Transcript Issues: Playing in the browser - SOLVED!

[EDIT: See my posts below on Mon Nov 05, 2018 6:14 pm and 8:35 pm for an update]

Hi everyone!

This is an issue that I brought up in the author’s forum. I also e-mailed the comp organizers. I thought maybe it had gone away, but it’s happening again and I’m getting concerned.

You may all know this, but in case you don’t, if you choose to play our games (Diddlebucker! in my case) in the browser, I get a transcript of your play. The problem is, several of the transcripts that I’ve received have been an amalgamation of my game and other games. It’s gibberish.

What I don’t know is where along the line the error is happening. Is the player actually seeing this, or does the error happen later down the line, mixing up the transcripts after a normal play has been completed?

If the player is seeing this, he or she is going to think my game makes no sense or is extremely buggy.

So, what I’m asking is if anyone playing the games has noticed a switch from one game to another. I’m going to post several of my transcripts that are showing this error so you can see what I mean.

Here’s my first such transcript. Diddlebucker! is green. I’ve left the other games’ text color alone. There are several different games here.

[long transcript wrapped by Mod for space]

[rant=transcript]

[/rant]

I noticed it happening again today. Out of the last five transcripts, three have shown this kind of thing.

This one switches from my game to The Temple of Shorgil. It also does my intro twice, which is not a coding error on my part. Again, Diddlebucker! is green.

And here’s another recent one. Diddlebucker! to something else and back to Diddlebucker! again.

You get the idea. I am not complaining, but I am concerned that people playing in the browser might be seeing this mess of other games and assume my game makes no sense. Can anyone else verify if they’ve seen this happen from their end?

Thanks!

J. Michael

Not sure of the answer, but I know I’ve seen some transcript glitches in past years (though not so bad as dipping into other games) where there were missing lines or weird repeats. It seemed like the player never reacted to these, so I’m hoping they’re just happening in the text-recording end and not showing in the browser. It almost looks like the transcripting feature may be simultaneously writing separate plays into the same file? Maybe if it’s getting two entries at the same split second it doesn’t know where they go?

That’s just a guess, I don’t know how it really works, but I would almost be certain if someone were playing and got text from a different game that they would be alerting on it with full-volume.

I’m not sure that this will help, but a few days ago I had the same problem–one of the transcripts for my game, ‘Bullhockey!’ seemed to have text from the same game–I would guess ‘Temple of Shorgil’–mixed in with it. In fact, the very same text that your game had mixed in.

I alerted the administrators about it, and Jackie said that techs are looking into it.

Good news! I got an e-mail from one of the techs and it appears the issue has been resolved. He said he did find a bug in the code and that he had fixed it. He said the fix would clear up existing transcripts and prevent new errors. So far, he’s right. My old transcripts are error free now.

I asked him if the bug would have affected the player’s experience, or just what I saw, but I haven’t heard back yet.

Turns out the issue only affected what the authors saw, not the players. Good news!

Thanks so much for the update, I was getting worried myself.