What changed
0 fixes0 additions3 changes0 removals
changedSo what happened was that a player living half a world away had the game crash during the loading screen, but not on my machine. The bigger problem was that we couldn't find the crash logs. There was also no exception in the player log. Finally, we managed to identify it by having the player crash the game on purpose using Task manager right before the real crash was supposed to occur and get the crash log from that fake crash. That actually gave me a clue on where the issue was: While loading audio and texture files, somehow someway the game was getting stuck while loading a specific audio file. I couldn't identify which one without the real crash report.
changedSo I implemented Unity's cloud solution so that in the future, if a case like this occurs again, at least Unity's crash app will send the crash logs to Unity's servers, along with the last 50 log statements from the player log. This will be immensely helpful and allow me to identify and fix issues a lot faster.
changedI also took the opportunity to place a builti-n player feedback button. So if you press F11, a button will appear and you will be able to type in a sort of a report. That consists of a title and a text and you can use it for anything you want, wether it's a suggestion, or a bug report, or even if you just feel like complimenting something you like about the game. The report will be sent to me. But mainly this tool is meant to be used by playtesters prior to the demo release. I'm thinking of keeping it even during the demo release because why not.
Swarmdustry changes
changedSo what happened was that a player living half a world away had the game crash during the loading screen, but not on my machine. The bigger problem was that we couldn't find the crash logs. There was also no exception in the player log. Finally, we managed to identify it by having the player crash the game on purpose using Task manager right before the real crash was supposed to occur and get the crash log from that fake crash. That actually gave me a clue on where the issue was: While loading audio and texture files, somehow someway the game was getting stuck while loading a specific audio file. I couldn't identify which one without the real crash report.
changedSo I implemented Unity's cloud solution so that in the future, if a case like this occurs again, at least Unity's crash app will send the crash logs to Unity's servers, along with the last 50 log statements from the player log. This will be immensely helpful and allow me to identify and fix issues a lot faster.
changedI also took the opportunity to place a builti-n player feedback button. So if you press F11, a button will appear and you will be able to type in a sort of a report. That consists of a title and a text and you can use it for anything you want, wether it's a suggestion, or a bug report, or even if you just feel like complimenting something you like about the game. The report will be sent to me. But mainly this tool is meant to be used by playtesters prior to the demo release. I'm thinking of keeping it even during the demo release because why not.
I've dedicated the past few weeks to building a tutorial and a demo. Myself, my team and some close friends have been doing a lot of playtesting and I feel like we are almost ready to open up the game to the public.
During this time, we've found many bugs, but only very few were critical which is always good news. But one of these bugs revealed a pretty big gap: I hadn't built any diagnostic tooling for debugging issues on other player's machines.
So what happened was that a player living half a world away had the game crash during the loading screen, but not on my machine. The bigger problem was that we couldn't find the crash logs. There was also no exception in the player log. Finally, we managed to identify it by having the player crash the game on purpose using Task manager right before the real crash was supposed to occur and get the crash log from that fake crash. That actually gave me a clue on where the issue was: While loading audio and texture files, somehow someway the game was getting stuck while loading a specific audio file. I couldn't identify which one without the real crash report.
So I implemented Unity's cloud solution so that in the future, if a case like this occurs again, at least Unity's crash app will send the crash logs to Unity's servers, along with the last 50 log statements from the player log. This will be immensely helpful and allow me to identify and fix issues a lot faster.
I also took the opportunity to place a builti-n player feedback button. So if you press F11, a button will appear and you will be able to type in a sort of a report. That consists of a title and a text and you can use it for anything you want, wether it's a suggestion, or a bug report, or even if you just feel like complimenting something you like about the game. The report will be sent to me. But mainly this tool is meant to be used by playtesters prior to the demo release. I'm thinking of keeping it even during the demo release because why not.
This is pretty much it for this short dev blog. Keep an eye out for steam announcements and discord chats. We'll be opening up playtesting and anybody can participate!
The swarm must spread!
