Leaving aside all the fancy names for your frameworks and business practises, it;s plain to see that which/what ever Frontier use, does not work.
Every single release by Frontier has been a bugfest. If not new bugs on top of old bugs, then old bugs that were fixed but which are not broken again, and finally the new bugs in their release.
From someone who was in IT long before the fancy frameworks, we did things the simple way.
Design, Code, Test to a point where it was deemed ready to go to User Acceptance Testing. From there it either went forward to Quality Assurance or back to the dev team. Agile (lets all have a cuddle) and SCRUMM while workable in a given scenario are not the be-and-end-all of project/development management. The entire company must work to the methodology selected. Having half doing and half not leads to a mess.
The current release 3.3, while having some nice new stuff (mining) as a whole is a complete mess. It's design is flawed, for example, (how do you know if you've mapped a planetary body?) and those flaws are exacerbated by the amateur approach to server topology and it's implementation within the game.
The constant server disconnects for example, lose your route mapping and can leave you where you started your jump or where you meant to jump to. Either way, you have no way of knowing if you mapped the entire system. I did a jump last night, got disconnected and returned to where I jumped from, with no fuel scooped and no system FSSs or DSSd.
That's just one example. There are many more. And they're all indicative of amateur at best methodologies and design. But that's not the real problem.
The real problem is that some gamers will just not hold the company responsible and will allow the company to publish any old manure and they'll accept it.
The game is only as good as the people publishing it. And Elite while being a great game, is probably the worst I have ever seen from a development point of view. Thankfully the graphics dept hold it together.
Good morning.
As a long time worker with IT systems and within the IT industry (my first IT related job was at an IT company that entered data using punch cards - look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about).
During my extensive career I've worked at many different companies, in different countries, in different roles. I'm actually quite good at it, seeing as after over 30 years I'm still employed to do it. I have consistently stuck to doing things that I like to do, so I enjoy my work.
None of that entitles me (IMO) to pass judgement on others or their work, especially in areas in which I am not an expert. I am (was) an expert programmer. In COBOL. Whilst I do know how to program, you should ask me to write a complicated routine in java. I'd take 10 times longer that anyone else, and hog a lot of other programmers time wilst doing it.
I have never (and never wanted to) understand servers. You need people like Dav who enjoy it to do it, experts in their field. I will listen to Dav explain how it works, nod at appropriate places to try to give the impression that I'm interested and am following, but in reality I have nothing to say about his area of expertise as I know nothing about it.
I've done design - it's actually integral to testing - but again, commenting on anyones design and their processes is going to be limited to 'appreciation' of the result, in the most positive terms I can find, because I do not have access to the many hours and days/weeks of consideration that has gone into their end result. I do actualy think that the the whole design of Engineers is a thing of beauty. I appreciate the design as made. It's clever, thorough and utilises every aspect of the game as it was when Engineers was introduced. But that's just my opinion coming from the basis of my experience with design.
I've made a career out of testing, starting right back when I got my programming training. The methodologies or 'fancy frameworks' that are in use today are based on and grow out of the 'simple way' of which you speak. Or rather, they grow out of the desire to improve on that 'simple way'. Being and old hand and saying that things were simpler and worked better 'when I was a nipper' ignores the simple fact that 'when I was a nipper' this game was impossible to make. Things are much more complicated now. Trying to compare the methodologies used when writing financial transaction programs for banks, to methodologies used for writing OO programs to control a space ship in a game, that has umpteen modules, weapons, paint jobs, engines (giving direct input into the game physics) etc. etc. and have that collection of objects move around as one item bases off of thrust, collisions, weapons impacts, degradation due to damage, etc. etc. is kind of like saying that cavemen were better at making stone axes. Yes they were. WERE. We don't need stone axes anymore, we have chainsaws.
And as I have previously stated. No organisation releases bug/issue/error free software. During my COBOL programming time I wrote one program that complied eror free the first time, and one program that the functional testers could find no error in. And I was an expert. Nowadays I have it a lot easier, as I just have to help my people find errors
FD are not amateurish, they are a professional organisation with experts in many different area's. Not even NASA get it right all the time, and the better companies to work for recognise that and surprisingly enough use frameworks and methodologies that are based on the idea of NOT getting it right the first time, but also on improving things consistently. Something that didn't happen back in the day, at the pace in which it happens today.
So, to address some of your complaints:
as a whole is a complete mess
This is your opinion. I get it, you are unhappy.
This is your opinion, as I can find no analysis in your posts to underpin your declaration. You are obviously an expert designer with intimate knowledge of all the facts and processes used to come to that design.
amateur approach to server topology and it's implementation
Amazing. You are also an expert on server topology too. Well I call myself an expert in two area's so I guess I'll take your assessment as is, based on your extensive knowledge of the subject.
the worst I have ever seen from a development point of view
*cough* That's pretty subjective.
To finish my answer to you.
Yes, there are some bugs, some issues and some challenges that all need to be addressed. Lumping the work and achievments of 100+ people into a small declaration such as 'a bugfest' or 'a mess' or 'the worst' or ' amateur approach' is not giving due consideration to anything other than your own dissatisfaction and is not helpful in any way. But then I'm guessing your post was not meant to be helpful.
