I refuse to get into a flame war over this. But suffice to say I've seen
some of the pseudo code that they have thrown around. It's not that they're
bad coders. It's that they're good coders who are under far too much
time-pressure. I don't care how good you are, if you have a 24 hour project
and are forced to kick it out the door in 5 hours there are going to be bad
mistakes, or errors in it.
I *know* some of the people involved in developing the pseudo code for the
patches that go in. The pseudocode is good but it makes some broad
assumptions without having tested certain aspects. IE: Aggroing by
accident etc.
It's not the _programmers_ fault. Hell, I used to be one myself, and even
the fabulous Brian Hook has made mistakes from time to time ;) I'm not
saying they are bad. I'm saying they're under way too much pressure which
results in collosal errors.
Big example: Everyone in Beta said that EQ was NOT ready for final in March
when they went to release. Everyone. Sony and Verant did so anyway. Even
the programmers (the few I knew anyway) said there were still a lot of
things they didn't feel were 'finished'.
----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Wasserman <wassermana@...>
To: <eqbards@onelist.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2000 3:54 PM
Subject: RE: [eqbards] Levels after hell levels
> From: "Adam Wasserman" <wassermana@...>
>
> right on!
>
> the programmers always get blamed. I can tell you as a matter of fact that
> most of the poor practices implemented in my code are not of my own
volition
> but rather because I was told by a producer "do it this way, that's what
so
> and so decided". At that point, I find that the producer generally has
> complete resistance to logic or perssuation and the issue is promptly
> closed.
>
> Blame the designers or the middle men that approve the designer's
decisions,
> but don't turn on the poor lowly programmers, it's probably not thier
doing.
>
> Draelon
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mike.langlois@... [mailto:mike.langlois@...]
> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2000 3:45 PM
> To: eqbards@onelist.com
> Subject: Re: [eqbards] Levels after hell levels
>
>
> From: mike.langlois@...
>
>
>
> I've seen this stated a bunch...you've never seen the code, correct?
>
> I agree that the interface interaction is incredibly Diku-like, but I
> imagine
> this is similar to Bioware using the D&D game architecture, not the old
Gold
> Box
> code.
> The game design is obviously based on Diku muds, but the code probably
> isn't.
> After all, even adapting a Diku code base for a game like EQ would make it
> pretty unrecognizable, IMHO.
>
> It's a monstrous package, but the amount of real game stopping bugs is
very
> minimal. Mostly we get trivial bugs that reflect poorly thought out
> logistics,
> not code.
>
> Heck, even Brian Hook said that they're a a talented bunch of programmers,
> and I
> doubt you're unimpressed with his work.
>
> Anyway, I don't mean this to be harsh, I just wonder what causes us to
blame
> the
> coders rather than the designers.
>
> Um, and that sign reversal thing does suck, btw. You have a point there,
> but
> I've done stupid things like that in my code before, and I bet you have,
too
> :P
>
> Just my .02
> Golias, Sol Ro
>
> ===============
> Which means that A) They've tinkered with the original Diku experience
> tables (NEEDED!) and B) The Hell levels and the H+1 levels are either
> extremely intentional or some collosolly bad coding. I'd personally
support
> either opinion equally. I'm not that impressed with Verant's programming
> prowess.
>
> Lyrnia Jongleur
> Bard of Norrath
>
>
>
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