What were they doing anyway?

[ew0054]

I thought the purpose of testing and developing a product is to get all the bugs out before it sells. So what went wrong here? Maybe if they spent less time on making it pretty and more on making it work right, we wouldn't have so many problems!

 

[Mrdie]

They were rushed to finish it by Take2

 

[Memphus]

I thought the purpose of testing and developing a product is to get all the bugs out before it sells. So what went wrong here? Maybe if they spent less time on making it pretty and more on making it work right, we wouldn't have so many problems!

Hi, seeing as this is kinda what I do for a living I will try to clear it up a little bit.

First off you have every right to be
Things that you buy you expect them to work, and so it should.

But consider this the XBox 360 is having problems now too.
Have you ever had a car that needed new tires after purchase?
some food from a can that was off before you opened it?
A cell phone which makes radio's goes fuzzy?
the list can go on

Point blank technology today is so complex. As an example my home computer had over 10 million transistors (yes/no 0/1 circuits) working together.

Now to expect someone to create something that can interface with all these possible different combinations is crazy. There is no way the developers could have tested the game on all of these different machines.

Not to mention all the economics involved in delaying the release of a product for a week or even a month (time it took for the patch to come out)

So point and case the fact that there is now a patch out in under a month is phenominal.

My final though on all of this is
-- you get a oil change on car you use everyday approximately every three months

-- If you use your computer everyday does it get service that often?

 

[calyth]

The problem is not just the combinations of parts that goes into a typical PC, but IMO there's a significant portion of PCs out there that are not stable, or will become unstable when stressed (like when it overheats, or receives bad power).
Lots of things will make any program crash, overheating chips will introduce errors into the calculation. Bad memory cells may not be accessed until you get a lot of memory usage (i.e. Civ 4). Bad power would simply corrupt your data. It's not like your mom & pop store, nor the big brand name computer companies would spend days stress testing the computer until you're sure it's stable.
If you compound an unstable computer with a not quite ready game, you'll get the rift between those who have minor bugs, and those who get CTDs. Not to mention it is impossible to write perfect code. (I've seen a technically incorrect Hello World that compiled) Also the fact is more often than not they simply don't have enough people familiar with the code and the time needed to really beta test everything.

 

[Speaker]

Yeah, all the programmers at Firaxis were making the game look pretty. Don't they hire people specifically for that? They're called artists? Right.

 

[logical_psycho]

What would you have prefered? Waiting another 6 months for them to find all bugs, or an early release with some buys, which they can patch out in about a month, because of the heavy load of feedback? A big part of testing is the resulting feedback which programmers get, with a lot of testers (which us gamers are used for) it can be done a lot quicker. I prefer it this way. It isn't like a console game, which should be released without bugs, because it simply can't be patched.

 

[minimus]

Yes computers are complicated but so are people most manufacturers of jeans that castrate people have gone out of business!

 

[logical_psycho]

FUBU isn't doing too well anymore either and they offer enough space for your nuts.

 

[Willowmound]

Yes computers are complicated but so are people most manufacturers of jeans that castrate people have gone out of business!

That's a silly analogy. Pants go on the outside and make you look presentable; software goes on the inside and completely alters the behaviour of a very complex system of electrical circuits. I can find no good analogy to humans, but I'd say creating new software that can run on literally millions of different machines is much more like surgery, or creating drugs, than putting on a pair of freakin' trousers!

 

[minimus]

My analogy was not that the simply manufacture of jeans was to be equated with programming but that companies who sell things that do not work for their customers tend to find themselves going out of business very fast. The complications of various PC set-ups cannot be an excuse for incompetence.

 

[MNGhost]

There's more than just the complication of all the different kinds of computers out there. A lot of times bugs are known and documented. But finding a bug and figuring out how to fix it are two different things. I do software development for a living and sometimes you just beat your head against the wall trying to fix a bug you think should be simple. And when your publisher tells you you got to ship your product, well, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it except hope you can get it in a future patch.

Civ 4 actually had its release date moved up. The developers were given even less time than they oridinally planned for it. I'm surprised it works at all.

 

[Willowmound]

My analogy was not that the simply manufacture of jeans was to be equated with programming but that companies who sell things that do not work for their customers tend to find themselves going out of business very fast. The complications of various PC set-ups cannot be an excuse for incompetence.

Fair enough, I guess...

 

[TLHeart]

I have found from my local friends who could not run CIV IV and I could, was due to there total lack of maintenance of their machines.

Developing a game for the PC market is much more compilcated than developing a game for a single console, where there is one processor, one memory, one video.

 

[spymonkey]

My analogy was not that the simply manufacture of jeans was to be equated with programming but that companies who sell things that do not work for their customers tend to find themselves going out of business very fast. The complications of various PC set-ups cannot be an excuse for incompetence.

I guess nearly the entire computer gaming industry should be going out of business then, eh?

 

[DemonDeLuxe]

I have found from my local friends who could not run CIV IV and I could, was due to there total lack of maintenance of their machines.

Developing a game for the PC market is much more compilcated than developing a game for a single console, where there is one processor, one memory, one video.

When a company develops a game and wants to sell it in huge numbers, they produce it for the average Joe - Joe who does NOT do maintenance on his comp, mainly because he wouldn't know how to do it. Heck, most of my friends learn from ME what the secret phrase "defragmentation" actually means and how to avoid spyware and the like. When I design a complex web page, I DON'T do it so that it works correctly only on the newest browsers and for experienced users. If someone uses a buggy browser, that is MY, the developer's, problem, not the client's. When MSIE 5.5 was a piece of crap and Opera 6 didn't understand certain JavaScript commands, *I* had to deal with it instead of giving out lame excuses like "you need to update blablabla". You know, why? Because it is MY interest that people see the site as it is intended to be, and because I know that if it doesn't or if the navigation is such that the visitor doesn't know how to handle it, I've just LOST a customer and maybe ruined a lucrative business opportunity.

If a company produced a game for tech nerds only, they could just as well close up shop. And quite a few did exactly that in the past.

 

[Urederra]

Yes computers are complicated but so are people most manufacturers of jeans that castrate people have gone out of business!

Now I am scared

 

[panzooka]

..10 million transistors...

simple math tells me that if each transistor is 99% working, the total is 0% working
if each transistor is 99.99999% working, the total is 37% working
if each transistor is 99.9999999% working, the total is 99% working
the 9 nines

 

[jerry247]

Stop making excuses and fix your computer. Should the designers decide that most people have spyware and didn't upgrade to sp2 so they should make it compatable w/ that? I think most people who play computer games should at least know how to fix their computer, dafrag and adaware is not that difficult.
Most new games require the latest software/hardware and is shipped w/ bugs. Every game I have ever bought has been patched.
The REAL QUESTION is why did I have to install directx 9.0c when I already had it installed?

 

[DemonDeLuxe]

Stop making excuses and fix your computer. [...] I think most people who play computer games should at least know how to fix their computer, dafrag and adaware is not that difficult. The REAL QUESTION is why did I have to install directx 9.0c when I already had it installed?

Too funny, Mr. Expert. You demand a minimum computer know-how from gamers but are yourself unable to determine whether a system tool you yourself installed was identical to your previous version? So, essentially, you were absolutely willing to compromise a running system with software you had no clue about? Mu-ha-har, that's what I call "expertise" *giggle*

Time to step down from your somewhat chauvinistic throne, don't you think?

(Hint: The CIV4 version is in fact a newer version than the official 9.0c. Microsoft just doesn't make every tiny development step into a new, downloadable release. )

 

[snepp]

Stop making excuses and fix your computer.

Joy, another tech support genius...

The REAL QUESTION is why did I have to install directx 9.0c when I already had it installed?

Odd, you'd think someone with such tech know-how would have been able to figure this one out.