GA pop boom in SMAC

[mark13]

Freshman - it's not so much what they got wrong, but what they got wrong and refused (or couldn't be bothered) to fix that gets on most people's nerves. That's why I'm so sceptical about civ3 - I can see it being SMAC all over again. And whilst I take your point about the number of hours of enjoyment this has given us....well, you expect a certain amount of customer service to come with it. And whilst the game itself is fantastic, Firaxis's PR has been dreadful all through.

[Cybergod]

Originally posted by freshman
Fireaxis should be rewarded for their efforts, and not admonished for a mistake anyone can make. No software is perfect How many details did they get right? You'll never know - because you probably don't know the first thing about programming.

1) Why are you insulting Mark?

2) You could say the same thing for loads of other games you really like AND you probably get a better service (eg. StarCraft, CC2 etc.). Yes, they did a great job making SMAC but then they got all hyped up and started making SMAX, which is greatly UNFINISHED, as I see it in fields of programming (different and problematic pallettes being used, faction-select crashes, the interceptor bug, unimaginative names/base-names/some parts of the story-line, GA boom you discussed) and it all just seems like like a MOD with just a few added features. I was disapointed with SMAX, not because it was a bad game, but because they could have done so much more with it. And they left the SMAC in a rush, forgetting to fix the bugs they left.

What you are saying that a company shouldn't get complaints because they aren't producing bug-less software that they are meant to. What less do you expect - "Oh a great game, never mind the bugs, never mind I get Terranx.exe crash every now and then, they tried and I'll live with it" ? Especially from what the company has grown now to.

Just my pestering of these forums...

[freshman]

mark,
Do you know the timing of bug awareness and bug fixing.
Are you a fly on the wall of Fireaxis?
How do you know they "couldn't be bothered" or "refused to fix".
Sometimes it comes down to a decision like : fix 99% of the bugs and release a patch now or fix 100% of the known bugs and delay release of the patch for another month.
How can you judge so quickly whether they made the wrong move. Keep in mind - they FIXED THE FRIKEN BUG! Just need to get SMAX v.2

PR'wise - I had a question for the Mac - they immediately answered me - and it fixed the problem.
Also - have you seen a picture of their staff? They're SMALL!! Mostly programmers and graphic artists. Charging so little for their product it's hard to hire a PR staff.

Let's just hope they're profitable enough for them to keep on pumping out great games, flawed though they may be.

Cyber - I was insulting MariOne who doesn't want to pay a cent for CivIII. I'm all for customer service and venting of complaints - I'm not for people who want to rip off a struggling company so that the rest of us might suffer becasue they cant stay in business.

[WhiteElephants]

Actually they fixed two bugs in the SMAX version of the game that were bothersome to me. One being the Golden Age pop boom, two being the maintence bug for thinker and transcend levels.

I think the biggest gripe I would have is that they fixed the bugs for SMAX and didn't put out a patch for SMAC.

I really shouldn't have to buy two games to fix one.

[MariOne]

Freshman,
look at my registration date.
I even played SMAC before it got out, I began playing it with the demo.

Don't you think that in 2.5 years here a Apolyton we already had this same discusssion over and over again?
You PoV view is well known, and we respect PoVs, although we are convinced of the contrary. We can't tell you to not express yourself, but excuse us if you're just the Nth person saying the same thing again, and years late on the time, for us.

So, you later explicitly vented your intention to insult me.
Will you excuse me if I can't be bothered?
Regardless my actual knlowledge of programming (and I would just say now that your shot missed), your post was acceptable till that final comment, then you proved yourself unable to bring on a correct debate and discussion, and unworthy to be replied to.

The other posters have covered a good part of the reasonable objections to your sycophancy.
I could have few bits to add, but I can't be bothered right now, usually I can't resist, but this time really I have more important things to do.

Maybe tomorrow evening.

PS: I have bought all the versions of Civ(SMAC) since the DOS one, on the day they came out. I have even bought SMAX paying almost more than for SMAC. And SMAX is indeed nothing more than a SMAC mod, with few objects added, 80% of which is uninteresting, and a patch. After all SMAX does NOT work on its own, you gotta have a wroking version of SMAC to add the SMAX MOD/patch on it.
So I already have PAID FurXs for their last PATCH!
How many companies make you PAY to PATCH their games?
And since in multiplayer if only one players has SMAC all the others have to adapt to it, I wanted a SMACv5 patch to be able to play with those who don't have SMAX, having fixed the bugs they knew how to fix, and did fix.
You have probably earned a place in FurXs PR. They made a game with say 200 bugs. They fixed 100. Then they DID invest time to fix some more. Only they said: "Do you want the fix for other 50 bugs? Well, then pay us AGAIN the price of the game we sold you".
And even if you find this acceptable, you could have at least expected, since even SMAX lets you choose between playing Crossfire or Classic in the mod opening menu, that having you paid for the patch, they sold you the patch for BOTH game options. Instead, you buy the patch working only for the terranx.exe mod, but you dont' get the same fixing code compiled in a terran.exe for the Classic option...

I hope that FurXs goes bankrupt and that the Civs continue with some other Company.

[Cybergod]

Originally posted by MariOne
I hope that FurXs goes bankrupt and that the Civs continue with some other Company.

LOL

Maybe Activision?

[mark13]

LOL - maybe not

And freshman - have a look through the archives (don't know if they're still available for the latter part of 1999), but if they are, you'll see that there were a lot of bugs reported to Firaxis - and they simply ignored us. In effect, they left the game unfinished. While I do realise that they're a small company, it's not as though they make a lot of games! In fact, since they were founded nearly five years ago, I can only count four - SMAC, Gettysburg, Antietam and the forthcoming Civ3. Surely it isn't too much to ask to bring out a finished product once in a while?

Also - remember Civ2. Do you recall how many bugs there were in the original release of that? Well - the vast majority of them were fixed - they brought out a lot of patches for that game. And while Microprose are a lot bigger company, they also make hundreds more games.

But still, the point remains. And I have a feeling we're going to get it all over again with Civ3 - which is why I fully understand MariOne's point of view. And though I will buy the game (and the $40 MGE when that comes out ) I can't help feeling similar sentiments.

[freshman]

I have a hard time understanding some of the biterness expressed towards Fireaxis mainly because my gaming experience with CivII (4 years) and AC (2 months) has been mostly very positive. I do have a Mac, and perhaps the ol' adage that good things come to those who wait applies here - more bug fixes seem to make it into Mac products. I haven't looked at the archives, but do believe that many bugs were discovered and mentioned to Fireaxis. I can also understand some of the frustration at not feeling like you were heard; lack of customer support; few or partial patches; etc...I would probably understand better the frustration at having to buy 2 games to get a bug fix - if I actually came across anything that impeded my enjoyment of the game - so far no gripes. Customer support should be an integral part of a successful company, so I won't defend Fireaxis anymore. They can decide their own fate...
And insults aside, I do vehemently disagree with anyone who publicly announces their intention to rip off a game. I think that is an unfortunate attitude, and really doesn't help the situation.
Perhaps, if it makes a difference, they might consider charging more for their product to be able to afford better Customer support; I'd be in favor of that. I would certainly prefer them to charge more for 1 game (the honest way) than to be faced with having to purchase another game just to have some bugs fixed (somewhat underhanded). I think their games are incredibly complex, programming wise, and probably sell in lower volume than most other types of games - like sports/action/first-shooter/RealTimeStrategy... It seems to me like they aren't in a good situation for making a serious profit. It's a situation we have to deal with too. And it's a situation that would be repeated with any company because of the type of market - so be careful what you wish for. So I think some empathy might be in order, though I'll no longer defend them against your gripes.

[RedFred]

Freshman, it would be difficult to condense the history of Firaxis' abysmal PR work into a few paragraphs but I'll try.

There was the interview where Firaxis suggested that they deliberately added a bunch of bugs in, so that the SMAC community would have things to talk about. Other posts by Firaxian members at the old .owo website came across as equally condescending and arrogant.

A lot of the ideas for SMACX came from for free to Firaxis from us at the .owo forums. They repayed us by saying that there was only going to be one or two patches maximum for SMACX after fixing a few obvious errors. We voted for two patches, but they made sort of a secret revision to their first patch and never did release a proper second patch.

'Poly members at the time, particularly zsozso, spent a lot of work developing a bug list for the comprehensive second patch that never materialized. I agree that you will never get all the bugs. Not one or two or ten or twenty, but hundreds of bugs were uncovered. This was before we knew Firaxis was reneging on its promise of another patch. So all the work was for nought. Most irritating for me were the edge of world and interceptor crashes.

If SMAC/SMACX were games that sucked this wouldn't be an issue now. But, I feel that the games were brilliant. So most of us remaining here have put up with the crashes and whatnot and keep playing. So I regard the game as conceptually great but flawed from a programming standpoint. But if Firaxis had just worked a little harder they could have made the best game ever.

[MariOne]

Originally posted by freshman
...
And insults aside, I do vehemently disagree with anyone who publicly announces their intention to rip off a game. I think that is an unfortunate attitude, and really doesn't help the situation.
...

I admit that it was rather hard from me, and that was the effect I intended to obtain.
Let's say that the most provoking part is the public announcement... here in Italy I never heard that a shop accepts to refund you when you return a game that doesn't "satisfy" you, like instead I heard many times claim here that's common practice in the US.
So it's natural that everyone attempts to provide himself whit a "homemade demo" when an official one is not available...
I'm ofter regarded as a martian when I purchase a game that passed my personal tryout, when I could go on playing it (illegally) for free...
And as I said I regularly bought all the Civ series, including SMAC AND the SMAX "patch", and even that true ripoff shelfware that's ToT.

Originally posted by RedFred
...
If SMAC/SMACX were games that sucked this wouldn't be an issue now. But, I feel that the games were brilliant. So most of us remaining here have put up with the crashes and whatnot and keep playing. So I regard the game as conceptually great but flawed from a programming standpoint. But if Firaxis had just worked a little harder they could have made the best game ever.

I mostly concur with RedFred.
I might add/specify a category of most annoying errors.
OK, those which equally hit all the players and that cause the game to hang/crash are really serious.
But also those which allow to perform an action explicitly denied by the stated game rules, using simply an alternate input method, make really sink your respect for the programmers.
These become relevant in Multiplayer especially, as you have to take on a overhead of ruling and referee job, to avoid that some "unadvised" player "unadvertently" exploits a loophole in the rules implementation left there by the programmers.
So, we have actions that get a denying mesage from the game if you invoke them via a Keyboard Shortcut, or from the menu, and are allowed if you perform them via the right-click popup menu, or viceversa.
We have cases in which the bug simply lies in a lacking IF instruction in the code to test if the required conditions for action are met. Or simply, BAD habits in the placing of the IF instructions in the code structur.
OR... an insufficient knowledge/application of the concepts of Software Engineering (hey, I remember I was studying them at the Univ 15 years ago...).
Even if the modularization and architecture of the program didn't turn out to be optimal anyway, MANY of the pointed out bugs could have really been fixed by simply adding an IF statement somewhere, without really impacting with the execution flow anywhere else in the code...

There's another really trivial but really blatant case I always stress, and recently brought up again by some newcomers (to say that it's not just me being manic about it): the game interface provides an indicator in the basewindow facilities display, to let you know which NetNodes you have already linked. Well, that indicator can be seen playing at 1024x768, but NOT at 800x600.
I have personally pointed out this little problem at Firaxis when playing the DEMO, i.e. before end of February 99.
Regardless the fact that you have workarounds for this, and that it' doesn't really affect your playing, and ignoring the fact that they didn't bother to address and fix it, this is an issue of handling the basic API, basic programming skills like using text display primitives to obtain something like, if not shrink-to-fit (and considering that the gamne uses only two FIXED full-screen graphics modes, it was really just all about THINKING to determine two different font sizes depending on the used resolution), at least a *word wrap* effect!
So, don't tell us about the complexity of such programming.
I think this examples show us of the poor skills used in the *basic* programming techniques and/or the poor attention they did put into details.

You know, they had (and boasted a bit about) a beta-testing program lasting months before they even released the demo. Well, after 2-3 week the demo was out, innumerable bugs were found out that escaped the beta-test program...

I could be talking for pages and pages about it.
Let me just conlclude with the already mentioned gem:
"Well, all the bugs we put in the game help to cement your feeling of belonging to an online community". No comment.

___

About what to do about the Civ III purchase now.
Actually, posting something similar in the MoO3 forum, I got a reply stating a simple concept I overlooked.
click here
Firaxis has already been paid for their developing.
The money I / you would spend to buy it, would mainly go to the publisher, Infogrames.
Of course, I dont' know the details, so I figure that if the game is either a flop or very succesful that would make a difference to Firaxis too. But probably more in the line of their reputation and in the jobs they will be able to find for the future, rather than in their actual current revenues.

This still leaves me in the doubt whether I am willing to shell for what can be potentially another "conceptually great but flawed from a programming standpoint" game.
If Infogrames is planning to commit into the realisation of MoM2, and to support their effort in MoO3, I would be willing to sustain them buying another of their games. But if that would signal them that I also endorse their choice of Firaxis as developer, I would be conveying the opposite of what I think...

Let's be positive and imagine that SMAC was an unfortunate event. Let's give Firaxis another chance. This would mean assuming that the shiit *implementation* work they did with was just an episode.
Well, you'll pardon me if I dont' give them that chance on pure trust. As I already posted in another site, if they're not releasing a demo, I'll provide me with one on my own. I might also wait to see how will they address the multiplaying issue, which after SMAC is of paramount relevance to me.
If this time they did even just a decent job, I will be more than willing to spend my money to get a regular legal copy of the game. THEN.