Civ3 from a programmer's perspective

[eRAZOR]

Originally posted by Matte979
You forget the most important thing DEADLINES!

I work in the software programming industry. When I first started a few years back I was planning on making everything perfect.
But nobody is willing to pay or wait for the perfect product, thats life. So after a while you realise you can't fix everything so you do your best and try to meet the deadline, which is the most important thing for the people that buy your product. Time is more important than perfection thats how it is.

Now to CIV3 problem.

1. Features missing: Why?... Deadline.
2. Not enough testing: Why?... Deadline
3. Design Flaws: Why?... Deadline takes along time to fix.
Important on Design Flaws..
(One thing people have to realise is that some design flaws are not really flaws but how the developer wannt the game to run and many people agree on their decission and some do not, its the same thing with all games, we do not like the same games. I do not like Quake games for example but i like Ghost Recon, same genre but diffrent in design) Just buy the ones you like.

I agree that the Deadline imposed by Infogrames was way to
optimistic for a game of this complexity but that happens. (Been there done that)

Its all about making money and finishing on time. Thats it.

I think firaxis is doing everything that they are obliged to.

People need to realise its just a Game not the perfect game.
Have fun with it as it is, chill out. Its a good game better than
most games if your into strategy.

One more thing.
Even the creation of you and other people have some bugs and design decision gone wrong aswell, like Osama Bin Laden. And nature have tried for over 4 million years.

For you that know about implementation projects in the real world
this is a common thing that happens. First the developers promise a great project that will fix everything when the customer gets the program. When the customer get the program the customer miss some things that they had expected. The relation goes bad. The developers try to fix and add everything and fix it, relation ship goes up. If the developers abandon the product like acticvison with CTP you lose the customer. Thats how it works.

Real world suck but we have no other world!

One thing these people that complain tell firaxis is how popular the game is. Otherwise they would not bother about complaining..

/Mathias
"Calm down and have fun and tell firaxis what to fix"

BTW. I wannt that patch and more patches to fix the editor.

Rest assured that every developer who contributed to this thread is well aware of those nasty deadlines. However what you forgot to point out is that is all a matter of common sense. There's an individual threshold and mine has been reached.

[Th0mas]

Originally posted by eRAZOR
Also agreed but the inherent problem with Civ3 is that the testers and/or the developers didn't have the time to complete their job in a professional manner. A clear sign of a "rush out, patch later" approach (unless the QA failed completely).

As humbleprogramme was trying to point out ... there is never 'enough time' to capture all bugs or game balance issues, more time would have meant less bugs, but a decision has to be made at some point to release the software.

No matter how well planned, the final stages of any project ALL WAYS feel rushed..

Originally posted by Humbleprogramme
The more glaring the bug, the less forgivable it is, but only a handful of the bugs documented in the forums here are serious show-stoppers. How many of you remember "GPFs" or the infamous "BSOD"? Subtle bugs, such as "If I bring up a flyout menu, then use a hotkey, the menu doesn't go away." are harder to find, because testers naturally learn to use the application, and human nature makes it difficult to intentionally do something wrong.

Originally posted by eRAZOR
That's exactly the reason why testers and not programmers test software. They are getting paid for trying unusual things. No excuse.

No excuse! Did you actually read what he wrote! That wasn't an excuse he was just pointing out the inherent difficulties of testing new software... This is not a black and White issue, mistakes happen - Based on your attitude I assume you are perfect with whatever you do.

Originally posted by humbleprogramme
Does this mean that the bugs in Civ3 are "acceptable" and that we should shut up and live with them? No...it means that the developer should accept feedback and make an earnest effort to remove them...which is exactly what the patch is intended to do

Originally posted by eRAZOR
Again, I cannot agree. The patch indeed addresses some major issues like curruption and air superiority but other very important things like the (IMO flawed) combat system, Game play .......

Did anybody say that this would be the only patch Fraxis will release? I would suggest that priority 'bugs' and game unbalancing features of the first release have been covered in the current patch. The other stuff, if appropriate (IMO the combat system is not flawed - you just don't like it) would be released in further patches.

Originally posted by HP

Design flaws are not only forgivable, but in many cases are an inherent part of the process. The design of Civ3 is very complex...

Originally posted by eRAZOR
Design flaws are an indication of a poor design hence the name.(especially after a four your development phase)

Originally posted by eRAZOR
The design might be indeed complex although I'm not sure what you were trying to express with the rest of this paragraph

You plainly did not grasp what HP was saying here. With respect to your whole post, this is probably the most important part of HP's original post.

Basically CIV 3 is VERY COMPLEX, developers are infallable, testers are not perfect and to balance a game such as this is very difficult..bugs and design flaws. Design Flaws do not equate to poor design, Same as poor implementation does not necessary equate to poor strategy.

Originally posted by eRAZOR
You tell this your customers as well?

You need to be a bit more pragmatic in your approach.

Originally posted by eRAZOR
What CTP fiasco...

Please don't .... this does you no favours.

P.S. I apologise if others have replied to this while I was writing it, to much RL getting in the way

[Velociryx]

Hey again guy!

LOL...you know...I've never even messed with the "Quote" thingy....something about an old dog not being able to learn new tricks? Mayhap....

Anyway....I *do* agree that the "fun factor" of a game has got to be firmly in the driver's seat....but I think that game balance goes hand in hand with that.

Let's say, for example, that we make a civ-type game, and we put in a unit....we'll call it the Berserker. Ancient era unit that you get when you research Peyote...or something. Now, this unit (in Civ3-stats terms) has an attack of 6, defense of 4, and moves 3 tiles per turn, regardless of terrain (and has the blitz ability).

Clearly, whoever gets this bugger first is just gonna roll over the opposition.

Imagine this unit in MP.

Sure, it'd be a heckuva lot of fun for the guy who HAS the Berserker, but if you got stuck in a lousy tundra start, you have no chance....zip....zero. ::shrug:: I just don't see it as being a terrible lotta fun for the guy on the receiving end of such an attack.

Oh....I agree with you that the game has a somewhat "rushed/unfinished" feel to it, but....it's interesting to note that despite that, it's kept me up late just about every night since it came out....

-=Vel=-
(one more turn...just ONE more turn....)

[Moraelin]

First of all, as a programmer I do understand the difference between a bug and a design flaw.

However, as a just the guy who bought the game off the shelf, it's irrelevant to me. Glaring design flaws are just as bad as bugs. In fact they're often worse, because bugs might get patched, while design flaws most often get to stay.

Either way, it doesn't make me any happier. I've paid for the whole product, not only the programming or the design. When I interact with the game, I interact with BOTH the programming and the design parts of it. I won't go, "oh, it's just the design that's broken, but I've only bought the programming part, so it's ok."

(And I also doubt that Civ 3 saw that complex a design process, seein' as it's just a poor thought patchwork of SMAC and Civ 2, with some poorly thought out tweaks thrown in.)

Either way, that's what testers and reviews are for. The testing should test both the bugs AND the design. And the designers should take the feedback from testers into account, not dismiss it as "it's not a bug." Yes, no matter how great a designer you've written all over the official page that you are, it IS possible that you made a mistake and something needs to be thought over again.

E.g., I find it hard to swallow that none of the beta-testers noticed that by mid game it becomes a totally boring click fest, alternated with waiting 5 whole minutes for all the AI units and workers on auto to move. Even with animations turned off. You know it's bad when not board whiners like me, but people who liked the game enough to write a walkthrough or strategy guide, feel a need to write in there that a lot of people will probably want to play only until the turns start getting too long, and then just quit without saving and start over again. Why didn't the testers complain about that? Didn't any of them wish there was something as elegant as public works instead of that screw-up?

E.g., didn't any of the testers ever try moving some units together? (Like a settler and his escorts.) And they never noticed that you have to move them one by one, one freakin' square at a time, just to have them stay together? None of those testers ever wished they could move whole stacks, instead of each unit at a time?

Or didn't any of the testers find it weird how come a size 2 city can just swallow 12 armies without a fight, without a revolt, without a warning?

And so on and so forth. Again, I do know they design faults not programming bugs, but it doesn't really make me feel any better.

[rid102]

I consider an unintended game exploit to be something like the "Trade all your techs and gold for a single city, no matter how many times I take the city right back" flaw

Such a scenario is a fault in the software (under a mild assumption*). Faults cause and lead to [/I]failures[I] ("problems" or "bugs" whatever you want to call them).

Specification: Players will be able to trade cities for per turn gold.

[Fault] Design: AI can trade cities for per turn gold (see spec.).

[Failure] Implementation:

These aren't bugs, in the sense that they don't crash the game, and are working as they were designed to work

* The point is, you do not and cannot know whether they are bugs or not, because there is no real specification available for the software.

A game isn't buggy or shoddy work just because you subjectively don't like it.

And conversely, a game isn't free of faults just because you subjectively don't recognise the faults within it. Without a specification you can't tell one way or the other.

[Herder]

I just think people are disappointed.

Most of the die hards are wanting something with more features. I mean this is after all the company that gave us SMAC.

This is afterall the third iteration of a game that has been out for a decade. You would think some major refinements would have been made.

I had very high hopes for Civ III. It plays very fun at first but the late game tedium, omission of prior features(sentry mode? ), non-intuitive tech tree and air superiority bug killed it for me. The game feels unfinished. I returned my copy in hopes that some of these issues would be addressed in the patch.

Now that the patch is released I am waffling. They addressed some issues but not the big killer, late game tedium. I think that sums it up for me.

[rid102]

Design Flaws do not equate to poor design

That is utter nonsense. The goal of design is to produce a plan, idea and structure for solving a given problem without faults preferably in the most efficient and most maintainable way possible (and possibly aiming for some other SE principles).

Therefore a design with faults is indicative of a weak design.

[Heliodorus]

Speaking to eRazor specifically and the rest of you just generally.

I'm just so disappointed at the amount of negativity individuals can generate at being in disagreement with the design decisions and with the actual mistakes made in the creation of a GAME. That's why I've liked this thread so much and why I specifically called out eRazor - lighten up!

I don't think that CTP or CTP2 were great games. They were great extensions of the civilization building game, but there were some really crappy problems in there (like an AI that couldn't remotely compete on any level with me and my play style). I loved that you didn't need to build roads and RRs everywhere, and the whole improvement pool concept. Combat was great, but the AI was atrocious at defending, let alone attacking. Still, I had my fun with it, and it's now off my hard drive.

The airpower thing in Civ3 was the only eggregious offense in my book, as that should have been found in testing. Lumberjacking (soon to be fixed) and pop rushing worry me, specifically in the concept of multiplayer (which I'm not likely to play anyway).

Philosophically speaking, I think one will approve or disapprove of design limitations/exploits based on one's personality. Are you the kind of person who is going to search for a way to see those issues in the positive, or in the negative. Specifically, I will use the example of the combat system. As I stated previously, the CTP2 combat system was VERY nicely done, and at first I was troubled by Civ3s system. Then it occurred to me: the way Civ3's combat system is designed lends itself to making the AI more competitive against me, even if it is rather illogical. But I APPROVE of making the AI more competitive because in the long run, it means more challenge out of the game for me, and thus, more enjoyment. So now if my tanks get whacked by spearmen, while logically I'm inclined to be offended, I have to remember that what I'm frustrated by is NOT a poorly designed game, but rather by a design decision which enables the AI to better resist my strategies. It requires me to think through my initial idea of how things SHOULD work with an eye at making them ACTUALLY work the way I want them too (i.e., build more tanks, or throw some of your older cavalry in to soften things up for the assault). This makes me think in a non-linear fashion, and actually that makes me a better strategist, and that's for me a rewarding experience.

I am very glad I bought Civ3, and I'm very pleased with the design decisions built into it. I'm glad to read, for a change, posts from the people who can look at things without righteous indignation (not accusing you of that eRazor, but some folks like Locutus really got my goat with their "taking my ball and going home" approach, which is their right, I realize).

Long enough... later... the Egyptians are waiting to be subjugated by my new Legions...

[eRAZOR]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Hey again guy!

LOL...you know...I've never even messed with the "Quote" thingy....something about an old dog not being able to learn new tricks? Mayhap....

Anyway....I *do* agree that the "fun factor" of a game has got to be firmly in the driver's seat....but I think that game balance goes hand in hand with that.

Let's say, for example, that we make a civ-type game, and we put in a unit....we'll call it the Berserker. Ancient era unit that you get when you research Peyote...or something. Now, this unit (in Civ3-stats terms) has an attack of 6, defense of 4, and moves 3 tiles per turn, regardless of terrain (and has the blitz ability).

Clearly, whoever gets this bugger first is just gonna roll over the opposition.

Imagine this unit in MP.

Sure, it'd be a heckuva lot of fun for the guy who HAS the Berserker, but if you got stuck in a lousy tundra start, you have no chance....zip....zero. ::shrug:: I just don't see it as being a terrible lotta fun for the guy on the receiving end of such an attack.

Oh....I agree with you that the game has a somewhat "rushed/unfinished" feel to it, but....it's interesting to note that despite that, it's kept me up late just about every night since it came out....

-=Vel=-
(one more turn...just ONE more turn....)

The sad thing is that I was looking forward to this game for a long time and now that I've got the game I find myself playing a few rounds and suddenly feel the urge to exit the game and do something else. I'v never had this feeling with any of the previous installments of the civ series.

I cannot exactly define what keeps me from playing but one issue is clearly the lack of the love to details I experienced with the civ1&2 and yes CTP1&2. There's a rule one it comes to software development: 80% of your customers will only use 20% of the features of the software BUT one common mistake is that those 20% vary greatly among the 80% and therefore the other 80% of the features cannot be left out. Firaxis (probably forced by InfoGreed) did exactly that. Take the wonder movies for example. I don't think I and my fellow players were the only people who enjoyed them and even if you are among those who never really payed attention to the movies you have to admit that it adds to the overall immersion factor of the game that the developers devoted the time to add such minor things.

Another point is the useability. Why on earth could they leave out stacked unit movement? Even if you hate CTP you got to admit that it was far superior in that department.

I could go on for a while but unfortunately I have to leave the office due to server maintenance.

l8er

[Th0mas]

Originally posted by rid102

That is utter nonsense. The goal of design is to produce a plan, idea and structure for solving a given problem without faults preferably in the most efficient and most maintainable way possible (and possibly aiming for some other SE principles).

Therefore a design with faults is indicative of a weak design.

With all due respect, I disagree.

Game balancing issues that were referred to as 'design faults' (in the above posts) do NOT equate to poor game design.

e.g. Crippling corruption in CIV III.

This is not poor design, however the implementation of that design has meant that for some people the game is 'broken'. By tweaking the level of corruption in the new patch, Fraxis have changed how the corruption design has been implemented within the game

[rid102]

Game balancing issues that were referred to as 'design faults' (in the above posts) do NOT equate to poor game design.

Yes, I agree but that's not because "design faults don't mean poor design". But actually because there is no specification for such features (at least available to users) so claiming it's a fault is meaningless.

If you design a peice of software with faults then you only solving the given problem for a subset of cases (i.e. it's an incomplete solution).

E.g.

User Specification: I want a program that'll print out the correct day of the week everytime I run it.

Design: Read from system clock, calculate day of week, print it out. Oh, except if it's a Sunday in which case core dump.

Implementation: <100% as design>

User: "I've got your program but it core dumps on Sundays"

Programmer: "But yeah I designed it to do that."

And by your logic the programmer is correct (there is no weakness in his design even though it's got a fault).

The weak link here is specification to design (the example shows the software not conforming to specification), and as no-one has a detailed specification here for Civ3 (AFAIK) people making claims about the game being "flawed" is meaningless. Unless proven otherwise you have to assume that's what the game was meant to do (which in some people's eyes is an even worse "crime").

Corruption is meant to be horribly crippling.

Combat is meant to be uncertain.

etc. etc.

[xane]

As YACP (Yet Another Computer Programmer) I'd just like to say a quick word about "deadlines".

If deadlines never existed, and people who pushed deadlines didn't, then nothing would get released. Creative programming is a notoriously perfectionist career, and I'm afraid innovation often gets waylaid because someone will often think that their "innovative" design wont be as "innovative" if someone else comes out with it first, so rush jobs are quite common with the "we'll fix it later" attitude.

Many inspiring authors owe their careers to publisher deadlines, there's another bunch of procrastinators that need a boot to get them to finish up.

So, before you accuse Infogrames of "unreasonable deadlines", I'm sure at some point they asked Firaxis the immortal question "when will it be done", and based their precious little project plan on that, so now whose fault is it ?

Games publishers have to take the cr*p when their future product enters the "vapourware" league table, maybe we should consider that most of us are perfectly willing to wait till Fall 2002 for a completed product - yeah right.

id software had the right attitude. They released regular "tasters" of Quake III Arena every few months, which got hoards of fanboys doing free beta testing for them, the result was an almost perfect product, most of the subsequent patches have been to counteract cheating.

[DATarbell]

HumbleProgrammer (and many others in this thread), thank you for an excellent post--regardless of what the naysayers say. Now, I've got to get back to the game, because it really is that good! (IMHO)

[jackshot]

A point here - with all the same human programmer limitations, IMO SMAC was a much more polished and interesting game out of the box. So was Gettysburg, for that matter.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by Herder
I just think people are disappointed.

Most of the die hards are wanting something with more features. I mean this is after all the company that gave us SMAC.

This is afterall the third iteration of a game that has been out for a decade. You would think some major refinements would have been made.

I should know better than to feed the trolls, but...

I for one am NOT disappointed.

I am glad they gave us a game with less features than SMAC. Really. More features doesn't mean a better game. For example, in SMAC has anyone ever seen the AI use satellites? Ever? The Clones were a good bablenced design feature too. I would rather have a clean, balanced, simpler design that works than the "throw in the kitchen sink" design that so many on this board think is a good design.

There are major refinements. Diplomacy (OK, this was in SMAC, too), AI (none of the others had an AI that would challenge anyone), strategic resources, culture.

Oh yeah, I like the combat system. Who needs realistic results? I don't find them anomolous. The math seems right.

This game is fun, and that's all that really matters