It's like using "||", only you get to write four extra lines of code



  • I just ran into this little beauty.

    if ($someCondition || !$someOtherCondition || (MyClass::$publicStaticVar > 1) {
        $this->setState('normal');
    } else {
        if (!$moreConditions && $moreAndMoreConditions || $somethingElse) {
            $this->setState('normal');
        }
    }

    I'm trying to debug a really nasty problem in tens of thousands of lines of code written as poorly as this or worse, riddled with duplication, SQL injection vulnerabilities, plain 'ol this-has-never-worked idiocy, and WTFery of all kinds. The perpetrators have been rewarded with leadership roles. Tell me, oh denizens of TDWTF, is there ever any escape from this drudgery? I love writing code, and I invest a lot of study and practice into improving. But I'm starting to get the impression that this makes *me* the fool.



  • It depends what you mean by escape...

    There are a lot of companies out there who have the same problems. The reality is that top management generally doesn't want to have to do anything, which is why they hire people to do it for them... the only problem is, hiring and promoting people is something that they ALSO don't want to have to do... so they farm off hiring to an HR department, which usually doesn't have enough domain knowledge to hire the right people (hence you get absolute bilge checked into source control)... and they put zero effort into picking who to promote, by randomly selecting the first name their subconscious mind gives them (usually the dickhead "life-and-soul of the Christmas party" guy who made sure to ply them with drinks).

    Never does it cross their minds that the quiet guy who's name they cant quite remember should be promoted... mainly because they don't remember his name, but also because they themselves have lost touch with the cutting edge of technology (if they were ever in touch) and so wouldn't be able to differentiate between good code and a kick in the balls, even if presented to them side by side.

    Escape means leaving that company, and hopefully finding one where the people are alright... you'll never find a company where the codebase is perfect, and where you agree with every managerial decision, but you could at least find somewhere with a balance you can deal with! Whatever you do - don't stop practicing and improving (from the sound of it, there is no chance of that... you sound like the type who'll learn new tech skills regardless of if someones paying you for it). There ARE employers out there looking for enthusiastic techies like yourself. Its just that the only way you're gonna find them is by going out and finding them.

    Improving your skills doesn't make you the fool... it makes you one of the few sane people in a foolish world. I know what you mean though - when you see some talentless fucker getting all the credit and all the money for having told you to do something that he can't... you probably will never escape that, as the world is inherently unfair like that. The only thing you can do is minimise your exposure to such unfairness, so you can shrug it off and not care so much when you see it.


    I found a role coding games for consoles and PC (result!). Generally the company's code base is pretty good, and the senior coders and managers have got to their positions by being competent and hardworking. So, I escaped by taking a pay cut, ditching web and application development, and doing something a bit more difficult... but crucially a lot more fun and interesting, and almost entirely devoid of horrific WTFs. Any WTFs I do come across I don't mind, because I believe in the enjoyment people will get when they play the finished product... as opposed to the mind-numbing awfulness experienced by users of some tedious web application. So, I took a year out to relearn C++, open GL and directx (and sit on my arse playing games), I had to take a pay cut, but I'm really enjoying myself.



  • @eViLegion said:

    So, I took a year out to relearn C++, open GL and directx (and sit on my arse playing games), I had to take a pay cut, but I'm really enjoying myself.

    Careful there, evil, you might get yourself banned. People don't come to this site to read about developers enjoying their non-wtf jobs and everything working out well.



    Seriously though, that sounds great. Congratulations.



  • @eViLegion said:

    So, I escaped by taking a pay cut, ditching web and application development, and doing something a bit more difficult... but crucially a lot more fun and interesting, and almost entirely devoid of horrific WTFs.

    Well, we know you're not working with Gamebryo/Creation Engine. Or Unreal. Or...

    Wait! Video games are crawling with WTFs. How the fuck can you be coding a game in C++ and not encounter constant WTFs? Or are you the kind of person who ships a game that sets the user's 1920x1200 monitor to 1024x768 because you were too fucking lazy to query available modes, and you just don't consider that a WTF like the rest of the universe does?



  • @eViLegion said:

    There are a lot of companies out there who have the same problems. The reality is that top management generally doesn't want to have to do anything, which is why they hire people to do it for them... the only problem is, hiring and promoting people is something that they ALSO don't want to have to do... so they farm off hiring to an HR department, which usually doesn't have enough domain knowledge to hire the right people (hence you get absolute bilge checked into source control)... and they put zero effort into picking who to promote, by randomly selecting the first name their subconscious mind gives them (usually the dickhead "life-and-soul of the Christmas party" guy who made sure to ply them with drinks).

    Never does it cross their minds that the quiet guy who's name they cant quite remember should be promoted... mainly because they don't remember his name, but also because they themselves have lost touch with the cutting edge of technology (if they were ever in touch) and so wouldn't be able to differentiate between good code and a kick in the balls, even if presented to them side by side.

    This guy has it right. The only way to escape bad people is to leave. At my last job one of the (many) reasons I said "fuck this place" is that one of my coworkers spent like a month rolling his own Java mock framework (why yes, the first Google hit for "Java mock framework" is a Stack Overflow thread listing a dozen mature stable frameworks) and then got promoted*, while I churn out a code update that fixed a flaw** so legitimately high-priority that it got its own special release*** and I get the managerial equivalent of a pat on the head at the next project-wide meeting.

    * Technically he got promoted because the top Project Manager asked if anyone would do a client's pet project involving Active Directory and he volunteered for it despite not knowing anything about Active Directory. Considering he was a huge Not Invented Here guy, I'd bet his solution could have been done in a quarter of the time with two or three carefully-worded Google searches.

    ** System analyst whose design contained the original flaw? Promoted.

    *** I even got it done in within project milestones, which is impressive since I estimated double the time to my manager and he cut that estimate in half because of how high-priority it was (as in people not getting paid).



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Well, we know you're not working with Gamebryo/Creation Engine. Or Unreal. Or...

    Wait! Video games are crawling with WTFs. How the fuck can you be coding a game in C++ and not encounter constant WTFs? Or are you the kind of person who ships a game that sets the user's 1920x1200 monitor to 1024x768 because you were too fucking lazy to query available modes, and you just don't consider that a WTF like the rest of the universe does?

    Heh, well, there are minor wtfs like anywhere else, but none of them particularly noteworthy.

    Obviously, console side we give no choice over resolution... stuff is rendered at the largest size which still looks smooth, then upscaled as required. On PC, of course, it is left to the user to pick resolution and quality settings.

    I guess the reason there are fewer wtfs, is because of the required standard of efficiency... code has got to be clean and fast, or games simply won't work like they should (e.g. take too long calculating some decision for AI, and you seriously limit the number of AI you can have in the game)... you're kinda forced into producing the simplest system to solve your problem because bloat REALLY matters!

    EDIT: I hate the way chrome buggers posts up, and I don't have firefox here. :o(



  • @eViLegion said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Well, we know you're not working with Gamebryo/Creation Engine. Or Unreal. Or...

    Wait! Video games are crawling with WTFs. How the fuck can you be coding a game in C++ and not encounter constant WTFs? Or are you the kind of person who ships a game that sets the user's 1920x1200 monitor to 1024x768 because you were too fucking lazy to query available modes, and you just don't consider that a WTF like the rest of the universe does?

    Heh, well, there are minor wtfs like anywhere else, but none of them particularly noteworthy.

    Obviously, console side we give no choice over resolution... stuff is rendered at the largest size which still looks smooth, then upscaled as required. On PC, of course, it is left to the user to pick resolution and quality settings.

    I guess the reason there are fewer wtfs, is because of the required standard of efficiency... code has got to be clean and fast, or games simply won't work like they should (e.g. take too long calculating some decision for AI, and you seriously limit the number of AI you can have in the game)... you're kinda forced into producing the simplest system to solve your problem because bloat REALLY matters!

    EDIT: I hate the way chrome buggers posts up, and I don't have firefox here. :o(

    Bullshit. You might happen to be working in the one game shop on Earth where somebody actually makes decisions based on the quality of the product, that does not mean that game shops are somehow magically better than anywhere else. I would find a link for you of the fuckered SimCity launch, but thats a bit too obvious and Google works for you too.

     



  • @eViLegion said:

    because [in games] bloat REALLY matters!
     

    lol



  • @Cenan said:

    the fuckered SimCity launch
     

    The fuckered Simcity launch was not at all a code problem.

    There's plenty schadenfreude to be had from deconstructing Glassbox, though.

     

     




  • @dhromed said:

    @Cenan said:

    the fuckered SimCity launch
     

    The fuckered Simcity launch was not at all a code problem.

    There's plenty schadenfreude to be had from deconstructing Glassbox, though.

    Requiring always-on internet connection for a part of the game's (single player) engine is most definately a code problem. But you're right nonetheless, the SimCity fiasko was a bad example, and their WTF was not having enough servers to deal with their (very very predictable) demand. It is however still a game shop producing a monumental fuckup.

     



  • @eViLegion said:

    I guess the reason there are fewer wtfs, is because of the required standard of efficiency... code has got to be clean and fast, or games simply won't work like they should (e.g. take too long calculating some decision for AI, and you seriously limit the number of AI you can have in the game)... you're kinda forced into producing the simplest system to solve your problem because bloat REALLY matters!

    Ok first of all, that's bullshit in 2013. You could build your games in a managed language, halve your development time, and still have cycles to spare. Even on console hardware. (Well. Unless it's the PS3, that thing sucks shit.)

    Secondly, despite Gamebryo being a buggy, bloated, mess, pretty much every game made in it becomes a top seller and award-winner. Am I claiming the game engine has anything to do with that? No. I'm claiming that a good game designer, DESPITE USING AN AWFUL ENGINE, will still create a top-selling award-winning game. So I think your priorities are out of whack.



  • @Cenan said:

    Requiring always-on internet connection for a part of the game's (single player) engine is most definately a code problem.
     

    No, it's a business requirement.



  • Because of course blakey, you know exactly what you're talking about, having shipped a great many games on a great many platforms.



  • SimCity was an EVERYTHING problem:

    1) The design of the game was pretty much the opposite of what everybody wanted from a SimCity game, and removed hundreds of features the SimCity designers (apparently?) didn't think were important. (For example, saving your city, blowing it up gooood with disasters, then re-loading again. How could they not anticipate wanting to do that? Were they never 14?) They're adamant they had a vision for the game, and kudos to them, but the vision wasn't a game people actually want to play.

    2) The marketing for the game was about as awful as could be. As I posted on Twitter, there would have been almost zero complaints about the missing features if they'd just named the game like "SimCities Online Worlds" or something to imply it was an online MMO-type thing. Instead, EA Marketing wanted to milk the SimCity name and pretend this game was SimCity 5, misleading customers and pissing everybody off. (Note that EA is alone in this: the awful game "Dungeons" was advertised as a Dungeon Keeper remake/clone, and it's not even close.)

    3) The programmers who shipped the game with huge, huge bugs are also responsible. The Glassbox engine looks nice, but... that's it. It''s AI is fucking retarded as shit. SimCity 2000 did a better job of linking homes with jobs, and routing cars along roads. (Although it's literally impossible to do a worst job routing traffic than Glassbox does.)

    4) The EA server admin people who thought they had enough servers-- even though the game was still denying connections even after they *doubled* their initial amount of servers *and* disabled all the bandwidth-heavy features in the game. Wut? What was their original capacity estimate? 4 P4-300s in a closet somewhere in Trenton? Jesus Christ, did these guys fuck up.

    Anyway, point is: SimCity was a fuck up on pretty much every level.



  • @eViLegion said:

    Because of course blakey, you know exactly what you're talking about, having shipped a great many games on a great many platforms.

    I've shipped games. YOU DON'T KNOW ME! sobs

    That aside, I do know that the designer of the game is 10,000 times more important for the creation of a good game than the game engine, or what language it's written in. And I also know that managed languages are so much easier to work with, they'd increase your developer efficiency by a factor of 3. And I also know the gaming industry has coders who usually make decisions based on "we've always done it that way", which is basically the worst way to make decisions. And I know Roosbeef - Onder Invloed. That's the point I'm trying to make.

    Skyrim was an excellent game despite Gamebryo/Creation Engine. Imagine how excellent it would have been if they coded in a language that allowed them more time to fix the myriad of bugs?

    EDIT: of course a guy whose bread and butter is developing games in C++ isn't going to agree with me, just like idiots who bring home the bacon with Lotus Notes consulting are going to show up in that Notes thread any second now and try to convince us it's not that bad.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    @eViLegion said:
    I guess the reason there are fewer wtfs, is because of the required standard of efficiency... code has got to be clean and fast, or games simply won't work like they should (e.g. take too long calculating some decision for AI, and you seriously limit the number of AI you can have in the game)... you're kinda forced into producing the simplest system to solve your problem because bloat REALLY matters!

    Ok first of all, that's bullshit in 2013. You could build your games in a managed language, halve your development time, and still have cycles to spare. Even on console hardware. (Well. Unless it's the PS3, that thing sucks shit.)

    It's true. Especially for the AI behind well structured, simple games like chess.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    And I know Roosbeef - Onder Invloed.
     

    That's why you drink.



  • @boomzilla said:

    [quote user="blakeyrat"][quote user="eViLegion"]I guess the reason there are fewer wtfs, is because of the required standard of efficiency... code has got to be clean and fast, or games simply won't work like they should (e.g. take too long calculating some decision for AI, and you seriously limit the number of AI you can have in the game)... you're kinda forced into producing the simplest system to solve your problem because bloat REALLY matters!

    Ok first of all, that's bullshit in 2013. You could build your games in a managed language, halve your development time, and still have cycles to spare. Even on console hardware. (Well. Unless it's the PS3, that thing sucks shit.)
    [/quote]

    It's true. Especially for the AI behind well structured, simple games like chess.[/quote]
    Okay, here are two examples:

    Minecraft was made in a managed language.

    Portal 2 was made in a non-managed language.

    Which one is a better game?



  • @Ben L. said:

    Which one is a better game?
     

    You win a prize for most irrelevant question.





  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Ben L. said:

    Minecraft was made in a managed language.

    Portal 2 was made in a non-managed language.

    Which one is a better game?

    I haven't played either, but I'll assume that game sequels are better than the originals, so I'll go with Portal 2.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @dhromed said:

    @Ben L. said:

    Which one is a better game?
     

    You win a prize for most irrelevant question.

     

    You win a prize for most giving out the most irrelevant prize.

     



  • @Ben L. said:

    Minecraft was made in a managed language.

    Portal 2 was made in a non-managed language.

    Which one is a better game?

    Did you read my opinion on the matter AT ALL? Goddamned, I'm running out of new and creative ways to call people on these forums "dumb".

    The question isn't "which is better, Minecraft or Portal 2", the question is more like: "if you had two teams build Portal 2, based on the exact same assets and design docs, only one used a managed language and one used C++, would the managed language version have come out better?" (My assertion is that it would.) And EVEN THEN it's a terrible example because Valve gave the Portal 2 devs plenty of time to debug and perfect their game before shipping, which is not true or typical in 95% of the industry.

    The Skyrim example is a much better one because: 1) Portal 2 is overrated trash anyway, and 2) Skyrim was obviously rushed to hit it's 11/11/11 date and needed at least another 3 months of polish.

    (Food for thought: even if you think in the above example that C++ would be a better choice for writing your theoretical Portal 2 remake, now let's talk about Steam. Do you think Steam should be written in C++? Explain why or why not in the space provided. If more space is required, you may request a sheet of paper from the proctor of this exam. You have one hour to complete this section.)



  • @Ben L. said:

    Okay, here are two examples:

    Minecraft was made in a managed language.

    Portal 2 was made in a non-managed language.

    Which one is a better game?


    Well, they're both excellent games with a lot to offer...

    BUT... Minecraft is buggy as hell, and runs slower than old people fuck, even if your machine is an absolute beast. And that is just in single player... try it in multiplayer and it does some very very strange things indeed (like whole sections of the world simply not loading in time as you walk on it, so you fall out of the universe).

    Yes, you can make very good games in managed languages, but if you're trying to do something esoteric, and particularly if you're trying to do realtime world generation like in Minecraft, you really benefit from proper (e.g. manual) memory management.


  • @eViLegion said:

    BUT... Minecraft is buggy as hell, and runs slower than old people fuck, even if your machine is an absolute beast. And that is just in single player...
     

    n...no?

    MC is an in-between load. Most AAA games put a much higher strain on CPU and GPU. Think of ACIII and Human Revolution.

    Light load is games like Osmos.

    @eViLegion said:

    try it in multiplayer and it does some very very strange things indeed

    Hey, it does the same strange things in singleplayer. Chunk load has never been a problem for me.It never happens during normal walking; it only happened to me while I was speedboating somewhere.

    We're not talking top-quality programming here.

     

     

    HOWEVER

    I have a belief based on no experience that Minecraft would have improved performance if it'd been coded in C++.



  • For steam it really doesn't matter...



    Client: most of the time it does nothing anyway, just sits there quietly, occasionally polling the server for something it needs. Whenever it does do something, it is usually your bandwidth which acts as your speed bottleneck, so there would be no improvement to be gained by making it quicker.



    Server: actually a large cluster of machines doing different things... doesn't need to be particularly efficient, as you can just shove more machines into the cluster if you want better performance.



    For a game neither of these conditions apply... you can't simply expect an end user to try and bolt extra machines onto the side of their machine to improve performance (aside from the fact it wouldn't work, its also commercially ridiculous). In a game, potentially every instruction matters... by which i mean, every tiny improvement in speed you can get means a fraction of an extra frame rendered per second. One or two instructions might not make that big a difference on their own, but if you've got 5 nested loops being called every frame, then it does usually make a lot of sense to try and trim that down.



  • To be fair, I did run minecraft with a fuckton of mods shoved in, so that might be why singleplayer went a bit wrong for me.



    Multiplayer chunk load is a total fucker though, even without mods. It was mainly when I tried travelling on my lovely minecart transport system that it tarded up.



  • @eViLegion said:

    It was mainly when I tried travelling on my lovely minecart transport system that it tarded up.
     

    The game engine is apparently faster than its data-reading routines.



  • @eViLegion said:

    Client: most of the time it does nothing anyway, just sits there quietly, occasionally polling the server for something it needs. Whenever it does do something, it is usually your bandwidth which acts as your speed bottleneck, so there would be no improvement to be gained by making it quicker.

    Because speed is LITERALLY THE ONLY METRIC EVER NEEDED TO MEASURE ANYTHING EVER? Dude. Skyrim isn't a good game because it runs fast. You're still 100% missing the point here.

    No Steam is awful because it's buggy as shit. It's buggy as shit because:

    1) Management generally-not-caring-about-it-being-buggy-as-shit, and

    2) It's terrible convoluted C++ codebase makes bug fixes difficult or nearly impossible.

    3) It's coded by interns (I suspect) who have absolutely no concept of usability, and Valve doesn't see the value in user-testing.

    I wouldn't care if Steam was literally 10 times slower if it let me change the font size in IM windows*, or actually kept track of the categories in my library after I set them, or stopped mysteriously forgetting about "non-Steam" games I've added to my library every time my computer restarts. Or if loading my "activity" screen and then hitting reload a second later actually gave me the exact same activity feed, instead of just a random selection of items (or nothing at all in some cases.)

    *) Ironically, Valve sees the need for accessibility in video games-- their games always have extremely good subtitles, they have modes for color-blindness (or are color-blind safe in the first place), etc. But when it comes to desktop software? "Change the font size? FUCK YOU! You have a 1080p monitor on a 13.3" screen? Oh, well that's different. In that case: STILL FUCK YOU!"

    Fuck Valve. Remember Steam is popular because 1) it's a virtual monopoly, and 2) EA's bullshit is even worse. Not because it's good.

    @eViLegion said:

    In a game, potentially every instruction matters... by which i mean, every tiny improvement in speed you can get means a fraction of an extra frame rendered per second.

    Yeah, but that doesn't universally apply. Now maybe you're writing "Super Action FPS Super Fast Action Fast Super 4.0 Gold" and it does matter to you, but for 99% of games it doesn't matter. Again: Skyrim wasn't universally acclaimed because it was fast, and Borderlands 2 (or Bioshock Infinite, for a more recent example) doesn't look excellent because it's pumping 10% more pixels than the competition, they look excellent because they had excellent artists and a clear and coherent vision for the end-result of the product.

    You're trapped in this little tiny cramped cubby-hole. You're not seeing the big picture at all. Maybe if you saw the big picture you'd still disagree with me-- that's fine! Everybody's entitled to their opinion! But I'd like some evidence that you *do* see the big picture first.

    @eViLegion said:

    ne or two instructions might not make that big a difference on their own, but if you've got 5 nested loops being called every frame, then it does usually make a lot of sense to try and trim that down.

    Well derp, but what does that have to do with C++ vs. managed?



  • I see the bigger picture dude...

    I know its all about design, and games like Skyrim and Borderlands have excellent design. It doesn't matter how fast your engine is if the game is a pile of wank.



    However, if Skyrim had been coded with a faster engine, then (for example) it would have allowed additional polygons in the final exported versions of all models, or higher resolution on textures etc... the fact is that the designers will have created all their assets at a much higher level of detail than any version of the game could handle, and these will have been down-scaled to fit the capabilities of the platform in question. So, a faster engine would have made the game even better, as you'd have been able to see more of what the artists intended you to see.



    Speed is not the be-all-and-end-all, I agree, but it does matter.



  • @eViLegion said:

    However, if Skyrim had been coded with a faster engine, then (for example) it would have allowed additional polygons in the final exported versions of all models, or higher resolution on textures etc... the fact is that the designers will have created all their assets at a much higher level of detail than any version of the game could handle, and these will have been down-scaled to fit the capabilities of the platform in question. So, a faster engine would have made the game even better, as you'd have been able to see more of what the artists intended you to see.

    That's an interesting fantasy world.

    Here in the REAL world what would have happened is: "Bob, ignore that bug about dragons flying backwards, we gotta get this performance up by 4% before we ship. Yes, that Thieves Guild quest is still broken, so what? MORE PIXELS MORE PIXELS!"

    Nothing happens in a vacuum. Skyrim's weakness wasn't its performance (well except on the aforementioned shitty PS3 hardware), but its bugginess-- if they had spent even MORE time fussing over performance than they already had, they'd just increase the bugginess.

    And no matter how great your code is today, your game's going to look dated (and run 20,000 times faster) in 5 years.

    @eViLegion said:

    Speed is not the be-all-and-end-all, I agree, but it does matter.

    Well duh. Again: missing the point. Of course it matters. Who said otherwise?

    My argument is that it doesn't matter *as much* as development time. Especially since game companies are always running on crunch time. They should be prioritizing their development efficiency as much as possible. And using C++? Ain't doing that. And why? "Because we've always done it that way!"

    And part of the reason is that the industry is full of people like you who think pumping pixels is so fucking important. I guess because you grew up on Quake on your 486? I dunno. But that attitude needs to go away.

    BTW, who says both "dude" and "pile of wank"? Where are you from?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    No Steam is awful because it's buggy as shit. It's buggy as shit because:

    2) It's terrible convoluted C++ codebase makes bug fixes difficult or nearly impossible.

     

    Umm... I'll admit it's been a while since the last time I got a new computer, but IIRC when I went to reinstall Steam on it, it required the .NET framework.

     



  • England... where people say both dude, and wank. We import a lot of words, thereby becoming the best at language.



    The bugginess of Skyrim wasn't even the engine. It was the scripts that ran on the engine. Almost certainly these will have been maintained by two completely different teams, working in two different languages, with the ones who've got a clue put on the engine team, and the interns put on the scripts (because its less dangerous that way). So likely as not, each type of fix (make engine faster/fix stupid mission errors) required a totally different human resource to fix it (I guess the engine guys probably could fix the mission errors, but who wants to go trawling through reams of interns script?).



    You seem to love jumping to the conclusion that people have "missed your point" as though your points are somehow so insightfully complex that the person to whom you address it can't possibly have understood. Maybe they dismissed your point as angrily stating the obvious with foghorn subtlety, without actually saying anything of merit or interest to the person to whom you say it?



    Anyway... is the source of your anger because someone uses C++, thus slightly increasing development time and slightly decreasing code maintainability? If so, then I think you're kinda missing the point that there simply is no other language with the power and available tools, which will allow you to craft a common code-base across all the available gaming platforms. So its kinda retarded to say people should be using another language, until such time as another language can be easily made to work on ALL of those platforms.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    Umm... I'll admit it's been a while since the last time I got a new computer, but IIRC when I went to reinstall Steam on it, it required the .NET framework.

    ... aaannnddd your point is...?



  • @eViLegion said:

    The bugginess of Skyrim wasn't even the engine. It was the scripts that ran on the engine.

    Some were.

    A large proportion of them were in the engine.

    However, I'd also argue that they foolishly decided to hard-code a lot of shit into the engine that didn't belong there.

    They also chose to use a fucking retarded home-grown scripting engine instead of just installing a JavaScript engine or Lua or something else that's sane, embeddable, and common. Dumb decision.

    @eViLegion said:

    Almost certainly these will have been maintained by two completely different teams, working in two different languages, with the ones who've got a clue put on the engine team, and the interns put on the scripts (because its less dangerous that way).

    True.

    @eViLegion said:

    (I guess the engine guys probably could fix the mission errors, but who wants to go trawling through reams of interns script?).

    You're kind of an asshole, aren't you?

    @eViLegion said:

    You seem to love jumping to the conclusion that people have "missed your point" as though your points are somehow so insightfully complex that the person to whom you address it can't possibly have understood.

    You hit that nail right on the head. I might add that to my sig.

    @eViLegion said:

    Maybe they dismissed your point as angrily stating the obvious with foghorn subtlety, without actually saying anything of merit or interest to the person to whom you say it?

    I can't parse that sentence. So I'll reply... maaaybe?

    @eViLegion said:

    Anyway... is the source of your anger because someone uses C++, thus slightly increasing development time and slightly decreasing code maintainability?

    Do you honestly believe it's only a slight improvement?

    @eViLegion said:

    If so, then I think you're kinda missing the point that there simply is no other language with the power and available tools, which will allow you to craft a common code-base across all the available gaming platforms.

    Well yeah. That's because the fucking entire INDUSTRY, including the guys making the tools has that dumb Michael Bay mentality I was just complaining about. And I'm ignoring the weasel-word "power" there, because you can define that however you like.

    @eViLegion said:

    So its kinda retarded to say people should be using another language, until such time as another language can be easily made to work on ALL of those platforms.

    The development time you save not dealing with C++ bullshit will give you more than enough time to port your tools.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:
    Umm... I'll admit it's been a while since the last time I got a new computer, but IIRC when I went to reinstall Steam on it, it required the .NET framework.

    ... aaannnddd your point is...?

     

    ...that that doesn't sound much like a program that was written in C++ and not a managed language.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    ...that that doesn't sound much like a program that was written in C++ and not a managed language.

    Ok. Well, it is. So.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    You're kind of an asshole, aren't you?



    LMAO.

    I once heard about this ceramic jug which informed a nearby heater of potable-water about the near-complete reduction in light energy being reflected from its surface.

    That aside.... yes, yes I am.





    As for everything else you said, you've clearly strayed into territory that you have little experience of.



    Lets say I want to create a game that will work on PC, 360, Durango, PS3, PS4, Android and iOS. I already have an engine which will allow that game (with some tweaking of course) to run on ALL of those systems. And you think I'll save time by creating tools, and indeed compilers, to target those platforms? Maybe, if I was given 5 years to do that, I might save a couple of months per subsequent project.... maybe.



    Since you're evidently incapable of parsing a perfectly correct English sentence, I shall slightly rephrase it:
    "Maybe your points are dismissed, because you angrily state the obvious, with the subtlety of a foghorn, and at no point do you engage with anything of merit or interest to the person you are addressing?"





    Anyway, back to the substance of what you were saying...


    • Yeah, they probably should've gone with Lua. Can't really go wrong with that.


    • Code maintainability has nothing to do with the language, and everything to do with the coders. A shit coder will make an app in your beautifully managed language just as unmaintainable as in any other language. So yes... only slightly


    • And finally... so, the entire multibillion dollar industry is wrong and you're right.... right? Fair enough.


  • @eViLegion said:

    * Code maintainability has nothing to do with the language, and everything to do with the coders. A shit coder will make an app in your beautifully managed language just as unmaintainable as in any other language. So yes... only slightly

    That is true, but bad languages encourage bad code. It's theoretically possible to write good code in Perl, but you've never seen any.

    @eViLegion said:

    * And finally... so, the entire multibillion dollar industry is wrong and you're right.... right? Fair enough.

    Exactly right. I should add that to my sig too.



  • Lol Blakey. I might disagree with a lot you say, but you make it very good fun to do so, and for that I thank you! If you're ever in England looking for work (unlikely I'd imagine), let me know cuz you'd fit right in over here!



  • @ArrivingRaptor said:

    This guy has it right. The only way to escape bad people is to leave. At my last job one of the (many) reasons I said "fuck this place" is that one of my coworkers spent like a month rolling his own Java mock framework (why yes, the first Google hit for "Java mock framework" is a Stack Overflow thread listing a dozen mature stable frameworks) and then got promoted*, while I churn out a code update that fixed a flaw** so legitimately high-priority that it got its own special release*** and I get the managerial equivalent of a pat on the head at the next project-wide meeting.

    * Technically he got promoted because the top Project Manager asked if anyone would do a client's pet project involving Active Directory and he volunteered for it despite not knowing anything about Active Directory. Considering he was a huge Not Invented Here guy, I'd bet his solution could have been done in a quarter of the time with two or three carefully-worded Google searches.

    ** System analyst whose design contained the original flaw? Promoted.

    *** I even got it done in within project milestones, which is impressive since I estimated double the time to my manager and he cut that estimate in half because of how high-priority it was (as in people not getting paid).

    Sounds like somebody needs to work on his blowjob technique. Personally, I prefer to just roll it around in my mouth a bit. You're not going to make CTO that way, but it's a stable career path. Now, if you have a particularly weak gag reflex, there are some more options open to you that I think you'll find interesting..



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @dhromed said:

    @Ben L. said:

    Which one is a better game?
     

    You win a prize for most irrelevant question.

     

    You win a prize for most giving out the most irrelevant prize.

    So I was right, there is a Nobel Prize in Giving Out Nobel Prizes.



  • @eViLegion said:

    EDIT: I hate the way chrome buggers posts up, and I don't have firefox here. :o(
     

    I don't think its Chrome but an outdated TinyMCE plugin. Someone prod Alex!

    Alternatively: could you portableapps Firefox?



  • @Cenan said:

    Requiring always-on internet connection for a part of the game's (single player) engine is most definately a code problem
     

    I thought that was a design decision - the code didn't rely upon dialing home but some bright spark decided having it periodically calling mummy every half-hour for permission to run was an excellent anti-piracy technique.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Sounds like somebody needs to work on his blowjob technique. Personally, I prefer to just roll it around in my mouth a bit.
     

    Dude, I'm eating dinner over here.



  • @Cassidy said:

    I thought that was a design decision - the code didn't rely upon dialing home but some bright spark decided having it periodically calling mummy every half-hour for permission to run was an excellent anti-piracy technique.

    Nah I take them at face value-- I think they literally thought the idea of having cities connect and trade with each other was worth ditching the 47 other features people really wanted from SimCity 5. EA's said multiple times that it's not DRM, and while EA is a scummy organization brimming with scumbags, I doubt they'd lie that blatantly about it. (I mean when previous DRM attempts failed miserably they didn't lie about those.)

    But saying they did it on purpose doesn't change the fact that it's a really stupid idea that pretty much everybody hates and nobody asked for. So it's incompetence (to an astonishing degree), not malice. Of course the end-result is the same...



  • @dhromed said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Sounds like somebody needs to work on his blowjob technique. Personally, I prefer to just roll it around in my mouth a bit.
     

    Dude, I'm eating dinner over here.

    Why are you eating dinner at 9:00am?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Cassidy said:

    I don't think its Chrome but an outdated TinyMCE plugin. Someone prod Alex!
    Not going to happen. ISTR that we've had this discussion long before you joined - nothing's going to change on the backend.



  • @PJH said:

    @Cassidy said:
    I don't think its Chrome but an outdated TinyMCE plugin. Someone prod Alex!
    Not going to happen. ISTR that we've had this discussion long before you joined - nothing's going to change on the backend.

    All I can say is "Thank God". If CS actually worked this place would be so much less amusing.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @PJH said:
    @Cassidy said:
    I don't think its Chrome but an outdated TinyMCE plugin. Someone prod Alex!
    Not going to happen. ISTR that we've had this discussion long before you joined - nothing's going to change on the backend.

    All I can say is "Thank God". If CS actually worked this place would be so much less amusing.

     

    I especially like how the cursor seems to be feeding off of space chars. You start typing shit in, go do something else for a bit hide in a closet somewhere till the boss is gone again, and come back to see it's been gobbling down a trailing space you could just swear was there earlier.

    It brings a whole new level of excitement to typing stuff into an edit box, almost like someone resurrected Clippy and gave him an elvish cloak and an axe instead of that impotent baloon he used to tote around. Now, not only is he annoying, he's also dangerous.



  • @dhromed said:

    Dude, I'm eating dinner over here.
     

    That's "MISTER R. Dinner, CTO of Initech" to you.


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