ReportingProblems

• Reporting problems
  • Before reporting
  • Tips for reporting problems
  • Produce a detailed game session log
  • Examples of reports

Reporting problems

This page will give you a good idea of how to report problems to the project in a useful way.

Before reporting

Here are some things you should do before reporting issues to us:

• Make sure you've got the latest version of Speed Dreams.
• Read the release notes for the version of Speed Dreams you are using, and the platform you are running it on. Be sure to check the original TORCS documentation at http://torcs.org.
• Make sure you've got the latest drivers installed for your video card.
• Find a way to reproduce the problem, if you can.
• Search Trac tickets to see if that bug has already been reported for the latest version.
• If it hasn't, post about it in any of the 3 ways detailed below. Give as many details about how to reproduce it as possible.
• Always include details about your hardware, operating system and library versions.
• Try to provide us with as much information as you can, even if you think we might not need to know it. This will help us reproduce and fix the problem faster.

If you find no solution for the problem, you can report it in 3 ways:

• via the Speed Dreams bug tracker(preferred)
• via the speed-dreams-users mailing list(preferred #2)
• or via Jabber

Tips for reporting problems

• Search the Trac tickets for topics already containing your problem. At least read through the most recent Help and Bugs posts to make sure this isn't already being discussed. If it's a big problem, likelihood is that there's a topic about on the front page of the site.
• Please put a meaningful title on your thread. "Please help me" or "problem with game" do not tell us anything at all. You need not say that there's a problem, as we expect it to be a problem :). Here are examples of good topics: "Car won't shift gears", "lap is not triggered", "AI car turns wrong way", "HUD is not drawn". These topics are all short, but tell us what the topic is about before we read it. It is also much easier to search through topics when they have good titles.
• Make sure to provide every bit of information that you know. This helps us tell where the problem lies, really. We can't help at all, or begin to debug a problem, until we know where it is. There are many more things that cause problems besides the game code, so it is imperative you don't forget this. Problems can be caused by hardware (including CPU, memory, video card, sound card, video memory), operating system, drivers (for video and sound, mainly), or the libraries used on your system (this mainly only applies to Linux and FreeBSD).
• Check back regularly after reporting a problem. We may have questions for you or possible solutions, as well as tests we may need you to run so we can discover more about how the game runs on your system. Try to respond as quickly as possible, and we'll do the same.
• If you use the Trac ticket system, please put your email into the 'CC' field so you can see easily what happens to your problem, or if we have any questions about it to you.
• Use your very best English. It's the only language we all understand. To those of you who are not native English speakers, we will do our very best to understand you. To those of you who are native English speakers, we should not have to spend extra time trying to decipher your post, because you are too lazy to spell correctly and use correct grammar and punctuation. Write your very best and we will have a lot easier time understanding your problem. These things are sometimes hard to describe. Take your time and write as much as you need to tell us about your problem. We understand if you make a few mistakes, but please do your best.
• If you can, include a screen shot of your problem (don't forget to compress the image file as much as possible : the JPEG file format is generally great for this).

Produce a detailed game session log

After reporting problems as explained above, we - dev. guys - will often ask you : "well, to dig more deeply into this issue, we definitely need to know what's really happening on your box ; could you send us back a log of your game session ?".

What's this damn "log" ?

Here's the answer, and how to produce one.

Note: This only applies to 2.0.x and later releases, as well as from-source builds completed from the SVN trunk and at least revision 2750.

When starting and then running, the Speed Dreams program often writes messages explaining what it is doing in the background :

• This is very technical information only targeting people who know the internal code of the game,
• but it can be of great interest when investigating issues ... often the most direct and productive way to understand what really happening bad,
• technically speaking, this messages are by default written to the standard error stream (but this can be changed) :
  • under Windows, when installed through an official binary installer, these messages appear in the black console window that is open behind Speed Dreams' one when starting it up,
  • under Linux, these messages flow into the shell window you use to run SD in the command line.
• but by default, only error/warning and few information messages are output : this is generally not sufficient

In order to get a detailed log, you'll have to start Speed Dreams in a slightly different way :

• under Windows, 2 solutions :
  • or change the game command line in the shortcut you generally use to run the game (and then (double) click on the modified shortcut) :
  • right click on the shortcut icon (on you desktop or in the start menu), and then choose "Properties",
  • at the end of the "command" field (something like "C:\Program files\speed-dreams-xxxx\bin\speed-dreams.exe"), right after the last double quote, add the following text (don't include the double quotes, but don't forget any space) : " -t 5".
  • or run the game from a "Command" shell through the command line found in the startup shortcut, with the same additional options :
  • start a command shell through the Windows start menu (or Start menu / Run ... then "cmd" then return),
  • copy / paste the game command line from the startup shortcut you generally use to run the game (see immediately above),
  • append " -t 5" at the end of the line (don't include the double quotes),
  • hit the Return key, and the game start.
• under Linux,
  • append " -t 5" at the end of the command line you generally use to start the game (don't include the double quotes) , and hit Return
  • in case you got a binary package for you special distro., you may enjoy a Speed Dreams desktop shortcut, and thus be able to change its command line in order add the extra options ...

After that, do what to do in the game in order to reproduce the issue.

Note: Under Windows, don't exit the game if you used the first method. If the game crashes and exits by itself, you have to use the second method.

Then copy / paste the whole shell window text contents into a new document in a text editor :

• under Windows,
  • use the "System menu" of the console window (on the top left corner), choose "Select all", and then hit Return,
  • start your favorite word processor / text editor, and create a new document (File / New should generally do the job),
  • paste (Edit / Paste should be the one to do that),
  • save the document into a file.
• under Linux,
  • select the relevant text in the shell you used to start the game,
  • start your favorite word processor / text editor, and create a new document (File / New should generally do the job),
  • paste (Edit / Paste should be the one to do that),
  • save the document into a file.

Finally, attach the produced file to the Trac ticket you had already filed. That's all folks :-)

Note for advanced users : a simpler solution is to directly instruct Speed Dreams to write its messages to a file :

• append " -t 5 -r /path/to/my/logfile.log"
• beware of the target log file location : carefully choose a target folder where you have write access as a "normal" user.

Examples of reports

Here's a bad example of a bug report:

Topic: HELP OH NO!!!!!1!
when i start up the game it shows some stuff and then goes away what do i do how do u fix it

Here's a good example of a bug report:

Topic: Crash in latest Windows release
Hi, I downloaded the full version of Speed Dreams for Windows (version 1.4.0-beta1) and it crashes
whenever I try to start a new game. The menus all function correctly. My system is Windows XP
SP2, P4 2 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM and GeForce 5600 video card with nVidia drivers 9.4.3.2.

(This Wiki page was very heavily influenced by VDrift's corresponding one. Thanks Thelusiv!)