Yes, granted its always possible to squeeze stuff in places it wasn't necessarily supposed to go (our coders are a pretty talented bunchOriginally Posted by TheRealRayne
), but once content is set for an update it only makes the process more risky when you start messing with versions and trying to backwards port things. It's generally a very bad idea that can lead to the kind of funky issues that causes much scratching of heads amongst coders and is best avoided
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Old Timer
Just be happy that they let us know what they've got planned. They didnt have to tell us. It will arrive when it arrives. The community has been waiting for this sort of patch for a long time, im sure you can wait a few more weeksMeanwhile look forward to the 17.1 patch.
bumping this for being made of win
imo when someone do a good job he only deserves to hear ppl saying "good job" and nothing else (at least for a while :-P)
Good Job FC :-)
Well I'm NOT a coder...Im a GAMER. So, stfu and let them work. They are fixin/adding stuff out of nowhere.....3 weeks ago ppl thot the game was about to close...leave them be, it'll get here. And before the flames start, the "Wat do U know noob, u only been here for 2 yrs", I dont care if I been here for 10 mins, they are fixin stuff....let them be.
Gunfytr 220/22 sol
Lawdog80 219/20 advy
all i can say is this...
WOOOOOHOOO!
It is funny how people always tell coders that something "should be easy" to do. Unless you know exactly the mechanisms behind it, you cannot know. I get told by others (some of them coders, most not) how fast a certain little fix should be and how easy to squeeze in on a weekly basis. Most of the time, these people are just wrong, because they think they can guess how something works from looking at it.
Maybe switching from a 24h timer to a 2h one is as easy as replacing one "24" with a "02" in a single line of code. Most likely, it is not. If you are lucky it is only some crappy old code where the 24 sits in a constant that is used in plenty of other places as well. If you are unlucky it is something freaky we cannot even fathom. Let the coders do their work.
Everyone that has coded stuff in a team knows the kinda code that seemed completely reasonable a year ago and now is the one reason why certain changes are hard or even impossible to implement. Or that was coded by someone no longer working for the company, and that is treated like a black box by everyone now. And how you vowed to do it better next time, to do code that is easier to maintain, only to be pressured into coding stupid again by time constraints and customers that do not know what they want... ^^*
I've looked at some coding, sometimes its a messed up bunch of crap, everything everywhere....
Sometimes the makers were neat and used....whats that code talk? Pyhoon? something like that
Last edited by hatez; Feb 1st, 2007 at 14:26:54.
Uh, yeah
- Twotwenty 220/23 shade
- Zonality 150/19 MA
- Height <incoming project>
Then why are you bitching? If you're a developer, you know full well that things take time. Furthermore, they need to keep players interested. Releasing EVERYTHING in one patch would hinder further updates...You think the ideas for this game grow on a tree?...
Luuv this is probably the most intelligent response to the whole arguement of "I can write small programs so I know it must be easy" arguement.It is funny how people always tell coders that something "should be easy" to do. Unless you know exactly the mechanisms behind it, you cannot know. I get told by others (some of them coders, most not) how fast a certain little fix should be and how easy to squeeze in on a weekly basis. Most of the time, these people are just wrong, because they think they can guess how something works from looking at it.
Maybe switching from a 24h timer to a 2h one is as easy as replacing one "24" with a "02" in a single line of code. Most likely, it is not. If you are lucky it is only some crappy old code where the 24 sits in a constant that is used in plenty of other places as well. If you are unlucky it is something freaky we cannot even fathom. Let the coders do their work.
Everyone that has coded stuff in a team knows the kinda code that seemed completely reasonable a year ago and now is the one reason why certain changes are hard or even impossible to implement. Or that was coded by someone no longer working for the company, and that is treated like a black box by everyone now. And how you vowed to do it better next time, to do code that is easier to maintain, only to be pressured into coding stupid again by time constraints and customers that do not know what they want... ^^*
I seriously doubt there is a single coder currently posting on the forums that has ever worked on a project of updateing code for a program as intricate and involved as an MMO. Let alone one that is 7 years old and was probably written without paying attention to the possible need to update that code years later.
I am also willing to bet that instead of everything being in nice neat functions that can be commented out safely, its instead a mass of spaghetti code in which global variables that shouldnt even exist are critical in a dozen different places to totally different functions working properly.
What do you think Luuv?
by the way BIG hugs to the FC devs.
Eno J00 RoX0r!!
Now wheres my Bright orange 1hb Nerf bat with the 5% NSD proc as described in my Sig?I wanna go what random cocoon users so they get the big NERFED above there heads
After ToTW
A Guide To ToTW
There is a lot of grey beween usefull and useless.
Mortiigs of SL UNITE! We WILL fling poo at you!
Sil, is there any chance that the spawn timers on the Zodiacs will also be reduced a bit? Possibly from 6 hours to 3 or 4 hours? I'm thrilled beyond words that the Beast change may mean no more 150+ Beast raids, but we're also having 100+ Zods raids, and since LE didn't introduce new NCU items, I think that number will continue to climb.
I can see how this would be the case with perk resets, since it probably involves multiple changes in the clientside and server side code, but the beast changes seems like it would be relatively simple fix to tack on at the end of a patch. Surely you guys have tools to change these sorts of things easily, right? i can't imagine that your world programmers go into the server source code and manually set spawn timers.Yes, granted its always possible to squeeze stuff in places it wasn't necessarily supposed to go (our coders are a pretty talented bunch
I'm pretty sure if you asked a large majority of the customers would support waiting an extra couple days to see these two changes sooner rather than later(especially considering the changes being made in this patch that effect perks like bio cacoon). Besides its two less things to implement and test in 17.2, so the time between the two patches will actually be shorter =P
Last edited by TheRealRayne; Feb 1st, 2007 at 17:52:12.
teh fool :: Raynefists :: playing since beta 3 (sort of)
I would like to see the 2 hr perk change go through as soon as possible. at that point I will bring my top 4 characters out of retirement. I had given up playing with them anymore as I really need to get in a few symbiants but didn't want to spend 3 months doing perk resets. This will make me reconsider my decision to terminate my account.
Also, I may actually get to see the beast for the first time.
ANi.
PLEASE, give use a simple YES or no answer as to whether or not the CoH chests can be opened
Well, all I can say is you have picked up some very bad habits for development in a complex system environment. I sure hope you aren't working on anything life or business critical with that attitude. And please, don't teach the interns to do things that way...
Luuv hits things pretty much dead on the mark. AO obviously has a lot of weird interactions in the code and database. For all we know, the granularity of the existing perk reset timer is days, not hours.
Glad to see a return to smaller, more frequent updates. Hopefully that means smaller, less frequent bugs.
Last edited by CarbonCopy; Feb 1st, 2007 at 23:17:10.
Yes, we have no signature today!
No, but it does link up to version control, having to test the playfield from scratch again, all the additional QA time that involves - every time anything in a playfield is changed everything has to be checked to ensure that exporting it again didn't bring in any unintended bug or change that wasn't supposed to go live.
Even world design changes still relate to code and data, as there is data on the playfield for spawn times, mobs, teleports, all that kind of thing and any change has the potential to effect 'something' if not done correctly, comes across a technical error or is rushed.
What sometimes might seem like a 'simple change' to people on the outside (or who don't have any experience of why version control systems are a very important part of software development) can actually amount to many days, if not even weeks of work.
'How hard can it be' is usually a very bad karma thing to say around software developers
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Old Timer
I absolutely do not intend this as a flame. Considering the vast amount of blatantly obvious bugs that have gotten through over time, doesn't it seem somewhat unbelievable that your testing process would be that rigorous? or is this a recent change(IE, since 17.0.3)?
Believe me, i am fully aware of the challenges of large project software development. As i write this my bosses are having the entire office stay late to test bugs with the project myself and the rest of the coders here spent the better part of a month making and testing extensively. The number of bugs they've found in just a few hours on code we've gone over 100 times is almost scary. Even given that, I really just don't think we would take that much time to test changes to a single input value out of literally thousands in a system that has worked very well for nearly 6 years on a very large variety of inputs.
Furthermore, there have been times when FC has been able to respond very rapidly to broken stats on individual mobs, so it just seems somewhat unbelieveable it would require retesting the entire zone top to bottom.
Last edited by TheRealRayne; Feb 2nd, 2007 at 01:14:58.
teh fool :: Raynefists :: playing since beta 3 (sort of)
And some of the emergency fixes (minor as they may have seemed) have had spectacular bugs.
A full retest after *any* change is a good practice.
It's obvious parts of LE didn't get tested well enough (research procs, anyone?) but that's no reason to keep rushing things out a bit prematurely.
Last edited by CarbonCopy; Feb 2nd, 2007 at 01:22:37.
Yes, we have no signature today!
WTB a 17.1.1 with the perk reset change : )
Xpression - 220 Trox Keeper - Thong Power
Mpression - Levelling Trox Trader
Regression - 200 Trox NT
Zegression - 218 Trox Soldier
Xegression - 215 Opi Agent
HUGE, Inc.
I don't care who ya are.
This is a phat patch! Software developer or not..
And ya'll should shut up and flame me instead btw :/
if you didn't trust FC you wouldn't be playing their game so just rest it for a sec, k?
For all of those who believe this is easy i suggest you go grab youself a bot (i.e. bebot) And make a small change to the core program and see just how many errors appear. Then maybe do a major change. Now imagine the thousands of lines of code in the bots and thats only for a chat bot. Then think about how many lines of code there are in the full ao source and therefore how many that can throw errors.
Just leave them alone and be happy with what 17.1 brings. Sil didnt have to tell us about 17.2 dont make him regret the decision. I like to know in advance whats coming.
Luuv: Perfectly said
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