06-24-2016, 08:36 AM
Yes, so after seeing so many of these complaints about description crashes and running into them myself while clicking on random people, two thoughts have finally occurred to me.
Before I address them, I'd like to point out to many of the people 'hoping this issue gets fixed' that it's most likely a BYOND issue with rendering all the fancy HTML5 inside the game, as it does now rather than opening a browser page. In other words, I doubt it's something we'll be seeing fixed very soon or at least easily. Rather than wonder how to fix it, I suggest we add two very important features to simply get around this issue, along with perhaps a rule which will probably sound reasonable enough after the thought.
I don't doubt Dev's already thought of these or was planning to add them in before the issues came up, but just in case...
First of all, bring back preview. Obviously if someone hits preview and their client crashes, they're going to realize something's wrong with their code. There should be no reason people risk turning themselves into walking nukes simply by editing their first description page. In addition to adding preview, force users to preview their page before it actually saves. Why? To prevent the whole 'I don't like equipment tab viewing, so I'll nuke my description' abuse, which I'm sure at least one person is doing intentionally or has at least thought to.
Secondly, add a verb that resets all of a user's profile pages. Of course, this comes with the downside of people losing them if they hadn't backed them up somewhere else, but that simply takes changing the verb's directive from 'reset all pages' to 'drop down menus and allow the user to choose the page they wish to reset.' Obviously, add into that process of changing that page back to null the same routine the game does to give players their old descriptions back: output it as basic text in a popup window before it's set back to null. That way, nothing lost.
If we can have both these things and assuming they work, there should be no reason for anyone be going around with a broken description anymore. Therefore, anyone going around with one would be bug abusing, so simply make it against the rules.
I made that sound a bit salty, but I know most people don't intend to bomb their descriptions as the game is right now. I'm simply thinking into the future.
Open to criticism on this.
Before I address them, I'd like to point out to many of the people 'hoping this issue gets fixed' that it's most likely a BYOND issue with rendering all the fancy HTML5 inside the game, as it does now rather than opening a browser page. In other words, I doubt it's something we'll be seeing fixed very soon or at least easily. Rather than wonder how to fix it, I suggest we add two very important features to simply get around this issue, along with perhaps a rule which will probably sound reasonable enough after the thought.
I don't doubt Dev's already thought of these or was planning to add them in before the issues came up, but just in case...
First of all, bring back preview. Obviously if someone hits preview and their client crashes, they're going to realize something's wrong with their code. There should be no reason people risk turning themselves into walking nukes simply by editing their first description page. In addition to adding preview, force users to preview their page before it actually saves. Why? To prevent the whole 'I don't like equipment tab viewing, so I'll nuke my description' abuse, which I'm sure at least one person is doing intentionally or has at least thought to.
Secondly, add a verb that resets all of a user's profile pages. Of course, this comes with the downside of people losing them if they hadn't backed them up somewhere else, but that simply takes changing the verb's directive from 'reset all pages' to 'drop down menus and allow the user to choose the page they wish to reset.' Obviously, add into that process of changing that page back to null the same routine the game does to give players their old descriptions back: output it as basic text in a popup window before it's set back to null. That way, nothing lost.
If we can have both these things and assuming they work, there should be no reason for anyone be going around with a broken description anymore. Therefore, anyone going around with one would be bug abusing, so simply make it against the rules.
I made that sound a bit salty, but I know most people don't intend to bomb their descriptions as the game is right now. I'm simply thinking into the future.
Open to criticism on this.