Sure it is, you just implement depth map deformation into the static terrain, totally doable! Then you just tie in a strain system to all the game's models so they fall when they don't have enough support, then add destruction animations for every static model and falling animations for every character. Totally easy, they had that back when the original Red Faction came out for PS2, the devs are just lazy! /s

[–] digitalnuisance@infosec.pub 3 points 5 days ago

You say that, but...

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 83 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (11 children)

That's nothing new.

Gamers who don't know any programming, or maybe made a little utility for themselves. Looovee to bring out the old "just change one line of code", "just add this model", etc. to alter something in a game.

They literally do not understand how complex systems become, specially in online multiplayer games. Riot had issues with their spaghetti code, and people were crawling over eachother to explain how "easy" it would be to just change an ability. Without realizing that it could impact and potentially break half a dozen other abilities.

[–] Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 75 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Even if you're an actual software dev, it's still pretty much impossible to guess how much work something is without knowing the codebase intimately.

[–] Lightor@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

I'm a software dev and it should only take 7.

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Absolutely, it's impossible to know how much. But it's a lot easier to grasp that it's rarely just "changing a few lines" when it comes to these types of situations.

Specially since many programmers have encountered clients, managers, etc. who think it's that simple as well.

[–] fennesz12@feddit.dk 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

My favorite one is "Just add multiplayer".

Sure. I'll just go right ahead and toggle it in the engine. Why didn't I think of that?

[–] businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 days ago

lemme just bang out a complete rewrite of the game functionality over lunch

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[–] shoo@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

When a dev with game dev experience says something should be easy to fix, it's under the assumption of a reasonable code base. Most games are built off of common engines and you can sometimes infer how things are likely organized if you track how bugs are introduced, how objects interact, how things are loaded, etc...

When something is a 1 day bugfix under ideal conditions, saying it will take 6+ months is admitting one of:

The codebase is fucked
All resources are going to new features
Something external is slowing it down (palworld lawsuit, company sale, C-suite politics, etc...)
Your current dev team is sub par

Not that any of those is completely undefendable or pure malpractice, but saying it "can't" be done or blaming complexity is often a cop out.

[–] kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

In the real world there is no entirely reasonable code base. There's always going to be some aspects of it that are kind of shit, because you intended to do X but then had to change to doing Y, and you have not had time or sufficient reason to properly rewrite everything to reflect that.

We tend to underestimate how long things will take, precisely because when we imagine someone doing them we think of the ideal case, where everything is reasonable and goes well. Which is pretty much guaranteed to not be the case whenever you do anything complex.

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[–] theblips@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago

The correlation between code quality and game quality is almost negative. When you're doing groundbreaking stuff or going for your own artistic vision it's tough to code well, even more so when you hit a jackpot and have to expand quickly (e.g. League spaghetti, Palworld)

[–] DireTech@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 days ago

Can’t be done is usually shorthand for the cost massively outweighs the benefits. No different from remodeling a building. Like coding, literally anything is theoretically possible but sometimes you’d have to redo so much existing work it’s never going to be worth it.

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[–] fennesz12@feddit.dk 11 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Diablo4 has memory leak issues. As a software engineer myself, I just don't see any excuse for a game this long in production to have memory leak problems.

There is no doubt that a lot of games are getting rushed without being properly tested.

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[–] cactusupyourbutt@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

as a professional software dev, games with fozens or hundreds of abilities that interact with eachother scare me

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[–] Tower@lemm.ee 7 points 6 days ago

See: Destiny and Telesto.

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[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 42 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I wish my clients would understand that, and my code is a lot simpler than a video game.

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I built an API connector for work (I'm a hobbyist, not a pro) to download what is the most common cargo transported by trucking companies from the DoT database. Everyone complained because they had to enter the company names correctly into a CSV as it wouldn't accept typos or do fuzzy matching, nor could it automatically determine which was the head office of a company, only return a list of all of the offices.

[–] Owlboi@lemm.ee 46 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

if it takes you 6 months to add a new fundamental game mechanic then thats understandable

if it takes you 6 months to remove an unnecessary popup then youre incompetent. (looking at you, Hunt Showdown)

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Lol hunt takes six months dev time to make the ui twice as worse

[–] digitalnuisance@infosec.pub 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

UI is incredibly complex under the hood. Cryengine is also difficult to work in. There are tons of reasons games with distinct outstanding features don't switch engines, though, and it's usually due to the specific features said engine provides, no matter how difficult it becomes to work with as a legacy system over the years.

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[–] slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 50 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Half a year's work takes 6 months? I had no idea

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 36 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes.

[–] fennesz12@feddit.dk 8 points 6 days ago

This still cracks me up even though I heard it so many years ago

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[–] yoriaiko@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 6 days ago

Mostly agree, 98% of requests are unrealistic. Most of these requests are not even simple.

But many times, things ARE fucked. And when that happen - dear gamers, don't curse devs, as a team. There was shitty ceo, who couldnt make a straight decision or changed them 200 times a day, because felt some popular new feature totally must be in the game, that ruined whole concept. Many times, the concept were shitty from the start, then blame director of that. Even more often, publishers pushes their financial decision over dev team (hello Helldivers2 vs Sony). Yet another time, some lawsuit shitstorm happens, that makes devs scrap something (hello Palworlds vs big_n). And many times, its all together.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 21 points 6 days ago

For Palworld, a new island takes 6 months, per the article. Probably talking about Sakurajima and the big southern one. That makes sense, since it's not just putting stuff there and calling it a day on the first finished thing, some level design has to happen so the place makes sense and doesn't feel super boring to explore.

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (9 children)

It would also be great if devs added things during development that should simply be there at launch. Instead of that, shit gets rushed out the door with promises of future fixes and updates. And then devs get all huffy when people rightfully ask for things to be added that are supposed to be basic launch features…

[–] Goronmon@lemmy.world 35 points 6 days ago (5 children)

What I don't understand is why do developers make bad games? They should just make good games instead.

Gamers want good games, not bad games.

[–] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The developers aren't in charge of what's in the game, the PMs and accountants are

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

To be fair, the Prime Ministers should really be focused on more important things than a game companies software development.

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[–] ramirezmike@programming.dev 13 points 6 days ago

supposed to be basic launch features

isn't this very subjective and dependent on the game and scale of success?

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[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

I was once building a game where a dinky little neon space fighter zips around the field shooting down enemies that spawn in until the boss. Everything was going great, the engine was handling large number speeds, the parallax background I custom coded with an rng star map worked perfect, right up until I tried to implement enemy tracking of the player: that shit would not work no matter how hard I tried.

I was about to share the old demo for you dudes to try but looks like I've lost the .pck file associated with the Godot executable or the embedded pck is no longer recognized.

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