My feelings on The Demon Rush
Sounds good to me. If you want to add me to the PM you can, but I have a feeling that 99% of what's being talked about will go over my head.
Yay, so its everyone's favorite time of year, its your chance to gawk at how I could have possibly gotten a CS degree!
So CBX and I have been hard at work writing this, in the hopes of making everyone's lives more complicated come marathon time. But I need your help. Knowing me, the program is riddled with show-stopping bugs all over the place that I am unable to track down all on my own.
What you need:
0) A google account: if you don't have one, I'm not quite sure how you internet on a daily basis, but if you don't, you just go to google, and tell them your email, and a password, and poof, you get access to a lot of good stuff.
1) A computer cabable of running C#-based programs: for a variety of reasons, the program is written in C# this year (and probably brainfuck next year). Hence, it'll only run on relatively recent versions of Windows.
2) A sense of adventure: I like to think the program is pretty self-explanatory, but I also like to think I'm a half-decent programmer. I'm willing to answer any questions about the program you may have, but I'm not about to post a twenty-page guide on how to enter text into boxes. Some willingness to figure stuff out on your own would go a long way.
3) A sense of propriety: Since there is _some_ personal information in the database (specifically, names and e-mail addresses), you will be expected not to reveal any information about anyone in the system without their expressed consent etc..
With that out of the way, here's what you need to do:
0) Head over to http://trackertest.uranium-anchor.com/tracker. This is the testing website we're using (the live site will be at http://sda.sorrowind.net/tracker, since they're separate sites, you'd need a separate account and such). Near the bottom of the page, you'll see a button that says 'log in with google account'. Click it, and you'll either be redirected to google to enter your email and password, or go directly to step 0.2.
1) Enter the username you want to have on the site, preferably make it your SDA forum name.
2) Post here to let me know you added your account to the site, and I'll modify the account to give it privileges to access the fancy backend stuff (complicated? To the programmer, this is a way of life!).
3) Start up the program, and go File -> Connect To Tracker Website. For the domain, enter trackertest.uranium-anchor.com.
The email and password is just your google email and password that you used in step 0.
4) Since all the events are in one database, you can pick which event to work on. Right now, go File -> Select Event, and pick Classic Games Done Quick. We've loaded all of that event's donations in there, and I worked through a few, but basically, its small enough to test on, but its real enough to be real.
5) If you used the program last year, its mostly the same, but some things are a little different:
- mostly the way that assigning bids and stuff is handled. Basically, you create the entity using the 'create' button, and then edit the fields in the table, and then save everything all at once. Linking to the target bid should be slightly easier this time around since I added auto-complete to the text fields (if what you're looking for doesn't show up, you can (when the editing field is _active_) right-click->search to get a full search dialog too).
- Searching should be a little simpler. We added a 'basic search' field that can be used to search for any piece of text on any entity (so like, name, comment, description, whatever), should make finding things easier I hope.
- I split the 'process donations' pages into two versions, one that loads the bids onto the page (version 2), and one that doesn't (version 1). Version 1 loads faster, but is kinda useless. I don't know, I think there was a reason both were in there, but I may have been smoking a particularly funky brand of kool-aid that night.
- Speaking of which, the 'process donations' pages have two 'modes' (three, technically), for dealing with comments (i.e. screening for crude/lewd-ness), and for dealing with bid related stuff (and the 3rd mode is both at once). All that does is effect which fields are auto-set to 'processed'/'approved', when you hit the 'save' button (and they'll only be set to that if they were left on their default value).
- The 'reading' page (which I'm proud to announce runs about 100x faster this year (not an exaggeration!) also has 2 modes, for 'high', and 'low' volume. High volume will only read those whose comments have been set to 'APPROVED' (you can also set it to filter based on time passed since it arrived (to avoid reading donations only to immediately have it come back again once the comment is loaded (NO, there is no other known way around this using chipin, sorry!), and based on a minimum amount (we used a base-line of 1.00$ last year, we may consider upping it a bit, and changing it from time-to-time depending on circumstances).
- Don't run either the chipin or schedule merge. I guess the chipin is okay, it just won't do anything. The schedule merge will just give you an error (which will be marked as 'unknown', this is a known bug).
- To create things, just select the appropriate thing from the 'create' menu. It won't be entered into the database until you hit the 'save' button, so keep that in mind. When you need to link stuff (i.e. assign the game to a bid), you have to use the funny text box with a search button next to it. This is called an entity selector, and basically, if you start typing something, it'll try to auto-complete it for you. If you can't find what you're looking for, you can try to manually search (it'll open a search dialog when you click the search button). Note that some things (donors, specifically) won't have the auto-complete thing, so you'll have to set them using the search: basically, this was done because the auto-complete can get kinda laggy when dealing with very large sets (and we have over 5000 donors registered, which for our purposes is very large).
6) Go nuts. Seriously, as far as I can tell, the program works correctly under normal circumstances, so I need to know what abnormal things need to be addressed. Things to look for:
- The error messages are somewhat ass: I don't know how much of a problem this will be, but if you come across any that don't make any sense, or have any idea how to word them better, please post it here.
- There are some cases where error dialogs will pop up, but they won't block you from manipulating the main program in the meantime (normally, when the error window pops up, it'll force you to close it before you can get back to the main program, and 'ding' at you until you do so). I got some of them, but there might be others. Basically, if you notice the program spawning a bunch of windows in the background, let me know what you were doing when they appeared.
- When you try to close a page without editing anything, it might give you a 'there are unsaved changes on this tab, close anyways', and you're all like 'there are totally no unsaved changes on this tab page, what the fuck SMK?', to which I reply 'I know, its a bug'
- If you save an entity, it might not show up in the auto-complete boxes for something like 2 minutes. If this happens, you can either search for it manually, or refresh the page, both will force it to update immediately.
- Anything that causes the program to crash: let me know where and when, and hopefully steps to reproduce it. By 'crash', I don't mean pop up an error dialog telling you that you forgot to enter a name into the name field, I mean causes the program to stop working and asks you to send an error report or something weird like that.
Anyways, I'm getting kinda loopy from the fever and lack of sleep, so I'm going to cut my losses and stop now. Any help would be appreciated.
So CBX and I have been hard at work writing this, in the hopes of making everyone's lives more complicated come marathon time. But I need your help. Knowing me, the program is riddled with show-stopping bugs all over the place that I am unable to track down all on my own.
What you need:
0) A google account: if you don't have one, I'm not quite sure how you internet on a daily basis, but if you don't, you just go to google, and tell them your email, and a password, and poof, you get access to a lot of good stuff.
1) A computer cabable of running C#-based programs: for a variety of reasons, the program is written in C# this year (and probably brainfuck next year). Hence, it'll only run on relatively recent versions of Windows.
2) A sense of adventure: I like to think the program is pretty self-explanatory, but I also like to think I'm a half-decent programmer. I'm willing to answer any questions about the program you may have, but I'm not about to post a twenty-page guide on how to enter text into boxes. Some willingness to figure stuff out on your own would go a long way.
3) A sense of propriety: Since there is _some_ personal information in the database (specifically, names and e-mail addresses), you will be expected not to reveal any information about anyone in the system without their expressed consent etc..
With that out of the way, here's what you need to do:
0) Head over to http://trackertest.uranium-anchor.com/tracker. This is the testing website we're using (the live site will be at http://sda.sorrowind.net/tracker, since they're separate sites, you'd need a separate account and such). Near the bottom of the page, you'll see a button that says 'log in with google account'. Click it, and you'll either be redirected to google to enter your email and password, or go directly to step 0.2.
1) Enter the username you want to have on the site, preferably make it your SDA forum name.
2) Post here to let me know you added your account to the site, and I'll modify the account to give it privileges to access the fancy backend stuff (complicated? To the programmer, this is a way of life!).
3) Start up the program, and go File -> Connect To Tracker Website. For the domain, enter trackertest.uranium-anchor.com.
The email and password is just your google email and password that you used in step 0.
4) Since all the events are in one database, you can pick which event to work on. Right now, go File -> Select Event, and pick Classic Games Done Quick. We've loaded all of that event's donations in there, and I worked through a few, but basically, its small enough to test on, but its real enough to be real.
5) If you used the program last year, its mostly the same, but some things are a little different:
- mostly the way that assigning bids and stuff is handled. Basically, you create the entity using the 'create' button, and then edit the fields in the table, and then save everything all at once. Linking to the target bid should be slightly easier this time around since I added auto-complete to the text fields (if what you're looking for doesn't show up, you can (when the editing field is _active_) right-click->search to get a full search dialog too).
- Searching should be a little simpler. We added a 'basic search' field that can be used to search for any piece of text on any entity (so like, name, comment, description, whatever), should make finding things easier I hope.
- I split the 'process donations' pages into two versions, one that loads the bids onto the page (version 2), and one that doesn't (version 1). Version 1 loads faster, but is kinda useless. I don't know, I think there was a reason both were in there, but I may have been smoking a particularly funky brand of kool-aid that night.
- Speaking of which, the 'process donations' pages have two 'modes' (three, technically), for dealing with comments (i.e. screening for crude/lewd-ness), and for dealing with bid related stuff (and the 3rd mode is both at once). All that does is effect which fields are auto-set to 'processed'/'approved', when you hit the 'save' button (and they'll only be set to that if they were left on their default value).
- The 'reading' page (which I'm proud to announce runs about 100x faster this year (not an exaggeration!) also has 2 modes, for 'high', and 'low' volume. High volume will only read those whose comments have been set to 'APPROVED' (you can also set it to filter based on time passed since it arrived (to avoid reading donations only to immediately have it come back again once the comment is loaded (NO, there is no other known way around this using chipin, sorry!), and based on a minimum amount (we used a base-line of 1.00$ last year, we may consider upping it a bit, and changing it from time-to-time depending on circumstances).
- Don't run either the chipin or schedule merge. I guess the chipin is okay, it just won't do anything. The schedule merge will just give you an error (which will be marked as 'unknown', this is a known bug).
- To create things, just select the appropriate thing from the 'create' menu. It won't be entered into the database until you hit the 'save' button, so keep that in mind. When you need to link stuff (i.e. assign the game to a bid), you have to use the funny text box with a search button next to it. This is called an entity selector, and basically, if you start typing something, it'll try to auto-complete it for you. If you can't find what you're looking for, you can try to manually search (it'll open a search dialog when you click the search button). Note that some things (donors, specifically) won't have the auto-complete thing, so you'll have to set them using the search: basically, this was done because the auto-complete can get kinda laggy when dealing with very large sets (and we have over 5000 donors registered, which for our purposes is very large).
6) Go nuts. Seriously, as far as I can tell, the program works correctly under normal circumstances, so I need to know what abnormal things need to be addressed. Things to look for:
- The error messages are somewhat ass: I don't know how much of a problem this will be, but if you come across any that don't make any sense, or have any idea how to word them better, please post it here.
- There are some cases where error dialogs will pop up, but they won't block you from manipulating the main program in the meantime (normally, when the error window pops up, it'll force you to close it before you can get back to the main program, and 'ding' at you until you do so). I got some of them, but there might be others. Basically, if you notice the program spawning a bunch of windows in the background, let me know what you were doing when they appeared.
- When you try to close a page without editing anything, it might give you a 'there are unsaved changes on this tab, close anyways', and you're all like 'there are totally no unsaved changes on this tab page, what the fuck SMK?', to which I reply 'I know, its a bug'
- If you save an entity, it might not show up in the auto-complete boxes for something like 2 minutes. If this happens, you can either search for it manually, or refresh the page, both will force it to update immediately.
- Anything that causes the program to crash: let me know where and when, and hopefully steps to reproduce it. By 'crash', I don't mean pop up an error dialog telling you that you forgot to enter a name into the name field, I mean causes the program to stop working and asks you to send an error report or something weird like that.
Anyways, I'm getting kinda loopy from the fever and lack of sleep, so I'm going to cut my losses and stop now. Any help would be appreciated.