[Phantom Hoover]

Would it be possible to add a button somewhere on the launcher or installer that opens your fs2_open.log file? It'd be a lot easier on new users than trying to guide them through checking all of the different places Windows may have stored it depending on OS version, install location and phase of the moon.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Yeah, we really need to simplify our troubleshooting procedure. On a similar note: how difficult would it be for the launcher to auto-detect a debug build? That way our troubleshooting steps could go from :

- select a debug build
- launch the game
- play until bug occurs
- open FS2 folder
- go to data/
- post fs2_open.log on the forum
- once the problem is solved, switch back to a release build
- play the game

To:
- launch the game is debug mode
- play until bug occurs
- click on "find debug log" or something similar
- post fs2_open.log on the forum
- once the problem is solved, play the game

[Luis Dias]

You could even make it so that within the launcher a new window could pop up and we would be able to send a bug report while directly creating a forum thread *iff* a description and name were added to the bug report. I imagine a new bot account would have to be created in order to be able to post into the forum. Within the launcher, a button would also be added so you could see any activity in that newly created thread.

Too fluid?

[Dragon]

No need to make a forum bot , I think. Automatic crash report sending has been done, though. Heck, MS Windows allows you to send a crash report to them for just about anything (I don't think that anyone actually reads this stuff, though). It could send the log to an anonymous online database and give it an ID number, so that the person could just post the log ID and everyone could quickly access it.

[niffiwan]

No need to make a forum bot , I think. Automatic crash report sending has been done, though. Heck, MS Windows allows you to send a crash report to them for just about anything (I don't think that anyone actually reads this stuff, though). It could send the log to an anonymous online database and give it an ID number, so that the person could just post the log ID and everyone could quickly access it.

You'll still need someone to volunteer to run a reasonably highly available server that accepts anonymous data uploads. It seems far easier to me to just have a button to access the log, and a link to pastebin (or a similar service), and a link to the forums. After all, from a selfish point of view, we want more participants on the forums anyway, right? Encourage them to create their own account

I should also note that ngld's new knossos launcher does include a button to open the log in a new window (on Linux at least, I haven't run it on Windows yet). It's not in the most obvious place, but that could be easily changed.

[jr2]

Yeah, we really need to simplify our troubleshooting procedure. On a similar note: how difficult would it be for the launcher to auto-detect a debug build? That way our troubleshooting steps could go from :

- select a debug build
- launch the game
- play until bug occurs
- open FS2 folder   <-- or, %userprofile%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\%FS2 folder%  if user installed into Program Files (x86), or don't even get me started if they installed into steamapps.  Don't forget Linux and Mac OS X are also different. 
- go to data/
- post fs2_open.log on the forum
- once the problem is solved, switch back to a release build
- play the game

To:
- launch the game is debug mode
- play until bug occurs
- click on "find debug log" or something similar
- post fs2_open.log on the forum
- once the problem is solved, play the game