www.Construct.net Website bug reports
This is where we handle public bug report submissions for the Construct.net website.
Many users file bugs which are useless because they don't contain enough information for us to do anything about them. We just close these bugs without investigating them. Please follow these guidelines to avoid having your bug closed and help make sure we can fix the bug you're reporting.
The bug submission page is pre-filled with a template. We need all this information to help you. Do not delete it. Please provide as much of the requested information as you can.
Our staff are here to help you. We have experienced engineers who have dealt with thousands of bug reports. The vast majority of reporters are helpful and are happy to work with us. However if you don't co-operate or are unnecessarily combative in dealing with staff, we will close your report and stop investigating it. We will resume investigation on the report if someone files it complying with the guidelines.
The following list are behaviors we will see as trolling. If too many of these behaviors occur in one report it is liable to be closed.
- Insisting developers investigate the issue over holidays or weekends. Please be patient.
- Repeatedly nagging developers to investigate an issue ahead of schedule, or repeatedly bumping the thread.
- Exaggerating the impact of an issue, or otherwise acting as if your issue is so serious, it is the end of the world. This is rarely the case, especially if the issue is not new. Diverting attention can also end up postponing work on other genuinely more serious issues, harming other users. It is also unnecessarily aggravating.
- Constantly treating the developers with scepticism or distrust. We are not perfect, but we are experienced engineers. Please have a little faith. Sometimes we discuss the issue and make educated guesses. However there is no need to try to argue us down every time we say something; it is simply a waste of everyone's time.
- Throwing in unrelated bugs or gripes. Please don't muddy the waters by talking about unrelated issues, complaining about why your favourite feature is not implemented yet, etc. Fixing a bug is difficult enough as it is, and having a concise, focused approach gives us the best chance of fixing it.
- Blaming us before the issue has been fully identified. All software depends on a wide range of third parties, such as OS developers, compiler and library authors, driver developers, browser makers, and so on. We do routinely fix or work around issues which are not directly our fault, in order to try to make sure Construct works as well as possible. If we point to a third-party cause, it does not necessarily mean we are trying to avoid fixing it, although it may make it significantly more difficult. Our normal routine investigation simply involves identifying the root cause before we proceed to mitigating it. There is no reason to launch in to a rant about how it's all our fault. Often this is simply incorrect and may also cause embarrassment.
- Demanding a resolution when none is practical. Some issues will have no good resolution, such as an issue caused by a specific graphics driver version on a particular OS and hardware combination. It is not feasible to investigate such issues, particularly if the evidence suggests the problem is not in our code. It is also unreasonable to demand an explanation of the inner workings of these other pieces of software we've had no part in developing.
- Accusing us of not responding or not caring about the issue, particularly after we have already put effort in to responding or investigating it
- Arguing about whether or not what you did qualifies as trolling or not ("meta-trolling"). It is up to the judgement of our staff.
Here are answers to common questions or concerns during the bug report process. These really are asked frequently, so it's worth a look.
You need to follow all the guidelines in this post for the developers to actually have a reasonable chance of being able to diagnose and fix the problem you are trying to report. We get literally thousands of bug reports and dealing with them can be very time consuming. In order to save the developer's time so they can spend more time writing new and exciting features, and to save your time so you don't write useless reports which aren't useful to the developers, these guidelines are mandatory and reports not following them will be closed without investigation.
Please do not be offended; we deal with large numbers of bug reports and our aim is to deal with them as efficiently as possible. We want to make sure you get in to the habit of filing useful, detailed, actionable bug reports which we can diagnose and fix quickly. This benefits you as well, since you are more likely to get your bug fixed, and sooner. So it is in everyone's interest that you learn to follow the guidelines to the fullest extent possible for every bug report. We may unceremoniously say that it is closed without investigation, but that is probably one out of 10 or 20 that day, and we want to highlight how you need to help us help you.
Please do not reply to closed bug reports. Instead, please file a new report, and make sure you follow all the guidelines and provide any missing information.
We do look at every report, but developer and release schedules mean we may not get round to it immediately. Please allow a few weeks for it to be investigated. If you are waiting, you can improve the chance it is resolved when a developer does get round to it by carefully reviewing these guidelines and providing as much useful information about the problem as possible. If you are missing anything, you may end up waiting a few weeks for a reply simply asking for the missing information, and then you're back to waiting again.
Thanks for reading our guidelines! You can get started by visiting the Issues section.