ObsidianAnt video about odyssey delay.

tolm

tolm
COVID is a horrible thing, no question.

That said ... I’m a Software Engineer - as are the team of folks I work with. COVID has had zero impact on our productivity. We have daily Zoom calls instead of our daily in-person “stand up” in the morning and we’ve delivered at least as much - if not more - than we would have done in the office.

So, safe to assume the delay is at least as much “this is harder than we thought” as it is “logistical issues” as far as I’m concerned. Which is fine - better to be honest if something is not ready and then get it right (or more right ...) when it is delivered. I just hope they use the time to provide sensible quality on PC AND current-gen consoles (ie. PS5 and the XBox X One S Series Box X or whatever it’s called ;) ) rather than slavishly insisting on leveraging “backwards compatibility” and dragging everything down to the base PS4 capabilities.
 

znôrt

znôrt
Rat Catcher said:
Unless all of the staff had synchronous very high speed fibre connection to the internet they would have been taking an instant 'hit' in performance to their normal working environment, I'd imagine that at the start of WFH this was unlikely.
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that's not how it works, you do not need high speed connection to develop. developers surely got their development machines shipped home. build and deploy should be an automated server process anyway, all they need is to checkout and commit their work and your cellphone connection would work for that if necessary. that's even far less demanding than any videoconference tool, and everybody uses those from home these days.

if anything there's about a zillion ways to organize a remote environment for sw development, even in the probably highly idiosyncratic environment of frontier, that can be up and running in a week. what can make it far harder to adapt is preexisting inefficiencies, like poorly communicating/specifying managers, general disorganization, lack of focus ... so the human factor. such bad habits are not uncommon and would make such a transition much more problematic. internet connection? no problem.
 

znôrt

znôrt
Kantaris said:
Most companies didn't have the technical infrastructure to support their entire staff working remotely, and many still don't.
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any software developing company should be doing that pre-covid. it's 2020 we're not talking local townhouse administration.

Kantaris said:
to magically having everybody working from home like no big deal in a day, week or even a month.
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any decent software development company should have that in place already. if not, it can be set up in far less than a month.
 

tolm

tolm
znôrt said:
that's not how it works, you do not need high speed connection to develop. developers surely got their development machines shipped home. build and deploy should be an automated process, all they need is to checkout and commit their work and your cellphone connection would work for that if necessary. that's even far less demanding than any videoconference tool, and everybody uses those from home these days.

if anything there's about a zillion ways to organize a remote environment for sw development, even in the probably highly idiosyncratic environment of frontier, that can be up and running in a week. what's can make it far harder to adapt is preexisting inefficiencies, like poorly communicating/specifying managers, general disorganization, lack of focus ... so the human factor. such bad habits are not uncommon and would make such a transition much more problematic. internet connection? no problem.
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Indeed, and that’s assuming no remote access for occasional use was in place already - which would surprise me.

Citrix / Remote Desktop if the developers machines are desktops that must remain in the office. They’ve all got laptops and broadband at home anyway. Otherwise development laptops get taken home and you use a VPN connection to get on the company intranet securely from home.

Source code repositories are fundamentally designed to work distributively - that’s kinda how the entire open source thing works and that includes entire operating systems!

Only tricky part might be .... those console dev kits and cross-compiling for them ... which might explain why the console versions are more delayed?
 

skananote

S
Kantaris said:
A business is designed to run at the lowest possible cost with the highest revenue, you don't invest in 5000 VPN licenses when I less you're a fully remote company and having to source that during a pandemic isn't easy.
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Yeah, but no. This issue is a part of disaster recovery solution. I do not believe that FDev does not have infrastructure in place that would do VPN already. It might be a bit of scaling issue but this can be corrected within days, sometimes hours. If they did not plan for this then whoever is doing business continuity in FDev should be simply fired...
 

Kelster87

Kelster87
The language in FDev's recent market announcement to the LSE suggests that FDev have had some issues with the collaborative stuff while in lockdown. Yes, the language used is mild, but the admission of a problem at all in such a release means it's likely a pigs breakfast.

And who knows what the delays are on getting stuff 'certified' by MS and Sony? I know it's usually 1 - 4 weeks, depending on whether it's an update or a new product and I'd assume FDev allow for this, so maybe there are some cert delays in addition to FDev's own?
 

znôrt

znôrt
tolm said:
Only tricky part might be .... those console dev kits and cross-compiling for them ... which might explain why the console versions are more delayed?
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that just keeps running in the office, in their automation server of choice's build jobs?

but there sure are tricky parts, there always are, but for sure there are easy and quick solutions for them. we have been doing software remotely for ages.

the whole discussion is just some people picturing this as an unsurmountable challenge because they desperately want to believe frontier's narrative. the fun thing is that frontier has never needed a pandemic to botch a release and delay a delivery until now. they're more than capable to do that without, but somehow this one has to be special? 😅
 

Qualityoflife

Qualityoflife
I prophesied this...."commander trending stats at your service"!

I have it on cosmic authority, 'as told to me by a thargoid spy', that frontier needs to be fed redbull and doctors prescribed uppers("not drugs") to get the lead out and get something done once in a while?

Ona serious note; these delays are because they are adding interiors and the panther clipper, with a close following up of earthlikes and EVA.
 
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kilvenny

kilvenny
Kelster87 said:
The language in FDev's recent market announcement to the LSE suggests that FDev have had some issues with the collaborative stuff while in lockdown. Yes, the language used is mild, but the admission of a problem at all in such a release means it's likely a pigs breakfast.
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This is THE key point. This is a market release that impacts the stock price and in it there is acknowledgement of an issue that means even said low key its a significant problem. FD if you remember had an office in Canada which they closed, they also moved a couple of years ago choosing to house their 500 employees in one building. That means they have processes set up for collaboration face to face. Sitting in a video conference is way different to face to face, it can be done, but it's a different experience. Its much harder to reproduce eg sitting in front of a whiteboard working out issues that someone sees.
 

askavir

askavir
znôrt said:
the whole discussion is just some people picturing this as an unsurmountable challenge because they desperately want to believe frontier's narrative. the fun thing is that frontier has never needed a pandemic to botch a release and delay a delivery until now. they're more than capable to do that without, but somehow this one has to be special? 😅
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But the true question is: what does it even matter what is the reason for the delay? The delay is real, the game won't be coming in the original timeframe, we will all have to wait a bit longer, and no yelling, moaning or throwing toys out of the pram is going to change any of that.
 

skananote

S
askavir said:
But the true question is: what does it even matter what is the reason for the delay? The delay is real, the game won't be coming in the original timeframe, we will all have to wait a bit longer, and no yelling, moaning or throwing toys out of the pram is going to change any of that.
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It makes a difference because people do not like liars... If there is a problem fine, there is a problem, but using vague language, hiding stuff, dodging questions during AMA is not the right way to interact with players/CUSTOMERS...
 

Northpin

Northpin
tolm said:
That said ... I’m a Software Engineer - as are the team of folks I work with. COVID has had zero impact on our productivity. We have daily Zoom calls instead of our daily in-person “stand up” in the morning and we’ve delivered at least as much - if not more - than we would have done in the office.
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Pretty much this.
I work in a software dev company and there was basically zero impact on development due to covid.
People are working from home just fine and they dont have to waste 2-3 hours per day commuting.
But as a company we were affected because we deliver b2b software and if our customers are affected, this is affecting us too.

This however is not the case for FDev or generaly speaking for gaming companies. The gaming industry seen a surge during last year because people turned more to gaming to combat the lockdowns.
 
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