Intro

A good Bug Report (or BR) title is short and descriptive. It should tell the reader what the bug is, where it happens and in which circumstances it occurs. A good idea is to put the location or a keyword as the first word, so it'd be easier for BH's and QA people to sort through bug reports. Like "Exploration", "Chat" or "Modules".

Example: "Overview: War targets not displayed on overview".

Directions about what is needed for a useful bug report:

  1. Logserver log
  2. DXDiag file
  3. Crashdump (if its generated)
  4. Screenshot of the bug (not the error window that sometimes pops up though, thats useless)
  5. Detailed description of what happened and what you did.

Using the logserver

(to minimize problems with this, its recommended that you either restart your computer or check Task managers process list for unresponsive instances of Eve.exe)

  1. Find your Eve folder in Windows Explorer
  2. When you have the Eve folder open, find "logserver.exe" and launch it (Do NOT have EVE running)
  3. Select "File" -> "New Workspace"
  4. Start Eve like you would normally do
  5. When you have reproduced the bug, Eve crashes or when you kill the process if it hangs, select "File" -> "Save workspace as..." and save the workspace in a place you'll find it again.

Saving a screenshot

  1. When you encounter the bug, press the Print Screen(Prt Scr) button on you keyboard. (If pressing Prt Scr does not generate a screenshot, check the status of your F-lock button)
  2. The screenshot should be located in "My Documents" under "EVE" then "Capture".
  3. Find the screenshot you took(the one with the most recent timestamp).
  4. Edit the screenshot in paint to highlight the point(s) of interest.

Saving a DXDiag

  1. Select "Start" -> "Run..."
  2. Type "dxdiag" and press Enter
  3. Select the "Save all information..." button and save the file in a place you'll find it again.

Finding the crashdump

  1. Locate a subfolder of you Eve folder called "Logs" (f.ex "C:\Program Files\CCP\EVE\Logs"
  2. Find the .dmp file with the most recent time stamp. Files called #error*.txt are useless.

Category

Selects one of the high-level categories for the defect.

  • Game mechanics: Anything to do with the logic behind the game, design and the way things are supposed to work.
  • PVE: Issues with agents, missions, exploration, LP store, NPC’s and so on which don’t fall in the Game mechanics category.
  • Technical: Crashes, freezes, exceptions, hardware-related issues, sound, cache, EVE Voice, models, graphics (i.e. models and textures) and other technical issues.
  • Tutorial (NPE): Anything related to the New Player Experience, rookie missions, and the tutorial.
  • UI: All issues related to the User Interface (NeoCom, overview, station services etc), but not graphical issues.
  • Website and forums: self-explanatory.
  • Other: Stuff that doesn't fit in any of the categories above.

Client Build

Don't forget to update this field with the build number in which the bug occurred. If the issue is also present in the current Tranquility build, make a note of that in the bug report, but the client build should be the current test server build in which you last reproduced the issue. You can find this build number by looking at the bottom left corner of the login screen (example 3.22.36191 would be build 36191) or in-game by hitting the ESC key and viewing the top left of the screen.

Make sure to mention the build in which the bug occurred and the server you were testing on. Usually the test servers run a different code than Tranquility, so it is important to know in which version of the code happens the bug.

Description

Here you should give as many details as possible and describe the bug scenario in detail and all the circumstances in which the bug occurred.

A good description will save devs a lot of headaches and make it easier to fix your issue quicker. For example, submitting a bug "War targets not displayed on overview" or "Cannot unfit launchers on ships" sounds very serious until you specify that it *only* happens if you select a certain option in the Overview or you have a certain rig fitted on your ship when trying to remove the launchers. It's important to give a measure of how severe the bug is and how wide its area of effect is.

Mention how often that bug occurs, if it's something that happens every time or just some weird occurrence that only happened once and couldn't be reproduced. It's important to know if it's a common issue that can easily happen or some kind of oddball exception.

Reproduction Steps

The most useful bug reports are those that have a good description as to how to reproduce the bug in a consistent manner. Try to reproduce the bug again and determine the exact steps you need to go through in order to make it happen again.

Try to find the simplest method to make your bug happen. This section should outline how you made it happen, broken down into steps, numbered chronologically. Try to make it very clear for anyone reading the BR just what exactly they have to do in order to reproduce the bug. The bug might seem fairly obvious to you, because you've experienced it firsthand, but if the reproduction steps are complicated try to make the steps as clear and complete as possible so that we can reproduce it ourselves and fix the issue.

Attachments

Client logs and screen shots of the situation are very useful and should be attached to the bug report.

If you are experiencing crashes, frozen client, graphic errors or sound errors, then attach a DxDiag output as well to the bug report.

Just make sure that you add all attached files to a single zip archive, which you attach to the bug report.

Logserver

  • To use Logserver, launch Logserver.exe before you start the EVE client(s), go to File and select New Workspace (Ctrl + W). After you reproduced the bug, go to File again and select Save Workspace or Save Workspace As... This will save the log by default in the directory where Logserver.exe is, but you can select a different location as well.
  • You can place Logserver.exe in its separate folder, to avoid cluttering your Eve folders with log files. Just copy the file to a new folder and launch it from there (you can make a shortcut on the desktop or the Quick Launch bar for fast access).
  • You can rename the logfiles after the bug they recorded, for easier filing.
  • To save RAM and make the logfiles easier to manage, use the Server Mode. To do that, open the Logserver and from the Tools menu check Server Mode. You can set the number of lines from the dialog box that automatically appears when you check Server Mode. This means that after logging that number of lines Logserver will automatically save the file and start a new log.

Screen shots

The screen shots you take are stored in the "My Documents\EVE\Capture\Screenshots" folder.

DxDiag

The DxDiag report provides detailed information about your computer’s configuration. It might prove crucial in getting to the root of a hardware/driver-related issue.