 were very misleading). Without that bug report it would not have been possible to find and fix it.

Seriously, good bug reports should be held in high regard, because a good bug report can save hours of development time.

You are totally right, Crush. But, I had not "made a proper bug report" because that was not my intention; I didn't lost a Towel. I was just making a mention about another friend which has the same "problem".

Thank you for your trust, Crush. I think the report by Jael RD and nelson6e65 was misleading because they had several actions in short time interval, which was not my case. surely, they saw the problem some time after the action, an misinterpreted the initial condition.

If there's a recent backup before the bug was introduced, take it and count the total number of towels owned by the players in the database, dyed and non dyed, it would be N, then count the total number of towel that are actually in game N-Nlost, the difference N - (N - Nlost) could be (if nobody delete the char or throw the towel in the floor after the backup, which is hard to believe) the total number of people that lost the towel due to that bug so give just to that players the towel back. It should be 4 or whatever, you can even know who owned or didnt own a towel as well. Stop with this we cannot tell who owned the towel, if you want you can know.

This is possible, DEVs/Administrators?

Now this has been a fault of the developement team so the developement team must take the responsability of it, do not punish the players for your fault.

I'm agree with you... but Nard is quite right:

(..)I know this game is open source and relies on goodwill, and nobody is perfect. The decision of replacing or not is up to Administrators. If I am offered one I will not refuse (..)

I love this game! I appraise the job of Dev's team. All problems have fix/solutions.
Go ahead!
But, would be unfortunate that players stay away only (or become embittered) for an error/bug not solved for they.

Regards!

------------
PD: I hope you can trust in me: Players who I know with Towels are: ferskelletor, AlucarD, Akiraz and Cannuto... because they are in my party (No-Name-Worms).

[Big Crunch]

my thought remains the same. We need a button that says 'Report Bugs Here' on the main themanaworld.org site. That will help those that are unfamiliar with mantis to post a bug. I have a mantis account and i've only looked at a bug ticket when i've gotten the email

[Crush]

When this link would just point to Mantis, I don't think that it would be very useful. Having to register would be a big barrier, and those who bother to register would very likely flood mantis with duplicated, poorly written or just plain pointless tickets. Maybe have some kind of "anonymous complaint box" and have real developers write proper mantis tickets about the problems mentioned there.

Problem A: Someone would have to program this

Problem B: Someone would have to look at it regularly

[Ledmitz]

Seriously... isn't there a record of who owns what? ... trades made? what was bought when and for how much? I had just assumed that there was such a thing, for those things and chat, but I am assuming too much maybe. In any event, Jael RD started this thread because he noticed his towel missing and towels did go missing, so how is there any question of his credibility. There are 100 slots in the Inventory window and plenty of players use those slots. Plenty of players have oranges in their Inventory too. Are you saying that we need to have photographic memories in order to report a bug? What's with the red-tape and proper procedure stuff? Reminds me of government antics to give a run around.
I am not a programmer, but I know a little bit about code structure. There is code for the towels and how they function. In fact, I bet if a player came to me and I had access to that code that I would be able to simply find the Orange Hitchhikers Towel, find the use function of the towel and see plainly that "Hitchhiker's Towel" was missing from the code and only Orange remained. Another thing I would question is how that happened and when, since the Orange hitchhikers towel had worked fine before one of the updates. Why was the Orange Hitchhiker's Towel code ever touched at all?

Here's another thing I noticed....

1st update = Selim was changed for the better.. I think we all agree Thank you for any changes that keep the game fresh and for having this game put together at all.

2nd update = Orange Hitchhiker's Towel now turns into an Orange when used. What else was in this update? Am I too forward to ask?

3rd update = Orange hitchhiker's Towel fixed

What was the second update?


And one more thing to remember... although the contributors of this game have put in a lot of time and effort and although the server and game is free to use and alter, although GM's put in a lot of time into keeping things in order.... This game would also not exist without players. I know it is hard to take any criticism at all when you put your time and energy into something and do it all for free, but if you are ignorant... expect ignorance back. That is simply human nature and I see in threads above that it is greeted well when a bug is reported so that it can be fixed.

So let's see that then, eh?

[ChefChelios]

1st update = Selim was changed for the better.. I think we all agree Thank you for any changes that keep the game fresh and for having this game put together at all.

damn... you know my masterplan... changing the .png file and let some noobs get oranges xD

[Jenalya]

Here's another thing I noticed....

1st update = Selim was changed for the better.. I think we all agree Thank you for any changes that keep the game fresh and for having this game put together at all.

2nd update = Orange Hitchhiker's Towel now turns into an Orange when used. What else was in this update? Am I too forward to ask?

3rd update = Orange hitchhiker's Towel fixed

What was the second update?

There were a lot more things...
If you're interested in a short overview of what's being worked on and getting in, see the Weekly Summary and in case you want to have a closer look, the git repositories are publicly available.

Beside of working on new content, we're currently doing some code-cleanups step by step, in order to have better understandable, maintainable and consistent data. This means a lot of changes that shouldn't be visible to players if everything's done right.
The issue with the warp towel in particular was caused by some name changes of items that used a different name in the item_db than shown to the players. This made scripting harder, since you e.g. had to use "GemRawRed" in scripts when meaning a Ruby.