A programmers perspective on a buggy release.

[lemmy101]

<3 to xienwolf for an awesome post that really nails it.

 

[bossconian]

<3 to xienwolf for an awesome post that really nails it.

Please stop the self-apprising circle comment without any input to the discussion.

Xienwolf - we are talking about bugs, game flaws and issues that you can pick up during couple of hours of play which aren't an effect of a last minute patch. We are not talking about the sittuation that company tripps over some overseen stupid bug. We are talking about situation that company knowingly releases barelly working / unfinished shell product in hope of early money sweep.

What is more concernign that we had simmilar siutation in CIV IV and company never fixed / improved multiplayer over last 5 years - and we still struggle with oss / games hungs / crashes / lack of managebility as kick /ban bogus player etc. There is no guarantee this will change this time. However you money is in thier bank account allready .

 

[WTRT]

Great, my first post here. Thought I'd try to add something intelligent to the discussion.

Often when a game is being developed, core technologies are being chosen to drive the game (this sound system, this graphic engine, etc.). They could be developed internally or bought from a third party. The minute these decisions are made, the deadline is set, because these technologies have a limited lifespan due to the rapid evolution of technology. These problems don't occur in business software, because they rarely operate as close to the hardware layer like games do, but rather they run on a target platform, which in itself allows more flexibility and so-called "lazy" programming.

People want to see shiny and new things foremost, the exception being only the most dedicated of fans (Dwarf Fortress anyone?). Guess what the target audience of this site is? Yup.

And there's ofcourse the decisions being made by management, who try to squeeze every penny out of their product as possible (who doesn't like to drive in a fancy car?). Please do not blame the developers for those decisions. That's like blaming the car assembly guy for a faulty engine. Most developers I know take pride in their jobs and the products they make, but when the deadline hits, they can't keep tweaking and fiddling forever. When the number of lines in code doesn't grow (even though they might get changed a lot), managers tend to view the product as finished.

Finally, let's tend to look at the sector for which the programming is being done: the entertainment sector is something entirely else then a system designed for operating the space shuttle for example, which absolutely has to be faultless because lifes are at stake. But I bet you can't run CiV on that last one either.

Just saying, relax. If you want a product without any flaws, be prepared to shell out more than 50$ (try adding a few zeroes). How many do your customers pay for their software? If the bugs are so game breaking you can't play a proper game, submit them to fireaxis, and use your experience to help them out by providing a detailed report about your system configuration and things you might have done. They might even get it fixed sooner if your helpful instead of just a number with a vague description. Since you're a programmer you should also know it's hard to fix a bug when you can't reproduce the problem.

 

[spoooq]

What was the game like two months ago? I know it had a lot worse bugs. I know the devs worked hard to fix everything they could. How do I know this? Because I know no dev ever wants to release something bad. It isn't a matter of money, it is a matter of pride. You don't work in gaming for the money, especially on something like Civ, you work because you want to make awesome games.

 

[spoooq]

Just saying, relax. If you want a product without any flaws, be prepared to shell out more than 50$ (try adding a few zeroes).

Making something with half as many bugs does not cost twice as much. It can cost ten times as much. This is something even a lot of developers fail to understand.

 

[kozzer]

It is not all that funny, and I am not saying bug free, just not so in a rush to slap the program together. They should take a bit more time. It is not CIV 5, I have had no problems either. All I am saying is that they should have a Q&A and testing period. This period will not fix everything, but perhaps may address a few unseen concerns. I don'[t rember saying bug free, please don't put words in my mouth.

And my quote,"so you do not have to fix so many bugs later." How is that transformed into no bugs???

I didn't mean to put words into your mouth, but anyway, the reason I said moving the deadline back is 'funny' is not because of anything technical, but rather because of business. Telling your boss or client that you're pushing the release back is not good, and in my experience is never done unless there's some critical "software won't work" bugs. And obviously Civ5 isn't like that, since most of us have been able to play with little to no problems.

As to not encountering any bugs, I consider a leader offering me the majority (5 of 7 or 8 cities) of his / her empire after I declared war and killed about 7 units (and lost 3 of mine, leaving me with a total of two on the continent) without me even yet attacking any of the cities a bug.

Yeah, that sucks. And I would classify that as a bug. I haven't seen anything like that. So far, in all my wars, the AI has been churning out units non-stop even as I take their cities. I think in one game, after I had taken like 7 or 10 cities from an AI empire, they offered me 2 more for peace (which left them with yet another 5 or so cities). That's the closest I've gotten to your situation as of yet.

 

[DuseCutter]

I develop software, not games, but business software. Nonetheless, all software has a development process. Testing and QA is a HUGE part of the software development process. The fact that this piece of software was allowed to be released to the general public in the state that its in shows that it was rushed and the company needed to start making profits off of it.

Let me tell you, if I sent my code into production with this many bugs I would be fired the next day. If this game went through the proper avenues of FULL testing and QA then many of the issues should have come to light and been resolved. As it stands they havent.

To defend unfinished, unpolished software in hopes that it will be fixed in the future is unacceptable ANYWHERE but the gaming world. Consumers should not have to stand for it. I dont know why some of you sit there smiling while you're getting screwed.

I haven't read the thread, but as a software developer I agree. There's just a ton of minor bugs that shows they were either short-handed, or didn't have the time to finish it. I wonder what the reasons are, if it was money or an unwillingness to extend the development time, ie, push back the release date.

That said. I really like playing the game. Just wish there was more control over some of the little things. A few examples: Why does the opening video play every time? Why does the opening menu's option to create another shortcut for DX11 not actually make a shortcut to that version of the game? Why isn't there an option to not have the game automatically fly to the next unit when you leave a city screen? Why does the game choose a unit on the other side of my civ when I'm in the middle of fighting a battle? Can I have an option for a clock on the screen so I can see what time it is? In Windows 7 when I hit the Start button the game doesn't minimize so I cannot access my desktop.

EDIT 2: Now that I've read some of it... yeah, I'm not complaining about bugs. That's going to happen. I haven't really seen TOO MANY bugs, more like lack of features, and that indicates a bottleneck somewhere.

 

[warhead66]

i'm amazed at how this could have made 7 pages and 6 paragraph posts, this isn't rocket science it's pretty damn simple and doesn't take a programmer to figure out:

if you bought cubase (a $1000 music software program), and it has an error and it has a lot of bugs, someones head is on the line. The software is meant to run on one type of computer only and those computers are meant to run cubase.

if you buy a $40 pc game that has errors, you ask for a patch and stop whining. this game is supposed to run on thousands of different computers/settings, different OS and different brands. Of course it's unstable at first, obvious troll is obvious.

What blows my mind it's that its always the same people who whine on every board. And it happens in all games. I literally cannot remember a game that hasn't had bugs right after release, yet still it surprises people, even programmers.. lol.

 

[Hukuma]

People are, to some extent, talking to cross purposes here. Many people are saying "of course the product will be unstable for some systems", and others are saying "there shouldn't be balance breaking oversights". The problem is they're both actually just saying "bugs", so they think they're disagreeing.

What most of the people who complain about the bugs are complaining about are things like Eternal Peace, Eternal Open Borders without an Open Borders to start with, 5GPT maximum, and ragequitting AI. These are not small issues, and their concern is definitely justified. Fortunately patches have already fixed some of those issues, and we're told a patch is in progress for the Eternal Peace.

As a customer, I'm fairly tolerant for games without a massive (SC2/WoW) semi-public beta having stability issues, but I get upset when something makes it impossible to play the game in the way it's intended (Eternal deals, missing resources). I don't think this is unreasonable, and I hope both sides can attempt to taboo the word "bug" in favor of defining the sort of issue they're talking about to see how much actual disagreement there is.

 

[xienwolf]

Please stop the self-apprising circle comment without any input to the discussion.

Xienwolf - we are talking about bugs, game flaws and issues that you can pick up during couple of hours of play which aren't an effect of a last minute patch. We are not talking about the sittuation that company tripps over some overseen stupid bug. We are talking about situation that company knowingly releases barelly working / unfinished shell product in hope of early money sweep.

What is more concernign that we had simmilar siutation in CIV IV and company never fixed / improved multiplayer over last 5 years - and we still struggle with oss / games hungs / crashes / lack of managebility as kick /ban bogus player etc. There is no guarantee this will change this time. However you money is in thier bank account allready .

Oh, sorry. I hadn't noticed your name in the Frankenstein credit list. Nice that you have inside information on what was and wasn't known before release, and how extensive testing had been.

And a "couple of hours of play" is exactly what I said does NOT happen for final adjustments. Quite likely what caused the 5 GPT issue was an attempt to block a gamebreaking balance issue which the code team BARELY convinced the QA guys to let them slip in. Thus they were provided with minutes to test their adjustment, if any time at all. Because non-programmers were in control at that point.