Re: Rubywand's new award! Plus, Answers

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Nathan Mates writes ...
> 
> In article <34F7519A.885105CC@swbell.net>,
> Rubywand  <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:
> >> Your idiotic programming practices which have been shot down
> >> many times this week?
> >     No fair! Tripping over mutilated, sliced-up half-wits is not the
> >same as being shot down.
>
> ....
> 
>    First, did you bother reading the documentation in the least

     Yes! You have to read the docs to find out how to make the screen
bigger.


> and
> emailing the author first?

     No! My post_s_ were cleverly hidden on the world's (e.g. Earth's)
largest and virtually only Apple II newsgroup. You know,
comp.sys.apple2, the newsgroup _you_ like to bash. Right! It's the
newsgroup several Wolf3D programmers (including _you_) spend all their
time on. My posts were disguised via the lable "Wolf 3D-- bug",
remember?



> Since you did not,

     half-right, as usual


> it's safe to assume
> you're just as much the illiterate fool as you've shown to be with the
> OS bug facts and the truth above. You cannot follow the rules in the
> least, of COURSE you're gonna be ignored.
>

     Which, of COURSE, explains how you came to spend hours putting
together this posting.


 
>    By the way, I seem to have missed the bit in the csa2 charter that
> said programmers did have to read it.

     Say what? Where did this come from?

     You appear to have blown a fuse. Careful, Natey; one more and it's
off to Supertimer's boards bin for you.



> Perhaps in your idiotic rantings
> and ravings at a recent full moon you had a delusional moment to that
> effect, but it's certainly not in the truth.
>

[Dear Csa2 Reader: In case you are wondering, nothing was cut from the
above sequence.]


> ....  
> 
>    It is an OS bug, as it exists in the ROM code. Now as you cannot
> handle that truth, you're gonna act the idiot. Go away, back under the
> rock whence you came from, pirating liar.
>

     Not exactly courteous, constructive discourse. Still, the reminder
of my new Real Pirate status is some compensation.

     Let's try this ...


              Rubywand's BUG Test!

     Suppose you have just spent a few hours playing MechWarrior,
Atlantis, and Ultima IX, all of which run fine. Then, you start
SheepWars V: Cow Castle!. Four hours into the game, you're just about to
Wool Bomb the Head Cow when the Sound locks on a long Moooooo, your
screen turns white, and your 6.5GB hard drive is formatted!

Question: Does SheepWars V: Cow Castle! have a bug?


     The only sane answer is "Yes", of course it has a bug. The game was
released to the public and everyone knows that a game is not supposed to
format your hard disk.

     If your answer was "I don't know. I'd have to check out SW-5,
Windows 95 and all of the other programs to which Windows maintains any
kind of active linkage", then, obviously, your position would be that no
one can say whether any game has a bug without doing an in-depth
analysis of SW-5, Windows 95, and associated programs. Basically, no
user and most reviewers would ever be able to say "This game has a bug"
no matter how wacko the glitch. Clearly, your useage of the term "Bug"
is overwhemingly at variance with the accepted, understood useage. You
may not approve; but, words are defined the culture, not you. 

     "No" is untenable. You have just experienced the problem. The
closest you can come to a sensible-sounding "No" is to go for "I don't
know".


     Suppose a careful scan reveals that SheepWars V: Cow Castle
contains code designed to do the Format! There's even a nasty little
note from the programmer. Since the program is working as intended by
the programmer.

Question: Now, does SheepWars V: Cow Castle! have a bug?

     The program can not be said to have a bug because it is executing
as intended. It does not, however, matter. The _Game_ as it runs and is
experienced by the player is not doing what it (or any other game) is
supposed to. Once again, the answer is "Yes".

     Basically, you can say whether or not a game has a bug based upon
its performance. If it formats your hard disk, it has a bug.

     Wolf3D as experienced by many players under an OS which (like
Windows 95) has bugs, does not do what it is supposed to. It crashes.
The game has a _BUG_.

     The only persons likely to claim that the presence of an OS bug
somehow makes Wolf3D bug-free, are those who, taking pride in their
knowledge of the OS, insist upon redefining "Game Bug". They will tell
you that _you_ can never say that any GS game has a bug just as you can
never say that any game on any system has a bug.

 
> >     1. The same bunch who put out your doc put out the OS which has
> >some serious bugs, including at least one associated with the CALL
> >described. In such a doc, the expression "can use" means "can use if you
> >want to try and are willing to test the results".
> 
>    Really? I seem to have missed that line in reading Apple's notes.

     It's called "common sense". That Apple tells you how to go about
making the SetTSPtr CALL from an application does not imply an Apple
guarantee that the CALL will work from any application no matter what
the installed INITs and drivers.

> ....
> 
> >     According to the credits, you did some last-minute modifications to
> >the game. Was the CALL to SetTSPtr one of your modifications?
> 
>    Not in the least.

     Thank you for answering the question.


> I sent Sheppy some code previously in
> TurkeyShootGS for use in speeding up screen draws (particularly on
> slot GSs), and helped squash a totally different bug just before
> release. Sheppy put in that call of his own free will more than a week
> before the game was released, and neither he nor any of the regular
> testers encountered it before release. Many others tried launching and
> quitting the game up to 30 times in a row, never once crashing. Since
> you've already proven you can't handle technical truth, I think
> challenging you to explain why the bug *didn't* bite them would be way
> over your head.
>


    Truth? No crashes? Please read the following:


Jeff Blakeney as posted on csa2, 2/28/1998

>>

....  I was in chat on Delphi with Sheppy
when he discovered the problem with the RefreshDesktop call and he
decided to use the SetTSPtr call to make RefreshDesktop do what he
wanted.  This was at least one WEEK, if not two, before the program
was released and the testers did get to test this change.

There was a total of one out of ten playtesters that ran into this
problem and the error couldn't be reproduced by others so they figured
it was a rare setup that would cause the problem.  As it was not a
fatal or dangerous problem (didn't initialize disks or anything, just
makes you reboot) it wasn't that big of a concern.
....

<<



Eric Shepherd as posted on csa2, 2/25/1998

>>

As I told you in email, Rubywand, the bug in the Tool Locator was
discovered *after* the game shipped, by about eight hours.  We knew what
we released the game that *one* computer was randomly crashing when the
game quit under some circumstances, but out of a dozen machines being
tested on, that seemed like a low enough percentage that the testers and
I
concurred the game was worth shipping, but we'd investigate the problem
further.
....
<<


 
> >     Why all the secrecy?
> >     Was it really so difficult to level with us from the start?
> 
>    Secrecy? It's been clear from the beginning-- this is an OS bug,
> and I've said where and why it happened. You're the one inventing
> conspiracies, ....

     One is beginning to wonder. Still, such "conspiracy" as there may
be seems to boil down to this:

 1. The game was released when it was known that it had failed on at
least one test computer.

 2. The need for a fix (in the OS or the game) to eliminate the Wolf3D
crash problem was recognized before any user problem reports appeared on
csa2. At this time, the decision was made to require an OS patch rather
than to repair the game itself.

 3. The programmers did not respond to user bug reports posted on csa2
because there was no intention to repair the game. The complaint that
users failed to email their reports was merely a ploy to divert blame
for purposeful non-response to user postings.

 4. The programmers have demonstrated a willingness to allow great user
inconvenience and to risk damage to user systems.


> .... 
>    Go back to your trailer trash home, watch the X-Files ....
> 
> Nathan Mates
>


     Thank you, again, for your response.


Rubywand