Bug Reporting for Games with Character Creators

Character creators let players customize their character across a wealth of options, body shape, face, hair, clothing, colors, and more, that combine into a vast space of possible characters, and that combinatorial freedom is the appeal and the bug source. Bugs hide in the option combinations, a clipping issue when certain options combine, a morph that breaks, a rendering problem with a custom character, and in the persistence, a creation that fails to save or load. Like other combinatorial-space features, these depend on the character configuration. Tracking character creator bugs means capturing the character config behind a custom creation that broke.

Customization options combine into a vast space

A character creator offers many customization options, body proportions, facial features, hair, clothing, accessories, colors, patterns, that the player combines to create their character, and these options combine into a vast space of possible characters, far more than you could ever test, like the combinatorial space of any system with many combining options. This freedom is the appeal, letting players create unique characters, and it is the bug source, since the combinations produce situations you did not anticipate.

The bugs are in the combinations and the custom characters they produce: a clipping issue where certain options overlap, a morph or deformation that breaks with a combination of proportions, a rendering problem with a custom character, an option that interacts wrongly with another. These emerge from the option combinations, like the combo bugs of any combinatorial feature, and a player can create a character that exposes a bug no designer combined. Understanding that customization options combine into a vast space, with bugs in the combinations and the custom characters, frames the bug tracking: capture the full character configuration behind a custom creation, since the bug emerged from the specific combination the player made.

Capture the character configuration

The core context for a character creator bug is the full character configuration, all the options the player selected, the proportions, features, hair, clothing, colors, and their values, since a character creator bug emerges from the specific combination of options, and reproducing it requires recreating the exact character, like capturing a build or configuration in any combinatorial system. Capture the full character config when a bug is reported.

Capture the complete configuration as a serializable snapshot, the player character is defined by their option selections, which are compact and capturable, so capturing them lets you recreate the exact character and reproduce the bug, much like a serialized build. A report of a clipping, morph, or rendering bug becomes diagnosable when you can load the exact character configuration the player created and see the bug. The character configuration is the player creation from which the bug emerged, and capturing it fully is what lets you recreate the specific combination of options that produced the bug. Capturing the character configuration is the foundation, providing the player creation as a reproducible snapshot, against which the combination, rendering, or persistence bug can be diagnosed.

Watch the option combinations and clipping

The signature character creator bug is the combination problem, where options that each work alone combine into a bug, most commonly clipping, where parts of the character intersect or poke through each other in a combination of proportions, clothing, or accessories, since the options are designed somewhat independently and not every combination is tested. Capture the configuration when a clipping or combination bug is reported, since it reveals the combination that produced it.

Clipping is especially common because the customization combines body proportions, clothing, hair, and accessories that must fit together across all combinations, and an extreme proportion or an unusual combination can cause parts to clip, like the seam bugs of any combinatorial system. Other combination bugs, a morph that breaks at extreme proportions, an option that interacts wrongly with another, are similar. Capturing the configuration of a combination bug, and watching for the clipping and morph issues that the option combinations produce, covers the combination dimension of character creators, where the vast option space produces the clipping and interaction bugs that are the genre characteristic issues, which the captured config lets you reproduce.

Capture the rendering and persistence context

Custom characters must render correctly across the game, and rendering bugs occur, a custom character that renders wrong, a texture or color issue, a custom character that breaks in a particular scene or lighting, since the custom character is a combination the rendering must handle. Capture the rendering context, the character config and where it rendered wrong, with a screenshot, since a rendering bug with a custom character depends on the config and the rendering situation.

And capture the persistence context, since character creators save the player creation, which they invest effort in, and persistence bugs are critical, a creation that fails to save, a saved character that does not load correctly, a creation that corrupts, since losing a player carefully-made character is frustrating, like the save bugs of any valued creation. Capture the save state and config for persistence bugs. Capturing the rendering context, for the custom-character rendering bugs, and the persistence context, for the saved-creation bugs, covers the rendering and saving dimensions of character creators, alongside the combination bugs, together capturing where the vast option space, the custom rendering, and the saved creations produce the genre bugs.

Setting it up with Bugnet

Add an in-game report option and attach the full character configuration, the rendering context, and the persistence and save state as a serialized snapshot and custom fields, with a screenshot. Bugnet stores them so a character creator bug arrives with the character-config context needed to recreate the exact custom character and reproduce a combination, rendering, or persistence bug, which is essential given the vast option space you cannot test exhaustively.

Group identical reports into occurrence counts, watching whether bugs cluster around particular option combinations, which would point at a combination problem there. Because character creators produce a vast combinatorial space with bugs in the combinations, the captured config is what lets you reproduce the exact character the player created and see the bug, finding whether it is a clipping or combination issue, a rendering problem, or a persistence bug, keeping the character creation working across the combinations players make, the rendering of their custom characters, and the saving of their creations, which is exactly where the genre freedom produces its bugs.

Test the combinations and protect creations

Because character creator bugs are in the option combinations, test the combinations, especially the extremes and the combinations most likely to clip or break, the extreme proportions, the clothing and accessory combinations, since you cannot test every combination but can test the boundaries and the likely-problematic combinations, like testing the edge cases of any combinatorial system. Testing the combination extremes catches the clipping and morph bugs most likely to appear.

And protect the saved creations, testing the saving and loading of custom characters, since losing a player carefully-made creation is frustrating and persistence bugs are damaging, applying save-safety rigor to the creations players invest in. Pair the combination and persistence testing with your captured reports, which surface the combination, rendering, and persistence bugs players hit with the configurations you did not test, since players create characters you could not anticipate. Together they keep the character creator working across the combinations players make and the creations they save, ensuring the customization freedom that is the genre appeal produces unique characters rather than clipping, broken, or lost creations.

Character creators combine many options into a vast space. Capture the character config to recreate the combination that broke.