March 8th, 2022 Livestream

Re: Reporting Issues

https://youtu.be/Svk5fRCAfX8

Topics

• QA Site

Transcript

we're coughing saying so we always delay stuff but hopefully we'll get a patch out sometime maybe next week with more updates and hopefully we can address some of the issues that have been coming up in the previous patch that were released and this is kind of what I want to talk about next actually because one thing that kind of happened with the last patch that I just want to acknowledge real quick is that some of the for some people the signaling system for trains, kind of like became wonky for some people it didn't really change at all but for some people for some reason like it's not working fully, and we are aware of the issue that there is an issue but we're not aware of what the issue is exactly and when we were trying to investigate this we had a really hard time like understanding what the problem was, and this is something that I've been kind of meaning to talk about for a little while actually, when it comes to like us handling you know issues but also like you guys helping us out reporting issues, like sometimes there are ways that you can make it a lot better for us or like let me rephrase that like there's a couple of times where we've had a hard time like understanding what an issue is and and one good example is something I saw in chat earlier where somebody talked about pipes that is also an issue that we've, we're like a little bit embarrassed that we haven't been able to fix it yet but it's a pretty big system-wide issue that we also need to like look into so it's not like an easy fix that we can get into so we're hoping we can like actually look into that and have that bundle with like one of the the bigger updates that we're gonna do hopefully soon, but, one thing that kind of like why that is a good example is because when that issue occurred when we introduced the new, I think that was in the fluid update a lot of people are reporting like we're having issues with pipes and that's the only thing really really we saw was that people were complaining about like oh pipe's not working the way they are and then we tried it ourselves and they were like there's nothing wrong with the pipes like they work the way they should, and then that goes back and forth with us and it's it's a little bit frustrating for both parts because we obviously know that something's not working properly but we can't like identify what the issue is and then a couple of people came together and just made like a really detailed, qa post that like really emphasized like here's the cases where the issue happened and like these are the ways to reproduce it like a really low low level kind of like explaining like these are the steps you need to take to be able to encounter this issue, and then I believe they also like added a save file to that as well and that was great for us because that was that was such a good like tool to just take and be like okay this is the issue, because a lot of times when people report stuff like especially like when people just say like the game is crashing like that doesn't tell us anything, unless we can find a way to reproduce an issue or if we can get like enough information so we have like an actual like something to drive the solution beyond like such as like call stacks or that you get in the crash reporter tool, like unless we get that we can't really do anything and that's kind of the problem so I'm gonna move over to this next step so so when it comes to reporting issues the qa site is is the best tool we have, the reason why we would like people to go to the qa site specifically and I know it's a hassle that like you have to sign up and create an account and stuff like that, the reason for that is mainly because when the way we kind of do when we handle like issues with the game is is kind of twofold like right like me and jace and a couple of other people are kind of like scouting the internet and like discord and all of that and looking for like what people are talking about in our community when it comes to these kind of things, and sometimes we can get a pretty good understanding as to like what an issue is or like what is what is the main drive that people are having, but the problem is that we're not the ones fixing the issue we're not the ones like and and even if we do relay an issue like that's kind of get that kind of gets lost sometimes in the the the work that we otherwise do so the qa site is really like the reason why we funneled people to the keyway site is because that's the best place for everyone at coffee stain to like look for for information regarding issues for the j's not working jace is working fine jase tell them you're fine yes yeah see jace is fine, hopefully hopefully that comes out I'm not sure if that does actually but, like the keyword side is really for everyone else working on the game because you know not everyone working on the game uses steam or uses you know discord or uses reddit or whatever where people are are commenting about issues so like if if if we relay like oh that's an issue you can find on steam like maybe they won't be able to see it there so and the same goes for like feedback when it comes to the game it's better to have like everything and I mean like balancing and that kind of stuff so it's better to have like one site to kind of like funnel everything into so we have like one collected database of like this is where we go to find that, so so that's kind of why we're always putting emphasis on you know going to the qi site to report stuff

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what's my second point here let me check yes because that gives us like so yeah that's the q a side so the next point I have here is is when it comes to issues please give us as detailed information as possible and I really mean like explain to us as if we're five, unless there is a post that already does that, because we we we do see everything that goes on the q a side, we do see like we have people that are actively looking for new posts and reading them so like no information really gets lost so like if if if someone reports that for instance in this case like trains aren't working the way they should, you know then then, then we'll see that and even if like 100 people report the same issue in in 100 different threads we will still know that like oh there's this issue, but it's very important that when you do give us feedback and like give us report issues like this try to give us as much information as possible like I mentioned before just saying that the game crashes doesn't tell us much it it the only thing that that tells us is that people are having crash issues but it doesn't tell us what is causing it because it can be a lot of different reasons as to why the game is crashing and due to kind of the nature of releasing a game on pc as well it it's kind of like a it's not a seamless, like distribution method really for pc because there can be so many like different aspects as like why a game doesn't work because there are cases where it's not our fault that the game isn't working on your hardware there can be something else related to it and sometimes you know it can be like hardware failure or sometimes it's maybe some configuration issue, and sometimes and a lot of times actually, you guys can actually solve your issues by yourself if you just had the information, as to what is causing the issue, so, so like I see a lot of posts on on the steam forms for instance where people are reporting crashes and I'm pretty fa I'm fairly confident that like maybe more than half of those or even more maybe could be resolved if if like there was just like a good way to like figure out how to get the information out sort of and we do put like you know pin posts on steam like if your game is cash crashing like these are the most like, common causes but not everyone sees that, and if somebody just posts like what the cause of the crash is then people can also help in because there's a huge like collective community out there you guys that you know have informa have this information so if somebody just posts like this is my crash then if it's something direct like related to for instance direct three then a lot of you guys already know that like that might be because of your rendering api and maybe you should try and switch it out or if it's like something with validating your save files then people are pretty good at jumping and chiming in until about that, so yeah game crashers when I dump my pc in my bathtub that is actually our fault though that we should honestly look into that so please provide us with, detailed information as to what is causing the crash so like I guess you're in your bathtub step two is is throwing it in the bathtub I guess, so yeah so so really when you when you're making these posts on our qa site like try and give us as much information as possible if it's if the game is crashing please provide a crash reporter like the thing we get the crash reported tools anyways but you know if it's the specifically the rendering api issue for instance then you can resolve that on your own most of the times, by just switching the rendering api and if you can't boot the game then there's a way to get around that as well if you, use the like launch arguments that exist on steam and epic you can get around that, so so so yeah like give us as much information as possible if it's something in-game related for instance that pipes aren't working then really try to like dumb down as much as possible like what is the trying to like investigate and help us out to give information as like what you're doing to get the issue, there's also you know you we don't host anything on our qe site but it's still possible for you to like post, you know youtube unlisted videos for instance if you have like a video of you, using shadowplay or maybe obs or something like that, capturing the issue and like showing us sometimes that helps a lot just seeing kind of like what's going on in the game when you're reporting something, sometimes people have also reported issues where they're actually design decisions so like that also helps sometimes when we're confused as like no it's supposed to be like that, and a lot of times it also helps if we get the save file from you so and and for those cases you can use like google drive or other like sharing services, watch out for timed services though because sometimes like some services are like oh you can use this for two weeks and then the save file is gone and then that's when we have time to look into it and say fazcon so, so yeah what I'm trying to say is essentially like when you're reporting issues with us, please help us give us as much detailed information as possible, that was kind of the the the reason why I kind of bring this up is because we did find out that there was an issue with trains for some people but we've yet to like really identify like what exactly the issue is, and that's that's frustrating for everyone because it's frustrating for you guys because there's an issue that shouldn't be there but it's also frustrating for us because like we want to solve that issue we definitely don't want there to be issues with our game, but if we're unable to reproduce it or unable to like figure it out, it makes it really difficult for us and it's also like one other aspect is this is as well like but if you know this is an issue why don't you like contact the people that have reported the issue like we do try to do that sometimes but it's really that's like another step of work sort of for us that can can sometimes just lead it into like not us actually getting in touch with people, so it's just like an extra step that that makes it harder for us to investigate, and, like if someone's not available when we want to look into something then it makes it kind of tricky so the more information that exists about things the better really

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so yes I have another crash in weeks I feel left out I'm sorry maybe we should introduce something so you get a crash, if I comment more detail information on old posts will you notice, that's a good question actually sometimes if it's a very like highly upvoted, post on the qa side and you give us more detailed information then yes that is true sometimes it might be easier to make a new one and just kind of redo a post if you will just for for clarity, because I think most of the time unless we're like looking specifically into a post that's when we'll see the comments right,

[Music]

because I don't think we necessarily see like if somebody comments that's not like part of when we're looking for daily changes on the keyway side I don't think comments necessarily, will pop up there always so yeah if you if you have made a post on the qa site and you feel like you want to update it, then it might be better just like remove your old one and make a new one with more information unless you've got a lot of votes on it, so yes, and yeah like specify like if you're playing on a dedicated server and the crash is only happening dedicated server like it it's it is tedious for us and I know it sounds like I'm asking you guys to do our work a little bit, but like we we are like it's not like if in this instance with a train issue like it's not like oh we know this is an issue and we're just going to ignore it forever because we didn't get a good enough qa post like that's not the case at all we will look into it but you know if the more detailed information about we have the case that can turn like an issue that's unknown and potentially like a pretty difficult fix into oh wait I know exactly what the problem is and that turns into like a five minute fix, and that five minute fix might be a small one that fits into the next patch instead of it becoming like a whole like investigative, process that turns into like when we're estimating like how much time we think it would take to solve an issue instead we can just say you know based on on what we know already, what about say fuzzy uses mods that is that is unfortunate yes, unless your save file can be loaded so so here's the thing when it comes to modding as well when you're reporting issues so like we can't do anything about modded save files, because there are many reasons as to why some issue may occur with your game if you're using mods, because it might be that the mod is broken itself and you need to contact like the mod crater rather in this instance it might be that like a collection of mods is doing something funky, where like you playing with mod a and mod b by themselves is fine but when you have them together in one session then it causes another dif issue, and and the truth is like whenever we get a crash or anything like that we have like a flag that checks like if you're using mods or not and if you're using mods we have to ignore it because we can't like differentiate between what is an issue caused by from us or what is an issue caused by mods and I would say roughly between like 80 and 90 of the crashes that we get are modding related, so so it becomes really difficult to like troubleshoot like what the issue is if you're using mods, but if you're running into an issue, one thing you can do if you want to try and report it and figure out like the first step is to figure out if it's the mod causing the issue or not and the best way to do that is by disabling mods completely and making sure that the mods aren't loaded in in the game and you do this in the mod manager using the mod manager and if you're using mods without the mod manager what are you doing the mod manage is so good, so so yeah mod mods make it more difficult for us to to actually troubleshoot issues because it is like it is possible like when people are reporting issues that like maybe it's the mod causing the issue maybe because we can't find it is because we're not using mods or something like that, so so the best way really in those cases is disable all mods, and even better scenario is because sometimes even in a save file mods can kind of like affect how stuff is saved, because of the way we've designed the save system, there's also like no way to differentiate between like if something faulty like was when it saved it was because of the mod and but then it's still saving the save file so it's still an issue but that issue would never have happened in the vanilla version of the game potentially, so it's kind of hard sometimes to also differentiate like just having the save file even if you play vanilla so even better is if you can try and like re, reproduce the issue in vanilla from a clean save file, that's an even better case but I think so for I think for the most part just having a safe file that you can load it in vanilla and see if you still get the issue will still go miles so yeah holy [ __ ], so yeah that's that's that's reporting issues that's something I've been meaning to bring up for a while, I don't know if we should make a video about this or not maybe in the future I don't know but, I just want to like yeah clear that up that you know the more information you give us the better it always irks me a little bit that whenever I see like posts on you know wherever on the internet where people are saying like I'm getting a crash and you know that could have been potentially me just chiming and being like oh it's because of this and and if you change this then it will resolve it and instead it turns into them like maybe potentially not playing the game for months where it's like a five minute fix, 100 because not everybody watches the stream that is true, I will bring that up with chase