ObsidianAnt: 3305 Elite Dangerous - New Player Minor Factions, Frontier's AGM, Scourge Decal

znôrt

znôrt
babelfisch said:
Sure, if the 2020 codebase is ready.
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this is not nearly as much about the code itself than about the process. bad process produces bad code, if you clean the code but continue with bad processes you are not going anywhere. with a good process even bad code is manageable. bugs in the game are the symptom but, ironically, are your last worry if you want to solve the problem, which is establishing proper process.

how much this takes is anybody's guess. frontier have given themselves 6 months and i'm very skeptical that's enough given my estimations (with no insider info) of what needs to change. it's a change that will involve moving people around first, not bugs: hire qa management and direction, educate staff, establish new routines, set up tools and environments to support them and automate test and build pipelines. in the end it means much less work and investment for better results, but it takes some prior effort to get there. it can potentially take years and one of the most crucial aspect is bringing high management to realize how important this actually is, and not sabotage their own shop mid way.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Frillop Freyraum said:
You don't really suggest they would write the whole game from scratch and expect this to be finished in end of 2020, don't you? Or what else do you have in mind when talking about 'cleaned codebase'?
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It seems you have two parallel codebases going on. If 2020 was started a while back, it makes more sense to use those improvements now rather than later. For example networking, rendering pipelines, game logic can be shared if they are modular enough to avoid having two answers made to the same answer later on.

FD are not rewriting the whole thing, they are refactoring and refining.
 

[VR] optimal_909

[VR] optimal_909
Frillop Freyraum said:
You don't really suggest they would write the whole game from scratch and expect this to be finished in end of 2020, don't you? Or what else do you have in mind when talking about 'cleaned codebase'?
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Someone before said it took 80-100 people and two years to code the base game, and that the numbers add up now in a similar fashion. More content, but stuff like Stellar Forge can be carried over, while most assets 'only' need a remaster.

And probably this wasn't a choice, but there was a 'wholly frack' moment at some point that they just can't patch-up the thing fast and good enough.
At least, with giving the benefit of doubt to FDev, that's the best explanation for the utter breakdown of development cycle after Beyond.
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
znôrt said:
this is not nearly as much about the code itself than about the process. bad process produces bad code, if you clean the code but continue with bad processes you are not going anywhere. with a good process even bad code is manageable. bugs in the game are the symptom but, ironically, are your last worry if you want to solve the problem, which is establishing proper process.

how much this takes is anybody's guess. frontier have given themselves 6 months and i'm very skeptical that's enough given my estimations (with no insider info) of what needs to change. it's a change that will involve moving people around first, not bugs: hire qa management and direction, educate staff, establish new routines, set up tools and environments to support them and automate test and build pipelines. in the end it means much less work and investment for better results, but it takes some prior effort to get there. it can potentially take years and one of the most crucial aspect is bringing high management to realize how important this actually is, and not sabotage their own shop mid way.
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Well according to that Twitter guy you are wrong. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle though.
 

Barking_Mad

Barking_Mad
No half-decent programmer writes code now as they would 5 years ago. When you have multiple people working on the same game (and let's be fair, it's a very complicated beast, especially with the BGS) you can guarantee that they look at some of what's been written by themselves and maybe others (who have left) and say "There's a better way of doing this". Now, which bits and how much of it gets looked is another question entirely, but I believe Ben Parry (formerly of FDev now of CIG) said after he'd left that FDev is very particular about how code is written. That still doesn't solve problems but if done correctly, helps to mitigate them. It would be an unbelievable achievement if after writing code on the fly for 5 years if they didn't feel the need to re-write any of it. IIRC the first leak of this by a FDEV partner company said something about "a refresh" of the game. This seemingly makes more sense given this announcement.
 

Exeider

Exeider
Golgot said:
Yeah let’s hope so. Honestly I think the quotes read very easily alongside the former interpretation though. IE:



I don’t see anything there stating that core changes will be pay-walled. And the language certainly fits with rollouts like the prior ones where core changes come to all.
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After sleeping on it for the evening, I've concluded that he has to mean it's at the same time, because the ire, the support of two code bases, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, it has to be the former, god it just has to be.
 

znôrt

znôrt
babelfisch said:
Well according to that Twitter guy you are wrong. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle though.
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lol, hadn't even read the op, thanks for reminding me. i love gossip!

indeed, a load of tosh: "the product base needs to be rationalised". just so. that's it. okay, okay, cool tweet, bro ... 😂
 

Exeider

Exeider
Speedcuffs said:
Pretty certain you can't do engineering without Horizons.
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You can, just not very well, they've added the raws to mining belts, Constructed to the salvage tables when you blow up an NPC and the data is scan-able with the right scanner attached. so you can theoretically collect those materials without ever having to land anywhere.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Exeider said:
You can, just not very well, they've added the raws to mining belts, Constructed to the salvage tables when you blow up an NPC and the data is scan-able with the right scanner attached. so you can theoretically collect those materials without ever having to land anywhere.
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Aaand.... how would you then go about doing anything with those mat's?
 

znôrt

znôrt
Frillop Freyraum said:
But we all are commenting on unreliable narrator. Now be curious to what this probably could lead. ;)
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well, it's info :)
one possible take:

1. financial pundit and media wannabe manages to score interview with very important ceo
2. asks him about the sorry state of the product
3. discovers that the obvious elephant in the room (obviously and utterly failing qa) is not an elephant (i.e., it's not obviously and utterly failing qa) but a magic ball
4. the magic ball is called 'product base rationalization', word of ceo

so, more interestingly, how would the ceo have come to such display of synthesis and enlightenment? could have gone like this:

1. sun shines and life is beatiful in the valley of frontier
2. suddenly a trivial update arxes up the whole system, fills the county with black smoke and sets the brand new store on fire
3. ceo rallies his minions: you guys told me this was ok? what just happened???
4. it is ok! we've been working hard! it's just ... just ... (looks frantically at the horizon) ... we need to rationalise the base!
5. is that going to cost much?
6. about six months would be rational. i swear!
7. ok, sorted then. i will speak to the buffoons now!
 

Dutchman141

Dutchman141
As always, we're only speculating away again.
Are they rewriting the base code? Who knows, they might or might not.
How long have they been appointing people to this project? Who knows, maybe longer then we're aware of.
We know zilch about their base code, based on performance and appearing bugs etc. we make assumptions, but we could very well be very wrong.

2020 is going to be a new era for ED, in what perspective? Added features or maybe something entirely different too? Who knows?
Are the fleet carriers reprioritized again just for the sake of fixing bugs in stead or is there more going on? Who knows?

All I know is that I don't know squat and I'm not gonna crunch my brain trying to figure it out either.
What I care about is what I have or get, a good quality very playable game.
 
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dannysquid

dannysquid
Most of the problems are probably being caused by networking stuff, which I assume would have to be re-written to deal with space legs anyway.
 
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