How To Report Bugs

Reproducibility

This indicates whether a bug always occurs when Steps to Reproduce are performed or whether it's not recurrent or in some way difficult to track. In a perfect situation, before reporting a bug we should always come up with such Steps to Reproduce that always result in the bug, but in some cases it will not be possible (for example bugs connected with low performance are sometimes difficult to reproduce).

Platform

Not always required, but sometimes necessary. Examples:

• game is developed for e. g. PC, PS4 and XBox, and the bug occurs only on one of those platforms
• the bug is related to low performance, so we need to report an exact hardware configuration
• game is developed for web browsers, and the bug occurs only in a specific browser

Attachments

Those could be:

• screenshots (very useful when describing bugs related to environments and UI)
• videos (could illustrate some strange AI behaviors)
• error logs (in case of any kind of crashes they should be considered a complementary part of the report)

OK, let's see how the bug descriptions listed at the beginning could look like with the bug template applied.

Example 1: Cave Troll cannot be defeated with some weapons.

Title: Great Axe doesn't do any damage to Cave Troll
Category: Gameplay
Severity/Priority: Critical/High
Steps to Reproduce: 

1. Prerequisites: Act 2 should be active
2. Travel to the Dwarven Realms
3. Talk to Ghotrek to activate the Cave Troll side-quest
4. Go to the Cave Troll's lair
5. Equip any weapon of Great Axe type
6. Attack and try to damage the Cave Troll

Current Result: Cave Troll receives no damage
Expected Result:
Affected Version: 0.3.1
Reproducibility: always
Platform: any
Attachments: N/A

Example 2: HUD displays incorrect amount of ammo.

Title: Too much ammo is added after reload
Category: UI/HUD
Severity/Priority: Major/High
Steps to Reproduce: 

1. Equip any firearm (let's assume it has 30 bullets in the clip)
2. Fire 5 bullets
3. Reload

Current Result: HUD displays 55 bullets loaded (amount before reload + clip size)
Expected Result: HUD should display 30 bullets loaded (amount before reload + 5 after the reload)
Affected Version: 0.3.1
Reproducibility: always
Platform: any
Attachments: screenshot with incorrect value marked on HUD

Example 3: Graphics in level 3 is broken.

Title: Skyscrapers in level 3 don't have materials applied
Category: Environments
Severity/Priority: Minor/Normal
Steps to Reproduce:
Current Result: please see attached screenshot
Expected Result:
Affected Version: 0.5b
Reproducibility: always
Platform: PS4
Attachments: screenshot with Skyscrapers

Handling bugs in an organized and consistent manner is essential for game quality. Using a clear and unified bug report template will boost your communication and team performance and, in the end, help deliver a smooth game experience that the players expect.

Thank you for reading.