Nonsense, buggy software on a long haul airliner would be totally unaccpetable; these aircraft just keep getting bigger and bigger doesn't mean they should get sloppy...
Just because games are getting bigger, why shouldn't more employees be recruited; heck I bet they already do that...
EA are the biggest offenders (at least that is what I think), I'm so close to boycotting all games developed and / or published by them, I'm so fed up...
Last edited by BEANFro Elite; 10-01-2006 at 03:49 AM.
I see both sides of the coin. Buggy software that is obviously "unfinished, rushed" code is not acceptable. Ever. However...
Having written a few pieces of software myself, it's no picnic finding every bug that is there. It doesn't matter how much of a master perfectionist and craftsman you are.. mistakes will happen.
BEANFro... do you code..? Try it sometime. Pick up something such as Visual C# and write even a small application. See how you do and then give it to 10 people.. see if it runs flawlessly on THEIR system
Oh and the airliner is a terrible example. That kind of software goes through YEARS of Q/A & testing with 20 times the number of experts. Professonal aviation staff, not a team of gamers.
It's not as easy as it is made out to be. But I repeat. There is no excuse for obviously poorly written, rushed software. That's the industries fault rather than the developers!
Last edited by Shorty; 10-01-2006 at 07:09 AM.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
BEANFro Elite..sorry but you are just wrong there.
First of all as shorty mentioned you just cannot compare the aircraft computers and such, for a start they are 'Real Time Systems' as opposed to just computers, and that is a totally different way of doing things with completely different objectives. Look it up on wiki or something, not going to waste my time explaining the differences here
My point about games getting bigger is that they get more and more complex, and recruiting more coder's will not help remove bugs from systems like that. A program will often (usually) be written in modular form, ie different groups work on different sections of the game, and then 'plug' them all together. Granted, all these teams work closely together to make sure it will all work at the end, but when you have that many people working on something there are bound to be bugs. It is much easier to get bugs into a program when there is more than one person working on that particular codebase than when there is just you on your own. everyone has a different coding style, some people might not follow the same variable nameing structure.
An example? I use this kind of variable structure.
This makes it easier to identify what type a variable is, just by the first letter of it's name. Not everyone does this however, and if you are in a team where one person doesn't, you could end up with some software that had a mixture of naming conventions..totally confusing things when you read through the code.Code:int iNumber1 char cThisIsAChar boolean bReturnValue
You should try to do some coding if you don't quite understand what I meanC# is a good way to go, modern language that has a logical syntax and is ok to start with...VB doesnt really count as a programming language so I wouldnt start with that, it just teaches you bad habits ;/ Which is a shame as so many people start with it..and for them the transition to a more powerful language like C/C++/C# becomes all the more difficult
Last edited by Spud1; 10-01-2006 at 09:29 AM.
Originally Posted by BEANFro Elite
thats a pretty crap analogy. aircraft are getting bigger and bigger? well sure, the airbus is the biggest ever plane, just released last year, is the FIRST increase in size from the 747 which is 35 years old! one size increase in 35 years is hardly what i'd call 'getting bigger and bigger'
747s, when made, didnt have software as such, everything is mechanical. planes are having more and more software as time goes on, but the functionality compared to a game is minute, and the platform is always identical. you wouldnt take something off a 747 and expect it to work on an airbus..
i can understand why bugs in games are frustrating, but you guys, teh customers, are the ones pushing release dates, wanting better looking products and so on.. and its not as if bugs in games are a new thing.. but as complexity increases, so does the level of bugs.
if you want something more stable, get a console.
hughlunnon@yahoo.com | I have sigs turned off..
I don't think that the situation is that bad... there are plenty of games that work without a problem on my PC, such as Warcraft III, Guild Wars, Rome: Total War, UT2004, Black and White 2, X2, etc. Perhaps not the most recent games, but they work without problems. Just about the buggiest game I have is Morrowind, and that isn't all that bad.
So, personally, I think the stability of games is fine. Morrowind may not be rock solid, but it is a brilliant game, and its only the occasional crash, so I can forgive it.
"Well, there was your Uncle Tiberius who died wrapped in cabbage leaves but we assumed that was a freak accident."
That's what I would do. There's no point in moaning, unless it makes you feel better
Ever hear of the quality triangle ? Cost, Time, Quality? You can have two.
Avionics software costs an awful lot, takes ages to develop and does very littler once it's finished. What little it does do, it does very, very well.
Games software is relatively cheap to develop, games and patches especially are released quite quickly and games are feature packed. Guess what, they're often not very stable.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people moaning on forums about some delay in the release of a patch. Then when the patch is released there's an equal number (and often the same people) moaning that the patch introduces some other problem.
The games industry could try the Avionics development model, but it would become exstinct very quickly. You probably moan at having to pay £35 for a new game. Would you be happy to pay £3500 if it came with a "no crash" guarantee ? Don't underestimate how expensive the test/fix/re-test cycle is.
I'm always dissapointed when a game crashes. I'm also disappointed when a game becomes boring or too easy/hard/repetative. We all want our games to be fantastic value for money. Every now and then we get one. For me it was Halflife and Counterstrike. That £35 bought me 1000s of hours of entertainment. It will probably be the best value entertainment I ever buy in my life.
Whoops!!was in a blind rage at EA there, what I meant was, airliners are getting bigger, but that does not mean that they can allow errors to eek their way into the production, now I recognise theres loads more at stake when designing planes but the principle is the same, just because something gets bigger thats no excuse to get sloppy...
As the saying goes... "We outnumber them by quite a significant margin, but that does not mean we mustn't fight hard; why should you let your brother carry your burden?" -Roman general: Rome : Total War
Well every game has a update-Because of Consumer feedback from finding glitches/Bugs within testing the game and this goes far back as RTCW [Return To Castle Wolfenstein] days....
i see it this way -at least they've got the wall textures/wall limitations correct -unlike COD2-Aka Clipping
I Wish they would get rid of that hole in the sandbags on that Winter Russian Train map...... [Sigh]
But-Because like everything in life-we always cant get it right the first time
Last edited by vincent; 14-01-2006 at 03:57 AM.
BEANFro Elite you still don't quite get it I think
They are also designed from the ground up as real time systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_system) which make a difference to how the software is developed..
games or 'regular' application development is totally different as I explained earlier
And vincent, it goes right back to the start of modern PC games, the doom/quake days..years before RTCW
Last edited by Spud1; 14-01-2006 at 09:38 AM.
I'm not talking about aircraft software in my last post...I'm on about the Design of aircraft...BEANFro Elite you still don't quite get it I think
even so the principle is completely differnt...anyway i guess there's not much point in arguing over it
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