How to Provide a Useful Bug Report

[friarsol]

You like Forge, we like Forge. We try to make it as clean as possible, but it happens. Bugs popup; cards didn't interact appropriately; once in a while something crashes. Sometimes they crop up because the script is slightly wrong, sometimes we try to fix something else that lead to some unexpected consequences. Here are some guidelines for providing a useful bug report:

0) Determine if what you want is actually a bug.
a) Generally bugs are: cards not interacting with the rules properly, the AI using a card illegally. In general, you'll know a bug if you see one. Just remember what isn't a bug.
b) Wanting a feature is not a bug. If you think we're missing stuff you'd like to see, feel free to add a Feature Request in the appropriate topic, Feature Requests Thread. It may get added, it may not. All of the Forge developers are doing so on their free time, so there aren't any guarantees here.
c) And wanting a card to be added to Forge that is not currently in the list of implemented cards is not a bug, it is a request for a new card. At this time we are no longer taking requests for cards to be implemented. We don't have very many remaining, so they are all on our list, and will be implemented as we get certain complications figured out.
d) If the AI is being dumb, or playing poorly, this isn't a bug. It's just a limitation of how our AI works. We have two dedicated AI Threads. If you feel the need to report poor AI play, please use the appropriate one and provide detailed information as it's covered below. Card AI (Improvements) Requests and AI attacking and blocking Observations Do not report on cards that are marked as unable to be played by the AI.

1) Determine which version of Forge you are using.
a) If this is the latest beta release, please post in the forum thread that announced the release of the beta. This thread is usually called something like: Forge Beta <date> ver. <version number> and should be stickied on the main Forge message board.
b) If this is a pretty recent snapshot release, please post in the Bug Reports (snapshot builds) in the Developer's Corner Forum.
c) If this is an Android Alpha release and it is related to the Android app itself (UI related things, other mobile specific issues), please post in the Forge Android App thread. If it doesn't meet that criteria, please post in Bug Reports (snapshot builds)
d) If you are using an old alpha, beta or snapshot release, please update to the latest version of the appropriate type and check if the bug still happens.

2) Please tell us exactly what cards are being used, how you are using them, and why you think it's a bug. Don't just say "Some card doesn't work" tell us exactly what you tried to do. If a card "stopped working" try to tell us how you used it earlier (be specific). A lot of this stuff is important, Forge is a huge game with a ton of rules to follow. "I activated ABC and targeted DEF. I thought DEF would be destroyed due to the ability, but it didn't happen."

3) If you can take a screenshot including the game log in the screenshot (or at least the last handful of lines as a copy/paste), that will increase the possibility of finding the bug.

4) A step by step way to reproduce a bug 100% of the time is the fastest way to get it fixed. Just because you get a crash when you use a specific card, doesn't mean that when I load it into my game it happens for me. I can't just fix an issue I can't identify.

Other things that can help:
5) Don't be afraid to follow up the next release. Sometimes bugs slip through the cracks, sometimes they are hard to track down so it's more difficult to actually fix. Make sure when following up, that you still provide some useful information, or at least a link back to when you did post useful information.

6) Try to do a cursory glance to see if someone already reported the same thing. You can still report it, but including the information like "Oh I noticed XYZ is happening to me, but in a slightly different scenario" it could help narrow down what's causing the issue.

7) Understand the cards. There are a ton of cards in magic, and a ton of different rulings. Try to be safe and lookup the primary card that you are concerned about on magiccards.info or gatherer.wizards.com. Usually if they are complex they'll have rulings blurbs about specific scenarios. Oftentimes a new player, or a player seeing a card for a first time, will have their question resolved by these useful blurbs.

Please note

Not every bug report will get a response from the dev team. Sometimes we try to clarify things, or reply to say that the report actually is working as expected. Sometimes we post when bugs are fixed, but sometimes bugs are fixed without replies.

Hopefully this short guide will be useful to everyone who's trying out Forge, and we'll add to this list appropriately.