Cien_Fuegos

Originally Posted by Rookery.

Good, fast and cheap.

You can only pick two.

:P

Originally Posted by DrMike2000

Hi. I'm a games programmer.

Fixing bugs takes time. Some industries do produce error-free code, such as the military. To do this, they take much longer, spec stuff out much more carefully, and employ many more people in testing. Thats a really good thing when lives depend on your software behaving correctly.

Applying this level of quality control to a game requires either much more money or time or probably both. As it is, every game studio I've seen relies to some degree on a bit of unpaid overtime from its staff. Asking for more of this would be kind of rude, so lets rule that option out.

Would you rather:

a) Have each issue take twice as long and pay maybe $45 per month for the privelege of a bug free game?

b) Leave things as they are and put up with the few bugs you have to deal with?

I'd choose b) myself.

And if you're asking people to cross every t and do every i, can you at least talk in proper sentences with capitals and punctuation?

Originally Posted by IAmTheRad

*wakes up*
Hmm? I think I won the sleep competition. Gold for sure. I'm so exhausted by that sleep I may need a short nap.

*gets beamed up to a starship*
I got moneys from the star trek online from the exchange and I now have fully upgraded my ship to the class I have, and my equipment is the best I can randomly get. Yay mk II items.

Originally Posted by Premonitions

And it's the chair from behind by premonitions! Where is the referee?

Originally Posted by NekoAli

*wakes up and yawns*

Did I win the sleep competition?

Originally Posted by Smurch

No matter how much beta testing you do to bug hunt, you still won't find them all, because you simply cannot replicate the wide variety of user platforms and behavior on a small scale. No release survives contact with it's users. This is a truism of software everywhere and always will be. There are simply too many variables to anticipate.

Originally Posted by Catwhoorg

Bear in mind this is from launch time (ie 2004)



Taken from: http://www.forbes.com/smallbusiness/.../1004/100.html

The last I heard the current game is over 2 million lines of code, but I dont have a cite for that. Not sure where I read it. Could have been here, could have been offsite.

Even if that code is 99.999% perfect that would still be 20 lines of code wrong. Finind that code line, and 'fixing it' can and often does create other lines of code that are now wrong. Squishing bugs is hard, in an environment this complex.

Then you have the compelx interactions. Like the famous 'undefined variable' that affected drop rates for over a year. It was defined most places, but in the one important subroutine it wasn't, ergo drop rates coulkd be and were affacted by odd things.

Then throw in hardware issues, I mean a cable is a cable is a cable right ? WRONG. Sometimes the flow of data between those 60 processor chips per sever (or more as they have since upgraded at least twice) get messed up not by progamming, but by a piece of other hardware, be it a cable, a connector or the fact that one of the server hamsters went where he/she shouldn't

Even with 11 (15 including Euro ones) supposedly identical server clusters runnign identical software , the actual running of each one is subject to minor differences in the hardware.

Pinnacle for years was slow to come round after maintenance, hence the 'drunk server' meme. Wasn't it the last but one double XP weekend that Virtue had terrible issues, which most of the other servers didn't. Again a hardware issue, not a bug, and realistically some of those hardware issues only show up under stress (like an event)

Originally Posted by Spazztastics

There is always bugs in games. It's pretty impossible to make a bugless game . There is a variaty reasons bugs occur; drivers, player triggered, version of operative system, incompatible third party software... the list goes on. You can't write a application that's 100% compatible to every single system setup out there.

Originally Posted by NovaFactor

Huh ?

Originally Posted by Premonitions

Yall's is crazy......
* Banged on table in Morse Code, as face is full of boobie/manchest*

Originally Posted by IAmTheRad

*beams into the Rookery*
You haven't seen me yet in Star Trek Online... I made a new character. It's one of the few games I'd RP in. Of course I RP in City of Heroes, but I'm getting tired of the same ol' same ol'. Waiting for GR. I'll play a bit after I17 is out.

Also, my guy in Star Trek Online is a Ferengi officer of the federation. Almost a Lieutenant Commander, I hope, and able to commission a new starship. I wouldn't mind a retrofitted Constitution class starcruiser, just like the Enterprise from the movies. My global is @IAmTheRad, of course.

Originally Posted by je_saist

Mewit Cien! Would you log in? I can't keep dunking Mr. Trilby's shoes in essence of pork chop every day so you can have two tasty chew toys. The entire channel is beginning to smell like pork chops!

Originally Posted by NekoAli

*sneak pounces on Fedor and begins the Olympic Tussling*

Aha! Take this! We'll see who takes home the gold in this event!

And welcome Necris. The Rookery. (with a dot) just a daily gathering thread where we can gather and be silly without disturbing the rest of the virtue forums (to much). It was originally started by the player Rookery, hence the name.

Originally Posted by Premonitions

OOOOOOI! *goes to sleep 'cause it's early/late.*

Originally Posted by NekoAli

*hugs on Fedor*

In regards to Aion, I was playing it through beta (I got in under the program when they killed Tabula Rasa) and pre-ordered the collectors edition. So as you might guess, I was pretty impressed with the game. It's really beautiful, the art and creature design is a lot nicer than in many MMOs. The combat system was pretty interesting, with chaining combos making combat more interesting than just mashing keys when abilities were available. The storyline was interesting, though the quests are the familiar old 'go kill x critters and bring me back their toenails'.

So if I like the game so much, why am I not playing? In two words.. gold sellers. The first couple of months when I was playing the game was absolutely drenched in it. Eventually it got to the problem where all of the channels were filled with nothing but constantly scrolling ugly spam and were of no use to anyone. You had to turn them off to see anything else in your chatbox. Unfortunately, since around the mid teens the game starts to be heavily group oriented, that meant you couldn't use those channels to find groups, which they were meant for.

Sadly, the designers were completely caught flat footed by this. Not only were they not able to control the gold spam, some things in the game actively made it easy for the spammers. Like not being able to ignore people's messages in channels, only when they whisper you. I've heard that since I left the game they've done a bunch of stuff to help fight them, but by then I had already quit the game as being unplayble because of it. I'd be interested in going back and giving it another try, but well... I really can't afford another paid game right now.

Originally Posted by Detra

*returns from the store*

Geeze people act like they never seen a red latex french maids outfit in public.. But I did see someone with the same boots. *winks*
I guess if I was dressed in an oversized Football jersey, and shopping for snack food and beer that'd be okay. But oh no, a latex bound maid.. that unheard of. *GASP* I guess we can't speak about.. ya know what nevermind.

Anywho. So this crazy lady at the store came up to me and said how well my lil hellspawn was behaving kinda went on a little bit, then she wished him and myself a happy V-day. And I did the same to her. See, even crazies need love too.

*hugz*