Apolyton Weekly Survey II: Bugs

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Donegeal
[conspiracy]MarkG is one of the 60!!! [/conspiracy]

actually, i'm not, i'm posting here, aint i?

[Donegeal]

Gramphos, you need a spell checker in the worst way...

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by MarkG
that said, i think we established that civ3 was pretty stable out of the box.

Are yousureyougotyins opinion on that? I think he kept ith the sme opinion, oreven worse, that he had before release. ButI may be remebering wrong. It's been long since yin stopped posting here (at least to my knowledge)

[MarkG]

gramphos, is there something wrong with the spacebar on your keyboard?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Normally when we discuss things, we say "I think it should be this way". I don't think anyone would say "I think it should have bugs."

At the moment pretty much every thread is this forum is about how things should be. One of the reasons for this feature is to encourage more and different types of discussion. I have about 18 different polls planned already (not counting the ones that can be held multiple times), and the list gradually keeps growing. Some of them are about what Civ4 should be like, some are about expectations about the game (such as the first two), some are about the community itself, some about yet other topics...

If you don't like a particular poll (or even all of them), noone's forcing you to participate in either the vote or the discussion. The fact that this poll has gotten 64 votes (only 4 of them for "I don't know yet"), 50 replies and over 400 views in the first 30 hours alone tells me a lot of people don't think it's worthless. But as Ninot said, in the end it's just another way to pass the time.

Edit: in addition, noone will say the game should have bugs, but we all know it will have them (or almost all anyway -- so far one person seems to disagree ) -- that's just the reality of the modern games industry. It can still be interesting to discuss what level of 'bugginess' is acceptable, so in that sense this discussion is still about what the game should be like.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Donegeal
Gramphos, you need a spell checker in the worst way...

Maybe, maybe also a new keyboard would help. I got one with a slightly messed layout against what I'm used to. Also some keys has to be hit hard to rally take, and some take two at once quite easy. Good thing is that I won't be using my backup cpmuter for more that to more days. Then I'll have my own favorite keyboard less, and make less keyslip typos.Then I could focus some on English spelling as well. My English is best around 10 am GMT, and is worst about this late

And btw, may 'emergency' computer isn't equiped with any spellchecking software

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by MarkG
gramphos, is there something wrong with the spacebar on your keyboard?

Yes, it works about two thirds of the time I hit it The harder I hit the larger the chance to get a space (or two) is Aslo 'w' is a little tricky. Good it's not for more than two more days until I have my primary computer again.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Locutus
If you don't like a particular poll (or even all of them), noone's forcing you to participate in either the vote or the discussion. The fact that this poll has gotten 64 votes (only 4 of them for "I don't know yet"), 50 replies and over 400 views in the first 30 hours alone tells me a lot of people don't think it's worthless. But as Ninot said, in the end it's just another way to pass the time.

Also note that there is not a single 'banana' vote in this poll yet. If you feel you can't vote, but want your vote count to the total then the banana option is agood one

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Therearesomeays of which you can analyze to see the risk ofbugs,and therisk of bugsnot beingfied. For a PC game thereillalways be issues with somestrange sombinationsofhardware andother software. Something that console gmes don'tsuffer of. That's the reason hy a bugless PC game most likely won't exist. Despite howmush money youput on QA there willbe someone in the many timeslargeraudience that get the released game who will haveissues notfoundby QA.

The ammount of bugs in a piece of code also depends on ho many programmers that have meen maintaining the code. Civ3 was based on Jackal, in the bottomn code that had been around atFiraxis since Civ2, and partly developed by people who left the company. Trying to change and add stuff such code will create new bugs. With ennough time to get into the code there will be less bugs.

Looking back at Civ3 we know it was rushed. Features were dropped from the feature list more or less lastmnute, because they couldn't finish it. Atari madethemreleasethegame atanunfinished state. What would another publisher had done? Most likely not missed the Holiday season if it was possible to get something shape up in time. Civ3 had the releasedate continuously pushed back closer to Christmas all the time, until it was impossible to push it more and still get the game out on time.

Now look forward on Civ4: What is the shape of it now? Well, we don't really know. The videos from E3 look good. I don't remember what shape Civ3 looked at on E3 2001 so I really can't compare them either. Also I have no real experience rom Take2games, and don't how they prioritize QA and bughunting. So why ould Civ4 be different?

Well, foronething the new 3d enginee hoefully means that no old code from Civ2 or Civ3 is left in the game. Alsothere has been no big brak out of Firaxis emploies to form their on company this time, (at least not that I know of) so hopefully any isues related to that for Civ3 is not affecting Civ4. Finally Civ3had no testingoutside Atari QA; for Civ4 Firaxis already have confirmed that 60 handpicked players have been playtesting Civ4 for some time already.

So we got lots of facts to baseour guesses on. Then the final pick you make has to be taken from the fact and mixed ith someof your optimism or pessimism depending on what party^*you are in. From that you should be able to make a qualified guess.

* Before the Civ3 release threere optimists and pessimits, and maybe some more arguing on theforum. Markosgame the keypersonsof the groups special titles,andlet th dscussiongoon for some time, but eventually stopped it when it had turned too mush OT.

Good post, although hard to read

[Dale]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Therearesomeays of which you can analyze to see the risk ofbugs,and therisk of bugsnot beingfied. For a PC game thereillalways be issues with somestrange sombinationsofhardware andother software. Something that console gmes don'tsuffer of. That's the reason hy a bugless PC game most likely won't exist. Despite howmush money youput on QA there willbe someone in the many timeslargeraudience that get the released game who will haveissues notfoundby QA.

The ammount of bugs in a piece of code also depends on ho many programmers that have meen maintaining the code. Civ3 was based on Jackal, in the bottomn code that had been around atFiraxis since Civ2, and partly developed by people who left the company. Trying to change and add stuff such code will create new bugs. With ennough time to get into the code there will be less bugs.

Looking back at Civ3 we know it was rushed. Features were dropped from the feature list more or less lastmnute, because they couldn't finish it. Atari madethemreleasethegame atanunfinished state. What would another publisher had done? Most likely not missed the Holiday season if it was possible to get something shape up in time. Civ3 had the releasedate continuously pushed back closer to Christmas all the time, until it was impossible to push it more and still get the game out on time.

Now look forward on Civ4: What is the shape of it now? Well, we don't really know. The videos from E3 look good. I don't remember what shape Civ3 looked at on E3 2001 so I really can't compare them either. Also I have no real experience rom Take2games, and don't how they prioritize QA and bughunting. So why ould Civ4 be different?

Well, foronething the new 3d enginee hoefully means that no old code from Civ2 or Civ3 is left in the game. Alsothere has been no big brak out of Firaxis emploies to form their on company this time, (at least not that I know of) so hopefully any isues related to that for Civ3 is not affecting Civ4. Finally Civ3had no testingoutside Atari QA; for Civ4 Firaxis already have confirmed that 60 handpicked players have been playtesting Civ4 for some time already.

So we got lots of facts to baseour guesses on. Then the final pick you make has to be taken from the fact and mixed ith someof your optimism or pessimism depending on what party^*you are in. From that you should be able to make a qualified guess.

* Before the Civ3 release threere optimists and pessimits, and maybe some more arguing on theforum. Markosgame the keypersonsof the groups special titles,andlet th dscussiongoon for some time, but eventually stopped it when it had turned too mush OT.

Good post Gramphos! (Though as mentioned, hard to read).

The fact Firaxis has 60 Civ-experts play-testing the game (for who knows how long) reassures me that there should not be logic errors (gameplay issues may be considered bugs by some, but in technical terms they're not "bugs"), but hardware bugs are inevitable.

Dale

[Adm.Naismith]

"There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be".

That's mine reasonable guess, IMHO.

Proper Quality Assurance can cost so much that can break a software project. It is so more difficult to manage QA in a game where you can have so many degrees of game freedom (so many acceptable choices).

Console game are not free of bugs, but usually have few, and none showstopping. Console sw developers have an easy, controlled environment (the strictly closed hw platform), and a Big Brother watching the development (Sony, Nintendo...), still they sometimes miss to iron some bug.

Game testers will do their best, I bet, still they can't catch everything. I remember some bugs in SMAC and Civ III where about wrong computing of some hidden game formula (energy in SMAC, corruption in Civ III, IIRC). You can't verify that kind of bugs if you don't know from the start the expected results.

It take some time to reverse-engineer the formula and check that results are wrong, so the first batch of game patches usually miss this kind of error. When the gamers are at least able to explain the trouble to the support line, sometimes the "patch game" is over and you must keep what you have or buy the "new, improved expansion".

So I bet "There will be bugs, some will be fixed, some won't be"; nonetheless I really hope that we will enjoy this very promising game.

BTW, I bet also my cyberfriend Yin26 will enjoy this Civ IV... as the preview mentioned so many old List suggestions

[Harovan]

BTW, I bet also my cyberfriend Yin26...

You have cyber with Yin?

Where is Yin anyway? Somebody summon him.

[MarkG]

he shall appear on time
have faith

[Solver]

So how do you know, Markos? He IS your DL after all ?

[MarkG]

i HAVE faith