Feedback Feature Suggestion: "Report" button on error pop-up

[matharoo]

We'll be starting alpha testing for our game soon, and was wondering about ways to get our users to report the error that they got.

So I thought that it could be useful to have a "report" button on the error pop-up. You could set any link you want for your project, and the button would simply copy the error to your clipboard and take you to the page (which could be a form).



This could help even for a game's stable release because you can't really avoid errors. Without a direct report button, not many players are going to report the errors that they get.

What do you guys think?

 

[JeffJ]

I dig it, as an optional flag or something (because what would happen if no URL was defined?)

Although, I imagine this would be easy to add ourselves once the manual error handling opens up, hopefully this year.

 

[CombatCalamity]

I dig it, as an optional flag or something (because what would happen if no URL was defined?)

Although, I imagine this would be easy to add ourselves once the manual error handling opens up, hopefully this year.

I think YellowAfterlife already has an extension on try catch error handling etc. like that.

 

[FrostyCat]

Generating an error results in an return code of 1, so that can be leveraged at the shell level along with debug parameters.

Here's an example that starts a webpage automatically upon the main game's crash:

@echo off
pushd %~dp0%
game.exe -output output.txt -debugoutput debug.txt || start "" https://www.google.ca
popd

Replace the URL with a form that instructs the user to submit output.txt and debug.txt. The error will be found in output.txt along with the result of all other show_debug_message() calls.

And as already said, if YoYo follows through on its promise to implement exception handling at a global level, the need for this would be greatly diminished, or at least restricted to absolutely unrecoverable faults.

 

[matharoo]

Generating an error results in an return code of 1, so that can be leveraged at the shell level along with debug parameters.

Here's an example that starts a webpage automatically upon the main game's crash:

@echo off
pushd %~dp0%
game.exe -output output.txt -debugoutput debug.txt || start "" https://www.google.ca
popd

Replace the URL with a form that instructs the user to submit output.txt and debug.txt. The error will be found in output.txt along with the result of all other show_debug_message() calls.

And as already said, if YoYo follows through on its promise to implement exception handling at a global level, the need for this would be greatly diminished, or at least restricted to absolutely unrecoverable faults.

So I added this to the arguments of my Steam build:

-output output.txt -debugoutput debug.txt || start "" https://my_google_docs_link

The output files are created, so that works, but after the game aborts with a fatal error, the link doesn't open. Any idea why?

I tried putting the link in quotes but that didn't work either.

EDIT: I tried using a bat file instead of executable arguments; the link still didn't work.

 

[matharoo]

Generating an error results in an return code of 1, so that can be leveraged at the shell level along with debug parameters.

Here's an example that starts a webpage automatically upon the main game's crash:

@echo off
pushd %~dp0%
game.exe -output output.txt -debugoutput debug.txt || start "" https://www.google.ca
popd

Replace the URL with a form that instructs the user to submit output.txt and debug.txt. The error will be found in output.txt along with the result of all other show_debug_message() calls.

And as already said, if YoYo follows through on its promise to implement exception handling at a global level, the need for this would be greatly diminished, or at least restricted to absolutely unrecoverable faults.

Hey, hope you saw my previous post - the crash link is not working.

EDIT: It works now, thanks.

 

[Mert]

Once we get exception handlings, I'll update my Firebase Crashlytics extension accordingly with this. Also, I'm waiting for try / catch for my Firebase Performance Monitoring extension.

Not being able to step in errors is a big hole in Game Maker's history.

 

[FrostyCat]

Hey, hope you saw my previous post - the crash link is not working. Thanks.

You have to start the game by running that batch file. The part starting from || are not arguments to the main executable.

I tested on the standard Windows VM build, so there may be export-specific differences in the Steam export that I'm not aware of. Try echoing %ERRORLEVEL% in the batch file and then PAUSE to keep it on screen for you to see.

 

[matharoo]

You have to start the game by running that batch file. The part starting from || are not arguments to the main executable.

I tested on the standard Windows VM build, so there may be export-specific differences in the Steam export that I'm not aware of. Try echoing %ERRORLEVEL% in the batch file and then PAUSE to keep it on screen for you to see.

Yes, using the batch file now, and there were some other complications that are now gone - and it works. Thanks!