official complaint to BIS

[boecko 0]

@Scrub

Since your bugreport is on the old buglist, i assume that the issue is fixed, isn't it?

@whisper

..about the manpower. Why not the same manpower, which mantains the Bikilist? The Community. A BTS is easier to mantain, you get more quality reports, and the crap reports are closed in a second or marked as a duplicate.

Best regards

Boecko

[Scrub 0]

Ok, I must clear my side of this up, and stop my aggravation and posting on this topic.  I had time look at this and think.  Yes, you pose a different buglist, it looks good.  For my side of the argument, I don't know if it's better when you add the conversion time to it.  The new BIKI bug list has all issues in it, catagories, severity, and fixed or not. (the 'find' utility gets the job done).

But here's the core difference that troubles me: I don't think BIS owes me a personally important reward. Did they fix my reported bug?  I hope so.  Will I hate them and bug them until they DO fix it?  No.  My duty to the improvement of ArmA is done with the reporting. From that point on, it's in BISs' court.  There, that about says what I need:  Your idea looks good.  No issue with that.  If it slows BIS down, and interrupts their system, then yes, that's making things harder.

Do they owe anyone a response?  No.  Do they owe more then they're doing?  No.  Would it help PR?  Most likely.  But knowing their integrity, IMHO, they should spend the time making their product as they have envisioned.  That's my 'peace', and I'll leave on those reasonably amicable terms.  

Best Regards,

Scrub

[boecko 0]

Ok, I must clear my side of this up, and stop my aggravation and posting on this topic.  I had time look at this and think.  Yes, you pose a different buglist, it looks good.  For my side of the argument, I don't know if it's better when you add the conversion time to it.  

I did this already. I made a ruby-script, which converts the existing BIKI-List into an existing Mantis-Installation in a second.

It converts priorities, categories, creates users and adds the comments.

It depends on the structure of the bugreport, but it works quite good.

Best regards

Boecko

[guerilla -MCY- 0]

those who played ofp 1.0 know about the old bugs and what ofp became till 1.96 patch. i think it doesn't matter which bugtool BIS are using as long as they use it and fix the most important one's. Every customer has his own priority and its up to BIS to decide which are really important for the main release. the lack of information from BIS might be due their hard work on the patch. Arma needs patience in developing as in playing and if you guys don't trust them, than you don't know what they allready brought to you, the best game ever !!!

[ggxjimmy 0]

tbh, arma sucks,. its one of the poorest games i've played in a long while. I had soo much excitment getting the game, installing it, loading it for the first time...BOOOM 7FPS on normal settings. Ok waited a week or however long it was for the first patch, 15-20FPS on normal settings. i played, but shouted a lot...then i got bored of the stock, really pathetic maps for multiplayer so started moding them and making my own. hmm i thought i'd put some Fog in so it wouldnt be so demanding on my PC, server started crashing... turn that crap off i did. eventully i found my 7900 GX2, AMD4200 dual core limits at 0% fog, Blank desert scenery, Tequilla Sunrise Deathmatch map.

I downloaded the Demo.

on normal settings i get 25-30FPS now still a bit poor, and really annoying.

Now i can try to get a feel for the game, or not. this game has no feel to it, its just poor IMO...

I'm think i just got fed up and needed to compare the game to something.

Laoded OFP up. went for a multiplayer, i havent had as good a game in that in over 2 years.

now all i play is WoW and OFP.

what a shame, Armacould have been better, lets see what miracles are in 1.03. dont hold your breath

jim

[boecko 0]

guerilla @ Jan. 31 2007,20:52)]Arma needs patience in developing as in playing and if you guys don't trust them, than you don't know what they allready brought to you, the best game ever !!!

Trust me, everyone here wants that BIS succeeds.

I'm not angry for being betatester. I'm angry that a lot of people (including me) is wasting their time with this list. Each tool has its purpose. WIKI for documentation. A BTS for bug reporting.

A wiki is no tool for bug reporting. Try to report a bug in the wiki in a good manner (i didn't see an account with your name).

This includes:

* Category

* Reproducibility

* Severity

* Priority

* Product Build

* Assign To

* Summary

* Description

* Steps To Reproduce

* Attached Files (Pictures,etc)

* Status (new,acknowledged,confirmed,assigned,fixed,closed)

This is a standard process in a BTS (some fields should be only modified by admins). Trying to implement these things with a wiki is not possible.

A BTS gives a lot of people a better feeling about theirs issues:

* you can look it up every time

* it will be not deleted, just closed (e.g. if its duplicate)

regards

Boecko

[max power 21]

I&C is my favourite forum member now because noone blows smoke out of his ass like he does. This legal threat has clear rhetorical aims, whether or not he actually had a consultation. The simple fact of the matter is that this threat is completely idle, and BIS will not meet his demands no matter how much he hammers on the lawsuit horn.

Scare tactics in order to insight people to meet demands that you have no right to make is what? That's right.

I&C is the new BIS forum branch of Al Queda. Let us now all welcome this sad new day by playing tiny little violins for I&C and the injustice he invented so that he could suffer it on public display.

[boecko 0]

@plaintiff1

It might interest you, that we left this issue some posts ago (After the suma-Post). Since that the discussion was constructive.

So whats your intention?

A discussion is about arguments... where is yours? Pro or Contra. Doesn't matter ..as long as you give me a rationale.

There were no arguments (just "There will be no BTS") in the Wikitalk-page against a BTS. =>  there was no discussion.

This thread is  getting civilized thanks to a statement from BIS (thanks suma).

Edit: ... I thought, this thread is getting civilized (see next Post)

[MehMan 0]

IC, are you slightly touched in the head? Just because the wiki doesn't supply you with the exact description of what one function does you are willing to sue a publisher or dev? Oh man, the primary reason for a game to exist is to be PLAYED not modded. 3/4 of the games don't have any modding capabilites AT ALL! NOTHING! You should be freaking happy that BIS decided that they'll make the game moddable and added a mission editor. You should be thanking Suma greatly because he actually posted here, as most devs wouldn't do that. Jeez, calm the hell down and wait. If you have a problem with the game, return it, nobody is forcing you to play it, nobody is forcing you to mod it, if you don't like the thing return it. As much as you can return a car if you are not satisfied, you can return a game, at least in most cases. I do not know the policy at Morphicon for this, but there should be some sort of policy for returning games. If not, then I bet you can sell it onwards.

Main point is, stop being such a bitch.

And mods, please don't warn me for this, as you can clearly see he is acting bitchy and my guess is that he'll only get the point if I am a total asshole.

[max power 21]

@plaintiff1

It might interest you, that we left this issue some posts ago (After the suma-Post). Since that the discussion was constructive.

So whats your intention?

A discussion is about arguments... where is yours? Pro or Contra. Doesn't matter ..as long as you give me a rationale.

There were no arguments (just "There will be no BTS") in the Wikitalk-page against a BTS. => there was no discussion.

This thread is getting civilized thanks to a statement from BIS (thanks suma).

Edit: ... I thought, this thread is getting civilized (see next Post)

The first I heard of it was recently when I&C and someone else were discussing it. I didn't bring it up.

For and against suing BIS? Are you fucking shitting me? You have no leg to stand on, how's that? I'm not surprised that noone entertained your ludicrous discussion.

[boecko 0]

For and against suing BIS?  Are you fucking shitting me?  You have no leg to stand on, how's that?  I'm not surprised that noone entertained your ludicrous discussion.

A dignified answer from someone, who claims to be a Buglist-Admin.

Have you actually read my posts before insulting me? My discussion was about BTS. You have shown the same competence before that. I should have known that, when replying to your post.

Sorry my fault

[NoRailgunner 0]

Please calm down... a little bit

What we have now:

+ all who bought the game are waiting for the patch (some of these guys can't await release...)

+ some suggestions / alternatives from an "complainant" who is very angry about the response of his letters/mails to BIS.

+ reply from BIS

Has anybody of you visited this page BI Studio inside ? I don't read anything about marketing dev and PR staff yet.

Maybe and hopefully they will find the right team for this job...

BIS-developers & crew is working on a game which is unique in the gaming world so far. And yes they count and should count on that great (OFP-) community.

[Balschoiw 0]

Would be nice if some mod handed out some nifty PR´s fro name - calling and flaming. While you may disagree with someone here it doesn´t automatically give you the right to call names and insult those who actually didn´t even had to do with the things you moan about. Especially from user who are here for more than 2 days you could at least expect that they read posts before they go on a witchhunt after the wrong persons.

Posts reported.

[max power 21]

For and against suing BIS? Are you fucking shitting me? You have no leg to stand on, how's that? I'm not surprised that noone entertained your ludicrous discussion.

A dignified answer from someone, who claims to be a Buglist-Admin.

Have you actually read my posts before insulting me? My discussion was about BTS. You have shown the same competence before that. I should have known that, when replying to your post.

Sorry my fault

I'm not sure what a bts is. I assumed you meant legal action. If not, I'm not talking about BTS. If so, then you've heard what I had to say about it.

I think you might be confusing the wiki buglist with the forum. I don't profess to be anything. I was asked to help maintain the bug wiki and so I do. I'm not sure what you expect from someone who is just making sure that the bug wiki makes some sense. This ad hominem is not really relevent.

Regarding the link to my user talk. That was meant to be humorous. I don't have any interest in your bug tracker nor do I have any power to make any decisions regarding it. I think your bug tracker idea is not terrible but totally superfluous. Please get off of that soapbox, everyone is tired of hearing it.

[hoz 0]

plaintiff1, WL+1 and pr'd until further notice. Name calling and flaming won't be tolerated.

[Luciano 0]

The biggest thing that throws me off from this game is not all the bugs. At least you can explain them (well except the super obvious ones).

But the campaign? How can that be explained?

Seeing the quality of the campaign makes one wonder if BIS really wants to make a good game or to take the easy way out, put crap together and glue it, hoping it will hold.

Even if the campaign was perfect (bugs wise), its still an insult to anybody buying ARMA as the sole purpose of playing offline. And believe me, there are people that play offline only.

[whisper 0]

@Scrub

Since your bugreport is on the old buglist, i assume that the issue is fixed, isn't it?

@whisper

..about the manpower. Why not the same manpower, which mantains the Bikilist? The Community. A BTS is easier to mantain, you get more quality reports, and the crap reports are closed in a second or marked as a duplicate.

Best regards

Boecko

Read Suma's post about that. They look open minded.

I was talking about "whhaaahaa, we get no docu"

[kestrel7e7 0]

Even if the campaign was perfect (bugs wise), its still an insult to anybody buying ARMA as the sole purpose of playing offline.  And believe me, there are people that play offline only.

Multiplayer is not the holy grail of gaming; it lacks context, story, atmosphere and is extremely repetitive. It also depends strongly on the quality and attitude of the participants.

It seems BIS are taking the Battlefield approach and making the singleplayer mode a joke. Which is unfortunate because imho the ArmA multiplayer mode isn't strong enough to stand on compared with the likes of (the less realistic) BF2.

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

@ MehMan:

Quote[/b] ]IC, are you slightly touched in the head?

RGR that, otherwise I would not be here or playing hours OFP.

So not only slightly. I love you to MehMan

Could I remind everyone that I am the forum troll using odd words! So do not steal my role or I get really angry.

@ Baddo: Thank you for explaining my wishes in a way I should have done it initially.

@ scrub: You think short term, I think long term. Of course it is some effort for BI to get used to the public BTS, but not in terms of manpower since the same headcount messing around with the buglist today could screen and maintain the incoming queue for BI. The management of the TTs at the public BTS would be done by community members.

Quote[/b] ]I vote for a blue back ground and blood red fonts with a BIS watermark on the new uber bugtracker database. Also, lets wait 6 months as we get a bugtracker for that too!

Have you ever checked that seriously before you wrote this?:

http://www.boeckler.org/mantis-1.0.6/view_all_bug_page.php

With the colors check with boecko, maybe he can create a personalized GUI color set for your account.

@wisper:

Quote[/b] ]Now, I'm really sorry for fellow mission makers/scripters/modders around, but my wild guess is that, if asking for priority amongst the above topics to their current playerbase, BI will see the "documentation" in the very last position of the "we need it now" topic of the month.

Which is wrong from BI. The last standard OFP mission I played was 2002 I guess. I only play custom made islands with custom made missions by using custom made addons.

This is only my opinion: If BI would release just the engine with a proper doc-set and a few sample missions and addons I would be happy. I do not expect from BI that they fix any of those missions or the campain. This time consuming work to polish a mission to an insane extend of perfectness is better done by the community. Also the 1:1 texturing of a vehicle showing the last screw like on the original is nothing to be done BI.

There are plenty of dedicated addon studios out there doing this job perfectly. What do they need to make perfect work?

Perfect tools and perfect documentation.

All the community made addons and missions made out of OFP an evergreen, the best BI did to support this was making client and server SW stable to some extend and to release more tools over the time.

By doing so BI also established a kind of training camp for future BI employees/contractors.

But then is of course the question: How can BI earn cash if they do not release packs like OFP/OFP:CWC/OFP:R?

I guess a kind of annual fee would be perfect and ensure continuous quality. Everyone can effort 10-30€/year if he could expect a proper SW+doc-set maintenance.

BI could expect an continuous annual cash beam good for a reliable business planning.

@plaintiff1:

Sorry that I forgot you, I love you too

To the arguments that most customers are not interested in modding, only playing: Right, that`s why I suggested in a previous reply to split that and sell packages with and without docu. Since the customer base for the package with docu would be much smaller, the price for that package would be much higher.

But it is worth a try from BI, maybe BI could come up with a price suggestion and we could order it online 3 month or so in advance and if enough persons ordered to reach the break even they could really start to work on that docu and send out the order confirmation.

There are so many ways.

@kestrel7e7:

to the MP vs SP quality:

You can script each MP map in a way that it is also a perfect SP map. Try crCTI in OFP, you can play it totally alone as commander or squad leader and the AI will still toast you :-)

So count on the community, you will be served.

[whisper 0]

Read what you wrote I&C, and then the opinion just ... before.

The "community" wanting something and the exact opposite at the same time, and BI being blamed (if not being treated as total incompetents by some know-it-all people).

Meaning they need to sort their priorities. If it's is not in their priority to have the docu completed, then can't you see how the Wiki is... well, somehow the only smart move then can really do?

As far as I'm concerned, as long as the game has crashes, performance issues, server stability issues, piss poor GUI, I want them to be concentrated on all these. If that means they can't give us proper documentation, then so be it.

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

Oooooch wisper,

Of course the "player only" wants to have the missions fixed now.

But a lot of problems why the maps/missions are not working are caused by bigger issues in the engine, so I do not expect a quick fix.

http://cr-ofp.dyndns.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=713&p=1

So many maps are created correctly but functions are not working properly (e.g.the inability of the AI to find its way or to execute commands).

So I SUGGEST to concentrate on maintain the engine since it would fix a lot of bugs percept as mission bugs. In the long run it would fix more bugs and make more player happy. The fine tuning of the remaining real mission scripting bugs is something for later.

You ask why I sometimes suggested that BI might be incompetent? I will explain it to you:

There are 3 facts:

1.) Morphicon/BI declared GOLD status around 7th Nov 2006 (in previous threads and replies I said BI declared GOLD I do not know who had the right to declare)

Quote[/b] ]

Bohemia Interactive announces that the German edition of Armed

Assault is gold, and their new military first-person shooter is due in

German stores on November 30. There's no word on when the game will be

available in other territories.

2.) The 1.00 was a disaster when it was release and 1.02 is not fixing all the bugs to justify GOLD.

I do not talk about small bugs or hard to reproduce, I talk about bugs jumping out of the screen and smashing a hammer on your head saying "here I am" !

3.) Both BI and Morphicon try to suggest that they tested the game before it was released.

Sorry, I can not bring that together, 2.) is an obvious fact, hence 1.) GOLD Status was never reached or 3.) it was never tested or results ignored.

That is why I created wild theories about it because there was nothing from BI side explaining this mismatch.

That`s why I suggested that BI/Morphicon is A) not able to test properly or B) they decided to release it with all the bugs.

Even if it sounds funny from my side I hope B) is true or somebody - preferably from BI - has a better explanation then I have to fill the hole of wild speculations.

B) would tell me that what ever was, BI is still able to solve it.

So far to the history of my behavior.

Now I would be happy to get an answer how we could proceed further in my 2 favorite issues:

@ Suma/BI

Quote[/b] ]1) Selling documentation

While this might be possible, I am not convinced it would work commercially. There seems to be too little people willing to pay for a thing like this. Moreover, creating it would delay us from our primary goal, i.e. developing games. I think Wiki approach will prove itself more suitable, we will be adding to it more and more information gradually, and the fact other uses will contribute as well will help a lot. Take an example of command reference, which is based on a reference XML we have provided, however it is now much more accurate and more complete. I think you are grossly underestimating the amount of work needed to transfer the raw (or sometimes even informal) knowledge into a concise documentation product.

Could we go into a serious discussion about content and format of such a doc? This is essential to evaluate if this would be commercial possible. And, to avoid some shouting I do not say that I want to have it tomorrow, I just say we should open a serious discussion how such a project could be setup without consuming to much resources from BI at the wrong time.

Quote[/b] ]2) Bug tracking system

This is definitely possible, however it seems to me the Wiki bug list as it is now works well enough for the purpose. The Trac you are refering to may prove useful, if I see there is a useful information in it, I will give it a try, and we shall see what may come out of this.

How could we go on here if it is meant serious? As I wrote before , boecko did already most of the work, just porting to another server and setting up responsability matrix and backup routine would be necessary to get it flying.

Cheers

I&C

[whisper 0]

So this has nothing to do with documentation.

Fine then.

[Sc@tterbrain 0]

Want "documentation" ?

Fine go over to the Armed A Graph thread.

I would love to see the official number of copies sold vs. the number of people who play it on any given day.  

Just look at the number of players online at any given time.

The number of people willing to blindly defend and flame may outnumber those who take issue with the "release"...but only in these forums.

Attacks on those with critical opinions just drives them away, but it dosen't make you right.

[Luciano 0]

500 People playing online?

Thats pretty good for ARMA. I expected like 200.

Although I'm willing to bet the numbers will go down fast. Unless BIS takes an about turn.

OFP at its peak had about 700 people playing, which was pretty good for no JIP.

I don't know if ARMA will reach close to that, even with the JIP.

The fact is that for anybody that enjoys the game online, there are at least 5 people who have either performance issues, crash all the time, or other issues that make it unplayable.

[sickboy 13]

Thats pretty good for ARMA.  I expected like 200.  

Although I'm willing to bet the numbers will go down fast.  Unless BIS takes an about turn.

Looking at the demo changelogs and the interview, there is much indication of improvements and ongoing improvements... I personally expect an update around de 505 Release.