The following guidelines are not mandatory, but your problem will almost definitely be solved a lot faster if you follow them.
1) Try an Update.
-- I see too many topics posted using outdated versions with problems that I thought I already resolved. The user updates, and the problem is indeed resolved. Plus, it's hard to debug a problem when you and I are using different versions. If it's a real problem, the first place I'm going to look is in the line of code that the error mentions. Every few versions, that line of code moves, so the line number changes.
2) Run from console/terminal.
-- A great deal of information is still printed to the terminal rather than displayed in dialog boxes (mostly because the project is still young, and the printed information changes so frequently that keeping dialog boxes up-to-date would be impractical - likewise for log files). The terminal displays a log of information that the program has gone through to get to this point. Some of it might tell you, or us, what went wrong and where.
3) Find out what revision you're using.
-- ENIGMA usually displays its revision number in the console/terminal, one of the very first lines output, e.g. "ENIGMA r123". See guideline #1 above.
4) Share the console/terminal output with us (along with your version number).
-- Actually most posters are smart enough to do this already, but I'm gonna remind you anyways. For windows users, Right Click on the Terminal's Menu Bar > Edit > Select All; Right-Click > Edit > Copy; Then paste your clipboard contents here.
5) If you encounter an error, write it down, even if you're going to try to work around it.
-- This one kills me. People see an error, and then quick just dismiss it, and try to work around it. Then they encounter a stranger error down the road, and *that* is the one they report. The earlier error is usually a lot more informative to us, and easily explains why the later error occurred.
6)
7) Profit!
A few other suggestions:
Topic titles:Good: "How do we use our own CPP library files?"
Bad: "NOOB QUESTION!"
Post contents:Good: "I am having a problem with running LGM; it appears that error
x is appearing. I am on Windows XP SP3, and I definitely have the newest Java Runtime Environment..."
Bad: "
HELP ME LGM ISNT WORK1N!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1"
Errors with your game:You may wish to post the source. If you are paranoid about people stealing your game (if it falls into the hands of a 12 year old who thinks he/she can make your game "better" or make a "better" version... well...), then try and post the source of where you think the error is being triggered.
