Zero Bugs
Nov 16, 2016
We've reached the next important milestone in our quest to releasing a game, and it's called Zero Bugs.
As of the 15th, we have zero bugs in our bug lists. That's not to say the game has zero bugs (far from it), but we fixed everything, and if we didn't fix it because it wasn't that important, we closed it.
Zero Bugs.
Testers continue to test and file bugs, but the rule now is at the end of each day, there are zero bugs in the bug database. We also take a hard look at the bugs coming in and decide whether to fix it or not. Sometimes the bug isn't that critical or it's an edge case, so we just close it. Other bugs are just too dangerous to fix and they aren't that important. If it was 2 months ago, we would fix it, but not now.
It's important to clarify what we mean by bug.
If something crashes the game, or makes the game unplayable or is painfully ugly, it's a A bug and we fix it. If it's just something that makes the game a little glitchy and it's not common, that's a B bug and we'll fix it if there is time and it's a safe fix. Bugs that are unlikely that anyone would even notice or are rare edge cases, those are C bugs and usually just get closed.
We had a bug where sometimes (rarely) an actor would face the wrong direction when you gave them something. Fixing it would touch a lot of code and there was a high likelihood of breaking other code, so we opted to not fix it. It the kind of bug you might see once in an entire playthrough.
We had another bug where the input and cursor were being turned off for a split second to keep the player from messing up a special-case animation, but a bug caused the input to be turned on prematurely and left on during a cut-scene. It's an edge case, but the consequences catastrophically break the game, so we had to fix that, despite needing to touch a lot of code to do so.
Testers still continue to report everything and we triage all the new bugs each day.
The thing about fixing bugs is, anytime to fix a bug, there is a likelihood you'll introduce a new bug, so we don't want to just keep fixing. The goal is to get a completely stable version where testers aren't finding any A or B bugs anymore. The only way to accomplish that is to lock the code down as much as possible.
We want to say there will be no bugs in the game, but that's just not realistic. The game has close to 100,000 lines of code and that is only the game code, not the engine. It's a complex beast.
There is a point where you have to say: we're done. If you don't, you never finish.
That is the real reason for these milestones: to force us to make hard decisions and move on.
Now, all that said. The Zero bugs relates to the game code, there are still several open bugs related to the engine and platforms, but there don't affect the game. An example of one of these is, when you scale the screen for safe mode, garbage shows up along the edges. That has nothing to do with the game code, and is purely an engine issue, so it's low priority. There are 10 or 20 such bugs, but we decided to focus on the game related bugs first.
I also have a big memory leak I need to find and fix. It's not the kind of memory leak a leak detector will ever find, it's memory the game is holding onto because it thinks it needs to, but doesn't. That's going to take me a few days of lock-myself-in-a-room-debugging to find.
There are also a lot of issues with the Xbox port, mostly related to Microsoft's cert issues, but that's probably a whole ‘nother blog post.
- Ron
Amazing to hear about all those milestones!
I am so hyped for the game!
Anyway, I'm sure TWP will be stable. Good luck, thanks.
For instance, in MI:
- the head of LeChuck suddenly detaches from his ghost body near the end of the game
- most words in the dialog with Spiffy are corrupted
- the verbs turn on/turn off never work when they are required, so that the game cannot actually be completed
It's twenty-six years, Mr. Gilbert : isn't it time to fix these issues ONCE AND FOR ALL!?
Those are present in most versions of the game:
- The storekeeper closes the door AFTER he walks to the counter. (all versions except EGA)
- The line "The basic theory is fine." of the Fettucini Brothers is skipped due to a script error.
- Smirk's cigar's smoke positioning is off.
- Guybrush occasionally refuses to burn the cereals, even after the journey to Monkey Island and vice versa. It is possible to get stuck here if you didn't bring anything else to burn.
- The Piranha poodles freeze briefly before eating the meat.
- Ghost key cloning by repeatedly using the compass on it while in Lechuck's room.
- Storekeeper walks through mid-air when shortening the first open safe cutscene early.
- "Use pewter wad with ???" can cause an error if it disappears from inventory, but the command isn't executed yet, ie. Guybrush is still walking to the target object.
- Guybrush doens't seem to have a clue when inspecting the rubber chicken, even after he has used it on the cable.
- Picking up yellow flower is not animated, eventhough one of the default animations would do perfectly fine here.
- Open exit door in the Scumm bar cuts off part of the left most table. (all VGA versions)
- Mancomb's is sitting in mid-air due to a missing chair. (all VGA versions)
- Cyan pixels in spinning Scumm Bar pirates. (all VGA versions)
- missing sign graphics on the ghost ship deck. The hotspot is still there. (all versions except EGA)
- When LeChuck is removing his sheriff costume, he has a cyan beard for a brief moment. (all VGA versions)
- downward flying LeChuck has flashing hands. (all VGA versions)
- Firework colors and lightning effect are missing in all VGA versions.
- Jolly Roger still visible on the mast after cooking it.
- Voodoo antiroot crate requires the tools when opening it again.
- Voodoo antiroot crate comment "I don't see anything special about it. Except that big glowing voodoo antiroot inside.", even if Guybrush already grabbed it.
- Storekeeper's comment on Guybrush pretending to wait tables, has a line skipped due to a script error.
- Estevan's fear eye animation is missing in all VGA versions.
- The porthole defogger does not decrease the price when opted out, which is the 0 entry in an array which was only initialized from 1 on.
- The swordmaster is invisible (while going into the house and closing the door) after showing the kidnapper's note.
- There are some goofs in the Herman dialog script letting him or Guybrush say things at the wrong time.
- The small lights at Stan's shed are not animated. The animations are there, but the script to actually animate them is simply missing.
I wonder, were you responsible for the enhanced CD modifications of Monkey Island, too? That one has by far the most bugs, which all of them (and some more) are still present in the Special Edition. Those are the bugs I found which were introduced in the enhanced CD version:
- Smirk's cigar has no smoke at all in the close up.
- Animal notice with bad background color making it much harder to read.
- Quite a few actors and texts have wrong colors due to palette changes in the enhanced CD version: Talk colors for the navigator, Estevan (glass eye in SCUMM bar), Bob and the ghost priest (which even has 3 different colors), sentence line when dead under water and during the auto sequence in the Governor's mansion, Dialog selection in the upside down text at the circus, in the close-up for the navigator and the final close-up with Elaine and Guybrush, and finally Guybrush skin and hair when he's dying.
- The "Still ten o'clock"-joke was messed up.
- "Jam. Rum." appears in the wrong location.
- "Use" the helmet at the circus doesn't work anymore. "Give" is the only way here.
- Navigator very rarely looks to front or back when it should. Guybrush also comments acordingly when looking at the the navigator. This makes finding the way much harder than it was before.
- On the Sea Monkey, dripping water animation speed.
- Use cereals while they are still in the cupboard with something causes a fatal error in the DOS version.
- Yellow petal is green at Stan's. Among other color glitches in the inventory.
- Random swordfighting pirates have all the same colors.
- Various costume graphics have less colors as on the regular VGA version.
- Shaking animation of grog machine is missing.
- Too bright costume palette in some rooms.
- Torch colors in jail.
- Lamp in mansion light color.
- Colored corner at the sign on the banana tree.
- Walking off path after visiting Sword Master's.
- Verbs flashing between rooms in hell maze.
- command line boot parameters don't require the debug mode anymore. Not sure if that was intentional, but it requires the debug mode activated in all other SCUMM games.
Of course, the vast majority of them are rather harmless, and I bet, you would call them C bugs indeed.
I can make a similar list for Monkey 2, if someone is interested.
It's pretty common in sports, once an undefined or unsettling situation is encountered, they fix it in the rules.
It kinda reminds me of the rugby offside loophole that Italy used against England this year in the Six Nations :D
And I did not just list them, I also fixed them in the Ultimate Talkie Edition: http://www.gratissaugen.de/ultimatetalkies/monkey1.html
Speaking of SE: How come they didn't realise that stool is missing and draw it in? Maybe it was because of switching between classic and SE (and they didn't want to change the original files).
In the EGA version the chair was at its place, and it disappeared in the VGA version. So, simply, the artist who redrew the background forgot to put it in. Then some artist had to redraw the background for SE, so he took the background and -since there's not a chair there- he simply dind't have a clue taht a chair was missing. Because you have to see the characters in place to realize there's something wrong.
So, maybe that artist didn't play the game....
Notice how the chairs are all gone when the bar is empty later on in the game? This is due to the chairs being part of the animated character objects. Maybe we are missing some plothole here, since having the chairs in the background graphics really seems obvious, yet they aren't for some reason.
So, the error was more subtle. In the VGA version somebody had drawn the character without the chair.
THIS is strange. How can you mistake that?
Quite normal that the mistake wasn't recognized in the next version.
Yes, the stools are part of the animation in EGA.
In VGA it's missing.
In the Ultimate version it's really fixed!
Also it's the same with all the other pirates in the SCUMM Bar so I don't know how they could miss this (both VGA and SE).
Especially with MI1:SE I was disappointed that the voiceover wasn't working in classic mode (gladly they made this right with MI2:SE).
I have played both games using your fixes and had no problems (well, I didn't know of most of the original bugs anyway, but Spiffy the Dog alone is a reason to use this version!).
It was fortunately solved in a later version.
> Mancomb's is sitting in mid-air due to a missing chair. (all VGA versions)
Ohhh, how come I've never noticed?
I wonder if it is the second edition (not special edition).
It has as many colours as the EGA version of Zak!
According to LogicDeLuxe' list it seems like they introduced quite a lot of bugs with new VGA and VGA CD versions they made later, especially missing stuff (stool, signs...).
Although I would have thought the stool is part of the background, how could they forget it?
...
(I am not able to lie!!)
Notice how the chairs are all gone when the bar is empty later on in the game? This is due to the chairs being part of the animated character objects. Maybe we are missing some plothole here, since having the chairs in the background graphics really seems obvious, yet they aren't for some reason.
- When begging for the bucket, the man still looks like he's sleeping.
- Polishing the pegleg is supposed to get as much money that you just get one piece of eight too little. You can easily defeat that mechanism by returning some stuff at the shop you bought earlier. Of cause, no one seriously playing this would ever encounter this. It is more like an easter egg, but a buggy one.
- Bloody Lip music and laundry music can start while Largo's theme is still playing.
- At Stan's, the direction Guybrush is currently facing is not taken into account. If you do things in a certain order, that will lead to Guybrush pointing away when he is meant to pointing to the coffin.
- Graphic glitch when offering something to Dread and then talking to him.
- There is a dialog option at Dread's ship which is never available due to a script bug. "You know, I used to go out with Governor Marley."
- The gambler's club tells you the next number, even before Ralphy played the last one. Yet, he tells you that he fixes only one number at a time.
- The water animation freezes on Dreads ship when looking at some inventory items.
- Lights stop flickering while Largo is at laundry.
- "Dem Bones" could hang after the first verse. That is very rare, but I've seen this happening.
- Voodoo bag sound does not stop when you interrupt the cutscene while she is shaking the bag.
- "Pull rope" in Dinky Island when it is already in the inventory can cause various issues, including the game terminating with a script error. Interestingly, this bug was fixed in the German version. Maybe Boris did this.
- Looking at Dread's map, Big Whoop map or Dem Bones lyrics at Rum Roger's can cause a script error.
- There is a script that would let Dread bring you back to Scabb and leave. It is supposed to trigger as soon as you have all 4 map pieces, but one of the map pieces doesn't adjust the variable it checks for.
- At Stan's, some colors are wrong, leading to some ugly black pixels.
- If you change rooms too fast, it is possible that the Scabb music won't stop on Dread's ship.
- I've also seen a video where the swamp music does not play, and Guybrush gets stuck in the hut's entry due to the script waiting for a music cue (which in this case never comes). I've never managed to get this bug myself, though.
- Guybrush's shirt color changes during the diving scene.
- At Dinky beach, Guybrush can fill the glass with water without picking it up first.
- In the final chapter, the time you'll have a chance to react when LeChuck appears depends on the text speed. If you have set the text very fast, you also have to click very fast, which can be frustrating, if you don't know how to avoid this issue.
- Using the voodoo doll inside the lift interferes with other scripts. That is why LeChuck never shows up when waiting in the lift. However, he does show up, if you don't have the voodoo doll yet. He has to, since it is the only room you can get his beard. However, if you are fast enough, you can just build the voodoo doll when he appears and use it, causing the bug.
- The paper of the wanted poster suddenly seems to be in much better shape when you put Kate's flyer on it.
- The sampled spit sound is never played when the barkeeper spits in the glass, due to checking for the wrong soundcard. (ScummVM fixes this one)
- The cook at Marley's mansion has some lines in the script which are never played. They must have noticed this when recording the SE, since they skipped those.
There are some occasions where looping sounds suddenly stop, which are not actual game bugs, but limitations in the iMuse engine. It is most noticeable at the water fall.
As with Monkey 1, those are fixed in the Ultimate Talkie Edition.
I think I've only really encountered the first one.
And then there was this duplicate pipe thing with the fisherman which was even mentioned in dialog.
Maybe a bug they encountered but fixed in a creative way?
> Polishing the pegleg [...] no one seriously playing this would ever encounter this
Hey, I was playing seriously!
I wonder what are the skipped lines of that cook in the mansion?
And the missing lines are not actually skipped like those cases in Monkey 1. It is in a script which is never called, iIrc. I don't remember the words, I just noticed this while sorting the samples. Probably not that interesting, or I would have remembered it, I guess.
I've seen you have fixed missing spoken numbers when talking to Stan in MI1!
Do you remember script(/interpreter) differences in MI2 at start on the beach when singing "100 bottles of beer on the wall"?
In my memory you could select random numbers in the original MI2 version.
In SE and Ultimate there are always the same selections and it doesn't count down all the way down from the bigger number, which is a shame.
However, the counting down is not changed at all. They still count down as low as 2 before Fink shouts a new number. The thing is, they didn't voice all numbers, and replaced any unvoiced numbers with mumbling. If you set subtitle mode to "keep original text" in the Ultimate Talkie, you can still see the numbers counting down.
The random numbers had to go, obviously, since it would lead to instant mumbling most of the time, which would be rather boring.
Didn't you fix Stan's numbers by "splicing together samples in real-time" and would this be possible with that pirate too? (all numbers up to 999 should be possible I think)
Yes, I remember that! I remeber I have noticed it only the first time I have played MI2, because on the next times I didn't look into the inventory anymore!
"- Guybrush's shirt color changes during the diving scene."
That's normal... or not? Don't colors change while in water?
"- In the final chapter, the time you'll have a chance to react when LeChuck appears depends on the text speed. If you have set the text very fast, you also have to click very fast, which can be frustrating, if you don't know how to avoid this issue."
Great discover!! This one can be turned into an interesting cheat!
Again, congratulations for your bug-tracking and devotion!
byeeee
There won't be a downloadable demo version. They have a demo only for certain events such as PAX.
But:
My Irony-Detector shows no clearly signaling according to your animation: If you throw the roll in this direction, the paper would be unroll to the floor. ;)
:-)
But my concern is that you once stated in a podcast, that you will put certain things into the game, that will have some sort of reference to modern times.
But are you planning a reference to Trump? Because the next 4 years we will hear his name daily (sigh). So I just think a reference to his name in the game will only envoke a sigh, and make me think of today, and not 1986, which is a time I only think of fondly.
But Trump.... yeah, I have heard way too much about him. Seriously: almost every single head line the last year have been about him. And think about how it will be in 4 years....Trump overload.
1. It's just fiction.
2. We can dream of a better world.
Or maybe just change the year to 2021?
I played Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindenders many times, and I gave it a 10/10 vote. But one day, David Fox told me that even Zak had some bugs left, but I have never noticed.
Anyway, what is the next milestone, now?
Each update helps to safely survive until game release... thanks again Ron. :-)
Does anyone know the estimated release date? Zero bugs sounds awfully close! :)
Tuesday, Feb 28, 2017 (Mardi Gras)
There are other great superheroes which are more fitting...
Also take a look at those blog entries if you haven't seen them already:
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/tester3000
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/yay_testertron3000
Thx
I must engrave this sentence and put it on my desk.
Let me know if there's any way I can help you. If you have any questions or run into problems, just send me an e-mail or create an issue on GitHub!
Daniel Wolf - Feb 21, 2016 at 15:08
http://dannad.de/xchg/doornail2.mp4
He will just drop it when TWP is done because it wouldn't be necessary anymore AND costs quite a lot per month.
If he'd make his next game with 5 people or less it costs $20/month + $10/month per add-on (the cheaper ones), with original pricing.
But 6 to 10 people would already cost $100/month + $50/month per add-on which is quite a step!
Aaand since TWP will be a huge success the next game will be an adventure game anyway, so Ron can keep working with Gary, David & Co who are already trained with those tools.
Yay!
I'm interested to know about the the next milestone, you know: The "shipped-to-DZ-Jay" stage. ;)
-dZ.
P.S. Very interesting commentary, Mr. Gilbert. I wonder if you have plans on correcting at least some of the "B" bugs in a future "service patch"? Or is the team taking the position that once released the game is frozen in time FOREVAH?
...
...which is actually likely to be delivered this year, sooo.... hurry up Thimbleweed Park Team!!
I'm a Kickstarter backer and the Kickstarter bigbox + Blu-ray documentation is still pending!
But not the bigbox (here is a mockup: https://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/status/775855500852211713 ) and not the remastered documentary on Blu-ray.
But we've already received the artbook: https://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/status/771767741229338624
Some may get game signed, some even recursively signed...
It is one thing to find many bugs which the ordinary OCD-guy would do as well.
It is something completely different to even notice a subtle bug that surfaced just recently after the 17th play through.
Even in my own games I wouldnt even realize (or mind) if the main characters were replaced by pink elephants at that point.
For memory hog se use gperftools in draconian Mode, with some scripting you can filter the verbose output.
BR
Quique
I don't want nothing on 2017 but playing this game.
I had the opportunity as a kid to play your games 25 years ago.
The magnitude of MM and MI, broke the distance barriers in a time where games were mainly propagated through consoles.
Being a kid in late 80s in Brazil and playing Adventures was also a nice opportunity for start learning some english basics. ;)
I see the Thimbleweed Park not just as a chance of playing your games again, but for a whole generation that started in the primordium of personal computer, watching the development tells us a lot about the software history.
Nowadays we are experiencing a era of innovation, where a huge mass of people want to create web applications and spread their ideas and solutions through software.
Im sure Thimbleweed Park Blog could be a nice "hint book", not just about software development, but even more about creating a Digital Products of Success.
Thank you for all that fun stuff that you create.
Best Regards,
Here you can see the birds are different pixel size relative with the background and are mis-aligned: https://storage.googleapis.com/images.thimbleweedpark.com/vista_door.png
This text is not pixel perfect aligned with the background: https://storage.googleapis.com/images.thimbleweedpark.com/cursor_sentence.gif
You said we will have a "pixel perfect" mode. Please, I need assurance about this, cause I fear you are not paying enough attention to those little details and maybe are not that important, but for me is very important that the game is "pixel perfect" :(
The only thing y o u can do is trust him on that, and i guess its just a flip of a switch. This option is somewhat important to me too, but even more i wanna know how long it takes for the majority to switch back. There should be statistics or an achievement :)
Btw, i played this game recently:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2100/
It uses the old Monkey Island assets, but Grisush Thriftweed is scaled with screen resolution. Looks odd at first, but i got used to it pretty fast and not interrupt the nostalgic feel at all
The important thing to remember at the pixel art is, we're not doing it to be retro, we're doing it because we love the aesthetic, but not the technical limitations. If you're looking for a game that slavishly adheres to the limitations of the 80s, this is not that game.
I can not express myself well in english, it's not my mother tongue, I did not intended to be rude on the way of saying my previous message, sometimes I'm afraid I sound rude when I try to express my worries, sorry if it was the case.
That said, it's an honor only the fact being responded by you. You are a living legend to me, you are a childhood hero to me. I have fond memory of my father introducing me to Monkey Island 2 as one warm memory of my childhood. You are doing an amazing job. Please when you finish this game do another one. I'll collaborate in Kickstarter the second after I see a project by you in Kickstarter. I cannot stress enough the amazingness of your games.
:)
Nevertheless I think that it would have been conducive to the pixel perfect mode to ensure equal resolutions for any artworks, so that the inventory icons don't have a lower resolution that the verbs, for instance.
I'm sorry if this disappoints anyone, but we want to make a game using the amazing aesthetic of pixel art, but didn't want to beholden to technical limitations.
Just trying to be upfront and transparent.
I never missed any technical improvement when I was playing MI 1 & 2, but it's not carved in stone.
Moreover, we have bigger screens nowadays. And, it may be a bit more difficult to attract younger gamers, if the entire game was in 320x200 for the sake of nostalgia.
Seeing that Axiom Verge zooms in and out, I assert that TWP is much more in proper style.
But I guess forcing those different room sizes to such raster would look really bad, hence you are doing it this way.
Btw. are the inventory icons even final? Who knows!
Oh, maybe even 10 bit per pixel then?
Hope you don't have any (other) appointments this weekend:
http://www.adventurexpo.org/schedule/
https://www.twitch.tv/adventurexpo
İ need to feed Clown the Ransome's hamster. But the cheese dissapear from the refrigerator. know i can't take popcorns from the rats. and i am stuck !
I just put the cheese in front of one of the holes, waiting for something, then i moved out or inside, cant remember, and when i came back and check...i couldnt find the cheese anymore. Went back to the refrigerator and was empty !
Please, im stuck here, dont know what to do.
Thanks