Supporting your Torque-based game
by Justin Mette · in Torque Game Engine · 02/19/2002 (7:45 am) · 3 replies
This may seem a tad early for this discussion as many of us are still quite a ways off from publishing our games. However, in the recent weeks as Myrmidon has started to shape up and represent the original concepts more people on the team have been running that game and we have been experiencing, first-hand, the difficulties of debugging the game on the plethora of machine configurations (video, sound, processor, memory, etc) out there.
Fixing a crash that only happens on one person's machine is extremely difficult and we have generally cheated by running debug builds or builds with lots of extra log output something we can't necessarily do after a game is published. In many cases, it's our new Myrmidon code that is causing problems and we can fix it but a few times, low level Torque issues have caused the problems. In those cases we are rendered quite helpless in debugging and fixing the problem.
In past software projects I have worked on, a support desk is established that answer calls and emails from customers once the product goes live (and sometimes even during Beta). The support personnel are trained to answer most support questions but there are those that get sent back to the developers to investigate (aka second-level support). I have also seen situations where there needs to be a third level of support if there are back-end systems being utilized by the software.
I was wondering what kind of thoughts GG or the community has given to product support for their published games. I would suspect that each of us responsible for publishing a game are also responsible for establishing our own first-level product support (at least email or web site submissions). Second-level support would most likely be the programming team for the game itself. Is GG planning on providing some type of third-level support for Torque in the cases where the second-level support team can't resolve the problem?
It seems both dangerous and valuable (extremes) for GG to get into this business. On the positive side, GG would generally be able to fix low-level Torque problems quicker than the rest of us which is a primary way to keep your customers happy quick turn around on bug fixes. Another benefit would be to the community in that Torque would continue to become more stable instead of programming teams fixing only their local copy of Torque, for example. Of course, the downside of GG providing third-level support for Torque is the overhead and resources required to provide that type of support something I am not clear whether GG wants to get into.
If GG is not interested in putting a third-level support org together (understandable) then we, the community, might consider some type of joint effort for tackling low-level Torque problems found after the release of our games.
Sorry for the length of the post, I guess I had more to say on this topic than I thought. What are the community thoughts on this topic?
Justin Mette
21-6 Productions
Fixing a crash that only happens on one person's machine is extremely difficult and we have generally cheated by running debug builds or builds with lots of extra log output something we can't necessarily do after a game is published. In many cases, it's our new Myrmidon code that is causing problems and we can fix it but a few times, low level Torque issues have caused the problems. In those cases we are rendered quite helpless in debugging and fixing the problem.
In past software projects I have worked on, a support desk is established that answer calls and emails from customers once the product goes live (and sometimes even during Beta). The support personnel are trained to answer most support questions but there are those that get sent back to the developers to investigate (aka second-level support). I have also seen situations where there needs to be a third level of support if there are back-end systems being utilized by the software.
I was wondering what kind of thoughts GG or the community has given to product support for their published games. I would suspect that each of us responsible for publishing a game are also responsible for establishing our own first-level product support (at least email or web site submissions). Second-level support would most likely be the programming team for the game itself. Is GG planning on providing some type of third-level support for Torque in the cases where the second-level support team can't resolve the problem?
It seems both dangerous and valuable (extremes) for GG to get into this business. On the positive side, GG would generally be able to fix low-level Torque problems quicker than the rest of us which is a primary way to keep your customers happy quick turn around on bug fixes. Another benefit would be to the community in that Torque would continue to become more stable instead of programming teams fixing only their local copy of Torque, for example. Of course, the downside of GG providing third-level support for Torque is the overhead and resources required to provide that type of support something I am not clear whether GG wants to get into.
If GG is not interested in putting a third-level support org together (understandable) then we, the community, might consider some type of joint effort for tackling low-level Torque problems found after the release of our games.
Sorry for the length of the post, I guess I had more to say on this topic than I thought. What are the community thoughts on this topic?
Justin Mette
21-6 Productions
#2
In addition, we will provide FAQ and trouble shooting guides to your users that you will have admin control over.
The developer is responsible for their product's support. GG will provide a certain amount of 3rd tier support, as Justin calls it. However, we will not fix arcane bugs caused by usage of the Torque that we do not feel is proper. If we feel that fixing a bug will be beneficial to all Torque users, then we will fix it. This is similar to using an operating system, i.e. you work around "bugs". Please remember that one person's bug is another person's feature.
Jeff Tunnell GG
02/19/2002 (10:27 am)
There will be bug tracking for each game, so users can report bugs. This will serve as a sales incentive or disincentive to the users since they will be able to see how many bugs a product has before they purchase. Products that have too many bugs, will be pulled from the ecommerce "shelf"In addition, we will provide FAQ and trouble shooting guides to your users that you will have admin control over.
The developer is responsible for their product's support. GG will provide a certain amount of 3rd tier support, as Justin calls it. However, we will not fix arcane bugs caused by usage of the Torque that we do not feel is proper. If we feel that fixing a bug will be beneficial to all Torque users, then we will fix it. This is similar to using an operating system, i.e. you work around "bugs". Please remember that one person's bug is another person's feature.
Jeff Tunnell GG
#3
I look forward to the day when I am using your bug tracking system and FAQ areas for Myrmidon!
Thanks for the quick and informative response.
02/19/2002 (10:36 am)
Jeff, that's fantastic! I am glad to hear that Garage Games will be "again" helping us indies with such a difficult aspect of publishing a game. You guys are really stepping up to the challenge nicely.I look forward to the day when I am using your bug tracking system and FAQ areas for Myrmidon!
Thanks for the quick and informative response.
Torque Owner Mychal McCabe
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Diagnostic dumps: Whenever the game is started, it dumps a whole load of diagnostics out to a text file. This includes any hardware information we could even dream was relevant graphics card ID, capabilities, memory, driver versions, OS versions, which blends were used, which didn't work, etc. The idea was that if a user had a problem, instead of asking them questions about their system (most users do not know what is inside the box, or have faulty and incomplete knowledge), we just had to ask them to send us the file we called it something friendly such as "your gfxcard.txt".
It could also present some of the more obvious problems. For example, all the user knows is that the game is slow and crashes a lot an incredibly vague problem to track down. Looking at the diagnostics, if the card reports having 0MB of AGP memory, we can fairly reliably diagnose old motherboard drivers.
***
In the past some discussion of contracting out for support services has come up, can't find the thread, based on a per sale amount. if I remember correctly, the GG folks have no intention (and shouldn't have any intention) of providing support to anyone but us developers in the established mode, but recognize that this is an issue and are trying to come up with a solution.
For most titles which come from GG, the inevitable wave of first response support contacts will commence and the face that each of us as developers presents to the out side world will contribute directly to the public perception of our offerings.
If a team sucessfully pursues box type publication through an established publisher then support would likely follow a different channel.
I'm curious to see where this thread will go.
Mychal McCabe
mychal@badlandsgames.com