"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things…"

For some reason my last post made me think of this. This is a dev watching QA testing, but it definitely applies to a production support mindset, too:



I'm also reminded of my old desktop support days where I had people use the Windows recycle bin to store important files and get upset when they disappear. Because Win95 had a "Briefcase" folder later removed in other versions, and these users saw the recycle bin as equivalent functionality as an icon on the desktop in which you could place and later locate files.

Also in an office with a file server with offsite-rotated tape backups, multiple business-critical files were kept on a floppy disk and passed around to constantly update. I didn't know until they brought me the disk. I opened the little door and saw a physical groove worn in the ferrite because they always update the same part of the same spreadsheet and hit save.

I can't fully articulate how all this applies to this particular project even to myself, but it's how my brain works, and it has to do with intent versus outcome and all the difficult-to-foresee factors that cause consequences.

 

It's clear now. And I agree. There needs to be discussion now at the programming level on game engine fundamentals. And a parallel discussion about what the game would look like to a player - without getting into nit-picky detail about things such as movement rates, etc. Those lead naturally to the middle level: how to implement the player-experience using the programming.

 

Puppeteer... That Video is TOO Funny besides making sense as applied here