We sometimes have bugs that are solved, have a solution, or have an obvious solution that makes it unnecessary to spend time on another temporary fix.

do not be upset if they are closed, or get low priority. Many gui problems for example may be known to not be perfect, but there is just not someone available to redesign the whole gui.

Low priority is a-okay with me. I, as much as anyone could, understand that resources are limited. Also, as a volunteer effort, people will work on what interests them, what they're good at, or what they think needs to be done to make the experience the best for players given the amount of effort they can put into it. Not all issues will be addressed in a timely manner... but it's my philosophy that every issue, no matter how small should be tracked regardless. Sometimes bunches of them can be whacked at the same time if a component has significant change made to it, but until a fix is implemented or the component changes in such a way that the report becomes nonsensical, having the bug report around is a sticky note that someone had an issue with some program behaviour. The second thing that caught me off guard is the implication that if I find an issue in the most currently released version (as a tech-savvy player rather than as part of the testing team using the latest build) and report it, that changes might have been made to the tree already without any record of it being available in the bug tracker for folks like me to be able to say "oh, I guess it's already taken care of" and move on to something else. The DLL thing is a good example, and if the reason given to me as to why it was closed was that it was already fixed for the next release, then I would have been mildly irritated that I'd duplicated effort (this issue on Windows might have been missed if everyone who was installing was an existing player that already had OpenAL installed and therefore wouldn't have noticed it); however, the answer I got is that it wasn't a bug because there was a workaround that was available to someone who searched around a bit. Nowhere did it mention that it was already fixed somewhere, and that's why I requested that it be re-opened.

I am suspecting that given the vast amount of issues that need to be handled, that the development team is just grabbing and running with whatever it can find and getting fixes and features tested and out the door... that there's so much to do that being all "formal" and logging issues in the bug tracker before fixing them would bog the process down way too much right now. If so, then if there was a running Changelog with all changes that were made since the last formal release that got automatically updated on the web when someone checked code in (with their explanation line of what they did), then people could check the BugTracker and the Changelog before logging an issue. Would that be possible to do easily? Also, if someone was planning a big change to something, if they could at least log the big changes in the BugTracker as features, that'd give people an indication that they should ignore those parts of the system until after the changes are made.

Or you first point, is a result of the nice feature that username/password combinations are stored for each server, and will load the last used one when you click the server (and clear them if this is the first time).

Heh, and there's another perfect example... after you've said that, I'd have logged a bug or feature request for a minor change to be made to that code: if it's the first time and there is no username/password for a server that got clicked on, then it wouldn't clear the fields... but that once the values had been registered, clicking on the server name would populate those fields and overwrite what was there before. It's such a small thing, but it's the small things that add up to irritate users over time... and it's something that if it didn't get fixed until just before the game was being targeted for a more widespread release, probably wouldn't bother anyone at all (although some people might whine if it was their pet peeve I guess). If someone had that chunk of code open already, they could just slip a quick fix in along with something else; otherwise, I know there are thousands of things that would be a lot more important than specifically going in to chomp on than something like this.

My point is that I suspect that my involvement at the moment would probably be more of an irritant than a help given what I've said and seen (if you're not all already completely sick of me already...), but that maybe I'd actually be valuable a little further down the road. I suspect that my timing if off for getting involved right now. I can't really dive in deep to the code or testing at the moment because I'm preparing to move and am too busy, but once I know I have some time in a few months, perhaps the time will be right then for the sort of contribution that I could make. I strongly suspect that there'll still be a few things to do then... .

Heh... duly noted and updated . Thx!

I got P.O.'ed with Blizzard and WoW and decided to check out other MMORPGs. I spent a couple of days looking around and saw that PlaneShift was built on an open source platform and decided to make it my first attempt to try something new. I read the web pages, registered my account and downloaded the client. I realize that the game was in the Alpha phase but figured that I'd still give it a try (with a very open mind due to its development state). If nothing else, maybe I could contribute with feedback on the game as well as any technical issues I discovered.

The first thing I encountered was the OpenAL32.dll missing issue. I searched the BugTracker and didn't find anything on it. Now, my bad... but I posted a bug report before searching for the solution here. It was dismissed as "not a bug" and I was pointed here. I also posted a bug report that there was no category for the installer itself. I can argue about the second one, but it's just for developers so it's not a big deal; however, I am a little rankled about the first. It's not too hard to fix, and it just took me a little bit of 'net searching to find the solution, and I know there's a way to repair it with the updater now that I've read the forums (although I haven't tried it since I fixed it with the OpenAL installer). What bugs me is that the installer will be a new user's first experience with the game, and not everyone is going to be able to resolve technical issues like that and will just give up. Even if it's not a problem with PlaneShift per se, it still impacts a user's experience and it would be *nice to have* if it handled the setup of middleware like OpenAL that is not likely to be installed on the average person's computer... especially since the OpenAL stuff is also free.

I had originally planned to open a series of problem reports (most of them low priority) and feature requests with the stuff I found as I tried to play, but I've decided to just dump it all here and if anyone on the dev team wants me to codify them in the BugTracker, I'd be happy to try my best to file quality entries. These are in rough chronological order as I found them, but there's no other order implied or otherwise (fyi, I was on a Windows/XP system (1024x768 fullscreen mode) as I was trying it... I also have Linux systems I can try):

• On logging in: typed username and password, then clicked on the server listed to the right, and doing that cleared my username and password
• There did not seem to be a volume control on the login or character creation screens. It was so loud ... I tried to turn it down with my mixer, but it didn't seem to make any difference... as though PlaneShift was overriding my OS level selection
• During character creation: life events font was too large to see the whole string and it didn't wrap very well
• When I pressed the Join button at one point, it didn't do anything ... and also didn't give me an error or indication of what I needed to do properly
• On my first ever login: the window with the buy/sell/trade buttons in it was kind of in the middle of the screen. It would have made more sense to me if it had started in the lower right corner or somewhere against the top or bottom and a side. I figured out how to move it though. The same was true of the stats window... upper right corner?
• In approaching the first NPC, the tutorial said that a red marker would appear under the selected entity, but I couldn't seem to get it to work until after I succeeded in chatting with the NPC and typed "hi". Doing a successful left click seemed to have activated the ability to right click and get the menu. This may be noob issues, but if it was not a subtle bug, then getting that first interaction was very cumbersome. It seemed to work fine after that, so that's what leads me to suspect a code issue
• When I accidentally hit the Quit icon, I got the "Do you really want to leave?" screen; however, the text over both the yes and the no choices both said "Quit"...
• I found it really hard to read the dialog bubbles over the character's head before they disappear (and sometimes it was cut off at the top of the screen). I was forced to ignore the NPC and read from the chat window. It really detracted from the gameplay experience and kept pulling me out of immersion. A suggestion: leave the bubble up until I do something ... like click on something or move
• I eventually figured it out, but at first I didn't think the dialog/messages window could be resized. Neither the pages I'd read nor the tutorial explained to me what to do (it might be there, but it was not obvious from the overview reading I did). The control was only learned by experimentation, but I didn't think it was particularly intuitive.
• When the chat menu *was* resized, it was really awkward looking artwise with everything all stretched linearly (just a resize of the artwork rather than a resize of the box... the sides and top should scale but leave the dimensions of the artwork the same). The font getting larger was also weird. Finally, the green blotchy highlights that resized along with the box looked really weird ... and blotchy ... when the window was made larger
• Speaking of the dialog/chat box, I found the constant flashing of the System or Main green highlights to be very distracting. If it was highlighted and solid (not flashing) that wouldn't be so bad. That would have alerted me to new text, but would not pull my attention forcibly away from gameplay
• The other thing I noticed when I resized the chat window was that although the font I typed in was still the same size, the cursor (before I started typing) was very tall and extended well into the artwork around the entry field box
• I was playing with the scroll wheel while the NPC was selected and I had a lot of trouble getting out of camera mode
• View movement: I found the need to use the PgUp/PgDn keys to look up and down to be very distracting while I tried to walk. Most games I have used, you can use some key/mouse combination (i.e. Shift and mouse movement) to change the basic orientation of the camera. I really wish I could have done it when I got to the edges of things and wanted to look down as well. I don't know what the plans are for this sort of control, but something is needed, imho, to allow movement and the adjustment of camera angle simultaneously to really help with the immersion
• When I typed "Hi, Miss Abelia sent me", the NPC didn't understand, but when I typed "Miss Abelia sent me", it worked... Is this sort of free form communication with NPCs really going to work? Dealing with even the most basic of interactions may ultimately prove to be very frustrating for both the users (who may not all be clever enough to guess the magic phrase to open the cave) and the developers (who will have to deal with constant whining about what didn't work in dealing with an NPC). The flip side is that if you could get this system to work most of the time (with web sites dedicated to phrases that *did* work for a particular NPC for a particular quest), then that might actually be pretty cool if it was something that was also open sourced and could be worked on by the larger language recognition community
• The "Accept Trade" and "Open Inventory" icons were the same in the Exchange window (a temporary state of affairs I would imagine, but I'm just listing all the stuff I noticed)
• When I wanted to walk, it was hard to do after speaking to an NPC. I tried hitting Esc and that closed the chat window, but still wouldn't let me move. To move, I had to click somewhere off the NPC to exit the "red marker" mode and then I could move. I gave it a chance, but even after doing it a bunch of times, it still felt awkward.
• An NPC said goodbye to me and I replied with "bye" and got the "I'm sorry ... I can't understand" you speech... see my comment above I guess. I was all excited at having accomplished a minor quest and was trying to talk "in character" when such a simple interchange broke down and left me frustrated
• When I right clicked on an NPC and brought up the "interaction choices" icons (which... are in front of the character... I found that very distracting!), when I clicked on the "Chat" icon, it brought up the chat window, but did not activate the cursor or put my focus into the text input box... I still had to go over and click in the input box so I could type
• In the chat window, there does not seem to be any way to cut and paste... this really detracted from the flow of things as I tried to communicate with NPCs

That's all I wrote down, and it was mostly during the tutorial, but I logged in fully and went to the city. I wandered around for a while but had no idea what to do next and continued to have issues interacting with NPCs. It was getting late and I decided that I'd had enough for one day (even though I hadn't actually played anything, I was simultaneously overwhelmed by everything I needed to figure out, and frustrated that the UI was not behaving the way I kept hoping it would). I am planning to log back in when I have more time to devote to trying some quests or something and see how that goes.

I hope my descriptions provide some good feedback on some of the issues I encountered during my brief interaction with PlaneShift. If you need me to clarify anything, test something specific around what I said, or contribute in some other way, please let me know. Now these are all "complaints", but I also have seen how much has *been* accomplished! I'm very excited that this game is in development and am looking forward to seeing more as it continues to take shape!