There will alway be bugs.

Arcanum isnot the only new game that is haveing
problem with bugs. The new pool of Radiance that just came out is haveing corrupt save game
problem and uninstall and install bug problem.
Bug are not limit to computer programs I once brought than cloth cover book that have some pages in the wrong place. They did than stractic study once that state we will have only one nuclear power accient every 100,000 year and yet since we built nuclear power planet we have 100 nuclear power accient all ready that we know of.
Computer game programs are alway complex and anything that is complex is going to have
bug.

 

*nodds in silent agreement to Charles' statement*

 

Its hard keeping things straight without having mistakes.

 

There is no denying human beings make errors. That much is given and we all know it.

Concerning the creation of games, humans are bound to make mistakes in programming, or just make bad calls and design decisions. Most of us gamers can accept that as well.

Question is, what do they do when the game is released and there are broken things (aka bugs), and imbalances? Do they say, Well we gave it our best try and what you see is what you get and we are moving on.

Or, do they say we are committed to giving our customers a product that works AS we wanted it to work and will do our best to acknowledge and fix any imbalances and bugs that we can after the game is release via patches until we are satisfied the game lives up to our standards.

To the people who make games and then abandon those games, there excuses are NEVER good enough for the gamers who get left with a piece of crap.

To the people who try hard to fix things before moving on to the next project, they win the respect and admiration of the people who buy there games and chances are high the next game they make, gamers will be willing to buy because of their good reputation for hanging in there to patch up and fix their games.

I can live with the fact Arcaumn has bugs. I can't recall buying a game in my 17 years of gaming that didn't have a bug or a glitch. I am just waiting to see if they will fix the problems and at least try and make multiplayer worthwhile.

 

I think we also have to take into consideration that testing a computer game is also a very complex and difficult task, and therefore will suffer the same problems as design and programming. Quality controllers are subject to human error too.

I agree, but it seems that some companies are getting into a bit of patch mentality, and maybe lowering their standards for each release, because they know they can patch again if more bugs arise.

For example, the similar scenarios from Sierra, where the Arcanum 1.0.6.9 had to be followed immediately with 1.0.7.0 and Blizzard, where LOD 1.09 had to be followed with 1.09b (the BIG joke with that one is the technical support statement they just made admitting, that 1.09b caused even MORE problems).

It's always been understood, at grass roots if nowhere else, that recoding during the maintenance cycle, once a system is live, is much harder than making system refinements during the development cycle. I think with this in mind development teams should be trying as hard as they can to avoid the need for major patching.

 

"To error is human, to spread for me, divine." - Cabbage Head

 

I agree the time should be taken before the game is released to try and fix as many bugs as possible, and in the case of arcanum, the many spells/skills/item balances that clearly were missed or overlooked.

IF, they do give us a patch that fixes these things I will be forgiving of the fact they had to patch in the first place.

I wish, just as most of you probably do, that games would come out of the box working as advertised and need small patches, if any, to fix only remote and obscure problems.

 

AT&T have than bug problem with they new switching program which they did 3 years of testing before useing. It has 100 million lines
of code written by than system analyer and system programming. The bug would only show up when three very rare phone system fault happen in a certain order an it would cause than collapse of than good part of the long system network. Three or four days after they install it the three very rare fault struck in the right order. Half of the long distance
phone network went down.
I beleive part of problen is they didnot practive the middle way of programming. They use the top down way totally. The middle way is you are in the middle written or enter than program from than book or other scoure. There are time you need to work from the botton up and there time you need to work from top down but you alway must use both down up and top down methord in programming.

 

I agree, games will have bugs. I've happily downloaded many a patch without any hard feelings. However, at the same time, there is such a thing as quality assurance. I understand if a company releases a game with some minor problems. I feel fine downloading patches to fix small things. However, what pisses me off are companies that release games that are virtually unplayable out of the box with the mentality that this is acceptable b/c they'll just issue a patch at some point in the future. Take Pool of Radiance as an example, from what I've read, we're talking about some major bugs.
While I understand that there will always be bugs and so there will always be patches. I don't think patches should be used by companies as an excuse to palm off some half-done bug-ridden piece of crap on the consumer.

 

but still most bugs are a result of the shole lot of different equipment you need to make the game playable under, like direct 3d or opengl. Since in a console there is only one card and one proc. It is fairly easy to make a game that rocks under a card and proc alot worser than what is available today for the pc. But most game producers behave like they have no self criticsm and realese a game for 50$ that whould be given out for free

 

Bugs, what bugs?

Having to restart the program like 1 in 10 times (not even in the last 6 or so weeks even, w00t) because the DX layer does not get started up right is about all that I have experanced.

Slow Downs? Yah sure, if I alt-tab out of the program and do something else for a VERY long period of time, Arcanum does not manage to regain back 100% of the resources that it needs. Big whoop, heh, I am quite glad that it multitasks as gracefuly as it does in the first place :smile:

Quite frankly, compared to the initial release of Black and White (read: Not beatable without some serious workarounds) this game is a BREEZE top lay.

Still not as bugless as the original AD&D 2nd ED Gold Box CRPGs, but hey, what'ya expect, this game has ALOT more stuff going on in it! Heh.

Of course I have a nice and speedy 950/1ghz (depending on the time of year I OC it more, colder ambiet allows for higher CPU overclocking speeds :smile: )

 

Let me just boot in here with

GOLD BOX SSI/TSR RULEZ J00[/size]

sorry

I just love 'dem 'der games! ^_^

Edit: Darn forum has no size tag. . . . ::groans::

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: com2kid on 2001-10-18 09:09 ]</font>

 

An other problem for play testing is that there
is no more standard computer like in the past.
When the first IBM appear they have DOS 1.0
128 kilobytes of memeny csa gaphic with 5.25 inch disk drive 20 meg harddrive IBM speaker only.
The first Pool of Radiance game need 384 k of memeny ega gaphic card and than 20 meg hard
drive and no sound card.
Today if I test than game I might repord no bugs or ploblems than other player will report many bugs and problems. The other person might have than bell computer while I have than Gateway computer.