READ THIS BEFORE POSTING

For all the help you need with Armagetron!
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Lucifer
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READ THIS BEFORE POSTING

Post by Lucifer »

Hi.

If you're reading this post, chances are you've got some sort of problem installing and/or running Armagetron Advanced. It would be really helpful for you and for us if you take a few minutes to read this post so that you can be sure to get the best support we have to give.

There are numerous resources available to help you get through problems. Many individuals in the development team and in the community have worked very hard to provide those resources to you, therefore under no circumstances should you send private messages or emails to individuals asking for help. If you get any help, which isn't likely, the information will stay private, and someone else having a similar problem will not be able to find it.

This support forum shouldn't be considered last resort, but you should make sure you've already used some of the resources available before you post here. If your question is answered elsewhere, then the time you spend finding the answer will be well spent. Many common questions are answered on the FAQ:

http://wiki.armagetronad.org/index.php?title=FAQ

If you're wanting to start a new server, the Server Administration Guide is available to guide you through the steps needed and will steer you clear of many common pitfalls:

http://wiki.armagetronad.org/index.php? ... tion_Guide

For general purpose information, there is documentation that comes with the program. You should spend a few minutes reading that. It's location is platform-dependent, so check the usual places on your platform (ie. in Windows check the Start menu, in Linux look in /usr/local/share and /usr/share, etc).

There is also a wiki that has a lot of good articles written by people just like you who wanted to help other people with the game:

http://wiki.armagetronad.org/

So, go check these resources and see if you can find what you're looking for. Then come back here.

Now that you've done that, and hopefully have come here with an unanswered question, you should spend a few minutes thinking about how to write your post. It's not tricky, but you need to consider that we get many support requests. Even if it doesn't look busy right now, by the time your specific issue is resolved we could easily get tens of other support requests. It's very important that you write a short and descriptive subject line. It may be very tempting to write one that shows us how important it is to you to resolve this issue, but you need to show some discretion here. Everyone that reads this forum has to deal with potentially very long lists of threads just like yours asking for help, and we need to be able to distinguish one from the other. It is very common for there to be 3-6 threads at once with subject lines that are variations of "HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". Writing such a subject line is extremely inconsiderate and wastes your time and ours. Many of the people you are asking for help will just move on and not bother reading your post because it is a waste of time. If we have several active threads with very similar subject lines but very different problems, it becomes impossible for us, the people offering support, to know which ones we need to track ourselves.

In your post, you need to make sure to describe the resources you have already used to try to answer your question. If your question is a frequently asked question and you don't tell us why the answer in the FAQ didn't work, you're just going to be linked to the FAQ, and that's really a waste of your time and ours.

It is to your advantage, not just for this specific support request but for all time, to read this wonderful article by Eric S. Raymond:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Finally, when you're finished, you should come back to your thread and edit the first post. Change the subject line to begin with "RESOLVED: " and leave the rest intact. Add some text to the end of the post giving a brief explanation of how the problem was resolved. This allows the support forum to become a resource for others who may have similar problems, and is the price you pay for the time and effort the people here are going to put into resolving your problem with you. So this shouldn't be considered a "free support" group. Quite the contrary, you need to give back so that other people with similar issues will be able to reference your thread while working them out.
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