Comments for Instant Kingdom - Independent Games

Comment on Automated error reporting by Ville

Ville — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:12:55 +0000

Strictly speaking the http post is the command to send stuff to a webpage – it only works when the connection is available. It’s up to the program to save the data to be sent later, but I’m not doing that because of the work involved.

Comment on Automated error reporting by VenoM_31

VenoM_31 — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:00:41 +0000

Great!
I’m pretty unfamiliar with all the net stuff, so a noob question:
does this “http post message” have an option to save a report to file and report later (ASAP – as soon as possible – as soon as Internet is available or smth)?

Comment on Automated error reporting by Ville

Ville — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:29:07 +0000

Ah, the curiosity of a programmer. I’m using the method SetUnhandledExceptionFilter to catch all the exceptions that aren’t catched by anything else. It works for arithmetic errors as well as access violations, but it’s windows only. I don’t know exactly what will be left uncaught after that, but it’s worked well so far.

I will be sending the reports to the instantkingdom server by plain old http post message, for which the recipient end is just a simple php script. The entire system is working already, as Gareth is eagerly crashing the game in the midst of making music.

Comment on Automated error reporting by Amarth

Amarth — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:04:12 +0000

MAC address is indeed a pretty good idea.

Some more technicalities… How do you actually notice there is an error? Assuming you use C++ for your game, I’d guess you could add a sort of outer try-catch loop but that won’t grab nearly all bugs. I think about null dereferencing or division by zero which IIRC don’t throw exceptions in C++ and indeed produce undefined behavior.

Also, how will you send the reports? E-mail? Or HTTP POST, somewhere on your website? Or something entirely different? Just curious here, not sure what would be the best way.

And yeah, I’d give the possibility to add comments, and it’s probably easiest with a little textbox. It might be useful to ask people for a way to contact them (e-mail or something), though the report shouldn’t require it. Even if a user can’t help you further with the bug, you can let them know when the bug is fixed. Always nice to hear back from the developer so you know your report made a difference.

Comment on Automated error reporting by VenoM_31

VenoM_31 — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:49:55 +0000

Amarth: “…like user name, machine name, CPU, RAM, graphics card, perhaps there even is a unique serial ID somewhere…” – MAC addresses? Just a thought.

Comment on Automated error reporting by Ville

Ville — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:21:30 +0000

Thanks for the idea! IP is definitely useless for any kind of reliable system, but since this is just to help me see if I got a dozen logs from the same user at the same time, IP is all I need. And of course, I’m expecting to never get any logs at all.

Seriously though, one thing I’m thinking is that I should probably put in a small input box so you could write what you did to crash the game. Knowing that along with the crash log would be extremely useful.

Comment on Can you spot it? by Egemen

Egemen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:41:39 +0000

There maybe a Spot skill and the more points you have in it the more does the necessary item shine it’s like a 6th sense for items. But that may make the game very easy so this skill must be hard to get or not implemented at all. Also you may do it like you did with blackrock. There maybe other similar items but one looks slightly different so an actual spot check by the player is needed.

Comment on Automated error reporting by Amarth

Amarth — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:51:42 +0000

IP addresses might not be the best way to identify computers or players. For one, do you take the machine’s IP? That might very well be a private network IP, so you’ll get many 192.168.0.10 addresses. Then there’s the other side, people with dynamic IPs. Or people who are not connected, playing on the go or something. Or people who play at different locations. You’ll get so many mismatches that using the IP is essentially useless. Also we’ll all be on IPv6 eventually so how will you handle that?

I’d suggest you take some machine parameters (like user name, machine name, CPU, RAM, graphics card, perhaps there even is a unique serial ID somewhere) and string them together, then hash them through MD5 or something, if you want a somewhat reliable yet non-privacy-infringing identifier.

Apart from that, I believe automated error reporting is a great idea. Squash the bugs!

Comment on Roger the Shark’s Tooth! by Barnox

Barnox — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:04:03 +0000

Magic Chain – On hold, it whips out and grab an enemy, and then you can move them around like you can boxes/rocks/logs. Cooldown, to not make it overpowered crowd control?

Peacekeeper’s shield – Two handed shield. Arrows travelling towards you will veer away to the side, and spells will fizzle out/get pushed away before hitting you. Possible use in puzzles to bend lightning strikes?

Fleet blade + Swift blade – Two one-hand shortblades. Individually, attack medium-fast for medium damage. When both are used together, another attack is unlocked allowing you to attack with both at a much faster pace.

Comment on Can you spot it? by Ville

Ville — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:23:53 +0000

I’ll definitely add an option to disable the highlight for item types – I won’t of course want all secret items to be plainly visible.

Using this as a skill could be a good idea, thanks cevgar!