Submitted 1 day ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Lol if gamers are bitching about a game not adding a whole new island, you should ignore them because they’re clearly idiots.
If gamers are bitching about your menu system being navigable by someone with less than an a PhD (cough, Risk of Rain 2 on console, cough) then if it takes 6 months to fix thats because you coded your software badly.
Describing design problems and attributing them to “bad code” is part of the problem tbh. The issue in your example started long before any code was written.
That’s right. Still, it could take more than 6 months to make it right.
No doubt.
menu system
I think you are vastly underestimating how complicated menu systems and UI in games are. I have a friend who works as a professional game developer in a small studio and far as I heard, he’s spent most of his time just working on their UI/menus.
Changing these things is neither easy nor fast.
The ROR2 new game menu has only a few elements:
That’s it.
I know it isnt completely trivial, but as someone with many years of experience making (small) indie games, I know for a fact that a menu like that is only changing a few global variables. It’s a frontend with very little backend to consider.
Something like that is not a year’s work. I could agree with a month, and even at that, most of it will be testing, not design.
And tbh - the main problem with it isn’t even its design (the design is fine) just its controls. You inexplicably have to use the D-pad for character select, but the analogy stick for everything else, apart from switching to difficult select with R2. Why not navigate the whole menu with either D-pad or left stick? That should only take a week to fix at the absolute maximum, unless they’ve managed to tie the code in a spaghettified knot that’s unnecessarily coupled with actual game mechanics.
If you’re spending months on your menu system, you’re doing something wrong. Bang it out in a few days and revisit just prior to launch. It’s really important because it’s the first thing players use, but it can also be overhauled late in development because it doesn’t impact much.
I would understand if it was a complex in-game menu system for a grand strategy or 4x game or something, not for a game launch menu. Get your UX team to iterate a bit during development and have devs throw it together once the major features are ready and it’s mostly time for bug fixing and polish.
Correct. Once again, Gamers take developers for granted because something LOOKS like it’s simple, but it rarely ever is. It’s hella frustrating to deal with this every day as a dev, but I guess that’s what you sign up for in this line of work.
6 months doesn’t sound unrealistic for re-doing a menu system. Designing, reworking art, re-programming workflows and then testing everything can take several months. Even just the logistics of releasing it after it’s done, that alone can take a month.
Yes, it is possible to setup everything in a very generic way that is data-driven, but that also is a lot of work that has to be prioritized with the scope of the project and the team members available.
it is possible to setup everything in a very generic way that is data-driven, but that also is a lot of work
Sure, but it can also be reused in future games. Separate styling from behavior and you can make it look unique for every game with minimal code changes.
I like to link them to any modding SDK (official or unofficial) and as them why don’t they make it.
Well for one they’re a consumer who paid for a functional game. Nobody expects drivers to break out power tools and mod their car right off the lot.
It’s even more embarrassing when modders do fix it. Some random guy with no source code access manages to fix an issue in 3 weeks that a whole team couldn’t fix in 3 years.
cough, Risk of Rain 2 on console, cough
I still remember when they somehow broke the Xbox version and nobody could get past the start menu.
I had to read an article about that. It apparently coincided with the release of the second DLC. It was pretty broken on PS5 as well. That just screams some high level exec said it MUST be out on the announced date cause they told someone that it would be. Likely part of a contract or their bonus was tied to it. Doesn’t matter if it’s unplayable. It ‘met’ the release deadline. Now we’re just ‘doing maintenance’.
I’m a dev and I firmly believe that if people could see the software they use daily as a physical object like a car…they’d be more “Hell, no. That’s a death trap” than they probably realize.
Alternative reasons (not mutually exclusive):
Again, complex changes are obviously going to take more time, but if the simplest changes take significant time or effort then something is wrong.
But other media said that coding is as simple as asking couple of question on chat.
Copilot, add destructible terrain to my game please
I dont think anyone will claim that destructible terrain is an easy addition.
I wish my clients would understand that, and my code is a lot simpler than a video game.
I built an API connector for work (I’m a hobbyist, not a pro) to download what is the most common cargo transported by trucking companies from the DoT database. Everyone complained because they had to enter the company names correctly into a CSV as it wouldn’t accept typos or do fuzzy matching, nor could it automatically determine which was the head office of a company, only return a list of all of the companies.
That’s nothing new.
Gamers who don’t know any programming, or at most have made a little script themselves. Love to bring out the old “just change one line of code”, “just add this model” to alter something in a game.
They literally do not understand how complex systems become, specially in online multiplayer games. Riot had issues with their spaghetti code, and people were crawling over eachother to explain how “easy” it would be to just change an ability. Without realizing that it could impact and break half a dozen other abilities.
Even if you’re an actual software dev, it’s still pretty much impossible to guess how much work something is without knowing the codebase intimately.
I’m a software dev and it should only take 7.
Absolutely, it’s impossible to know how much. But it’s a lot easier to grasp that it’s rarely just “changing a few lines” when it comes to these types of situations.
Specially since many programmers have encountered clients, managers, etc. who think it’s that simple as well.
When a dev with game dev experience says something should be easy to fix, it’s under the assumption of a reasonable cobe base. Most games are built off of common engines and you can sometimes infer how things are likely organized if you track how bugs are introduced, how objects interact, how things are loaded, etc…
When something is a 1 day bugfix under ideal conditions, saying it will take 6 months is admitting one of:
Not that any of those is completely undefendable or pure malpractice, but saying it “can’t” be done or blaming complexity is often a cop out.
And even then it’s sometimes impossible because how much can you keep in your head at once. Everybody specializes on these large projects. I may have 30000 ft view of how things operate but getting down into specifics can be hard. I have some intimate knowledge of the learning management system we develop for, which is way less complex than most games, and there are always little gotchas when you make code or architecture changes.
Diablo4 has memory leak issues. As a software engineer myself, I just don’t see any excuse for a game this long in production to have memory leak problems.
There is no doubt that a lot of games are getting rushed without being properly tested.
Tbf memory leaks can be very hard to diagnose and can also be hard to avoid in any software written in a language like C++, which is probably what Diablo 4 is written in.
as a professional software dev, games with fozens or hundreds of abilities that interact with eachother scare me
In most professioonal software you can compartmentalize and abstract. In things like MOBA games, the amount of interactions between abilities is as you say, scary.
Having an ability that does two types of damage, and then changing the order of which one hits first. Can literally break a game.
Well why didn’t you start 6 months ago. It’s not my problem. I paid full price
Do you yell at waiters by any chance?
Guy who doesn’t understand how gamedev works gets mad at guy telling them they don’t get how gamedev works, demanding their treats anyway after being told it might take a bit to make. News at 11.
See: Destiny and Telesto.
In the wake of all the layoffs and such I don’t know if any former employees have (as vaguely as possible) discussed the codebase yet. It seems like such an absolute nightmare.
Half a year’s work takes 6 months? I had no idea
Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes.
This still cracks me up even though I heard it so many years ago
Two minutes silence for every minute
if it takes you 6 months to add a new fundamental game mechanic then thats understandable
if it takes you 6 months to remove an unnecessary popup then youre incompetent.
Lol hunt takes six months dev time to make the ui twice as worse
UI is incredibly complex under the hood. Cryengine is also difficult to work in. There are tons of reasons games with distinct outstanding features don’t switch engines, though, and it’s usually due to the specific features said engine provides, no matter how difficult it becomes to work with as a legacy system over the years.
closer to 2 years. its crazy how incompetent crytek is.
Mostly agree, 98% of requests are unrealistic. Most of these requests are not even simple.
But many times, things ARE fucked. And when that happen - dear gamers, don’t curse devs, as a team. There was shitty ceo, who couldnt make a straight decision or changed them 200 times a day, because felt some popular new feature totally must be in the game, that ruined whole concept. Many times, the concept were shitty from the start, then blame director of that. Even more often, publishers pushes their financial decision over dev team (hello Helldivers2 vs Sony). Yet another time, some lawsuit shitstorm happens, that makes devs scrap something (hello Palworlds vs big_n). And many times, its all together.
For Palworld, a new island takes 6 months, per the article. Probably talking about Sakurajima and the big southern one. That makes sense, since it’s not just putting stuff there and calling it a day on the first finished thing, some level design has to happen so the place makes sense and doesn’t feel super boring to explore.
It would also be great if devs added things during development that should simply be there at launch. Instead of, shit get rushed out the door with promises of future fixes and updates. And then devs get all huffy when people rightfully ask for things to be added that are supposed to be basic launch features…
What I don’t understand is why do developers make bad games? They should just make good games instead.
Gamers want good games, not bad games.
The developers aren’t in charge of what’s in the game, the PMs and accountants are
Well, the fact is that there are also a LOT of dumb customers willing to buy crap. God knows why.
Just look at the trending / best selling lists on Steam. There’s shit on there that I wouldn’t play if you paid me. Yet somehow there’s enough of a customer base for that that they sell it.
Honestly, Steam should look into setting a minimum quality level for things sold on the platform.
Soo true
supposed to be basic launch features
isn’t this very subjective and dependent on the game and scale of success?
I agree with the sentiment, but I don’t know Helldivers 2 – what basic launch features were/are missing?
There’s a strong argument that the server architecture needed to be better at launch, but then the game sold more than an order of magnitude better than it was expected to, so no one would have noticed that it scaled badly had the player count been in line with their design and testing.
Maybe the suits can fix that in a week by using AI.
/s btw
Hey ChatGPT, code a new island!
Players: it’s not unique enough and that makes it boring. It’s like they rushed this one with some standard stuff.
Don’t compare actual games to scams.
I mean, it really depends on how you define scam. If you’re so loose with the definition that you would have considered No Man’s Sky a “scam” when it first released, then I can understand that.
Otherwise it’s not really a scam. There’s a free trial going on right now in Star Citizen.You’re free to check out the game for yourself. It’s in a really good state compared to what we’ve previously seen (not even close to bug free, but way more playable than before).
players? you mean marks
I own something from that. I tried running it once and it would barely load. I gave up. Didn’t try again even on a new pc
I bought a pledge early on. Sold it a few years later for double the price. Great investment!
My Helldivers gripe is that the war bonds cost too much for the casual player. 1000 super credits takes a while to gather, and even grind. Paying actual money for them is about $25aud per war bond. I think there’s eight war bonds now? That’s a full day’s income, and you still need to collect medals to unlock the contents of the warbond.
It’s 15 AUD, not 25.
As for myself. I play maybe on average 2-3 missions per day.
So 70 ish missions per month. Collect an average of 10sc per mission. That’s 700sc + the 300 you get from the previous warbond.
That sounds very reasonable to me for an average playtime of 1h per day.
I’m hoping after we beat back the squids the devs give us another free warbond. That should hopefully bridge the gap for new or players who cannot spend money on the game.
But you don’t “need” to unlock them all on the day of release, there is no FOMO component, they don’t disappear after a month.
And if you play enough to unlock them faster than they can get them out, you definitely have the time to grind the 1000SC to unlock them.
I’m definitely experiencing FOMO with the warbonds I don’t have. I don’t have the time to play/grind or the inclination to pay for them, so I am missing out. There’s three warbonds that I don’t have and sure I’ll eventually get them maybe but right now I’m missing out. Being able to unlock things is a big part of a game to me. I’m not dedicated enough to HD2 to skip the other games I want to play in order to get the unlocks. The whole process is lowering my interest in the game. I paid for it, I want to use the new toys that get released with it.
Have to disagree. The war bonds have been some of the easiest to pay with in game currency compared to games like cod where their cod points feel next to worthless.
If you are netting very few credits per hell dive, you may be playing with those that don’t need them or playing bots, or a newly released content. Farming on level 1 will often get you with like minded folk, especially before a war bonds release. Farming is quick when you realize you don’t have to extract, just abort to ship.
1000 super credits are easily farmed just by doing missions. Do low level missions, race to the poi’s with the car, rinse repeat.
Fun? No. But you said farming so this is it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
By just playing the game for little over a week, so no farming, just playing, i’ve gathered 700 sc.
The medals are easily gathered doing level 5 and up missions and completing your personal orders. And taking part in the majors of course.
All that stuff is great if you’ve the time. I’ve got maybe 1-2 hours a week for the game.
Ignoring the part about the super credits and fomo stuff, the money confuses me. Is regional pricing so different that you’re paying an additional $10 AUD compared to US and EU pricing? Additionally, $25 AUD as a full day’s income? Even a low hour, part time job earns way more than that. I feel like your situation might not be financially compatible with buying things like that, I’d cheat or pirate if it’s that important to you. $10 USD is not much for DLC, and while I strongly dislike purchasable gameplay mechanics in games, it’s supporting the continued development and it isn’t egregious. $10 is a burger, or a coffee, and I’m saying this as someone well below the poverty line.
Well in Helldivers 2s case, its not helpful that they picked to use a dead game engine. Autodesk Stingray has been dead for a while.
Also, I might agree except that solo indie devs in their basement can add many basic features in 6 months time, not just one. I get that some features, like new maps, mechanics, or characters take time. But for example, when a game mechanic already exists elsewhere in a game but not in a different part (for example, a flashlight attachment on one gun but not a different gun), there is not a thing in the world that will convince me that would take 6 months to add. And if it would take 6 months to add, that is entirely due to laziness or incompetence.
I am not a game dev and do not have a stake in this personally but also dislike the ‘lazy or incompetent dev’ line that gets used sometimes. While ALOT of games seem to be made with really shitty code, with a game that seems as complex as Helldivers 2 adding a new feature can be a lot more complex than expected.
First there are non-technical factors: bosses that might not want to implement the feature and needs to be convinced, the devs might not know how to implement it and need to do research which takes time, artists that need to be added to the pipeline for assets, budget or other financial concerns (management might not think the feature will contribute to revenue), or even something like petty internal politics.
One the side of technical problems there is combinatorial explosion where adding ONE feature means thinking about how it interacts with all the other features. There is the problem of possible technical debt where you might inherit bad code from previous devs that you need to change before you can add anything. There is also the problem that the feature might not be technically feasible; remember that a game has only a fraction of a second to do its calculations and display them to the player while also checking for player input. This does not even begin to consider the problems caused by being a multiplayer game with possible network problems.
On the discontinued engine, the studio founder said that they were already in development of Helldivers 2 when it was discontinued according to the Wikipedia article.
Sounds to me like you’re not considering that they likely have a massive list of priorities to address and a flashlight attachment is simply not even close to the top of the list.
Nothing exists in a vacuum.
But like, the commercial said that making games is just sitting on a couch and pressing a sound board to add that one sound effect in level 3, so like I don’t know why they want money for it.
The PC build is trash
So then why don’t they have regular bulletins in their games showing ‘Look, look! These features will be coming by xx/xx/xxxx!’ ?
Things set the timeline back? ‘Oh no! Looks like we won’t be releasing this on that date, it will actually be this date!’
Seems like a non issue for anyone with a 6th graders capacity for interacting with other humans. These are IT folks, with the added layer of gamers to boot — though. Anticipating motivations and responding to others input isn’t exactly a strong suit.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 34 minutes ago
I was once building a game where a dinky little neon space fighter zips around the field shooting down enemies that spawn in until the boss. Everything was going great, the engine was handling large number speeds, the parallax background I custom coded with an rng star map worked perfect, right up until I tried to implement enemy tracking of the player: that shit would not work no matter how hard I tried.
I was about to share the old demo for you dudes to try but looks like I’ve lost the .pck file associated with the Godot executable or the embedded pck is no longer recognized.