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AppGameKit Classic Chat / Wanted: AGK Community Tester

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LeeBamber
TGC Lead Developer
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Posted: 11th Jun 2012 13:33
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Hi Guys,

I am looking for someone from the AppGameKit community who has lots of time and doesn't need paying The mission, should you decide to accept it, would be to go through the Issues Board when we send you an email and reproduce the bug reports and post a definitive step by step to reproduce, or conclude the bug is not a bug, or is really a feature request, or is indeed a bug and here is how you reproduce it.

In our efforts to streamline, we observed it takes us quite a long time to reproduce bugs that turn out not to be bugs, and I think you will agree our time is better spent highly focused in the source code instead of making cute little programs to figure out how to get a bug to come out and play.

We cannot offer much in the way of remuneration, but we can give you the official 'AGK Community Tester' hat, and it will be yours for as long as you (and the community) want it. We might also throw in some benefits such as free TGC software should you need it. The hat does require that you can log in several times a week and keep the issues board up to date with comments on all current bugs so that when we move into 'bug fixing mode' we have wealth of material to work from.

If you are interested in wearing the hat, email me directly at lee@thegamecreators.com with a brief description of your background skills, experience and your familiarity with AppGameKit and the community, and I will get back to each of you in turn. If you do well in the role, there might even be a badge in it for you. We'll see

Lead Developer of Dark Basic Pro, FPS Creator and AppGameKit (App Game Kit)
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AgentSam
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Posted: 12th Jun 2012 05:04
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In addition to the above, I think it wouldn't hurt to actually show examples of well written reports, and promote writing of such reports.

Any additional work required to sort out those vague issue reports will get old pretty soon, I tell ya.

Frankly, writing those AppGameKit issue reports is quite a lot of work to begin with -- we would much rather just be coding with AppGameKit, than writing those issue reports in the first place! I have at least 20 reports logged in a notepad, which I haven't had the time to submit to the issue tracker yet. And, somehow I feel that if this product was stable and mature enough, I wouldn't have to. (I may have developed a somewhat grumpy attitude again..but there you are. Think of me as that part of your customers, who isn't easily impressed.)
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baxslash
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Posted: 12th Jun 2012 22:42
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Quote: "Frankly, writing those AppGameKit issue reports is quite a lot of work to begin with"

Really? I mean really? I haven't added a lot of issues there but it has taken me around 30 seconds to report a simple bug. I'm quite a busy person but I could have added a report to the issues board in the time it's taken me to log on here and write this post.

Is it really that hard?

I'd rather be coding too so back to it

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bjadams
AGK Backer
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Posted: 12th Jun 2012 22:55
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with straight-forward bugs it takes less than 5 mins to report. And Lee or Paul always pop up somewhere to discuss and give their point of view.

and are there really so many bugs in agk in 1076? apart from the white flash at startup on windows and those damn temp interpreter files in my documents, i can't see much annoying things.
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BatVink
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Posted: 13th Jun 2012 01:13
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In the corporate world, if you have a bug then you must reproduce it in a test environment, with all data. That could mean creating inventory, pricing it, setting discounts, allocating stock, generating picklists, posting to the ledgers and so on. Then when your bug is acknowledged, you pay to get it fixed.

We have it very easy here, and logging issues is normal for all software, it's how products mature.

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AgentSam
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Posted: 13th Jun 2012 03:56
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The step to recruit a community tester will help the developers, there is no doubt of that.

However, the work of the community tester doesn't appear to be very rewarding. Nor is that of the issue reporters actually. Yet many of TGCs faithful customers still do it.

So now, here we are - looking for a Community Tester to maintain the issues board, and presumably to do the work which should have been done by the original issue reporters in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that really doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

If all issue reports were well written, there wouldn't be a need for the "community tester". True? (I do realize that the majority of issue reports will propably never be as complete as they should be - so there's the need for the Issues Board maintenance, always.)

When Lee writes, "The hat does REQUIRE that you can log in several times a week and keep the issues board up to date" - it sounds like quite an obligation.

Questions - will there be one community tester or will there be many among which the workload will be distributed?

And, how many people have jumped at the opportunity to do this issue maintenenace work for free, for a commercial product? Just curious. TGC has a very faithful community here; they are lucky in that way.
I'm actually happy if people offer to do this work, but would also be a bit surprised.

Lastly, here's my attempt at giving an overview of the grief that goes along with the discovery of every bug. Why is this important? Because ultimately the discovered bugs should end up in the issues board, and this is the overall picture surrounding the bug discovery:

1. You run across a bug and you'll be rather disappointed at a product for failing once again. (When this happens repeatedly, it accumulates to a larger overall disappointment in the product. Assuming, of course, that the cause is justified -- a real bug, and not just your own failure to understand the documentation.)

2. You'll have to find a way around the bug to continue your project. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it isn't.

3. You are expected to report the issue - with as much detail as necessary. As Lee said above, he'd like to "have wealth of material to work from". I agree. It is necessary to verify the bug, how to reproduce it (with sufficient sample code where necessary), what the expected output should be, all that etc. It is a fairly standard procedure, some may even like doing it - yet many fail to do it properly.

4. At some indeterminate time, you will receive a product version with the bug fix. At that time, you may want to reimplement your application by removing your workaround; depending on how carefully you maintain your own projects. In any case, if you were in the middle of product development while updating to a new version of the SDK, you will have to make sure that the new release didn't break any old code in the current project.

Personally I'm never happy when I run across a new bug. Even if it would take me just 30 seconds to write the initial report.
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Hodgey
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Posted: 13th Jun 2012 04:50
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Quote: "However, the work of the community tester doesn't appear to be very rewarding. "

Depends on the tester. Some people might want the experience this provides e.g students. Others might be dedicated to improving AGK. Not all of us are after monetary rewards.

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kamac
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Posted: 13th Jun 2012 12:24 Edited at: 13th Jun 2012 12:25
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Quote: "However, the work of the community tester doesn't appear to be very rewarding. Nor is that of the issue reporters actually. Yet many of TGCs faithful customers still do it."


Think of it just as library creators for commercial products do. They make a library, and release it for free. Why? To help the community. That's it I guess.


You also assume that people should write correct issues reports. They should write reasonable topics which follow the rules on forums too. Do they do it? No, and that requires moderation. Same for issues board - people see something that they take a bug, but actually it might be a feature! Let's take a "random guy" for example:
1. Random guy is happy because he's coding his great game.
2. Random guy has ran across a problem - Oh no! - He thinks. He tries to repair it, but then he thinks "maybe it's a bug?".
3. Thinking it's a bug, our Random guy enters the issues board and (with a smile on his face) writes something like:
"Command A doesn't work because I've tried and it doesn't work."

Now Random guy thinks ( and he's correct there ) that somebody will check that command to see what did he mean.
But what if the checker doesn't encounter his problem? Then the report gets deleted - And that's called moderation!

Follow me on twitter! @MotionStruct
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bjadams
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Posted: 13th Jun 2012 14:43
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Kamac sometimes there are hidden scopes behind releasing a library.

I used to use a scripting language written in delphi. the programmer released it with the hidden scope so that people would do the testing and report problems, so he would not waste time finding bugs! when most of the problems were solved he offered the source code for sale because he was moving to other projects!!!! people who had build their products on this system had no other choice.

3 years later he came back and announced that he was working on a version 2. he did the same exact trick once again!

luckily i decided to move over to html5 & javascipt and i never looked back!
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Ancient Lady
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 18:27
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I just received an email from Lee accepting me as one of the AppGameKit Community Testers and this is the post he requested announcing my acceptance of the role.

So, now I am officially ready to try to reproduce and document issues mentioned.

Cheers,
Ancient Lady
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bjadams
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 18:28
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Really happy to have you as the tester, now I know who to complain to (apart from Paul)!!!
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kamac
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 18:31
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Received an email from Lee about accepting me also. So I announce I accept this role.

Follow me on twitter! @MotionStruct
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baxslash
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 18:35
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Great choices I think

Congrats guys! I'm sure your hard work will be aptly rewarded.

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DennisW
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 19:33
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Hello Guys and Gals

I also am one of the chosen ones.

I accept

Dennis

Ham and Eggs Breakfast
The Chicken was involved the Pig was Committed
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The Daddy
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 19:46
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Hi Lee

I accept the offer to be a community tester.

Let me know what kind of feedback you are looking for and in what format!

Constantly seeking!
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Ancient Lady
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 19:50
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Okay, four out of five of us testers have accepted (and already been pestered by me with emails).

Who is the fifth?

Cheers,
Ancient Lady
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Cliff Mellangard 3DEGS
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 19:54
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Congrats everyone
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Marl
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 20:02
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Quote: "Okay, four out of five of us testers have accepted (and already been pestered by me with emails).

Who is the fifth?"

Hey, you don't have time to be hanging around here gossiping - get some work done

Only kidding - Well done everyone.
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Ancient Lady
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 20:12
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Lee just let us in on it. Hodgey is one of the five. Fabulous!

I am working. I just figured out how to reproduce the problem for issue #305 and am currently writing it up.

Cheers,
Ancient Lady
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Marl
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 21:09
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Makes sense, there was a clue in his earlier post.
Quote: "...Others might be dedicated to improving AGK. Not all of us are after monetary rewards."


Well done Hodgey :missing thumbs up icon:

BTW. Nice moniker, but I can't help feeling a little intimidated by that Hammer
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Ancient Lady
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 21:16
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Quote: "I can't help feeling a little intimidated by that Hammer"


Maybe it's meant to intimidate everyone so that we don't get flooded?

Or it's a tool to be used on us if we don't do our job?

Or it's meant to be something that we use to break AppGameKit to show the bugs?

I really don't think that we are being called tools (in the derogatory sense).

But we are to be tools to help everyone. That sounds about right.

Cheers,
Ancient Lady
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Marl
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 21:42
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I think it's so that after a new release you can all put on your parachute pants and announce.

"It's Hammertime"

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Conjured Entertainment
AGK Developer
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 21:44 Edited at: 19th Jun 2012 21:54
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Congrats guys (& ancient gal)!

Keep 'banging' away at 'smashing' those bugs.
I'm sure your hammer will come in handy.

Use the force, and one day you might get a lightsaber, should you become a Jedi bug killer.

On a side note:
What's up with the open browser in Android?
Does the current player available for Android not support that yet or what?
It works fine on the PC using v1076, but when I broadcast to an Android (2.3.4), it gives an "unknown command: line#" error.

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DennisW
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 21:51
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Based on what we are to do. It should be a copy icon or a copy machine lol

Ham and Eggs Breakfast
The Chicken was involved the Pig was Committed
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baxslash
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 21:56
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Nice badge guys! As an ex-blacksmith I approve.

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DennisW
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 21:57
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So thats why you can hammer out that code so fast

Ham and Eggs Breakfast
The Chicken was involved the Pig was Committed
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Ancient Lady
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 22:09
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Quote: "So thats why you can hammer out that code so fast"


I suppose one must expect a bunny to be punny.

Cheers,
Ancient Lady
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bjadams
AGK Backer
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 22:33
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OK now that we have a whole team of testers, we need a couple of guys to write guides for doing funky ios & android native things in T2 that AppGameKit does not support yet!!!

Who is up for the job?!! I can offer some beer & chocolate as compensation!
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BatVink
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 22:41
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Congrats to all five of you. My game isn't working, do I just send it to you and you return it fixed?

It was worth a try! I will be posting some bugs shortly though, they'll have code but will no doubt need to be confirmed by you gurus as more than just shoddy coding on my part.

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Hodgey
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Posted: 19th Jun 2012 22:47
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I am always late to the party! Oh well, here I am.

Quote: "My game isn't working, do I just send it to you and you return it fixed?"

You could probably get away with that. Just send each bug in one by one and we have to determine if it's a bug or not, which practically means trying to solve it...and I shouldn't have told you that.

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Rich Dersheimer
AGK Developer
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 06:56
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Thank you to all the AppGameKit Community Testers! I'm sure your hard work will help TGC make AppGameKit better and better!

Some days, the bear will eat you.
Some days, you'll eat the bear.
Today, I'm eating the bear!
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AgentSam
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 11:30
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Judging by the ones who got selected, many capable persons offered to become community testers.

Being a community tester is obviously not something to be congratulated about - so, A HUGE THANK YOU to all newly selected Community Testers for the work you have offered to do!
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baxslash
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 11:37 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 11:48
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Good point, these people require thanks much more than congratulations

Thanks a lot guys for volunteering!

EDIT: What about something like this for the badge (if a hammer seems inappropriate?)



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Hodgey
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 11:50
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And I'm already making mistakes, small ones mind you. One should not code after taking a 2 hour maths exam.

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kamac
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 13:24
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Quote: "http://forum.thegamecreators.com/xt/xt_apollo_pic.php?i=2365605"


It's great, but thing is it has to be 50x50 .gif image . I've made another hammer, which seems quite nice but has messy outline because of .gif restrictions.

Follow me on twitter! @MotionStruct
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baxslash
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 13:32 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 13:32
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What about this version (50x50 gif):



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kamac
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 13:38 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 13:38
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Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. GIF restrictions make things ugly.
Here's my hammer in the form it has been sent to Lee:



It really looked more appealing as .png.

Follow me on twitter! @MotionStruct
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baxslash
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 13:42
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That's definitely better. I'll have a go at tidying mine up if I get a chance. A hammer just doesn't seem right to me but I guess you guys are the testers!


this.mess = abs(sin(times#))
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baxslash
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 13:47 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 13:47
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Slightly better:



this.mess = abs(sin(times#))

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Hodgey
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 13:52 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 14:10
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What about this?

Edit-version 2


The hammer could use more detail though.

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baxslash
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 14:33
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Nice one Hodgey!! I likey very muchy

Looks vaguely familiar...


this.mess = abs(sin(times#))
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Ancient Lady
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 16:12
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Hodgey, the forum clearly can't handle two badges at a time. Your hammer is missing.

Cheers,
Ancient Lady
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BatVink
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 17:11
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Quote: "Hodgey, the forum clearly can't handle two badges at a time"


Correct, hence no mods can also be considered respectable, helpful or anything else noteworthy!

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baxslash
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 17:19
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Quote: "Correct, hence no mods can also be considered respectable, helpful or anything else noteworthy!"

Raw nerve?

Remember batvink, you are a MOD. That's all ANYONE needs to know...

Anyway we all know how respectable, helpful and yay even noteworthy you are dude


this.mess = abs(sin(times#))
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Hodgey
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Posted: 20th Jun 2012 21:39 Edited at: 20th Jun 2012 21:40
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Quote: "Looks vaguely familiar..."

It's a screen shot of your badge because I may have dropped mine a few times. When (if) I get the hammer, I'm going to miss hanging out in the Valued Member's lounge with you.

Quote: "Hodgey, the forum clearly can't handle two badges at a time. Your hammer is missing."

I broke the forums!

Quote: "Correct, hence no mods can also be considered respectable, helpful or anything else noteworthy!"

You just need to promote the MOD badge correctly. Hence, the forum badge equation:



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Nickydude
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 14:50 Edited at: 21st Jun 2012 14:51
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Let me just correct that for you Hodgey.



I reject your reality and substitute my own...

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Hodgey
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 15:01
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Does that mean you can sell your moderator badge on ebay?

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Ancient Lady
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 16:50
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Myth Busters Rule!

Cheers,
Ancient Lady
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The Daddy
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 17:59
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How About this one......

Constantly seeking!

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The Daddy
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Posted: 21st Jun 2012 18:01
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Any takers on this??

Constantly seeking!

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