11/23 status update from Chantz on IG forums

[wervdon]

There's a fine line between perfectionism and trying to make a solid product. At the moment, Id definately say they are on the solid product side, since the bugs they've mentioned delaying gold status so far have definately been real show stoppers

I dont know about yall, but I definately don't want my first moo3 experience to be playing through 2/3rds of a game, having it crash, then trying to load and the save being corrupt ;P

[Bird-O-Prey]

Sure they are trying, but patterns are patterns...
Not that this will happen, but I just dont want to see...
- march 29: date is set for q3 2002
- sep 13: date is set at nov 26
- nov 19: date is set at dec 4
- dec 4: date is set at dec 12
- dec 12: date is set at dec 22
- dec 22: (make up your own here)...

[fatjoe79]

hey unless they're flat out lying here, it's good to see QS not just shipping the game and patching a couple days after release. It's nice to see a commitment to quality that most developers *cough*firaxis*cough* don't seem to have.

[vmxa1]

fatjoe79 you may want to hold off on that until we see what we get. I hope you are right.

[MarkG]

Bird-O-Prey,

you're not following the trend.

the march 29 delay was for a whole quarter(from q2 to q3)
the next for 56 days(from the last day of q3 to nov 26)
the last one for just 8 days(to dec 4 )

so the next delay should be for 2-3 days at most. then we go to hours...

[Master-Mike]

Well i dont mind if its delayed as long as it is as bug free as can be expected. Its great to see them make a very solid product, as most companies just want to push a product out the door and make money, and then they get bagged for it. Now a company delays the release a few times and they get bagged. I must admit im a very excited about moo3, ive been following it ever since it was announced they were going to make it 3 years ago. I will be happy has long as they keep us informed every few days or so to let us now whats happening, and release more juicey information.

[wervdon]

Another one: (same thread, about 70ish posts into it)

Folks,

I understand some of you are upset, but let's be *reasonable* here and put things into *perspective*.

Doomsayers(tm), how would you feel if you bought a game, put 30 + hours of play into it, were a hair away from winning and you were stopped COLD with a save corruption. *I* would be pissed, as would you.

Ship it crippled and patch it later is not the way to do business. Upon release, you will *all* have your nit piks, things you hate, things you love; we can't make each and everyone of you happy, but what we can do is deliver solid gameplay that doesn't crash on you 2 hours into it. We probably *will* do a patch after the game is released based on your input and feedback; it's a big part of *community*, something we personally believe in. But we'd rather have that patch be gameplay enhancements and tweaks; not fixing crash bugs.

IG & QSI will decide when the game is ready to go gold; no one else. Speculate all you want about IG and XMAS and Heavens Gate, but the fact remains, we have a commitment *down the line* for quality on this one. We didn't put all this time and effort into it to just shove it out the door. I was playing an MP game yesterday with one of the testers (and we were having a jolly good time) and it hung on us after a few hours of play (random crash)...that's just not good enough folks.

Best,
Constantine

[wervdon]

My opinion as a programmer:

The random multiplayer crash thingy maybe bordering on the perfectionism. I hope he realizes how difficult it can be for the programmers to fix a completely random bug like that I know how much I hate it when someone emails me about one of my various shareware programs and says "It crashed on me.", to which I respond "What was you doing at the time?", and get back a "I was you know, using it, not doing anything out of the ordinary." It basically leaves you with a "Ok, do I go back through every single line of code in the thing?" Of course, hopefully, his crash report for that game was a bit more detailed Its too bad windows doesnt drop core files like linux, it'd make things so much simpler with things like that :P

The corrupted save on the other hand, thats easy to fix. You have the save file to look at, and generally saving the game is a single function or a very small set of functions.

The other thing about the multiplayer crash, it doesnt effect all the players like the save corruption does. And you can safely assume 90% or so of multiplayer players do have internet access, and at least 2/3rds of them are game savy enough to understand how to patch a game.

Not saying I dont want them to fix both sets of bugs But they definately aren't on the same level of importance, and I personally would not mess a christmas release over a random hang in multiplayer after hours of play, especially not if the cause isn't easy to nail down

If it does ship with those sorts of random hang bugs though, I do hope it has a working non-corrupting autosave feature :P

[Bird-O-Prey]

Mark,

Of course I hope for the best. And I wish for a happy ending to all this doom and gloom release date speculation, as it seems to have permiated most of the moo-3 forums. The only way to stop it is for a gold announcement. I see your points about the spread of days involved, but the point still stands that the game has been delayed 3 times already, and I for one dont wish to hear about a 4th, no matter how many days are involved. Thats all Im trying to say . Im hoping for a hugh hit on a Diablo type scale, for moo-3. After all, this just might allow updates and new add-ons for the game we all look forward to. Thanks for the post Mark, and I think we really are on the same side here- ...

[wervdon]

Im going to clarify what I meant, because I think I might of come off as harsh

I think they should delay the game and fix any and all bugs they know about for which they can easily track down and fix. That is the crash report includes a good enough description of the situation so that the bug is repeatable.

I dont think they should delay for bugs which are random and rare, because in my experience you can't really put a time line on when you can fix those because of the needle in a haystack scenario. (if they are random but not rare, then they should be able to catch and isolate them just by running the program in their compilers debug mode)

And they should definately delay for any bug that is going to corrupt save files :P A crash will make me frown, a corrupt save after a crash will make me cuss

[Guffawing Crow]

Delayed again? Oh well.

Guess it's getting late enough where I'll have to toss it on my x-mas list for my family to buy me.

Happy bug hunting.

[Guffawing Crow]

Originally posted by MarkG
[a delay of one week isnt exactly a huge one you know...

[

Do you know the feeling when you have to go to the bathroom REALLY bad? In these kinds of situations, it seems that you're going to explode RIGHT before you relieve yourself, causing you to do some arcane polka.

Well, I've been doing this polka for a couple of weeks now!! If they tease me again, well....I'll just burst.

[MarkG]

Do you know the feeling when you have to go to the bathroom REALLY bad?

perhaps i'm not in the same state cause i've been DAILY following civ games for the last 6 years(this is kind of a scary statement as i think about it)

plus, i have some RON multiplayer games to play and i still havent goten PTW(coming this week). why dont you play some BNT? http://apolyton.net/bnt

[wervdon]

Another one from Chantz (sounds like the guys on the IG forum are gonna get what they seem to want--that is being kept totally in the dark until after its gold):

OK, my *last* post on *this* subject.

Lil Fuz, I *know* you all are reasonable people, that's really not my gripe. You ask me for information, i give it to you, good and bad. You say you want to be kept in the loop and updated, i do it as often as i can, good or bad (rantz too). So you see, it's a double edge sword for us; we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. Folks, dates do not come from just IG, they come from QSI as well. We work *together*; it is not a dictatorship.

No one wants the game done more than the people directly working on it and if you think otherwise, you're nuts.

So from now on, not a peep about dates or gold status from me on these boards and we're going to firmly stand by this. When it goes gold, we'll let you know. Until then, we test, hone, balance and squash bugs.

Best,
Constantine

[wervdon]

Oh btw thanks MarkG for pointing me to the BNT page, its not moo3, but its definately something to do