Ranger Archive

---

frightwig wrote:
SeanBlader,

I noticed you posted earlier in the day on Saturday.. Did you get to attend the ranger/scout forum later in the day, or is the info you posted from that?

I saw the original schedule, and it said rangers/scouts were at 4pm on Saturday... but maybe they changed the time? If the 4pm saturday forum still happened, did you get to sit in on it and ask questions?

---

*looks up a few posts to where he said it earlier*

Scouts and Rangers did not get their own session on Saturday, we got lumped together with Smugglers and Squad Leaders on Friday. It was a close race as to which had less people represented, Rangers or Squad Leaders... less than a half dozen of each, so they might have been some really SMALL groups. The one-on-one time later was better anyway.

As it was, we got a lot less time to ask Scout/Ranger specific questions, but we got a couple in during the open Q&A and I brought up some questions during the Melee/Creature Handler panel. We also got a lot of good informal time with the devs, but of-course anything gleamed from those would be unofficial, and I will pass on naming names in public.

One I brought up was how Terrain Negotiation on it's own does not seem to be a viable escape or fighting technique any longer. During the Q&A, the response to my observation was that the AI for the creatures is that they WILL be face to face with the person they are agro on within a few seconds and kiting is not an acceptable fighting technique because you could run around and stay at range forever undamaged. States and Tanks seem to be the ONLY intended ways to fight at range. It came out the creatures even get their own burstrun capability, though at a lower duration, so if we're in trouble we have the opportunity to burstrun and eventually outrun them and they disengage, but ranged fighters kiting and using terrain to their advantage is counter to the intended balance. They also didn't even hear (even though I was too loud in the mic) that on kashyyyk the walls are so close to the ground there are no hills to run up and try and use to get some space between you and the mobs.

Pet AI for Creature Handlers and their pets keeping up is unrelated to the creature burstrun and terrain negotiation.

Spawning System: There are currently around 40 different ways a creature can spawn and they are working on making that around 4. After this is complete, they are doing a planetary revamp and making sure you can adventure without mission terminals and have it be worthwhile and exciting again. Mission terminals (when they are done) should ONLY be for something quick and easy to do when you don't have much time or fast credit generation instead of currently the only way to do any moderately dangerous exploring. Rangers being able to force spawns in some fashion may come from this (my impression).

Unofficial: We've been discussing in the forums for some time about removing the need for master scout versus skillpoint reduction like ID. The idea in the back of their mind for rangers is to have unique abilities that don't necessarily require building on scout skills and reduce the scout requirement to only 2 lines instead of master scout. What those skills are though is up in the air yet. My intuition tells me they're thinking like BH Pistols, where you don't have to have any pistols from marksman or pistoleer to use your scatter pistol and get some decent mods and skills for it but are even better if you do, though maybe they have something grander in mind like our own "investigation" (ie: new XP type). I left with the impression the role of recon was foremost in their mind. When I asked about invisibility like jedi force cloak and riflemen cover, the answer was that the technology's there now, so it's not out of the question. I did ask a dev to his face for a gilley (sp?) suit, but saved the ranger hat for random shouts at appropriate times.

Message Edited by DaveG on 06-06-2005 05:30 PM

---

Calculus_Entropy wrote:

---

Vupos wrote:

---

Cango wrote:

---

DaveG wrote:

---

elemental damage

dallas mentioned that they were going through the code and found an entire section regarding elemental damage commented out. they fixed it and elemental damage should be working soon.

---

Is it me, or is this a really grossly incompetant mistake, even more so that they feel so comfortable admitting it that they don't think it reflects badly on them?

They're a multimillion dollar set up, when you're at that level you have quality auditing measures in place so you don't make such "noobish" mess ups like this.

Even I don't make this sort of mistake and I'm not even a very experienced programmer!

---

No, it's just you. Programmers for games arent always in the best of working conditions. I dont mean that they are up to their ankles in filth, in 104 degree heat with no A/C, whiel a slave driver beats them. What I mean is staying up for well over 24 hours at a time doing as much as they can under stressfull deadlines. A quick /* is easy to do and hard to miss, especially since it wouldn't show up as an error in debugging.

---

I don't care what type of conditions there are, that type of shotty programming is not going to fly in any other company the size of SOE, especially where such shotty codding affects your costumers in such an immense way.

---

Are you going to warmly embrace all the bugs that implementing the elemental damage will likely bring with it?

---

/agree calc

Though this would fully explain why most commando weapons do less damage than a CDEF and their AOE being completely broken... since commando weapons are primarily elemental.

---

AgonThalia wrote:

Anyway.....

Interesting news from fanfest. No real revamp persay, but a bit by bit approach.

is there any way we can find out which part is queued for upgrade and set up some ideas?

---

Oh yeah, I forgot to point out that given the dev's track record none of this report matters until it actually happens . But, it's good to see what their current intentions are (just remember that there intentions over the weeked can easily change).

---

Cango wrote:

---

DaveG wrote:

---

elemental damage

dallas mentioned that they were going through the code and found an entire section regarding elemental damage commented out. they fixed it and elemental damage should be working soon.

---

Is it me, or is this a really grossly incompetant mistake, even more so that they feel so comfortable admitting it that they don't think it reflects badly on them?

They're a multimillion dollar set up, when you're at that level you have quality auditing measures in place so you don't make such "noobish" mess ups like this.

Even I don't make this sort of mistake and I'm not even a very experienced programmer!

---

No, it's just you. Programmers for games arent always in the best of working conditions. I dont mean that they are up to their ankles in filth, in 104 degree heat with no A/C, whiel a slave driver beats them. What I mean is staying up for well over 24 hours at a time doing as much as they can under stressfull deadlines. A quick /* is easy to do and hard to miss, especially since it wouldn't show up as an error in debugging.

---

As a programmer myself, and tester, and analist, I just assume the whole reply was ment to be sarcastic.

As such I'll leave it with that.

---

SeanBlader wrote:

---

Cango wrote:

A quick /* is easy to do and hard to miss, especially since it wouldn't show up as an error in debugging.

---

I agree, especially in a system with as much as Galaxies has.

---

---

DaveG wrote:

Two projects for you. One I did by myself (a data analysis suite)as shareware in a language you won't have heard of unless you know Psion computers, and one in a university research group of six people, my part being written in C (a molecular dynamics simulation which was to be interfaced with other programs in a more general program that was to be done at a later point), mostly ona Unix station. Both programs were around 3000 lines of code. The latter went a long way to gaining me a first class masters degree.

What about you?

Message Edited by DaveG on 06-06-2005 05:30 PM

---

---

DaveG wrote:

---

Iseult wrote:

Question: have you ever coded professionally? And I'm not talking about some 200 line VB program that you whip up in a weekend - I'm talking about a major software project involving at least five developers, a support and testing staff, and *shudder* management. And thousands of lines of code, if not over a million? And running up hard against a deadline that you can't push back?

Just because I'm curious - DaveG what's the longest program you've written? What language was it written in? And how many other people were involved in the project?

Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Carbiner
Bloodfin

---

Two projects for you. One I did by myself (a data analysis suite) as shareware in a language you won't have heard of unless you know Psion computers, and one in a university research group of six people, my part being written in C (a molecular dynamics simulation which was to be interfaced with other programs in a more general program that was to be done at a later point), mostly on a Unix station. Both programs were around 3000 lines of code. The latter went a long way to gaining me a first class masters degree.

What about you?

Message Edited by DaveG on 06-06-2005 05:30 PM

---

Latest project: CD to secure computers of people moving into halls of residence this fall
target audience: 10,000+ customers
development staff: 5 + 2 managers
lines of code: 10,000+ in main installshield project (installshield uses c-like code) + 13 separate helper utilities written in C# (well one in c++) - these are maybe 500-1000 lines each, but written by at least 3 different developers. Also server side code for logging (again in c#).

OK - there's a huge difference between writing a 3000 line program and one involving thousands, if not millions of lines of code, one that involves multiple developers (some of whom have probably left the company) over multiple versions against a hard deadline. Trust me - the techniques that you depend on for a small project that will be deployed to a relatively small audience don't scale that well for a larger projects, especially if they are aimed at a larger audience. For one thing, you can't just eyeball the code for mistakes -- even tracing through the code to figure out where errors happen becomes a monumental task. Bug reports are a disaster, because they are coming from people who are not trained to write them and who don't have a requisite knowledge of how the code works. Testing becomes a major challenge because complex code means a larger number of inputs, which means multiple ways of arriving at the same result.

What I'm trying to say (and what Cango has been saying all along) is that maybe we should get some perspective before we yell lazy or paid by the hour.

Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Carbiner
Bloodfin

---

SickSix wrote:

---

...

the only mention of a fix to the imbalance of rifle, was blixtev mentioned that he could slow down the rate of fire of rifles. he said 'its' slow now but we can slow it down more' and smiled.

Um, W T F??????? i will quit. if they slow down rifleman more, and snare breaks on damage, Ranger/Rifleman will be utterly usesless. And Rifleman will be useless all together.

...

---

QFE

Except, I won't quit, probobly just go carbiner.

Yeah, damage is high on rifles, but if I want to solo something, as a Ranger, I still get beat up a lot because of crappy defense mods. And the long range doesn't help much. Lots of things telport right up to me, or quickly run to within carbine range, and with the annoying "run slower with a ranged weapon equipped" thing, kiteing is useless.

Message Edited by TomedNor on 06-06-2005 01:56 PM

---------------------------------------
See you around, and happy trails,
- Tomed Nor
*walks off into the forest*
Corbantis ~ Master Ranger, Master Rifleman, CorSec Ace Pilot

---

Dariane_Kamutsovy wrote:

---

DaveG wrote:

Two projects for you. One I did by myself (a data analysis suite)as shareware in a language you won't have heard of unless you know Psion computers, and one in a university research group of six people, my part being written in C (a molecular dynamics simulation which was to be interfaced with other programs in a more general program that was to be done at a later point), mostly ona Unix station. Both programs were around 3000 lines of code. The latter went a long way to gaining me a first class masters degree.

What about you?

Message Edited by DaveG on 06-06-2005 05:30 PM

---

Let me guess? Epoc32?

Me? Let me see...

Complete rewrite/enhancement of a OpenTV library set of components used for programming the Electronic Programma Books forSatellite Device Receivers.Line count: >8k of lines in C. This library is rather time critical (ie: a USER don't want to wait if a key is pressed).

Corresponding, an Application Generator (for the screens used) using the above library... Access/VBA and some OCX controls. Approx >15k lines.

Then a lot of other applications: in Lotus Notes, in PHP, in C/C++, Delphi, Java...

Testing: always.

But guess I'm not qualified enough.

---

---

Iseult wrote:

---

DaveG wrote:

---

Iseult wrote:

Question: have you ever coded professionally? And I'm not talking about some 200 line VB program that you whip up in a weekend - I'm talking about a major software project involving at least five developers, a support and testing staff, and *shudder* management. And thousands of lines of code, if not over a million? And running up hard against a deadline that you can't push back?

Just because I'm curious - DaveG what's the longest program you've written? What language was it written in? And how many other people were involved in the project?

Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Carbiner
Bloodfin

---

Two projects for you. One I did by myself (a data analysis suite) as shareware in a language you won't have heard of unless you know Psion computers, and one in a university research group of six people, my part being written in C (a molecular dynamics simulation which was to be interfaced with other programs in a more general program that was to be done at a later point), mostly on a Unix station. Both programs were around 3000 lines of code. The latter went a long way to gaining me a first class masters degree.

What about you?

Message Edited by DaveG on 06-06-2005 05:30 PM

---

Latest project: CD to secure computers of people moving into halls of residence this fall
target audience: 10,000+ customers
development staff: 5 + 2 managers
lines of code: 10,000+ in main installshield project (installshield uses c-like code) + 13 separate helper utilities written in C# (well one in c++) - these are maybe 500-1000 lines each, but written by at least 3 different developers. Also server side code for logging (again in c#).

OK - there's a huge difference between writing a 3000 line program and one involving thousands, if not millions of lines of code, one that involves multiple developers (some of whom have probably left the company) over multiple versions against a hard deadline. Trust me - the techniques that you depend on for a small project that will be deployed to a relatively small audience don't scale that well for a larger projects, especially if they are aimed at a larger audience. For one thing, you can't just eyeball the code for mistakes -- even tracing through the code to figure out where errors happen becomes a monumental task. Bug reports are a disaster, because they are coming from people who are not trained to write them and who don't have a requisite knowledge of how the code works. Testing becomes a major challenge because complex code means a larger number of inputs, which means multiple ways of arriving at the same result.

What I'm trying to say (and what Cango has been saying all along) is that maybe we should get some perspective before we yell lazy or paid by the hour.

Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Carbiner
Bloodfin

---

Ok, let me see........

Mine's bigger than yours!

Isn't this a Ranger forum?

Um, what's up with Page 2?

Message Edited by BioEngine on 06-06-2005 02:59 AM