I'm not happy with the way bug reports are being handled.

Twice now, I have submitted bug reports, and been told, essentally "that's not a bug, that's a feature." Since that particular cop-out is now about twelve years out of date, it's not even worth laughing at.

The two things I filed:

a) planar mapping is broken. It doesn't tile evenly on the inside of a dimpled sphere end. It stretches out of shape, depending on the degree of dimple. This is unacceptable. A perfectly square texture should be evenly tiled, in all dimensions. When tiled at 1 X 1, the texture edges should remain aligned to the prim edges at all times. It's a bug. I expect it to be fixed. I don't care if it's an "expected result" - fix it.

b) It is no longer possible to set the material of a grouped object. This was a really nice shortcut, that I used many times. Just select a group-linked object, set the material, and viola - it's set on all of the prims at once. But now, you have to manually select each individual prim, one at a time, and set them all manually. This is clunky, cumbersome, time consuming, and a step backwards. It is therefore not a "new feature" - it's a bug, and I expect it to be fixed, as well.

Dismissing bug reports is a bad way to keep your customers. If it's reported - fix it, whether you personally consider it a bug, or not.

Keeping customers happy and loyal, is how companies stay in business.

Cobalt, while I haven't seen the replies you got, as for a), I'll ask Runitai Linden for clarification.

b) is something I used to use myself. Haven't done this in Preview 1.10 yet, but I'll give it a spin.

Hoora thats they way to tell them unhappy people find better games to play and give there hard earned cash too.

I don't like the taking away of the cash for dwell if theres no dwell theres no camp chairs and no way to make cash when no one buys your stuff.

You're right. The fact is, it's too late to change that functionality. Things have already been built that work with it the way it is, and changing the way it works would break content, causing much sadness. However, I hear what you're saying, and I agree with you that there should be a way to achieve the results you describe. I think the proper way to provide such a change would be to add a whole extra option in the mapping drop down for a whole different mode of projection that does exactly what you want (I'm open to suggestions on what to call it). At the moment, other things are taking priority over creating additional texture generation modes, and I don't know how long it will be before that problem is revisited.

I submitted a bug about this a couple weeks ago: /290/a8/104366/1.html

The more people who submit it as a bug, the more likely LL will fix it. It should also be applied to other prim functions like features (flexibility and light), etc. Keep submitting those bug reports until LL acknowledges it (which Milo Linden did of the 2nd bug above at least).

The report that i submitted was that the text was confusing in calling it select only one object to change the light/flexi setting, as you suggested it should be more correct to call it select one primitive to change the setting as per the object panel.

Ooh also i know people like to see some statistics, and i got some good feedback from the last set of results just to show people, why sometimes we cant spend more time giving such a personal response to reports even though we do look into each one.

As of today the number of bug reports submitted and processed for preview 1.9.1/1.10 is 927, im sure that will increase with tomorrows preview pile on as listed in the announcements forum.

But not a whole lot has really been made with it yet. It's not too late to make the fix without a lot of headaches. Even I would suffer for it as my club uses planar mapping quite a bit, but I could (and will) live with the fix.

How about "True Mapping"?

But the system is already made, you said yoruself it's a bug that needs fixing. So really it shouldn't take more than a day or two of reviewing and adjusting to get it to work right and add another texturing option. o.O;

If you (LL) would just open up the bug database to resident testers we could simply add more info DIRECTLY to the specific bug so you wouldn't HAVE to handle so many (semi-)duplicate bug reports; a bug database wiki would suffice...

Actually its quite handy to have semi duplicate reports, it shows the extent of the problem in some cases and across what kind of hardware, also sometime non of the reproductions given can be used, but reading all the reports and gatering the info together from alot of reports can usually give a better reproduction of an issue.

PRIM_TEXGEN_DEFAULT
PRIM_TEXGEN_PLANAR
PRIM_TEXGEN_AZIMUTHAL
PRIM_TEXGEN_PSEUDOCYLINDRICAL
PRIM_TEXGEN_MOLLWEIDE
PRIM_TEXGEN_MERCATOR
PRIM_TEXGEN_LASKOWSKI_TRI_OPTIMAL_OBLIQUE

Azimuthal looks interesting, but that last one.... x.x
Looks like you'd need to hold doctorates in theoretical math, quantum physics, and cartography to figure it out, or at least how to draw something using it.

That sounds like a body muscle group.

You know, Biceps, Tricepts, Pectorals, Tri Ominal Obliques.

There's no reason a bug database can't include multiple reports from different people, too, Milo. Lindens can (and should) still be in charge of the database, obviously but, at the very least, testers could see what IS known (the known issues list is pathetically inaccurate and outdated most of the time) and try variations, comment about certain aspects of the bug in relation to specific instances, etc.

Linden comments would give the bug submitter reassurance that their bug report isn't blown off or whatever, too. Your bug report replies are nice, Milo but, for me, they are a first from a Linden (since 12/04).

Help us testers help you Lindens.

I totally disagree.

With an open bug database people could check upon if their particular bug has been filed already, see comments of other users on this (possible workarounds), can comment themselves (more detail on the bug, what hardware, ect.) and see, if the bug has been assigned to a tech already, been resolved or "WONTFIX". Bugzilla is a great tool, and I think SL could benefit from using it.

Keeping a bug list closed does not help in any way. People would submit the same bugs with the same informnation again and again, just because they don't know that it already has been filed. If you need statistics on how often this bug occurs, let the users just tick on "this bug occurs here, too".

The bug database is not public because there would be stuff in there thats not for the publics eyes such as:

Priority Bug -> Player found duping L$ and a desciption of how its done. etc..

They are still free to close up details that can lead to serious damage, UNTIL the issue is fixed ASAP. After that they should open the desciption to the public, so we can see what recently has been fixed and how it might affect other things we have been seeing.

Besides: if a maliciously inclined user wants to publish information on how to cheat yourself millions of L$ they can already do so on any of the freely available webspace hosters. This will even give them an effective cloak, preventing them from being banned for disclosing this information.

I've suggested an open bug list in the past with total silence on the other end which makes me think that LL considers bugs and their discussion proprietary.

If the bugs are proprietary, how about at least having a list of what behaviors are correct and won't be deliberately changed? Lots of stuff changes as new versions are released which get reported as bugs and are never responded to at all, but apparently are just new behaviors.

It's very difficult to design code not knowing what the system is supposed to do, never mind what it actually does.