From Gunsmoke Games' Patreon
PSA Concerning Bugs and Testing:
First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone reporting bugs through the #bugs_2_2 channel on Discord and, regardless of what I'm about to say, we hope everyone continues to do so. Don't let the idea that "maybe it's already been reported" or whatnot stop you from bringing to light something you think is a legit bug. Try to check first a bit, of course, but we'd rather a bug be reported 1000 times than it never go reported because of the Bystander Effect. (There's your Google homework for the day for those who don't know what that is. XD)
Secondly, we know a lot of you - especially those with a bit of background in programming, coding and/or game development - have a hard time understanding why this is such an issue for SU's development. A lot of you think a large portion of the bugs shouldn't be bugs at all. And frankly, you're right. However, that doesn’t mean the problems will just magically disappear overnight.
Frankly, the primary issue is Fungus. The way it works elongates the hell out of the bug testing and fixing process. Nothing can be reliably tested within Unity without being recompiled, tracking down the exact cause – even when you already know what it is - becomes searching a needle in a haystack, and many other small issues all form to create a larger overarching problem.
To put it simply, SU has far outgrown Fungus. The game was not originally intended to be what it is today. Visual editor tools and templates like Fungus can be very helpful, but at a certain point they start causing more problems than they solve – and that’s where things are right now.
Good News and Not-so-Good News
The good news is that we already have a solution in place: the Rebuild. The primary reason for the Rebuild is to greatly ease the future development of SU – making a lot of these issues neigh-on impossible to occur, designing the game from the ground up to be much easier to expand, and make it even 1000x easier to include entire new features and systems within a reasonable amount of development time.
What we’re getting at is that the Rebuild is going to solve A LOT of the bug and testing issues.
Unfortunately, there’s no magical button that’ll just transform SU’s design from the tangled Fungus mess it is now to the type of design we need it to be. There’s not even a halfway decent way to grab the text from Fungus! Locke is having to transcribe the game manually line-by-line!
The not-so-good news is that it’s going to take time. And while Locke may seem like he spends more time talking in Discord than coding some days, the fact is that he’s working at a breakneck pace trying to catch the Rebuild up AND do it the right way to avoid future development bottlenecks/problems AND add immense improvements + quality of life adjustments to the core game’s design AND make sure a mobile version is made available - all at the same time. And the crazy fuck is still adamant about being able to do all that before 2020.
The Testers Topic
It’s has been proposed by some people that part of the problem is we don’t have enough testers – and it is something we’re constantly considering. However, due to a lot of the aforementioned issues/circumstances, we won’t be looking to expand and/or refine the tester pool until the revamp of the process is complete.
TLDR: We’re Working On It
We know this seems like a binary issue that can be switched off at a whim, but it’s not. It’s something that’s going to take time and drastic measures to fix – and we’re doing everything we can to do so with each and every update cycle while also maintaining a steady supply of new content.
We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding on this matter.
Thanks for reading,
Gunsmoke Games
