Severe bugs

Some people believe that the only severe bug in a game are A bugs. But that is of course just another classification. But what constitutes an A or severe bug? It is usually a bug that faals into one of several areas

1. Effects the control of the character in a negative way (eg: stuck in wall)
2. A player abusing a bug can get an unfair advance or advantage in the game.(eg: allows you to skip difficult content)
3. Glitches that make the game generally unplayable. (eg: Screen graphical corruption obscures the game area)

Bugs by nature are a malfunction of the game code itself, though sometimes it is not the code, but is in fact the level layout, or maybe and more likely the level collision (missing a wall? :S).

Anyway, i wasn't gonna discuss all that really, but sometimes a bug that doesn't appear to be any big thang, can in fact be a severe bug. Let's take my current game for example. Bob the Frog has a circular scrolling level (horizontally). This means that stuff that goes off the left side comes back on the right side fairly quickly, and also vice versa. Well i have no regular severe bugs that i am aware of, but there is a graphical anomaly in the background graphics that i have been noticing and getting on my nerves. Well i decided that i needed to look into this bug, and the main reason is i regard it as severe. Yes, a simple looking graphical problem.

My reasoning i think is quite sound. This glitch makes my game look like it has been developed by an amateur. It makes the game look untidy. Though ti does not efect the gameplay of anyone playing directly, it does distract. So this is a must fix for me, otherwise i would expect people to mark my game down on quailty, and that will hurt sales potential.

The bug is a rounding issue. One where if the scrolling is going in a positive direction it all works fine. But if i scroll the other way (negatively on the X), then i get a strange effect. I have two halves to the Moon, they need to stay exactly 240 pixels from each other so they align properly. However when i print their positions i can see them alternating between 240 and 241 as i scroll in the negative X direction. This means i can see a pixel line (gap) appearing on and off again as i scroll along. Bah! so annoying!

This needs to be fixed, and probably soon, as it is getting on my Nerves.

Laters
Da Voodoochief