Chef Archive
Thread: Thunderheart acknowledged that the Food Bug was a Priority
tuta23 wrote:
SirVimes --- I, too, am curious as to how 'intertwined' this bug is with other portions of the game's mechanics...
I am not a designer (as I am surethe majority of players are not as well) and simply cannot comprehend that a simple math equation given known variables and a timer can be such a headache to hotfix.
Especially when the Devs could simply go back and look atgamecode from when it used to work (I entered Chef after this bug appeared but it is my understanding there was a time when it worked).
Strange.
{sigh}, I really wish hitting "back" when I accidently clicked a link re-populated the edit window. I hope I get everything I had before...
I have a hunch that this may be a design problem rather than just a coding bug.
The implementation of the buffs changed slightly on the Oct 8th patch. Now a buff to HAM adds to your current immediately, previously the buff only added to maximum, and the stat had to regenerate or be healed (the buff showed up as white damage). So now if you're about to be incapped by a rifleman spamming headshot, you can drink a Durindfire and get an extra 200 boost to your mind, allowing you to continue fighting.
[begin rampant speculation]
The change was a good one, in that now you're not wasting part of the buff's duration waiting for your HAM to regenerate up to the new max. However, it was considered too powerful to do multiple times, so the devs added a check: if you are already buffed, the second one adds only to your maximum. So that person from the above example can't take a second Durindfire if he hasn't killed the rifleman by the time his 200 Mind gets drained. And to balance the "instant gain", when the buff wears off, the buff amount is subtracted from both current and maximum.
However, they made two serious mistakes. First, secondary stats should always be at maxminus wounds minus encumberance, so the "+zero to current, +buff to maximum" casemakes no sense for those stats. Second, they don't check whether the previous buff affected the stat the second buff is adding to. You should be able to drinka Durindfire for an instant increase to current mind (and a drop in health), followed by a Cortyg for an instant increase to Health (and a drop to action/mind). A third (slightly less serious) mistake is that getting incapped when the buff wears off a HAM stat because of damage is a little severe.
So correcting this problem isn't just fixing one incorrect equation. The correct equation is in there for one case (as you can see when you take a single buff). It's the fact that the buff design changed, leading to multiple paths with multiple equations, and sometimes the wrong ones are used. The logic needs to be fixed to match the intended design. And finding logic bugs (especially if the program execution is hopping through different code modules) is one of the hardest debugging tasks.
Or the design may need to be changed. Getting a good, solid, detailed design is at least 80% of the work in software development. And for something like buffs, there may be quite a few people who need to have input on the design to make sure that players don't have the ability to unbalance the game.
[end rampant speculation]
I actually work insoftware development, along with experience in tech support and softwaretesting. If the design isn't clear, the developers may know where the bug is, but not know exactly what it's supposed to be changed to. It's better to get a definitive answer about the intended behavior and change the code once, instead of making what appears to be the right fix, only to have another problem pop up somewhere else like bubbles in wallpaper.
Personally, I like the instant HAM buff, and am willing to accept non-instant HAM buffs to ones past the first for balance. Since my combat skills stink, I've been using Flameouts (+1000 health) to give me extra time to run from mobs, since the majority of the damage they do is to the health bar, with action being second (and as a Bothan musician, my action is 1100 without buffs). Now all they have to do is make it work like this:
- Drink Durindfire: current and max Mind goes up 200, current and max Health goes down 80.
- Eat Glucose Pate: max Mind goes up 300, max and current focus goes up 300, max and current health/constitution goes down 75.
- Drink Flameout: current and max Health goes up 1000 (Health has only been affected negatively so far), current and max Mind/Focus/WIllpower goes down 150
- Eat Thakitillo: max health goes up 200, max and current strength/constitution goes up 200.
- Now you have +50 Mind (with 300 points of damage that can regenerate), +150 focus, -150 willpower, +870 health (with 200 points of damage), +200 strength and +200 constitution.
- As the buffs wear off, both the current and maximum of the stats are subtracted from (or added to for buffs with negatives). If Health or Mind would go to zero or below (due to wounds and/or damage taken while the buff was in effect), it goes to 1. Additional damage to that pool is required for an incap.
(note: I have no idea whether that combination is edible without getting full, it just looked good based on the stats buffed).
That's a good speculation, and I'd be curious to see how right it is (GreenMarine??).
However, one bug instance it doesn't quite explain is the downer after using a food once. Last night on Ahazi I use an Ice Cream, my focus rises 300 on both max and min (so good so far). When the buff runs out, it plummets to 150/500. I didn't eat anything else, and I know my focus was affected only once. At this time I also had doctor buffs on my health/action stats, and I had drunk a Fishak Surprise, so focus was only affected by the Ice Cream. I don't understand how the code could subtract 550 points from my focus on current and 300 on the max side.
So I'm sitting here, testing out my foods as I cook them (I just got entrees iv! yay!). I'd already eaten too much of something that had my focus down from the food buff bug. So my focus started at 150/500, and went down to 150/150 when I ate some Rakririan Burnout Sauce. After the buff was over, it went back up to 500/500.
Interesting. I've never noticed that before. Do other negative buffs wear off and bring you back to normal as well? Has anyone tested this?
Naturner wrote:
In his thread, TH responds to the food problems with"Unfortunatley, people have been venting without specific examples" or something like that. This is mildly (read: very) infuriating.
*vent*
There are at least2-3 good long threads on this board that detail the bug, and have specific examples with numbers. Did he miss these? Did he read them and come to the conclusion that they weren't detailed enough? There is an example posted on the TC bug report as well, was that noted?
I also trust that SirVimes gave him all relevent information, did TH ask for more info? I just don't understand why that reason would be given when I feel we have laid out good information.
*vent off*
I have decided that Thunderheart owes everyone an apology for this one. It was an outright lie. The more I read what he said the more pompous and ignorant it becomes, and soe should just be totally ashamed. His job is to communicate with us, to read posts, and he obviously isnt doinga very good job if he missed all of the MANY threads with detailed accounts, and the private messages people have sent him.
And I think its totally slanderous to everyone who posted about the bug, excusing them as nothing but "venting" instead of helping, totally ludicris.
Instead, he insulted all Chefs and pretty much proved he hasn't paid attention to the extensive research going on here. I find it unlikely that they couldn't wade through the handful of "I quit" or "why no fix??" threads to get to the several dozen on this bug. Besides. Chefs don't vent. We mope around, wallowing in mutual self-pity, hoping for attention, offering poisonfood and bluemilk (well not bluemilk) with sheepish grins to other professions who stumble in and say "is it fixed yet?"
On another note - I don't know what to make of the intertwined-systems stuff. It worked before! Make it work again!
Fastgun wrote:
90% of the difficulty in gettingbugs fixedis in communicating the need. In order to make the food bug a priority it has to be repeatedlt yelled over and over again. I know that this flys in the face of what makes a "constructive" and reasonable post. But the truth is, the internal testing for this game is only being done for major projects such as vehicles, cities, mounts, etc. I have no doubt that this bug was knownby the developers in an offhandedmanner, but because the public outcry wasn't loud enough, they felt it was a small issue that could beput on the back burner until other things got addressed. Since foodand buffs in general work if you only use a single application of one type, and use no other until it's completely gone, not to mention that the armor crafters have gotten good enough to produce decent sets that can be worn without buffs the public out cry has been dismal. The player population was apparently willing to live with this bug because they had found a work around. Don't use food.
The other side of the equation is that the Chef profession has always been a low populated one, so getting the word out is much harder, even though this bug has effectively broken the chef profession from being a viable producer of products that are wanted by the player community.
Yet if a particular gun hits a little hard, you will see 100's of posts in a matter of minutes. A large percentage of the players could see how this affected them and jumped to support or nerf this gun. The outcry was large enough and eventually reasonable enough that the Devs made it a priority to fix it.
The real problem is timing more than anything. Players were just starting to get used to food, and other buffs as the Chef population though small was growing up, and was beginning to produce major stat enhancing foods, with no negative effect. Personally I believe that if this bug would have showed up about 1 month later, the public outcry would have been much larger.
Fastgun
/agree
And believe me, I can't stand that this is the case...I hate having a chef population that's below some "critical threshold" that would get it reasonable bug fixes.
90% of the difficulty in gettingbugs fixedis in communicating the need. In order to make the food bug a priority it has to be repeatedlt yelled over and over again. I know that this flys in the face of what makes a "constructive" and reasonable post. But the truth is, the internal testing for this game is only being done for major projects such as vehicles, cities, mounts, etc. I have no doubt that this bug was knownby the developers in an offhandedmanner, but because the public outcry wasn't loud enough, they felt it was a small issue that could beput on the back burner until other things got addressed. Since foodand buffs in general work if you only use a single application of one type, and use no other until it's completely gone, not to mention that the armor crafters have gotten good enough to produce decent sets that can be worn without buffs the public out cry has been dismal. The player population was apparently willing to live with this bug because they had found a work around. Don't use food.
The other side of the equation is that the Chef profession has always been a low populated one, so getting the word out is much harder, even though this bug has effectively broken the chef profession from being a viable producer of products that are wanted by the player community.
Yet if a particular gun hits a little hard, you will see 100's of posts in a matter of minutes. A large percentage of the players could see how this affected them and jumped to support or nerf this gun. The outcry was large enough and eventually reasonable enough that the Devs made it a priority to fix it.
The real problem is timing more than anything. Players were just starting to get used to food, and other buffs as the Chef population though small was growing up, and was beginning to produce major stat enhancing foods, with no negative effect. Personally I believe that if this bug would have showed up about 1 month later, the public outcry would have been much larger.
Fastgun