Development Info There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly…

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Frayed Knights

<p>Jay "Rampant Coyote" Barnson, the man famous for giving his character portraits a truely oldschool look as well as for not appearing in the Codex person combobox to this very day, <a href="http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=803" target="_blank">makes more excuses why Frayed Knights isn't ready yet</a>. The main reason is that the time necessary to finish Frayed Knights will be approximately 180% of the time necessary to finish Frayed Knights, if I understood his math correctly. We at the Codex have an easier term for that: Thursday.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I first got started in game development, I was told of the &ldquo;80/20&Prime; rule. That is, 80% of the work takes 20% of the time&hellip; and the remaining 20% of the work takes 80% of the time.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve also come across the expression, &ldquo;The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% of the work takes the other 90% of the time.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s very true. Those of you nodding while wincing in pain, I see you guys are professional developers of one stripe or another.</p>
<p>For the rest of you, I want to invite you to ride virtual shotgun with me through a somewhat recent experience (from a month ago) in building out part of the game. I&rsquo;m going to change the name of a few things to avoid too much spoilerific territory, but when you play through Act 1, you&rsquo;ll undoubtedly recognize this part if you still remember this article. But all we&rsquo;re going to do is script up a single room in a dungeon. Of many rooms.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Personally, I love the idea of an Transmogrification device.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>potato at: <a href="http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=803">Tales of the Rampant Coyote</a></p>

 

[laclongquan]

Tsk! Evidently the man is not familiar with the term 'Thursday'.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

So it'll be done on Thursday.

I don't see what the issue is.

 

[Terror Teats]

Taher aownce aws a nma from Nanfuckit

wyatt sory guys i tuccpked up

 

[Terror Teats]

I awnc wac a pman from nancaufkit

jesus christy

 

[Topher]

Taher aownce aws a nma from Nanfuckit

wyatt sory guys i tuccpked up

Does anybody understand a damn thing he posts?

 

[Jaesun]

Taher aownce aws a nma from Nanfuckit

wyatt sory guys i tuccpked up

Does anybody understand a damn thing he posts?

Having him on ignore works wonders.

 

[shihonage]

That article is 90% accurate as to the exact work flow that happens whenever I try to connect new features and make them work within the game.

Just stupid ass shitty problems like this. One after another after another.

Oh. Another problem. Similar to the last one. I have to remove n items from the player inventories. My existing code only finds the first instance of an item and removes it. The new code has to search through the party and player inventories (in what order?) and keep removing all instances of the given item until it has removed so many. And then stop.

Not only there's stupid shit like this, but, as article accurately describes, there's a constant ADHD syndrome of jumping between various unfinished dependencies.

Another major syndrome the article doesn't mention is the equivalent of building two different pipes from two different districts for weeks, and when those pipes finally meet, you realize their diameters don't match, so you can't supply water where you needed to.

So you build some stupid abomination to fuse the pipes together, which cracks loose under pressure a few weeks later, and you find yourself blowing up the pipes and starting from scratch, because initially the outcome of this was too complex to be foreseen by a reasonably sized human brain.

 

[CreamyBlood]

That article is 90% accurate as to the exact work flow that happens whenever I try to connect new features and make them work within the game.

Just stupid ass shitty problems like this. One after another after another.

Oh. Another problem. Similar to the last one. I have to remove n items from the player inventories. My existing code only finds the first instance of an item and removes it. The new code has to search through the party and player inventories (in what order?) and keep removing all instances of the given item until it has removed so many. And then stop.

Not only there's stupid shit like this, but, as article accurately describes, there's a constant ADHD syndrome of jumping between various unfinished dependencies.

Another major syndrome the article doesn't mention is the equivalent of building two different pipes from two different districts for weeks, and when those pipes finally meet, you realize their diameters don't match, so you can't supply water where you needed to.

So you build some stupid abomination to fuse the pipes together, which cracks loose under pressure a few weeks later, and you find yourself blowing up the pipes and starting from scratch, because initially the outcome of this was too complex to be foreseen by a reasonably sized human brain.

I suspect most coders understand this, and it's true.

Try doing it yourself sometime, you might enjoy yourself.

 

[shihonage]

Try doing it yourself sometime, you might enjoy yourself.

Doing what?

 

[GarfunkeL]

He probably is not familiar with Shelter and though your writing was snarky observations of an outsider, rather than the introspective cursing it was meant to be.

 

[Raapys]

Though my coding experience is very limited, isn't this just a matter of (very) poor planning? Shouldn't all of this go down on a paper long before he actually starts coding it? Granted, you can always miss a few things, but the examples he mentions makes it look like he hadn't thought any of it through beforehand.

 

[shihonage]

@GarfunkeL: Maybe we should start a support circle. "Hi, I am X. I am making this game and its making me crazy and eating years of my life. It also repels any hope of women being part of it. Sometimes I struggle to weep silently to myself, but the well of tears is long dry". "HELLO X. You're paired with Peter Molyneux".

Though my coding experience is very limited, isn't this just a matter of (very) poor planning? Shouldn't all of this go down on a paper long before he actually starts coding it? Granted, you can always miss a few things, but the examples he mentions makes it look like he hadn't thought any of it through beforehand.

The level of planning required here is closer in caliber to that of NASA making a moon lander. Though the big picture may be clear, dynamic adaptation and planning are unavoidable.

As players, we take for granted way too many things a game does for us, and those things don't really become clear until we're in the thick of making one.

 

[RampantCoyote]

You plan and you design, and when you create these systems you say, "Wow, this is gonna be the coolest, cleanest, most well-designed code that was ever written."

Many months, many changes, and many modified fundamental assumptions later, you look at the same code and ask yourself, "What was I smoking when I created that?"

It's just the way software works in the real world with only a few exceptions (usually for very specific and mission-critical - or very small - systems, like a missile guidance system). In fact, an entire family of development methodologies have grown around this fact ("Agile Development").

 

[Country_Gravy]

Taher aownce aws a nma from Nanfuckit

wyatt sory guys i tuccpked up

Does anybody understand a damn thing he posts?

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose cock was so big he could suck it
He said with a grin
As he wiped off his chin
If my ear was a cunt I could fuck it

I think that is what he was trying to say