An essay to FDev:

[Ian Skippy]

And not just at the same time, but over time. A programmer builds a lot of the foundation code and knows all the nuances of that code, but then he moves on and another takes his place who only understands the basic APIs, not the nuances of the code underneath, and that's how things slowly start to fall apart. One can argue this is more the fault of the first programmer than his replacement, since ideally APIs should "just work" without mastery of the nuances, but this is rarely the reality.

And then yet another lead developer comes in and decides to depreciate the "old" APIs and replace them with something he thinks is better, and soon you just have a big mess.

I know, I've been there, and I personally preferred working on smaller projects that I had more way more control over. The bigger projects where my code had to compensate for all the faults in other people's code, that was not so enjoyable.

I think it is almost inevitable when a program becomes too large; especially when you keep piling stuff on it without having a clearly defined 'final end product'. I wouldnt even be surprised if a significant part of the New Era thingy is rewriting a ton of stuff to prevent the entire new thing from collapsing onto itself. Until then I dont expect much in the way of bug fixing beyond the most crucial stuff; it is from their pov a waste of time if that 'fixed code' is going to be replaced anyway.

 

[Midian Cabal]

Yeah. It's probably closer to the truth.

QA/QC is usually what lacks in all projects. Most companies like to shoot from the hip. We might be lucky. Just develop it and maybe there won't be many bugs. Hence the drive some years for "test driven development" strategies.

I remember one company I worked for, we didn't add a QA department until the project was in full go. A bit too late to fix core problems.

It's business after all, and in gaming industry more customers leave because of lack of content than because of bugs.
Karl Marx said: "Interest doesn't think, it calculates."

 

[Iskariot]

But let's talk the elephant in the room. HUD colors. Simple hacks were able to modify HUD colors exactly how we've been requesting from you guys for years now. And yet, you guys say that it's impossible given how the code was implemented. FDev, are you lying to us? Or are you incompetent? If you can't implement a simple method of HUD color change (there's a whole colorblind community that you're screwing here), how can we trust you with the development of the game to you going forward? If anything, you should take some pointers from those hackers. They might know the game better than you do.

You are really making a HUGE fool of yourself.

The current, very limited, method of changing HUD colours was made possible by the kind people from FDev.
We had discussed it a lot on the forums and FDev decided to make this method possible. It was a small gift to the community.
One of those many instances in which FDev showed us they are a game developer who cares about the fans. And now, because of your lack of knowledge you dis this?

It is not impossible to design a better, more versatile method, as far as I know, but it is a lot of work and FDev has other priorities.

 

[Midian Cabal]

Size doesn't matter.

Star Citizien: 400 programmers, still not done after 7 years. Buggy. Incomplete.

Elite Dangerous: 100 programmers or less, multiple versions released in 7 years, but lotta bugs. Huge updates about every 2 years.

No Man's Sky: 6 programmers, multiple versions released in 3 years, some bugs but not quite as bad. Huge updates almost every year.

The truth is that number of developers is not a good correlation to production. Sometimes it's an inverse correlation because the problem arise of intercommunication, standards, and compatibility.

More programmers, more code and more bugs, but not necessarily more efficient. It's like cooking food. Too many cooks...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8

Brook's law: "Adding human resources to a late software project makes it later," or put another way: while it takes one woman nine months to make a baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".

 

[Han Zulu]

This is exactly what the US Gov't/military is going through on an absolutely giant scale right now.
All the older programmers who know the birds nest/patchwork quilt inside and out have retired or abandoned ship.
Otoh, some of the kids they are hiring, brilliant and educated as they may be, simply aren't familiar with some of the older stuff they are tasked to work on.

Sounds like a nightmare.

Essentially, I think any organization of things or people, government, corporations, software code, biological things, goes through entropy. Chaos increases.

 

[Han Zulu]

Brook's law: "Adding human resources to a late software project makes it later," or put another way: while it takes one woman nine months to make a baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".

Awesome quotes. Extra + for that.

 

[The Replicated Man]

I am amazed as how the focal point of this this debacle seems to be the ability to change HUD colors.

It is like complaining about the alien mothership destroying your city because it is firing a gigantic cyan laser and you were told you couldn't have one in that color.

Spoiler: Like this...

I don't think people are complaining on that. Most are just upset that these "hackers" have found a way to actually do what frontier deemed impossible. Either Frontier blatantly Lied about it, or they weren't aware of it themselves. If it's the latter reason, It would be just as sad.

 

[Han Zulu]

I don't think people are complaining on that. Most are just upset that these "hackers" have found a way to actually do what frontier deemed impossible. Either Frontier blatantly Lied about it, or they weren't aware of it themselves. If it's the latter reason, It would be just as sad.

I have a dream. A space ship flying game that's open source and the cockpit, modules, functionality is all scripted and anyone can write a mod/plugin. A whole community contributing to the content. Would be awesome.

 

[The Replicated Man]

I have a dream. A space ship flying game that's open source and the cockpit, modules, functionality is all scripted and anyone can write a mod/plugin. A whole community contributing to the content. Would be awesome.

That would be awesome.

I also have a dream. Reppy's Used Ship Parts and General Scrapyard.

In a asteroid belt. With a little station to dock at and people can come and buy used parts from me. Some might just even be engineered! Head to haz res and do ship salvage from fights etc.

That would be pretty sweet.

 

[Old Duck]

I have a dream. A space ship flying game that's open source and the cockpit, modules, functionality is all scripted and anyone can write a mod/plugin. A whole community contributing to the content. Would be awesome.

I'm bipolar in this regard. I type this now using an open source browser running on an open source operating system, yet my favorite games are console exclusives, which are the most "closed" of programs. The selfish side of me wants a space ship flying game written by Guerrilla Games or Insomniac Games specifically for the Playstation.

 

[Eymerich]

Brook's law: "Adding human resources to a late software project makes it later," or put another way: while it takes one woman nine months to make a baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".

And still: why you have put a new human resource when it was late? Where were you?

And… true. Nine women can't make a baby in one month.

But still they can do 9 baby in 9 months which is 1 baby for month

 

[Z0mbieBabyJesus]

Op seems to believe himself to be an expert on this game or PvP. Maybe an an expert in dramatic ignorant outbursts. His essay, is basically just a bunch of word salad. Much like actual salad, completely void of anything of substance.

If FDev consulted actual experts in PVP or Powerplay, we wouldn't have had the drag munitions fiasco of the April update or Solo/PG powerplay, which allows people to hide from the opposition they're fighting against. I disagree. FDev should consult known experts of the game at the minimum.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I don't think that's in reference to himself.

 

[Han Zulu]

Besides this, how freaky with the zombieload security flaw in Intel processors, bypassing everything by tricking the microcode... This flaw has been in CPUs since 2011. :/ Dam Intel, why didn't they hire 50 billion more people to find it and fix it, 20 years ago!!! Sorry for exaggerated outburst...

 

[smiths121]

If FDev consulted actual experts in PVP or Powerplay, we wouldn't have had the drag munitions fiasco of the April update or Solo/PG powerplay, which allows people to hide from the opposition they're fighting against. I disagree. FDev should consult known experts of the game at the minimum.

Game modes was discussed in the DDF and decided upon before even the Alpha. The only experts at PvP were the devs at the time as no-one had played it!

Actually the decision leads to today's position - PvPers are considered worst than smokers by the vast majority of the "vocal" community, the need for the game to be best in breed PvP vehicle as declined.

I hasten to add I avoid PvP, so I may be biased - but the lack of emphasis on PvP is surely a good example of FD listening to their customers.

Simon

 

[Ian Skippy]

I don't think people are complaining on that. Most are just upset that these "hackers" have found a way to actually do what frontier deemed impossible. Either Frontier blatantly Lied about it, or they weren't aware of it themselves. If it's the latter reason, It would be just as sad.

You have no clue what you are talking about and are masking your ignorance with poor manners. Either educate yourself on what initially happened (and how FD later worked on keeping it functioning when they introduced NPC faces that initially were broken with custom colours) or just stay silent. This is embarrassing.

 

[firemane]

People have vision problems like colorblindness. Oh, wait. You don't give an eff. I get it now. You're being all in-your-face ignorant as a joke.

Actually, changing the HUD coloring to compensate for most cases of color blindness is already possible using file editing or third party tools. Some are specifically made for ED, such as Dr. Kai's. There are also a good number of alternate methods that are pretty easy to implement. Everyone but you seems to know that.

The fact that your exact need is not provided for in the exact way you want it is irrelevant when compared to the fact that the whole game is compromised.

You, Sir, are exactly the kind of person my comment was made for.

 

[Nutter]

This thread will close soon™, Just note zero dev posts. Was a good OP though

Cheating in a peer to peer setup is always going to be easy, but then it is also easy to do a database export for logs where x exceeded y including users account. Then simply delete the account in the same script that e-mails the account holder to inform them that they broke the terms.

Simples

 

[The Replicated Man]

You have no clue what you are talking about and are masking your ignorance with poor manners. Either educate yourself on what initially happened (and how FD later worked on keeping it functioning when they introduced NPC faces that initially were broken with custom colours) or just stay silent. This is embarrassing.

Poor Manners?
Please tell me how I was being rude in any way. I stand by my statement. You look like a fool.

 

[CMDR M. Lehman]

Foot-stomping and crossed arms.

Somewhere in Cambridge is a developer who knows way more about the Cobra engine than you do rolling his (or her) eyes.