Wednesday, September 30, 2009
if you're curious about what happend
about the 'tester bug'? As far as I know, it's still in the game. There's much worse problems with the game.
Which reminds me, that's another way things can fuck up in the game industry. What the developer will do is not be able to fix small bugs because they just can't achieve stability. Which means it runs. without crashing. That's of course on a whole different level of severity and must be addressed.
But what happens is that- oops, that little stuff just isnt important. It's just polish anyway. Which is of course what separates good, from bad, from mediocre games.
Then, timewise then, you get the worst thing in the game industry right now. Consoles can patch. Oh shit, now they can update! Which you'd think would be agood thing but what it means is that as soon as you pick up a new game, as soon as you connect, you have to download the update for it.
This makes developers lazy. This makes developers lazy. They don't fix things because they know they can put out a patch for it. I know for a fact A lot of bugs got waived, pushed to the next version because of this. I'm not even kidding. A lot of people in the game industry i've talked to have said the same. Makes 'em lazy.
So the worst games, you'll have to download multiple patches, or the patch will be a really high number. bad sign.
DLC!
Which reminds me, that's another way things can fuck up in the game industry. What the developer will do is not be able to fix small bugs because they just can't achieve stability. Which means it runs. without crashing. That's of course on a whole different level of severity and must be addressed.
But what happens is that- oops, that little stuff just isnt important. It's just polish anyway. Which is of course what separates good, from bad, from mediocre games.
Then, timewise then, you get the worst thing in the game industry right now. Consoles can patch. Oh shit, now they can update! Which you'd think would be agood thing but what it means is that as soon as you pick up a new game, as soon as you connect, you have to download the update for it.
This makes developers lazy. This makes developers lazy. They don't fix things because they know they can put out a patch for it. I know for a fact A lot of bugs got waived, pushed to the next version because of this. I'm not even kidding. A lot of people in the game industry i've talked to have said the same. Makes 'em lazy.
So the worst games, you'll have to download multiple patches, or the patch will be a really high number. bad sign.
DLC!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
how's it going?
So my contract finally expired at Sony. i guess i'm looking for work now. I can animate and model & texture in Maya. I can do character design.
http://thejeremycampbellexperience.com/index.html
Let me know if you find out anything.
http://thejeremycampbellexperience.com/index.html
Let me know if you find out anything.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
definiton of a 'tester bug'
Here's a bug i found awhile back. I can't tell you what game i'm working on (even though it has been released) or where i'm employed at, so i don't get into trouble NDA-wise. but i just can't let this one slide because i think it illustrates how it is that things go wrong in games.
When the user's character throws a grenade, the pin is still attached.
WTF? I mean damn, how does something like that get by? you may be asking yourself. i mean, anyone who's seen any movies knows you gotta pull the pin to arm a grenade. And this game is supposed to be 'realistic'.
A 'tester bug' is a bug that only testers would find. We find them by doing weird, counterintuitive shit that doesn't win us the game. It's also kind of a negative term, and often used as a rationale to close bugs. Ordinary people supposedly never do these things. To find that grenade bug for instance, you'd have to walk over and inspect a live grenade, instead of running in the opposite direction. But do you think it will never be noticed by anyone, ever?
Little things like this send a message: We don't care. Polish. Polish is what separates the good developers from the ones who are in it for the paycheck.
How does something like this happen? Probably, the modeler was given the assignment 'model a grenade'. He does it, checks in the asset. Goes to the pub. Programmer writes code that spawns a grenade when the user gives the command to throw one. He just makes a reference to the asset, he never even sees it. It's neither of their job, really, to make sure it's used correctly. But no one looked to see that the user's haracter was throwing a grenade with an attached pin. No one's looking at the big picture and that's the problem.
It's Test's job to find it. Okay, we found it. What happens now?
By the way, the bug was closed. (waived, actually, which means it's pushed back to the next patch) Will it ever be addressed? Who knows? That's another thing mediocre developers do- slack off on everything until something gets to a crisis point and then use that as an excuse to only work on the most egregious bugs. Again, i'm not mentioning any developer's names here, please don't sue me.
When the user's character throws a grenade, the pin is still attached.
WTF? I mean damn, how does something like that get by? you may be asking yourself. i mean, anyone who's seen any movies knows you gotta pull the pin to arm a grenade. And this game is supposed to be 'realistic'.
A 'tester bug' is a bug that only testers would find. We find them by doing weird, counterintuitive shit that doesn't win us the game. It's also kind of a negative term, and often used as a rationale to close bugs. Ordinary people supposedly never do these things. To find that grenade bug for instance, you'd have to walk over and inspect a live grenade, instead of running in the opposite direction. But do you think it will never be noticed by anyone, ever?
Little things like this send a message: We don't care. Polish. Polish is what separates the good developers from the ones who are in it for the paycheck.
How does something like this happen? Probably, the modeler was given the assignment 'model a grenade'. He does it, checks in the asset. Goes to the pub. Programmer writes code that spawns a grenade when the user gives the command to throw one. He just makes a reference to the asset, he never even sees it. It's neither of their job, really, to make sure it's used correctly. But no one looked to see that the user's haracter was throwing a grenade with an attached pin. No one's looking at the big picture and that's the problem.
It's Test's job to find it. Okay, we found it. What happens now?
By the way, the bug was closed. (waived, actually, which means it's pushed back to the next patch) Will it ever be addressed? Who knows? That's another thing mediocre developers do- slack off on everything until something gets to a crisis point and then use that as an excuse to only work on the most egregious bugs. Again, i'm not mentioning any developer's names here, please don't sue me.
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