I didn't say bugs doesn't happen, but it happens much less than the forum wants to make us believe. And yeah, missions not showing up though they should is a bug and will be fixed. Doesn't mean the code is spaghetti. Thing is, you don't know the code. It's assumptions. I don't know the code either, but what I see can also just be very complex stuff.
Elite has Grown Beyond its Capacity. Is it time for a new Elite game?
- Thread starter sb413197
- Start date
- Status
I didn't say bugs doesn't happen, but it happens much less than the forum wants to make us believe. And yeah, missions not showing up though they should is a bug and will be fixed. Doesn't mean the code is spaghetti. Thing is, you don't know the code. It's assumptions. I don't know the code either, but what I see can also just be very complex stuff.
Be nice to see if this game will ever become what it might have been first but after four years one starts to wonder if it will ever be the game it should, could have been.
As for a new Elite, nah allthough it is said we learn from our mistakes and FD have made a lot with this version of the game.
I do think X4 might be my next port of call when it comes to space games or at least flying space ships, I know its not Elite and a differnt game in its own right, but I know for sure in May Ill be playing Warhammer 40k Inquisitor Martyr that should take through to either the release of X4 or maybe the end of Beyond.
As for a new Elite, nah allthough it is said we learn from our mistakes and FD have made a lot with this version of the game.
I do think X4 might be my next port of call when it comes to space games or at least flying space ships, I know its not Elite and a differnt game in its own right, but I know for sure in May Ill be playing Warhammer 40k Inquisitor Martyr that should take through to either the release of X4 or maybe the end of Beyond.
Elite runs on the in-house Cobra engine. So uh, the next Elite would be exactly the same. Lol
fine. of course you only asked to dismiss any response, we both know that. oh, and play the doom card. did i say anything about doom? if you don't wash yourself for a year you will probably not die. but you will get some funny looks!
that code smells and those things have been happening and still do. they do actually happen more every release. though i'm glad you didn't actually read the whole 70 pages of imaginary bugs that are completely normal. everything is fine. relax!
There are issues, the developer is tackling them head on, and things will break and have broken; we don't have to know the code to see and experience that. Again there's a message in the main menu to illustrate as such.
I don't see how semantics over the presumed relative severity of something that's happening anyway, is really at all constructive. Stuff has broken. The developer is tackling it as best they can. The trend suggests this will continue for a period.
--
Back on topic, I can't see Frontier building another Elite. This one has almost been too much, as it is. They've got other franchises already; whilst these are managed by different teams, the developer has more than enough to do.
Last edited:
you have rep in queue!
I have had server transaction errors over the last few days.
There are also menu errors in stations, where things lock up till I log out and then in.
However, after any patch, it's perfectly normal to have bugs in online games. They will get fixed. This hysteria about existential code failure and the impending cataclysmic outcome is emotional.
We are seeing players burn out after long enough at the game. It doesn't matter how good or bad it is, objectively. There's only so much chocolate ice cream you can eat. Even if it were flawlessly bug free ice cream.
I'm of the mind the main problem is the game design. It's a mish-mash of bolted on ideas which simply don't work together well. The proof of this is when they attempt to fix something, it usually ends up being delivered with bugs, which when addresses break stuff else where int he game. This is classic bad-design.
The bad design comes from a lack of experience building an MMO, and lack of experience in delivering a game such as E : D to the gaming market place. It is obvious they have no clue about what the difference is in great gameplay and what they give us.
The next problem is trying to be too big too soon. They rushed a product out the door and followed the questions about when of the rest with 'soon' - That's the same as saying 'we don't know', which is not what the playerbase wants to hear. In conjunction with that, the testing and quality is abysmal. The betas are nothing more than playgrounds to test the newest toys. What feedback is given, is ignored in favour of getting it out the door. Even then, what is pushed out is buggy. And then fixed as time passes or 'soon'. And this directly effects the base game, because things are noticed which require tweaking something in the base game which invariably leads to that tweak messing with something else.
A classic is the KWS. Instead of fixing it properly before they release it, they release the main update and tell the players to wait, while they fix it. It should have been noticed during analysis and design and addressed back then. Again more indications of experience lacking. Another is the C&P. ANother over-scoped, bloated implementation to address a simple issue; griefing. Instead of addressing the griefing all it has done is annoyed some part of the playerbase and the other half go around with C&P ego advertisements' Look at the size of MY bounty!!
Add to all of that, I doubt anyone in FDev know what E : D actually is. It's not a game and not a sandbox. It's not a sim and only makes it into MMO category by relying on semantics. They need to address this first. If they don't know what it is, how can the playerbase? And finally; It is glaringly obvious that they do not play the same game we do. In 30 yrs of developing and gaming, I have never seen a gaming house so devoid of respect of it's players as I see in FDev. They write cheap and bolster with 'random'. They make their players jump through hoops, give them a reward, then take that reward and make it useless.
FDev are building E.D on the shoulders of giants. Those giants being the Graphic Artists. Without them, the game as we know it would be dead long ago.
The bad design comes from a lack of experience building an MMO, and lack of experience in delivering a game such as E : D to the gaming market place. It is obvious they have no clue about what the difference is in great gameplay and what they give us.
The next problem is trying to be too big too soon. They rushed a product out the door and followed the questions about when of the rest with 'soon' - That's the same as saying 'we don't know', which is not what the playerbase wants to hear. In conjunction with that, the testing and quality is abysmal. The betas are nothing more than playgrounds to test the newest toys. What feedback is given, is ignored in favour of getting it out the door. Even then, what is pushed out is buggy. And then fixed as time passes or 'soon'. And this directly effects the base game, because things are noticed which require tweaking something in the base game which invariably leads to that tweak messing with something else.
A classic is the KWS. Instead of fixing it properly before they release it, they release the main update and tell the players to wait, while they fix it. It should have been noticed during analysis and design and addressed back then. Again more indications of experience lacking. Another is the C&P. ANother over-scoped, bloated implementation to address a simple issue; griefing. Instead of addressing the griefing all it has done is annoyed some part of the playerbase and the other half go around with C&P ego advertisements' Look at the size of MY bounty!!
Add to all of that, I doubt anyone in FDev know what E : D actually is. It's not a game and not a sandbox. It's not a sim and only makes it into MMO category by relying on semantics. They need to address this first. If they don't know what it is, how can the playerbase? And finally; It is glaringly obvious that they do not play the same game we do. In 30 yrs of developing and gaming, I have never seen a gaming house so devoid of respect of it's players as I see in FDev. They write cheap and bolster with 'random'. They make their players jump through hoops, give them a reward, then take that reward and make it useless.
FDev are building E.D on the shoulders of giants. Those giants being the Graphic Artists. Without them, the game as we know it would be dead long ago.
Last edited:
Look at the OP's opening statement "I'm not a programmer" but he then goes on to make judgements on something by his own admission he knows little or nothing about. Many of the poster on this thread and in this forum do exactly the same.
I don't know what the OP does for a living but I probably know little or nothing about it. How would you feel if I started making uninformed judgements in public about what you do?
I have a commercial application that I wrote for client nearly 7 years ago using modern programming techniques and methods and it works well. However, the code as it is today is not a mess, nor is it spaghetti code but it is increasingly difficult to add the new functionality required by the customer. The problem is that the focus of the business has changed over time and in adding new features to deal with this change the software has had more and more code added that was not envisioned originally and the core mechanics do not really support these new changes. Old code reacts with the new code in unintended ways, a.k.a. bugs and this will only get worse as time goes by.
That is the basis of what I believe that is happening with Elite. The house analogy mention above by Sethioz is a good one and I often use it when talking to clients about their systems.
There is also the time factor. Writing code takes as long as it takes. I am pretty good at estimating the time required to write an application or to add new features but sometimes the client does not want to hear that and argues that it would be done quicker by adding more developers. The stock answer to this is that you don't get a baby in one month by making nine women pregnant. That's the clean version, I think you can work out what the dirty version is.
So is Elite spaghetti code? No I don't believe so. Is the programming bad? Absolutely not, the game would not exist if it were. Is the game badly designed? No, I don't believe that either. It's certainly not designed the way many "experts" on the forum think that it should but that means nothing. Has the time come to look at the core functionality and rebuild it where necessary based on where the game is now and where it is going? Absolutely. Guess what FDev are doing right now. Improving the core mechanics, revisiting features and so on and so on.
Speculate all you want but leave the writing of software systems (actually or metaphorically) to the professionals. It may not seem like to to someone outside the business, but we do know what we are doing, and you don't.
I don't know what the OP does for a living but I probably know little or nothing about it. How would you feel if I started making uninformed judgements in public about what you do?
I have a commercial application that I wrote for client nearly 7 years ago using modern programming techniques and methods and it works well. However, the code as it is today is not a mess, nor is it spaghetti code but it is increasingly difficult to add the new functionality required by the customer. The problem is that the focus of the business has changed over time and in adding new features to deal with this change the software has had more and more code added that was not envisioned originally and the core mechanics do not really support these new changes. Old code reacts with the new code in unintended ways, a.k.a. bugs and this will only get worse as time goes by.
That is the basis of what I believe that is happening with Elite. The house analogy mention above by Sethioz is a good one and I often use it when talking to clients about their systems.
There is also the time factor. Writing code takes as long as it takes. I am pretty good at estimating the time required to write an application or to add new features but sometimes the client does not want to hear that and argues that it would be done quicker by adding more developers. The stock answer to this is that you don't get a baby in one month by making nine women pregnant. That's the clean version, I think you can work out what the dirty version is.
So is Elite spaghetti code? No I don't believe so. Is the programming bad? Absolutely not, the game would not exist if it were. Is the game badly designed? No, I don't believe that either. It's certainly not designed the way many "experts" on the forum think that it should but that means nothing. Has the time come to look at the core functionality and rebuild it where necessary based on where the game is now and where it is going? Absolutely. Guess what FDev are doing right now. Improving the core mechanics, revisiting features and so on and so on.
Speculate all you want but leave the writing of software systems (actually or metaphorically) to the professionals. It may not seem like to to someone outside the business, but we do know what we are doing, and you don't.
there is no hysteria. just opinions. we can't see the code. but if you have coded for a while (say, 4 decades or so) in different environments and have seen the outcomes you get a feeling for this. it isn't the end of the world either. it just means that every iteration and every addition will take longer and probably have more defects. and programmers will curse. a lot. it can be fixed, it just takes time. it takes more time the later it is addressed. it can become quite unwieldly.
some of us interpreted the whole premise of 'beyond' to be precisely an attempt of buying this time for the game. it obviously isn't the case. oh well, then let's keep going.
Bioware Montreal
I don't think anyone has offered to write for frontier? I'm not sure what the rest is trying to say. Apart from "shut up" and "you know nothing, jon snow!", which sort of ignores that this is a forum, for discussion, and being a developer sort of really doesn't have a lot to do with that.
The topic was the suggestion is it time for a new game? Maybe try discussing that. Or not; up to you.
More non-programmers talking about "spaghetti code", oh brother!
I am a long time programmer who has seen all types of code and all types of development projects. Frontier's code is not spaghetti any more than a 747 Jetliner contains spaghetti. I've also worked at a major airline and walked through "A Checks" where every part of a 747 was removed from every other with the exception of the engines. That's millions of parts by the way. Somewhat like that 747, Elite Dangerous is just very complex.
Not counting the core team who is maintaining the Cobra Game Engine there is still a huge amount of code to understand in order to maintain the Elite Dangerous game. There are sections or modules of the game which handle different game functionality just like there are in the 747. For those modules, there are various experts in the Frontier company. Undoubtedly, some of those experts are now spending a lot of their time on other games like the dinosaur game. In their place, they probably have others now working on Elite Dangerous who are possibly less familiar with the game than the experts. Also, I'm sure developers come and go from Frontier.
I've been very impressed with how Frontier has handled this very complex simulation game the last few years.
The problems frontier has with this game can be summed up in three concepts and none of them have to do with spaghetti. They are manpower, knowledge transfer and testing. Problems that all software development (not to mention other) companies struggle with.
Because of the manpower issue, Frontier is relying (more than they probably should) on the player base for testing, but such is the case with almost all non-AAA games these days.
I will forever tip my hat to Commander Braben and his team for making this game and hope they continue to write the game he wants to play!
I am a long time programmer who has seen all types of code and all types of development projects. Frontier's code is not spaghetti any more than a 747 Jetliner contains spaghetti. I've also worked at a major airline and walked through "A Checks" where every part of a 747 was removed from every other with the exception of the engines. That's millions of parts by the way. Somewhat like that 747, Elite Dangerous is just very complex.
Not counting the core team who is maintaining the Cobra Game Engine there is still a huge amount of code to understand in order to maintain the Elite Dangerous game. There are sections or modules of the game which handle different game functionality just like there are in the 747. For those modules, there are various experts in the Frontier company. Undoubtedly, some of those experts are now spending a lot of their time on other games like the dinosaur game. In their place, they probably have others now working on Elite Dangerous who are possibly less familiar with the game than the experts. Also, I'm sure developers come and go from Frontier.
I've been very impressed with how Frontier has handled this very complex simulation game the last few years.
The problems frontier has with this game can be summed up in three concepts and none of them have to do with spaghetti. They are manpower, knowledge transfer and testing. Problems that all software development (not to mention other) companies struggle with.
Because of the manpower issue, Frontier is relying (more than they probably should) on the player base for testing, but such is the case with almost all non-AAA games these days.
I will forever tip my hat to Commander Braben and his team for making this game and hope they continue to write the game he wants to play!
Last edited:
that's more or less what i was saying. i didn't say spaghetti code, that would be gross. but spaghetti design? spaghetti maintenance? probably. spaghetti qa? absolutely. it comes naturally from rushed schedules and mixed priorities. even in your case, with proper refactor and testing there's no reason "changes on focus of business" should make your code messier. there are tools and known practices for that. the reason it does is you are given too short time to do that properly. probably because your customer is in a hurry, and because it would be more expensive. it's a tradeoff. in the long run, cheap gets expensive. now frontier is doing zero maintenance patches between releases, and rushing loads of featurettes with every release and each is buggier than the last one, it's not that dificult to read.
Really that's all needs be said. And the same would be true, if they introduced a second release of Elite.
I'm not sure which Braben you are referring to. He hasn't been seen (iirc) since prior to 2.0. And it's Sandy that's the lead developer, and the guy trying to resolve the issues here, along with his team; Braben is nowhere to be seen (unless it's to talk about the BGS and the Universe simulation). Way to ignore the actual people working hard to build that game.
I hope the developer continues to write the game they believe the players want to play. That's what Sandy is trying to do. I have no belief, at all, that Braben ever intended that. Build a reimagined elite? Sure. For others? That, I am less convinced of.
Last edited:
Spaghetti code is actually unplanned badly structured code. It doesn't just happen over time, you have to actively use bad coding practises to make it happen, which can slip in over time if practises become lax but it's not inevitable. I'd be surprised if FD coding's practises were that bad but I've also been surprised by how often bugs recur and how often things break that really shouldn't have been touched by what I can see has changed. And I am a coder.
I detected zero arrogance in this post.
Are you a development coder or a code tester? If code goes bad usually you can blame the salesman and time.
Actually, the bolt-on design is often a symptom of poor code sanitisation behind the scenes, it's why that design style is used usually when a game gets transferred to a new developer - they aren't familiar with the code so therefore anything they add has to be as disconnected as possible from existing mechanics. If the code for the core parts of the game aren't well known, then its much more difficult to integrate new mechanics deeply into the rest of the game, which means the developer are more likely to try to keep new mechanics as independent as possible. We can see this with things like powerplay and CQC arena, which are pretty much unrelated to the rest of the game. We can see this with wing missions being wholly separate from solo missions, when prompted as to why FD didn't just make all missions possible for wings their response was basically "nope, code won't let us do that", which is an odd thing to say considering how they have full access to their own code so therefore what they mean is "nope, we can't get the old code to do that".
To a certain extent yes but there is also the fact that customers do not want to pay me to write the application "properly" in the first place. By properly I mean with a sufficiently robust foundation that will support expansion in any direction for the next ten years or more.
To go back to the house analogy this would be the same as designing and building the foundations for a 200 room stately home whilst building a two bedroomed bungalow on the chance that in the future the owner might want to expand that far.
In my case the foundations 7 years ago were more than adequate for the application required then and some modest changes. No amount of refactoring, best design practise or tools will make a blind bit of difference when the application moves away from the original foundation, as it has done in this case.
I have other issues with some of the things you and others are saying. For example, you say "frontier is doing zero maintenance patches between releases". This is demonstrably incorrect. The recent 3.0.3 update was not a release, it was a maintenance patch. Well, it was a lot of maintenance patches rolled in to one update to be precise.
Yet the opening statement by the OP brought programming into the subject.
Discuss, by all means but don't judge or criticise on something you admit to not knowing anything about,
- Status