Development Cycle Archive

Well from reading that i think i have an idea of where he got "Blair" from. :-)

And I'll date myself by saying I bought Wing Commander 3 when if first came out. I loved that game and the series and still do.

And good luck to Blair on his upcoming wedding.

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MichailArris wrote:

Well from reading that i think i have an idea of where he got "Blair" from. :-)

And I'll date myself by saying I bought Wing Commander 3 when if first came out. I loved that game and the series and still do.

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/nod -- I caught the "Blair" reference, too. But... WC3? You waited until then?

I was fortunate enough to glom onto the original Wing Commander -- man, what a fabulous gaming experience that was! WC2 was also a lot of fun. (Although there was that insanely difficult capital ship destruction mission... Whew!)

Even better, I had access at the time to a 21-inch NEC monitor. Playing WC on one of these puppies was like looking out of an actual full-size cockpit. The experience was so intense that every now and then while driving at nightI'd catch myself angling my car at the more annoying drivers to get a better "shot" at them.

Oops.

To maintain some semblance of remaining on-topic, let me add that if the Space Expansion for SWG offers nearly as much fun as the Wing Commander games, I will be one very happy gamer.

--Flatfingers

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Drunkenjedi420 wrote:

Dear Allen Brack,

A lot of us have prolly said a lot of bad things to the SWG team. Talking about bugs .. Talking trash about any little thing. I know I have. I can see just how much passion you have for this game from your letter. Keep up the great work and IF we Troll you its cuz we love the game as much as you guys do. We do not see the game in code and dollar signs of course, but we do see the game as actual players. This is why we do not always understand why you guys do the things u do. Do your best man, doing great ! May the Force guide you to Eternal Wisdom and Honor! Peace out!

-Sazo

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That's a really nice sentiment that I know he would appreciate. Ill send it to him

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JediNewb wrote:

I've made this suggestion before, and I'm going to do it again here although I'm not certain it's appropriate to this thread.

Can we get a Known Issues page (or forum, if you want to keep it private from non-subscribers) for bugs/corrections that are acknowledged by the devs and are on the list of things to look at? Just a list, maybe organized by categories of profession, etc. of what you devs have recognized as things that need to be fixed, possibly highlighting the ones that are the current focus (or not...I'm sure there are people who would complain about that).

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Thunderheart wrote:

To be honest, way back when, I used to harp on this myself. Now that I am here, I understand why.Theamount of time it would take to maintain the tool (keeping it current, etc) is a massive job. Even the good idea of building a web tool to display such things is indeed a good idea, but the resources needed to make the tool are better spent on developing the game and the administration in either case is really a big undertaking. To execute that undertaking ultimately means taking away from game development and that just doesnt make sense.

The publish process has improved dramatically and gets better with each cycle. The In Test forum has become a very valuable tool and with Blair, Runesabre and Rogue-5leading the charge, the process is rock solid and getting better every day.

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To be quite honest here, this is the same old answer that just don't make sense. For one thing, this argument is assuming that SOE is incapable of hiring more staff to perform this function. For another, you are assuming that it would be done by the devs instead of the CS organization.

Let's be honest here, the only people at SOE who would benefit from this are the CSRs. I honestly don't understand why they aren't pushing for this. I have never heard of a "help desk" organization that doesn't have this type of thing in one fashion or another. While you might feel that maintaining this list would be a waste of time, not having it is wasting OUR time.

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Snikrop wrote:

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JediNewb wrote:

I've made this suggestion before, and I'm going to do it again here although I'm not certain it's appropriate to this thread.

Can we get a Known Issues page (or forum, if you want to keep it private from non-subscribers) for bugs/corrections that are acknowledged by the devs and are on the list of things to look at? Just a list, maybe organized by categories of profession, etc. of what you devs have recognized as things that need to be fixed, possibly highlighting the ones that are the current focus (or not...I'm sure there are people who would complain about that).

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I think that it's been said over and over again, and they've only done it when a publish has been totally hosed if I remember correctly. Many of the correspondents maintain FAQ's on their professions, but those vary wildly. I'd be please as punch to log in and watch the bug tracker shrink!

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To be honest, way back when, I used to harp on this myself. Now that I am here, I understand why.Theamount of time it would take to maintain the tool (keeping it current, etc) is a massive job. Even the good idea of building a web tool to display such things is indeed a good idea, but the resources needed to make the tool are better spent on developing the game and the administration in either case is really a big undertaking. To execute that undertaking ultimately means taking away from game development and that just doesnt make sense.

The publish process has improved dramatically and gets better with each cycle. The In Test forum has become a very valuable tool and with Blair, Runesabre and Rogue-5leading the charge, the process is rock solid and getting better every day.

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Thunderheart wrote:

Theamount of time it would take to maintain the tool (keeping it current, etc) is a massive job. Even the good idea of building a web tool to display such things is indeed a good idea, but the resources needed to make the tool are better spent on developing the game and the administration in either case is really a big undertaking. To execute that undertaking ultimately means taking away from game development and that just doesnt make sense.

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TH, I appreciate your addressing the "Known Issues Web Page"suggestion. There aren't many commercialsoftware developers (gaming or otherwise) that would make the effort you and your colleagues are making to communicate publicly with your customers -- thanks!

I also understand the position you're in as you try to explain why this suggestion isn't being adopted, and I won't attempt to contradict you. All I can do is note that in my direct personal experience ofactually creating this kind of system I didn't encounter the potentialproblems you describe.

I am by no means an accomplished Web developer, but even with my limited skillsI was able to create the necessary interface code (to extract relevant values from our trouble ticket database into flat files) and basicWeb pages (to display the data using JavaScript) in a couple of days. It's notpretty, but it doesn't have to be --asimplepagedoes the necessaryjob of displayingbasic taskstatus information.A professional Web page developer could doubtless create an equally simpleWeb-based status pagein even less time. (Especially since I spent extra time adding a search feature to my systemthat isn't necessary in your case.)

The features requiredto accomplish this are:

• a work assignment or trouble ticket database that describes planned developer tasks


• code toextract some fields from this database into flat files


• a way to schedule regular extractions automatically (cron on Unix, schtasks on Windows)


• a basic Web page that displaysextracted datawith minimal formatting


• some lead/producer time spent to control whatinformation is acceptable forpublic display

Assuming you already have the first two capabilities (you DO have some system for assigning code change tasksand tracking the status ofthose development tasks, right?), and that you have at least one Web developer and one lead or produceron staff,the only question is the cost of creating the actual extraction and display code. Again, based on my own direct experience we're talking a one-time expenditure oftwo or three days of development time at most to create the initial Web page, with an occasional hour or two per week (if that) to maintain the pageand some supervisory attention paid to controlwhattasksareallowed to be publicized.

Of courseeverycost has to be justified -- that's a discussion I have with my customers every day. Here's what I've been able to demonstrate to my customers:

• thedevelopment cost of coding this display tool islow (in absolute terms or relative to other costs)


• the operationalcost of controlling and monitoringthe data displayed is low (and is a lead/producer task, not a developer task)


• with appropriate controls ondisplayed data, the benefit in improved customersatisfaction derived from more effective communicationis significant

Based on these observations, I conclude that the costs of creating and using such a tool arejustified.

Again, I reiterateall thisnot to contradict you, but becauselike youI want to see SWG succeed, because I thinkan automatically-updated Known Issues web pagewould help accomplish that goal, and because I have some relevantexperience to offerconcerning thedevelopment ofsuchsystems. Having said my piece, I'll move on.

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The publish process has improved dramatically and gets better with each cycle. The In Test forum has become a very valuable tool and with Blair, Runesabre and Rogue-5leading the charge, the process is rock solid and getting better every day.

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Agreed.(Of course, this isn't areasonto abandon our effortsto look for even moreways to improve the development process. )

Thanks again for the making the time to discuss this with us, TH.

--Flatfingers

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Thunderheart wrote:

To be honest, way back when, I used to harp on this myself. Now that I am here, I understand why.Theamount of time it would take to maintain the tool (keeping it current, etc) is a massive job. Even the good idea of building a web tool to display such things is indeed a good idea, but the resources needed to make the tool are better spent on developing the game and the administration in either case is really a big undertaking. To execute that undertaking ultimately means taking away from game development and that just doesnt make sense.

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Threethings, TH:

1) There are commercial packages available that are made specifically for tracking software bugs. I have worked as a software developer for over 9 years and I have worked with several. As a matter of fact, I've never worked with asoftware vendor that didn't have some way of tracking the bugs in their products.

2) You seem to imply that you guys don't have a system in place for tracking bugs, their severity, and their priority. Is this actually the case? It would explain a great many things if this is true.

3) Since you guys can't provide a list of "known issues" to your customers,you should discontinue the policy of having CSRs NOT help customers who are experiencing "known issues", since there is NO place that your customers can go to be forwarned about said "known issues".

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Snikrop wrote:

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JediNewb wrote:

I've made this suggestion before, and I'm going to do it again here although I'm not certain it's appropriate to this thread.

Can we get a Known Issues page (or forum, if you want to keep it private from non-subscribers) for bugs/corrections that are acknowledged by the devs and are on the list of things to look at? Just a list, maybe organized by categories of profession, etc. of what you devs have recognized as things that need to be fixed, possibly highlighting the ones that are the current focus (or not...I'm sure there are people who would complain about that).

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I think that it's been said over and over again, and they've only done it when a publish has been totally hosed if I remember correctly. Many of the correspondents maintain FAQ's on their professions, but those vary wildly. I'd be please as punch to log in and watch the bug tracker shrink!

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To be honest, way back when, I used to harp on this myself. Now that I am here, I understand why.Theamount of time it would take to maintain the tool (keeping it current, etc) is a massive job. Even the good idea of building a web tool to display such things is indeed a good idea, but the resources needed to make the tool are better spent on developing the game and the administration in either case is really a big undertaking. To execute that undertaking ultimately means taking away from game development and that just doesnt make sense.

The publish process has improved dramatically and gets better with each cycle. The In Test forum has become a very valuable tool and with Blair, Runesabre and Rogue-5leading the charge, the process is rock solid and getting better every day.

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