Aesquire.320 net.games utzoo!decvax!harpo!esquire! Sun Apr 11 01:59:39 1982 TELLING THE BUG I just got back from the OAC (Office Automation Circus) and found a very interesting series of items in re the Rogue Release Holdup, (net.games.rogue). In Empire and other games I have always had a simple rule-of-thumb about bug rights and it now becomes obvious that it should be stated explicitly on any release. This is a retroactive notice for all the games I've released. RULE If you find a bug you can exploit it freely for 1 time period IFF you then report it to the person "in charge" of the game. If you don't know who is "in charge" at your site (oh, sure) then report it to me. "1 time period" means 1 day in Empire, 1 update time in Fast Food, 1 game in Convoy, 1 battle in Bolo (a major one, not a practice run), etc. This is the equivalent of "Cheater's Patent" and is meant to allow the clever "inventor" of the bug abuse to profit from his/her effort without destroying the fun of the game for others. As always there will be special cases but this rule has worked well in the past and will, hopefully, continue to do so. It's assumed that local games administrators will pass along the bugs with or without fixes to me, (Ken, you might want to adopt a similar policy...). Peter Langston esquire!psl ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.