Re: wolf 3d-- BUG!

[CUTjefbla@bconnex.net (Jeff Blakeney)]

Here are some points that I want to make but don't feel like writing
an essay to get them across in proper English fashion:

- The play testers did not see this bug therefore, a work around for
the OS bug could not be written before release.

- Sheppy followed Apple's instructions for doing what ended up
triggering the bug, therefore, his code is not at fault.

 - It is the same as if someone had a buggy init, DA or whatever that
Wolf triggered causing the machine to crash.  It isn't Sheppy's code
that is buggy it is the init, DA or whatever's.

- Have you ever had an init conflict?  Who's fault is it that certain
inits don't work together?  Should init authors have to test their
init with every other existing init and rewrite their code to make
sure that it doesn't trigger any bugs in any of the other inits? I
don't think so.

- Please note that the bug only happens when you quit from Wolf.  How
can you say one way or the other whether it is Sheppy's code crashing
before it finishes or Apple's code as it takes over control again that
is causing the problem?

- Nathan Mates tracked down the bug down to be in Apple's code which
answers that last question.  It is what the OS does after Sheppy's
code has finished and the OS has taken over control of the machine
again.

- Now that the bug is known to exist, a work around is being worked on
as I type.  Whether it be a new version of GUPP or new code in Wolf to
avoid the problem it will be taken care of.

- Doing the fix at the OS level (which is basically what GUPP would
do) is the best way to handle it because no other programs would have
to write code to deal with that OPERATING SYSTEM BUG.  Besides,
programs that do their own work around for that bug may not work with
a newer version of the OS where the bug has been fixed.

- The bug doesn't depend on having run Wolfenstein 3D.  It can be
triggered by other programs on machines that Wolf has never been
installed on.  How can you call it a Wolf bug if it happens when you
don't have Wolf installed?  It is like the Choose Font bug that Nathan
Mates discovered.  He used Teach as the example program to trigger the
bug.  Is this a bug in Teach?  No because it can also be triggered by
many other programs.  Are they all buggy too?  No, the OS was buggy
and the bug got triggered by a number of other programs.  Now that the
buggy code in the OS has been patched by GUPP, all those programs and
all the ones after them will work correctly.

Here are my responses to the previous post.  Some of which may just be
reiterations of my points above.

On Sun, 22 Feb 1998 06:02:22 -0600, Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>
wrote:

>     In so far as the supposed bug in the standard, widely-installed OS
>leads to a game bombing, the game programmers _must_ "clean up after"
>the bug. If they do not, their game will BOMB. This is not a complex
>concept.

Why not fix the buggy code once by patching the operating system
rather than have every program that works under that version of the
operating system get rewritten to work around it?

>     If the programmers release the game to the public, players will be
>chapped when they encounter the _game_ BUG. Reviewers will print
>reviewes saying things like: "It's a nice game; too bad it's got a BUG
>which  B O M B S  your system".

So, by your definition, this problem does not exist on a machine that
has System 6.01 installed but doesn't have Wolfenstein 3D.  This is
WRONG.  The buggy code is part of GS/OS and it exist on all machines
that are running System 6.01.  Whether it gets triggered on your
machine with your paticular setup is another topic altogether.

>     Feel free. Meanwhile, Wolf-3D should be fixed so that it does not
>crash when running under the standard OS. Many other GS games do not
>crash; Wolf-3D should not crash, either.

Many other games do crash on the IIgs.  What's your point.  Besides,
they are working on a fix but it will probably be to patch the bug in
the operating system rather than having Wolf work around the bug.

>     If programmers insist upon using calls like SetTSPtr, then they had
>darn sure better pay attention to OS quirks.

Sheppy did.  He followed Apple's Technote so as to avoid any problems
but there was an unknown bug in the operating system that got
triggered by his code and now some people are trying to dump on him
because of it.

>     Wolf-3D does not work correctly. The _game_ has a BUG, sir, a big
>fat BUG!

Wolfenstein 3D for the IIgs works fine.  It is the operating system
that has a bug that crashes the system when it tries to take control
of the system AFTER you have quit Wolf.

=== I've had enough SPAM.  Cut the obvious from my address to email me. ===