View Full Version : Any chance we'll have the patch by tonight for this weekend?
Any scope on the time of arrival? Friday... Do they work weekends, so maybe Sat. Mid March, etc. I'm sure they have a deadline they're working towards.
No they don't work weekends from what i know.
And all we know is that the patch is in final testing, so whenever that is finished is when we will get the patch.
HoreTore
03-02-2007, 16:24
Who works on weekends? :p
Was hoping for the patch today myself, but it seems like we'll have to wait to at least next week...
Barry Fitzgerald
03-02-2007, 16:36
More broken promises...
Last year the said end of feb...its now march. Sure a few days no big deal you say..but I shelved this game before xmas as it isnt playable..properly anyway. My last ditch hope is that patch 1.2 will fix many areas....
Darn game is just broken without it........
Quickening
03-02-2007, 16:36
As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest. I can't be much longer surely.
What time is it wherever the patch team is working, anyway? Something like... real late Friday probably?
Quickening
03-02-2007, 16:49
Didn't we get the last patch on a Saturday?
The testing team is in Europe, so its 3.47 GMT atm. THe dev team is in Oz, so any problems that come up in final testing have to be relayed back to them.
More broken promises...
And i wonder why CA only said aiming for Late Feb once? Maybe because of people like you?
Didn't we get the last patch on a Saturday?
No it was a weekday.
pike master
03-02-2007, 16:50
now lusted i specifically recall you saying you would feel us in by the end of the week on the rest of the patch list. is there any thing else you have heard or can you find out anymore as to what they have added on.
I know about several fixes in the patch not on the list, mosty related to modding, but no i have not heard anymore about a full fix list. You'll find out when the patch is released.
Quickening
03-02-2007, 16:57
I know about several fixes in the patch not on the list, mosty related to modding, but no i have not heard anymore about a full fix list. You'll find out when the patch is released.
Well Im grateful for your input and CA's work. Im not complaining, Im just eager as hell to try this patch ~:cheers:
Daykeras
03-02-2007, 17:16
I'm sure they've gone home for the weekend, so we'll hopefully see it next week. Bummer, really wanted to start a new campaign.
More broken promises... Last year the said end of feb...
ok... I'd like you to tell me what you're going to be doing 3 months from now - and if you aren't doing it, well then, you're just a dirty lying scoundrel =/
nobody can foretell the future, the date they gave was a goal they were working toward and a general idea of the release date.... a couple of days isn't a "lie", it would take a couple of weeks to even have reason for disappointment and a couple of months to have reason to accuse them of "broken promises"
As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest.
lol... you mind if I sig that? not tryna insult or anything... that's just my laugh for today =]
now lusted i specifically recall you saying you would feel us in by the end of the week on the rest of the patch list
comeon guys... don't start in on him too - I wouldn't want to admit I knew anything if I had to always carefully censor my comments to make sure nobody would have something to hold over me
Hollerbach
03-02-2007, 18:56
More broken promises...
Last year the said end of feb...its now march. Sure a few days no big deal you say..but I shelved this game before xmas as it isnt playable..properly anyway. My last ditch hope is that patch 1.2 will fix many areas....
Darn game is just broken without it........
And people wonder why game devs are hesistant to give info that seems perfectly reasonable to the community. This ^ is why, anything said gets taken as gospel and be damned if you don't deliver! :wall:
chilling
03-02-2007, 19:24
I hope the patch team go and have a relaxing weekend. Be back on Monday refreshed and ready to go, in the hope that we get the patch before next weekend.
Throw another prawn of the barbie for me.
pat the magnificent
03-02-2007, 19:53
They probably discovered some new bug caused by the patch and they're working to fix it. Waiting a few days is better than getting stuck with whatever the bug might be for the next few months.
I'm not saying that I enjoy this extra waiting, to the contrary I'm basically hating it. I don't want more bugs. I just want my game to work (and be harder).
Mega Dux Bob
03-02-2007, 22:49
And people wonder why game devs are hesistant to give info that seems perfectly reasonable to the community. This ^ is why, anything said gets taken as gospel and be damned if you don't deliver! :wall:
Not to mention people complaining that a game is broken because it was rushed out and then demanding the fix yesterday in the same breath. Sounds like some of the posters here are in management with that kind of logic.
As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest. I can't be much longer surely.
:help:
Philippe
03-02-2007, 23:36
The following comment is not based on any insider information. I have no connection with either CA or SEGA.
I get the impression (based on casual surfing) that the patch is nearing completion, as opposed to actually being finished. The reason I think this is that the list of fixes in the blog does not seem to be all-inclusive, which suggests that work is continuing. Given the internal complexity of M2TW, I really hope that they take their time about releasing the patch. Especially since it may be a while before we see another. RTW needed half a dozen patches, and I don't see any reason why M2TW would be any different.
So if that is the case, I hope that when they think they've finished the patch they take a few days off, forget about if for a while, and not release it. And then go back and check it all over again with fresh eyes.
Doing that, of course, will probably turn up new issues that need to be fixed, but that's the nature of the beast.
I would also assume that after the patch is actually finished (and I really, really hope they don't rush it out), it will have to be turned over to QA at SEGA. I don't know how it works in this specific case, but at other companies that often means extensive testing to make sure the security of whatever software protection is in place hasn't been compromised. And the legal departments of anybody whose logo is displayed when you first fire up the game will have to be convinced that the patch doesn't undermine their advertising. Nothing to do with the game, but depending on the beaurocracy involved this kind of thing could take weeks.
So I really don't think it would be a good idea to cancel any weekend dates with your girlfriend this month in anticipation of a rumored, imminent release that hasn't been committed to by both companies. Given what's involved you really don't want an early delivery, and she probably needs to spend more quality time with you anyway.
I get the impression (based on casual surfing) that the patch is nearing completion, as opposed to actually being finished
Wrong, the patch is finished - its in lockdown so no more fixes being added and its in final testing. That's what Caliban has told me so i can only assume its taking them a while to test to make sure all the bugs are fixed. I don't know why the fix list wasn't complete, but it wasn't because the patch isn't finished.
Barry Fitzgerald
03-03-2007, 16:46
The testing team is in Europe, so its 3.47 GMT atm. THe dev team is in Oz, so any problems that come up in final testing have to be relayed back to them.
And i wonder why CA only said aiming for Late Feb once? Maybe because of people like you?
No it was a weekday.
People like me paid for a game that doesn't work properly...I think paying customers deserve better than that..don't you?
If you bought a car and it broke down would you be singing the praises of the garage who sold it to you? not likely..
Anyway this is old ground...CA had better nail it real good on this one..or their rep will surely have suffered. It has to a point already..
People like me paid for a game that doesn't work properly...I think paying customers deserve better than that..don't you?
Yes, hence we get PATCHES. But asknig thme to rush it will result in a rushed patch, and oh look MORE BUGS! Give them time to test it properly and make sure the patch doesn't introduce new bugs.
People like me paid for a game that doesn't work properly...I think paying customers deserve better than that..don't you?
If you bought a car and it broke down would you be singing the praises of the garage who sold it to you? not likely..
Anyway this is old ground...CA had better nail it real good on this one..or their rep will surely have suffered. It has to a point already..
Well, to be honest i thought people like you had already left the series after Rome because back then the reputation was not existant anymore. Don't really know how it could become worse after it didn't exist anymore.
Or maybe I'm just masochistic because I can even live with the bugs in Boiling Point...:dizzy2:
Actually, I was quite happy at how playable Medieval 2 was on release, games that don't crash every few hours can be really nice these days and CA even bother to fix the issues we discover.
As long as they fix it in the end, there is no point in complaining, mistakes happen, and everyone who knows something about programming should know that. There is not a single bugfree piece of Software out there except maybe if it has only 20 lines of code.
FactionHeir
03-03-2007, 21:13
Quite a few of the old games (i.e. pre 1998) are mostly or completely bugfree. Back then, releases were brought out without bugs and they didn't need patching mainly because a buggy program would mean the end of the company (modems weren't even mainstream back then, so no way to distribute patches except through the odd game magazine)
DesertEagle
03-03-2007, 21:30
Quite a few of the old games (i.e. pre 1998) are mostly or completely bugfree. Back then, releases were brought out without bugs and they didn't need patching mainly because a buggy program would mean the end of the company (modems weren't even mainstream back then, so no way to distribute patches except through the odd game magazine)
QFT my friend, GFT!
Back in the day (dear god, I'm getting old when I can say that and actually mean it), computer games were released FINISHED because the crutch of fixing it later didn't exist. A company lived and died by the code that went out their doors on release day.
Too many times these days companys (and this is aimed more at the pubs, not the devs) are too money hungry and think, oh we'll just fix it later, get the playable game out and we'll take that money and tweak it closer to what it should have been in the first place down the road..
But at the same time, how many times have you older gamers like myself wondered... What games that were craptacular back then might have been salvagable if they were patched and tweaked and fixed?
In a way the poor companies are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If you wait until the game is absolutely perfect you have Duke Nukem: (On Hold) Forever. If you release it early, you have to patch and have people screaming at you for shoving the game out before it was ready, but also wondering why there isn't a patch ready one day later.
HoreTore
03-03-2007, 21:43
While that's true, complexity and size also plays a part. While it is true that designers ten years ago put a lot more effort to bugfixing before release, it's only logical that larger game = more code = more bugs.
The more complex a thing gets, the greater the chance of a bug. But designers today don't really care if bugs come through the release, as they can simply patch it, and they know that people will still buy as long as it's at least playable. Ten years ago, designers didn't think that way.
I hope your joking.
As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest. I can't be much longer surely.
Dead_Like_Me
03-04-2007, 00:16
they already gave a clue that this weekend will not bring with it the patch.
i guess that next week it might go out ... some people think it will be this week
which i doubt since they didn't released yet extra information.
so a week to wait is ok till then quite jumping this kind of posts.
Quite a few of the old games (i.e. pre 1998) are mostly or completely bugfree. Back then, releases were brought out without bugs and they didn't need patching mainly because a buggy program would mean the end of the company (modems weren't even mainstream back then, so no way to distribute patches except through the odd game magazine)
One of the biggest game company success stories of that time, Blizzard, disagrees with you. Warcraft released in 1994, and is currently running at version 1.21 due to numerous patches. Diablo released in 1997, and is up to version 1.09, again through numerous patches. Even with the relatively small size of games back then, bugs of various sorts always ended up in games. That you sometimes couldn't notice any is not sufficient evidence that they are not there: it just means whatever errors are in the code didn't do anything major to the game.
Now consider the amount of data we're talking about. Games in the pre-1998 era took up what... maybe 100 MB of hard disk space? And that would've been considered a VERY greedy game back then IIRC. I remember at one point having a HD that was only ~60 MB. Contrast that with this latest installment in the TW series. According to wikipedia, it requires 11 GB. Even if we round that down to 10 GB, comparing it to a 100 MB game means it is 100 times the size. Does it have 100 times as many problems? Not a chance, or you'd never even get it to load.
Then of course there's the matter of feasibility. Due to the games being 100 times the size now that they used to be, it is a given that you will start out with more errors in the project than you would've pre-1998 (the rate of lines per error can typically be assumed to be a constant in programming, meaning more code is expected to have proportionately more bugs in it). To chase down every single bug before release, though, is simply not a possibility. Even if you assume that projects of old were bug-free after testing (which again they almost certainly weren't), you'd have to predict that the testing period required to do that now would be 100 times as long in order to accomplish this feat. If we go with a low-end estimate and say that testers back then looked at the product for only 1 week (seems unlikely) to spot errors, then we arrive at an already-ludicrous current-day testing period of nearly 2 years required to release a bug-free product. This number grows even larger if those companies spent more time on testing, or if their testing had not removed 100% of the bugs (because in that case, the actual testing period for error-free code is longer than the time they actually tested for). If any companies spent that long testing, guess what? Their games would be old news before they even released, long since outpaced by technology. And that's assuming they could somehow survive that long to even release the game - odds are they'd run so far into debt that games would never even come out.
The simple fact of the matter is that technology and game size are growing at a much faster rate than anyone's ability to limit or remove bugs, which means that unless some miracle breakthrough happens that changes the error removal portion of the process, this trend of more bugs at release will invariably continue.
Oh hey, just noticed... THIS IS MY 500th POST!!! WOOHOO!!!!! :balloon:
They said late Feb or early March, assuming no bugs are discovered during the testing process (which can delay the patch for several more weeks). They're actually a little ahead of schedule if you take the more conservative estimate.
Ars Moriendi
03-04-2007, 02:37
Now consider the amount of data we're talking about. Games in the pre-1998 era took up what... maybe 100 MB of hard disk space? And that would've been considered a VERY greedy game back then IIRC. I remember at one point having a HD that was only ~60 MB. Contrast that with this latest installment in the TW series. According to wikipedia, it requires 11 GB. Even if we round that down to 10 GB, comparing it to a 100 MB game means it is 100 times the size. Does it have 100 times as many problems? Not a chance, or you'd never even get it to load.
Damn, I feel old for remembering this, but :
1993, Doom1, less than 10MB (it came on a few floppy disks).
The massive increase in game size is due mostly to the graphics/videos/models/textures/sounds/music - not the actual logic of the game - the exe files for modern games are still in the 5-30MB range, and much of it is again due to more complex interaction with the OS and the graphic and sound interfaces. The data files can and do actually harbour bugs (just look at how much can be fixed by the M2TW modders), but most of the hard problems are still in the engine.
I've played Doom for three or four years and I've never experienced a glitch, a bug, or anything that wasn't working as intended. It was a simple game, and maybe I just didn't know what was wrong (no acces to internet forums at the time) but I never had the "buy it now, fix it later" feeling that I have now when looking at any new game.
Re Berengario I
03-04-2007, 02:56
Damn, I feel old for remembering this, but :
1993, Doom1, less than 10MB (it came on a few floppy disks).
The massive increase in game size is due mostly to the graphics/videos/models/textures/sounds/music - not the actual logic of the game - the exe files for modern games are still in the 5-30MB range
Doom1 was on 3 floppy alas 1.44 mbx3 including the graphics and the levels so without trying to find the original floppys I can safely says it was under the 2gb of code (and I'd bet under 1024KBs because this was the limit of the extended memory in the old DOS).
It's partially true that games are rushed a bit more nowadays but I think the evil is that the sheer size of the projects leads to organization problems where one programmer doesn't know what the other programmer is doing because the two are not working in the same site (in case of CA England and Australia) and other times they don't even work in the same company.
A lot of programming, graphic, etc is send to external companies, then someone have to reassembly everything and glitches during this process are very easier to come out than in times when the games were made by 3-4 geeks working in the same garage.
As a modder I can safely say that I work more efficiently alone without the hassle to coordinate my work with 3-4 (or more) other guys.
But, while on some stuff working alone can also be faster, in most of the cases I have slowdowns unacceptable by a commercial company, expecially when huge amounts of code and data are required to be created.
SnowlyWhite
03-04-2007, 11:25
Saying that games are in the sore state we see today due to the "complexity" of them is pure bs. Sorry for bluntness, but that's the reality.
Yes, it's more complexity in today games, but on the other hand, the entire technology advanced. You don't have the same crummy developing tools you had 10 years ago, do you? You don't have that odd 286 machine to write code on, do you? That borland c editor is a fading memory, isn't it? You remember that prompt and not much else, don't you?
Definitelly games become more complex, on the other hand, definitelly the gaming section is not the one with the highest advancement speed in the IT industry. Both hardware and software developing tools advanced much faster then the gaming complexity did, so you'd actually expect games to be easier to develop, not harder.
Also, there aren't more ppl. on the project then before - if we take out all the "marketing"/dozen of project managers/so on. If you look at a today's game and take out that endless scrolling of who did the music, who beta tested the 107th and 210th maps, who gave the graphic designer a glass of water and who walked the dog, you'll notice there are still the same few ppl.(under 20, I'd say under 10, but for the sake of it, I'll give you 20) who actually write code/design graphics in a game. 1 senior dev., 5-6 programmers, 1 art dir, 4-5 graphics ppl. and that's that!
Reality is that games are 10 times worse because:
- noone cares; internet is Godgiven and everyone should have a connection, so we'll flood in lotsa patches. Why bother with a thorough testing in the 1st place?
- we have to pay an army of marketing ppl. who show us useless graphics about how everything is so and so, instead of actually hiring better programmers. A thorough stupidity... Psychology of your customers when you're refering to games it's so easy that lotsa developing companies consisting of programmers only managed to deliver us very enjoyable products for many years. Yes, games were made by programmers till a few years ago, and were darn good.
I hold myself as a rather complex person(and, no, by no meanings modesty is one of my features) however my gaming desires are rather plain. Ppl. expect decent graphics, a decent story where it's the case, an interface designed with some common sense and that's about it. Ah, and obviously, a working product, but that's something that's always forgotten by those wannabe shrinks.
If they'd actually bother to have a better product, they wouldn't need the army of marketing ppl. in the 1st place... There are more marketing ppl. then coders...
- better graphics... all we hear is we have new uber graphics; for heaven's sake, it's a strategy game!
Make a better ai, avoid game breaking bugs! Those marketing buffons should at least know what they're developing.
Yes, graphics are the definining thing in a shooter; no, they don't matter too much in a strategy game... how much brain is needed for that? Noone says you should have vga graphics, but, heck, it's not a screenshot contest, it's a bloody game! Almost all of the resources are graviting nowdays around "better graphics"; make it so we have uber cool screenshots for our next advertising "campaign"(the terms in the ad industry are so dumb one'd cry...).
- since we wasted so many resources and, consequently we have a horendous product, then, heck, we'll waste even more resources in buying good reviews for our otherwise crappy product and lotsa lotsa ads in various magazines/websites which probably pass the actual cost of developing x times. Like the players want nice banners, not a working game...
And yes, games pre '03-'04 or so were playable out of the box. They were patched... sure; but they were more then solid out of the box. I've played warcraft and never knew there was actually a patch for it. A great game. I've played diablo and never knew there was actually a patch for it. A great game. I've played starcraft... a great game; was it better post patches? Definitelly. Was great, made me skip many nights out of the box? Sure it was. I've played H3; was it playable out of the box? Sure. Was it better post expansions? Definitelly, but still, such a time sink from release version that a failed 5 years relationship is a standing proof for it's quality:p
You see... opened the cd box, inserted the cd in the unit, install, run, play. Patches? Far and few...
Anyway, I for sure, have adapted very well to the new industry "standard" or what they're trying to promote as being a natural state of things. Download hacked version, install, run. Is the game doing what they're advertising for, or at least a good proportion of it? Yes - great, go buy x copies(where x varies depending on how much I like the game, how much I like the series, how much I enjoyed my dinner, whatever); no - buh, bye.
Bar civ4(which anyway was '05), I'm yet to remember a game produced in '06 that was actually playable out of the box and more or less did what they advertised. Heck, even mtw2, which I don't have even the remote intention of buying right now(at least it gives me an occupation - to watch the forums for patches so hopefully I'll have the chance to buy it - afterall ca are nice guys, they gave us mtw1), is in a decent state compared to some of the games launched last year. If players keep soaking like they currently do, in 10 years we'll be told we should be happy if the new product doesn't insta format our hdds...
pike master
03-04-2007, 11:58
CA felt pressured by the community to come up with something better than what they claimed was a failed rome total war engine(which it was not)
"nobody" wanted a rome clone so i guess they got what the wanted:furious3:
ihategamespy
03-04-2007, 20:29
To be honest i only know about most bugs in games these days because of boards like this. Otherwise id be playing these games in blissful ignorance.
Which begs the question, how come it seems like there are people on these boards who can spot a bug in such a short span of time where professional QA testers cant after weeks and/or months of testing? What am i missing? If the makers of these types of games just let a few of these board members test their games for a week, would bugs be a thing of the past?
FactionHeir
03-04-2007, 20:54
I very much agree with what SnowlyWhite said. Too much emphasis on graphics to market the games nowadays.
Most of the seasoned players who have been around since the 90's don't care as much about graphics than some of the younger generation. What we want is a playable game which has graphics that allow a simple overview over the game and serve the purpose of allowing you to learn + play. Not a game that is 98% graphics, 2% gameplay. If I wanted that, I'd go watch a movie.
What makes games interesting is their replayability and fun factor - you can only see a certain graphic for a certain limited amount of time before it becomes dull and loses that "wow-factor" some people may experience.
Also, it seems that nowadays the customer is paying to become a beta tester of a newly released game that is probably still a far way off from 1.0
Saying that games are in the sore state we see today due to the "complexity" of them is pure bs. Sorry for bluntness, but that's the reality.
And yes, games pre '03-'04 or so were playable out of the box. They were patched... sure; but they were more then solid out of the box. I've played warcraft and never knew there was actually a patch for it. A great game. I've played diablo and never knew there was actually a patch for it. A great game. I've played starcraft... a great game; was it better post patches? Definitelly. Was great, made me skip many nights out of the box?
As far as I know, the majority of the bugs and problems with M2:TW are AI related.
The AI in those old Blizzard games or anything that isn't strategy game is extremely simple. What's the AI in Diablo? Monsers attack you when you appear in their LOS and that's it.
M2:TW must be a nightmare for programmers when it comes to AI. You have a campaign map, battle map, dimplomacy, generals, cities, sieges and hundreds of different units to manage.
I agree that the resources used on graphics and marketing could be used to improve gameplay most of the time, but there's no way that M2:TW has the equivalent complexity of 10 years old games.
SnowlyWhite
03-04-2007, 23:21
100% agree; I still remember that the old strategy games used something like "shortest path between your base and our base" in order to pour the units into the same point where you had lotsa turrets/defences/whatever.
Now, problem is that, after 10 years and around... from 33MHz(my 1st 486) to 3GHz... which is roughly 100 times more processing power(I know things aren't exactly like that:p) we're still using the same... "shortest path" thing nowdays too.
I fully agree that the current campaign map ai is a hell to be programmed given the ammount of variables; that's one of the reasons I think the old campaign map style(mtw1) should've been kept - simply tech. won't cope with it yet. But ok, I'd even swallow that; however, there are ai DOWNGRADES from mtw1 to mtw2 - not in the campaign part, but in the tactical battles part. How comes that in mtw1 I didn't manage to sweep all the missile troops at my leasure, while in mtw2 I don't have a problem doing it with 0 interference from his other troops? Yes, patched mtw1; on the other hand, you'd expect that ppl. already learnt from the 1st mistake and aren't eager to just repeat it... well, they don't.
And all of that is happening at CA products; a company which, despite my pages full of ranting, I'm rating in a top 3(actually even top 2) of my favourites and a company which definitelly monitors the public requirments 2-3 times better then the average developer. Most of the games I've saw last year were downright lying about what's in the box they're trying to sell me. In the happy case when they were actually working, you could consider yourself lucky if 50% of what was advertised on the box actually happened. All that hidden behind a nice EULA statying more or less "our rights: everything; your rights: 0".
stealingjoy
03-04-2007, 23:39
Yeah, definitely. The fact is, all this new available power doesn't mean that developers are just going to stand pat and only refine games -- they want to push it and create something even more impressive and interesting. Of course, they will fall short. SnowlyWhite lists some of the reasons for that, but I think it's an error to blame it all on those reasons. Developers are a lot more ambitious now and with that comes falling short.
- we have to pay an army of marketing ppl. who show us useless graphics about how everything is so and so, instead of actually hiring better programmers. A thorough stupidity... Psychology of your customers when you're refering to games it's so easy that lotsa developing companies consisting of programmers only managed to deliver us very enjoyable products for many years. Yes, games were made by programmers till a few years ago, and were darn good.
I hold myself as a rather complex person(and, no, by no meanings modesty is one of my features) however my gaming desires are rather plain. Ppl. expect decent graphics, a decent story where it's the case, an interface designed with some common sense and that's about it. Ah, and obviously, a working product, but that's something that's always forgotten by those wannabe shrinks.
If they'd actually bother to have a better product, they wouldn't need the army of marketing ppl. in the 1st place... There are more marketing ppl. then coders...
I know you want to sound like Adam Black or something but I don't think you understand marketing for anything. MOST of the decisions you are talking about are not made by those marketing guys. The marketers are NOT the decision makers in the process. That's the execs.
And the problem there is, programmers make lousy execs for the most part. There does need to be a decision maker riding everyone on things. But sometimes when creators play that role awful things happen... look at Daikatana and the absurd business priorities surrounding its creation. But let's be honest, marketers also make lousy execs. So what gets hired is someone with training or experience in management... often not directly related to software. So what he does is allocates budget in ways that are traditionally effective in other fields... so much for development, so much for marketing, etc.
But being pressured by his own bosses, the exec feels that every delay is burning a hole in he company's pocket. So it goes like this...
-The programmer makes an estimate on the amount of time needed to make the project. The exec then tells him to do it in less time. After things finally get nailed down, the programmer is lucky to get 3/4 of the time needed to finish. Some execs might not understand concepts as simple as taking a week off so you can look at the project with new eyes; they just see extra project costs.
-The marketers would ideally like to see the product before they start working up campaigns for it. I am one. Trust me, in a perfect world for a marketer they'd get the complete finished ready-to-ship product in their hands for a couple weeks before writing a single thing about it. These days, the project might only be a quarter finished before the marketing guys have to make their first releases about it... and have to talk about features. (IE, things that make customers want to buy it.) Working from what's planned on a project that has barely begun, they then have to pray the project they've been told to sell people on meets up with the current planning the better part of a year later. If the initial reaction isn't strong enough, marketing guys get fired before the product even hits shelves. If they guarantee too much or are too optimistic, about programming which they likely don't do... people blame the programmers and complain about the company. Months before the product is released these guys have to write ad copy and design packaging for a project that isn't finished yet. Because otherwise the company would have to wait months for packaging to be printed and readied. There are some alterations that can get worked in, but for the most part it's set. If the programmers don't inform the marketers a feature has been dropped or disabled in time... Fundamentally, it is not the marketing department that decides when the product gets shipped. They are given deadlines just like the programmers, and have to match what they say to what the programmers will have done by then. (What, you thought the game gets finished and then the marketing team only needs 15 minutes making stuff to sell it?)
Trust me, on this shortened development cycle used these days, it's a walk in hell for the marketing guys too. It pretty much demands they have a crystal ball to see the future, about something made with a skill they don't have. I can't condemn them for much on this, they are as trapped by circumstance as anyone.
Wherein lies the question... where does the demand for shorter development cycles come from? Mostly at executive level, where people sometimes arbitrarily look at numbers and try to cut time and expenses everywhere they can. There are even proponents of a philosophy in that arena that basically says "You don't need to understand what's actually done, if you follow the right formula for cutting time and expenses and then a good enough product will be made and it'll help motivate your workers." Those execs are being pushed by bosses too, and if they don't do those things their bosses threaten they'll find someone else who will... ultimately it goes up to company heads, who believe that shortened development cycles and reduced expenses are more important than quality product, or even happy customers. It's similar to first weekend syndrome in movies... the head figures if they balance it just right, it doesn't matter how bad the product is or how inaccurate the marketing gets as long as they make enough money before everyone realizes they've bought junk.
The solution is better communications among gamers, honesty on all our parts, and the wherewithal amongst us to commit to not buying something once we know it's junk. Enough cycles of this, eventually the corporate model will shift back to quality.
Which begs the question, how come it seems like there are people on these boards who can spot a bug in such a short span of time where professional QA testers cant after weeks and/or months of testing? What am i missing? If the makers of these types of games just let a few of these board members test their games for a week, would bugs be a thing of the past?
There are thousands of members at the various TW fansites. The QA team is probably less than 30 strong. So you have much larger number of people playing the game. They probably spot quite a few bugs in the final QA before release, but many of them will be put on the "To Patch list".
SnowlyWhite
03-05-2007, 00:30
I still remember what a project manager from my 1st job told me: "I hear your estimated terms for the job and multiply it by 5". Wasn't necesarilly refering to me, was talking more or less in general. I've been thoroughly following this principle when I started my own business and it turned out to be gold(I knew it all along, obviously, but was hard for me to accept it).
That, and something that a guy from the national statistics institute told me when I was over there to install some things on their machines: "Your industry is very hard to be included in a mathematical model, " - we were talking about stat. maths - "since, contrary to most of the industries, there's very little automatization and most of it is manual work"(or something along those lines). Fact is management in this sector substantially different then management in general imho.
Wherein lies the question... where does the demand for shorter development cycles come from? Mostly at executive level, where people sometimes arbitrarily look at numbers and try to cut time and expenses everywhere they can. There are even proponents of a philosophy in that arena that basically says "You don't need to understand what's actually done, if you follow the right formula for cutting time and expenses and then a good enough product will be made and it'll help motivate your workers." Those execs are being pushed by bosses too, and if they don't do those things their bosses threaten they'll find someone else who will... ultimately it goes up to company heads, who believe that shortened development cycles and reduced expenses are more important than quality product, or even happy customers. It's similar to first weekend syndrome in movies... the head figures if they balance it just right, it doesn't matter how bad the product is or how inaccurate the marketing gets as long as they make enough money before everyone realizes they've bought junk.
nicely put;) And yes, probably I've mixed too much(way too much actually) marketing with managing; my mistake here;)
The solution is better communications among gamers, honesty on all our parts, and the wherewithal amongst us to commit to not buying something once we know it's junk. Enough cycles of this, eventually the corporate model will shift back to quality.
100% agree; either that, or the industry goes down the drain, whatever... but the current state of things is awful.
100% agree; either that, or the industry goes down the drain, whatever... but the current state of things is awful.
Sometimes that happens, and sometimes it's good for new games. Look at the crashes in arcades; out of them you see things like Street Fighter 2, Dance Dance Revolution: new genres that renew interest.
In computer games especially, I'm not scared of there ever suddenly being no games. With the internet and open sourcing, there will likely always be new things to play out there even if nothing is selling anywhere.
And eventually, I imagine we'll see a very standardized 3D engine, and a pretty standard AI, and most games of any kind being based on permutations/combinations of it, even for games that are largely 2D. In the next 10 or so years I expect a "standard model" like that to appear, when graphic capabilities and speed are no longer seeing major increases that give noticeable benefit. At that point, with the engine laid down, it'll be more a matter of people's creativity in how they use it. It's fairly close to that already in some areas. But at that point development costs will drop, and people will be able to unleash more creativity on gameplay.
CptPicard
03-05-2007, 05:08
My € 0,02 worth to the size and complexity issue... it's true that games have got more complex and bigger than games of yesteryear, and also that tools have changed. I would suggest that complexity has simply moved from one part of the game to others, and because of the nature of modern games, this complexity is more prone to bugs.
In the old days you would actually code your own 3D engine from scratch, and that would be an achievement in itself -- I wonder how many percent of modern-day rank-and-file game programmers would be able to write a rudimentary Doom clone? Seriously, getting your infrastructure off the ground was most of the work that went into a game. If you screwed up, your game would quite spectacularly crash, burn and die. If it worked, you could wow your customers pretty much by that alone; and let's face it, although I have many fond memories of old gaming classics, gameplay could be pretty basic. Most importantly, if something didn't just quite work perfectly logically in a game, nobody cared. After all, they were shooting at pixelated zombies in a wireframe maze! How cool was that?
Today, the dirty details are pretty much hidden by toolkits. Most of the work, besides graphics, goes into creating the game world, its rules and its evolution based on those rules. This is where the bug-prone complexity comes in... it seems to me it's mostly about surprising emergent behaviour, and these sorts of things can be hard to foresee and control. Old-school bugs tended to be "tehnology bugs"; these days we mostly see "gameplay bugs" due to the increasingly unpredictable state space of the game.
Add to this a very specific audience that is sure to scrutinize every single aspect of the game's behaviour and criticize all aspects that don't seem to work right, and you've got all the ingredients for a lot of patching.. ;)
pike master
03-05-2007, 05:20
:wizard: i reckon if your a possum you could grow up in 3 months
And eventually, I imagine we'll see a very standardized 3D engine, and a pretty standard AI, and most games of any kind being based on permutations/combinations of it, even for games that are largely 2D. In the next 10 or so years I expect a "standard model" like that to appear, when graphic capabilities and speed are no longer seeing major increases that give noticeable benefit. At that point, with the engine laid down, it'll be more a matter of people's creativity in how they use it. It's fairly close to that already in some areas. But at that point development costs will drop, and people will be able to unleash more creativity on gameplay.
I don't think so, J. The reason is that everything is OWNED. Nothing like this will happen because all the ingenious innovations any company comes up with for their games are owned by those companies, and let me tell you the business world is NOT into sharing. Better ways of doing things will develop, but AI and graphical engines are for the most part not among things that are transparent enough to reverse engineer with any reasonable degree of accuracy. They're mostly black boxes, and the companies that own them will do everything in their power to keep it that way...
The only way I'd see either the graphical engine or the AI becoming standardized is if they somehow become public domain, probably through open source projects. This seems unlikely though - open source is making a surge, but it seems a long way from having a reasonable level of collaboration behind it, which would likely be required to even think about tackling a problem like a 3D engine that the entire industry could embrace as a standard. That by the way is the big deal: the industry must look at it and say that they cannot reasonably develop one that looks or functions better, or else they will continue to have reason to do so. This is even more the case with AI, as we are not even close to simulating human intelligence, and processors show no signs of approaching any sort of boundary as graphics may be (Moore's law has more or less held for a very long time now). That being the case, it seems likely that more and more resources will be available to fuel AI, and until AI approaches actual human intelligence, it seems unlikely that anyone would call a model the standard and stop trying to develop one better to wow gamers and thus make more money.
Don't get me wrong I'd love to see this happen since as you said it will put the focus back on good gameplay again... but it just doesn't look to me like things are heading in that direction, or at least not nearly as fast as you've suggested.
SnowlyWhite
03-05-2007, 06:43
Add to this a very specific audience that is sure to scrutinize every single aspect of the game's behaviour and criticize all aspects that don't seem to work right, and you've got all the ingredients for a lot of patching.. ;)
That's mostly the case of tw series; most of the games that, at least I, was reffering are... dunno, normal games targeting the teenager audience(or whatever they're targetting).
And having a very poor ai and basically all the infantry bugged(60%+ of the rooster units) is hardly "scrutinizing" the game;)
Also, the things I was talking about aren't "game bugs" but really technological bugs. The last time when I didn't follow my own standard of 1st playing a game was when I went straight to the store and bought gothic 3; hey... it's gothic, can't be that bad... it's a very good rpg serie in my oppinion. Only to find out up to where brit. humour can go in the hands of the germans - a quick load took 1 min. In a game where... you're expected to die alot. Mobs couldn't pathfind at all around a corner... in a rpg. It's not a bad concept, it's straight out bad technology.
Same thing goes for tw - strategy games = ai; poor ai = tech problem. It's not a balancing problem that you didn't forsee or about gamers who are twisting around a flaw in your game design. When everything that the ai is capable of is "Chargeee!"... it's tech problem.
I don't think so, J. The reason is that everything is OWNED. Nothing like this will happen because all the ingenious innovations any company comes up with for their games are owned by those companies, and let me tell you the business world is NOT into sharing. Better ways of doing things will develop, but AI and graphical engines are for the most part not among things that are transparent enough to reverse engineer with any reasonable degree of accuracy. They're mostly black boxes, and the companies that own them will do everything in their power to keep it that way...
The only way I'd see either the graphical engine or the AI becoming standardized is if they somehow become public domain, probably through open source projects. This seems unlikely though - open source is making a surge, but it seems a long way from having a reasonable level of collaboration behind it, which would likely be required to even think about tackling a problem like a 3D engine that the entire industry could embrace as a standard. That by the way is the big deal: the industry must look at it and say that they cannot reasonably develop one that looks or functions better, or else they will continue to have reason to do so. This is even more the case with AI, as we are not even close to simulating human intelligence, and processors show no signs of approaching any sort of boundary as graphics may be (Moore's law has more or less held for a very long time now). That being the case, it seems likely that more and more resources will be available to fuel AI, and until AI approaches actual human intelligence, it seems unlikely that anyone would call a model the standard and stop trying to develop one better to wow gamers and thus make more money.
Don't get me wrong I'd love to see this happen since as you said it will put the focus back on good gameplay again... but it just doesn't look to me like things are heading in that direction, or at least not nearly as fast as you've suggested.
I'd have to agree here.
About the AI bit, every game calls for it's own special flavor of programmed intelligence. Sure you can program or come up with a good framework, I think mainly you see this coming from higher ed based research which is all open to the public. Adding the meat and bones, and fine-tuning is up to each manufacturer. As cool as this would be, I don't see it happening any time soon at all.
Regarding game engines... Having a single one? Agree with you there again, doubt it highly. But what we DO have is several very common and highly extensible game engines that are licensed by the majority of manufacturers as the platforms for their games. The two big ones that come to mind are ID Software's platform(s), most current being the Doom3/Quake4 engine, and Epic Game's Unreal engine(s), of which Unreal 3 is coming sometime soon. Other very noteworthy examples include Valve's Source engine, Bioware's engines (Infinity, Aurora, Odyssey, etc), etc etc. The nice thing about these engines, at least the ones I've listed, are that they're well documented and SDK's exist for them all. I can only wish that CA had done that with M2TW. Never hurts to dream.
Actually I'm seeing this coming from a few market forces you guys aren't considering.
It's going to happen, at a point when 3D engines and cards become about 95%+ photoreal at framerates over 75 fps rendering a New York City street at lunch hour. At that point, there will be no financial return on continued development of a 3D engine in house for anybody. Then there will be 2 contenders in licensing; one is going to be easier to write for, the other in competition is going to undercut it on price. Within 18 months of that, one of the 2 will win out becoming de facto standard; the other will go unused after that.
Once the groundwork is laid down, and a pricing war is finished, it simply won't be profitable for anyone to develop a new one. There is one last twist in the pricing war; after apparently losing, and several months of being unable to license out their engine, the owners of the losing engine might simply take it open source. If it happens to be the engine that simpler to code/create for, then after another 18 months it will become a somewhat "final" standard. That'll be it; unless a truly astounding innovation occurs, which happens without funding, no one will bother putting any more money into 3D rendering engines.
AI is a bit more nebulous. The current issue is AI is partially limited by streamlining. Most games don't involve what we'd call a broad AI. For performance reasons, and current limits in coding, the AI's are specifically written to a particular game. Eventually though, a core engine will develop for a "virtual player". It doesn't even require the stated "human level intelligence" to work out. It simply needs to challenging for a human to deal with. The intelligence will be capable of interacting in a 3D environment the way an animal naturally can in the real world. Something probably close to mouse level intelligence is all that's required to be honest. The rest would be covered by information plugged into it for the particular game; winning instincts and strategy compiled for it to employ. Basically a "rodent who reads scripts" could really innovate gaming. An FPS game doesn't require a human level AI to challenge the player; all it needs is something that can move around the environment as ably as a mouse and use the equivalent of Ranger training and tactics to beat the tar out of you. The AI becoming standard would be a bit later, but I doubt the competition would be anywhere near as fierce or prolonged; I have strong feeling the company that finally makes it won't even be a game company.
But essentially, for 3D diminishing returns are going to destroy any profitability for new engine development. There will be a point at which extra eye candy just won't make any difference to gamers anymore. (In a way I can't wait, because then everyone's going to focus on other features to sell games.)
Given CA's tendancy to go for the "slow coming but big in size" patches, I'd rather wait a little bit longer than stare at a huge problem for another two months.
On the graphics vs gameplay debate- Graphics sell. Two words. Pretty simple, huh?
Anyone who claims to not "appreciate the graphics" either doesn't have the hardware to, or is lying out of their a$$.
As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest. I can't be much longer surely.
well that was a silly thing to do wasnt it
you sad sad man :yes: :beam:
FactionHeir
03-05-2007, 17:50
Actually I found that the trend in newer games in terms of AI ahs been giving the AI unfair advantages, i.e. letting it cheat, instead of properly improving AI to deal with the human player or each other.
Even in RTW and M2TW the AI has those kinds of cheats.
Quickening
03-05-2007, 17:50
well that was a silly thing to do wasnt it
you sad sad man :yes: :beam:
Don't worry about it, I went over Saturday instead.
Meh Im in no place to really add to the argument above. But as a gamer I can definately say that games are released in a far worse state than before and not only that, but imagination has gone out the window in favour of the same old safe genres.
But actually, Id say it was the gamers to blame. As has been stated above, developers make things that sell. Did Sacrifice sell well? Nope. Giants? Nope. Psychonauts? Nope. Nobody bought those innovative gems so why would companies bother making things like them now?
The whole patch thing has been argued out above. But the fact that you can get good solid titles released which are just as complicated as Total War and yet don't have essentially game breaking bugs, tells me that it isn't just down to games being more complex.
FactionHeir
03-05-2007, 17:50
-double post, ignore/delte this one-
Quickening
03-05-2007, 17:59
Even in RTW and M2TW the AI has those kinds of cheats.
Eh?! :dizzy2: Don't break my heart. I thought that in MTW2 the AI didn't cheat. I know that in RTW the AI got bonuses on higher difficulty levels but I thought in MTW2 the AI didn't get any. It just had better AI. No?
FactionHeir
03-05-2007, 18:02
Considering AI captains can fight night battles if they are attacking, doesn't seem to be bound by the agent limit, does not lose troops to desertion on crusades/jihad, can get adoptions of captains in the field instead without battles and a few other things I noted in the buglist, I am sorry to break your heart.
Want some glue?
SnowlyWhite
03-05-2007, 18:03
err... no:p
That's precisely my issue: from HoMM5(a complete and total failure in my book - I've played the homm series from '95 and I still have homm4 installed on my hdd, but homm5 lasted installed under 1 week) to MTW2 there's no better ai as the game is set on a higher difficulty setting. The last place where I saw that was... again, civ4. Play a game on vh and you'll notice the same gross mistakes done by the ai as on medium.
FactionHeir
03-05-2007, 18:05
Don't even get me started on HOMM5 AI and its crazy amount of cheating. I stopped playing that long ago. You'll notice the 15 odd page bugthread I created and maintained there when the game came out.
SnowlyWhite
03-05-2007, 18:12
In all honesty, I think you'd have gone out cheaper if you listed what was working in that game, not the bugs:p
Don't even get me started on HOMM5 AI and its crazy amount of cheating. I stopped playing that long ago. You'll notice the 15 odd page bugthread I created and maintained there when the game came out.
No kidding, I can't even beat the 3rd Dungeon mission on Easy because the AI keeps constantly throwing heroes carrying stacks twice anything I can field that I have to beat off, and when done I'm so depleted there's no way I can hope to go on the offensive.
Back on topic. As someone pointed out earlier, think it was Foz, given today's technology and the power of your average home PC, you won't get an AI that's truly capable of challenging the human mind. As such you have to throw the AI a bone and give them some wiggle room to even the playing field a bit. The problem I most often see is the lack of scaling when it comes to this "cheating", in that I think as difficulty is increased, the more acceptable it is to let the AI "cheat". Less difficulty, the more even the playing field should be.
Just my :2cents:
:bow:
Quickening
03-05-2007, 18:17
Considering AI captains can fight night battles if they are attacking, doesn't seem to be bound by the agent limit, does not lose troops to desertion on crusades/jihad, can get adoptions of captains in the field instead without battles and a few other things I noted in the buglist, I am sorry to break your heart.
Want some glue?
There's just too many pieces :no:
But still, you didn't say that the AI gets morale bonuses on higher difficulties and that was my main gripe.
Although having said that, there is something weird going on. While waiting for this patch I decided to start a new game on RTW and I found the battles so incredibly easy compared to MTW2 even though I play them both on hardest. Even if the AI doesn't get morale bonuses in MTW2, something makes it trickier. :2thumbsup:
SnowlyWhite
03-05-2007, 18:22
strongly disagree; I remember doing a clone of dune 2 with a high school friend(we were 15 - he did most of the work) which had a decent ai. Obviously strongly limited by the processing power required for backtracking that the pcs of that time had(we were on something like... 286 processor and the responses had to be more or less real time) and having no graphics bar some X representing the units. Mind you - decent is very different from very good; but was decent.
All you need is getting someone specialized in... ai. Yes, there are books about that, there are bits of code about that; heck, there are even university courses about it... It's a very specialized part of programming. But in a team of 6-7 ppl., definitelly if you develop a strategy game, a guy with solid background in this field is a must.
You don't need a good programmer, you need a good programmer in THAT specific field. Developing a good graphical engine and studying the way reflections are optimally implemented and doing ai implementation are like apple and carrots. Your engine developer genius is perfectly useless for ai design.
The ai should definitelly cheat on higher levels; an obviously thing is that you start with way less resources... which is a huge advantage for the opponent. But also, definitelly, should be abit improved too.
Don't get me wrong... I was never very good in this particular field(ai), nor did I read anything about the subject for over 8-10 years. However, I find it hard to believe that in all this time no progress whatsoever was recorded. I remember that, when I was hired, it was a constant request for cvs on any new project acquired, exactly in order to convince the client that we have the ppl. needed for it. I'm willing to bet any ammount that, in the cvs of those ppl. at novalis(the developer of HoMM5), there's noone with even the remote knowledge about artificial intelligence.
gardibolt
03-05-2007, 18:32
I remember playing games on my ancient TRS-80 (which still runs, btw), with the amazing upgrade from 4K of memory to 16K---man you could conquer the world with that baby! Some of the games (which came on cassette tapes---pre floppy drives) didn't work worth a damn, though---Although Temple of Apshai worked pretty well, the sequel, Hellfire Warrior would always crash at some point so I was never able to finish it. There was a pretty good Godzilla game (unlicensed, I'd guess) that would only play for a little while before it would crash too. What I wouldn't have given 25 years ago for a patch for those games!!
OK, I've just made myself feel really, really old. :inquisitive:
I remember playing games on my ancient TRS-80 (which still runs, btw), with the amazing upgrade from 4K of memory to 16K---man you could conquer the world with that baby! Some of the games (which came on cassette tapes---pre floppy drives) didn't work worth a damn, though---Although Temple of Apshai worked pretty well, the sequel, Hellfire Warrior would always crash at some point so I was never able to finish it. There was a pretty good Godzilla game (unlicensed, I'd guess) that would only play for a little while before it would crash too. What I wouldn't have given 25 years ago for a patch for those games!!
OK, I've just made myself feel really, really old. :inquisitive:
OK folks. Who let grandpa use the computer again??? :hide:
FactionHeir
03-05-2007, 18:57
As someone pointed out earlier, think it was Foz, given today's technology and the power of your average home PC, you won't get an AI that's truly capable of challenging the human mind. As such you have to throw the AI a bone and give them some wiggle room to even the playing field a bit. The problem I most often see is the lack of scaling when it comes to this "cheating", in that I think as difficulty is increased, the more acceptable it is to let the AI "cheat". Less difficulty, the more even the playing field should be.
With difficulty, I think the AI should become more aggressive on higher levels, but not cheat.
Thats a big no-no for me, as I want to fight someone who plays realistically and fair.
I can live with the AI starting with more florins than I on higher difficulty though, but not with stuff I listed above for instance.
pike master
03-05-2007, 20:23
sounds like we arent the only ones teed off about CAs progress it seems sega is somewhat concerned as well:applause:
Quickening
03-05-2007, 20:32
sounds like we arent the only ones teed off about CAs progress it seems sega is somewhat concerned as well:applause:
What makes you say that?
Aquitaine
03-05-2007, 20:44
This discussion has been had before (even here) but as someone who's worked a bit (and will be working again) on a large-scale PC strategy game, here's a thing or two about AI.
Only now, after decades of specialized programming for this one puropse, do we have a computer -- built to do this one thing -- that can beat the world's best chess player without cheating.
Chess is (programatically) a game with simple rules. The number of possible moves and outcomes is small enough such that people can (and do) memorize entire games.
Now look at Go. Chess is based on branch prediction -- that is, the computer being able to predict with some degree of accuracy 'six moves down the line, if I do all of these things, the other guy is most likely to do that but somewhat likely to do that, so perhaps I should interject this defensive move before move #4, but then will that change the probability for move #7...)
Go is based on on something like the inverse of that -- instead of following one or two paths 30+ moves down the line, it has to follow dozens of paths one or two steps down the line, because of the way the game works.
Consequently, computerized Go lags behind Computerized Chess, because computers are great at branch prediction and less great at what Go requires (I don't know if it has a catchy name.)
Now take a game like MTW2. Could you even describe your first ten moves with any degree of accuracy? Could you describe 10 moves late in the game? The sheer number of variables and 'stuff' that can happen is such that a computer simply cannot, even with a really good AI programmer, match the human brain's ability to adapt to a frequently changing, complex situation.
In fact, given the number of things that MTW2 has to do, I'm impressed that the AI does as well as it does. This is the first TW game where I can play on Normal and have to really try in some tactical battles because there's a good chance I might lose. I'm certainly not the best TW player here (or anywhere near it) but that's quite an accomplishment in my book.
pike master
03-05-2007, 20:47
check out the latest .com blog
Its just a blog entry by the guy who visits the CA offices for SEGA. I met him at the Gold Code day. It's part of his job to go down regularly.
Quickening
03-05-2007, 21:02
Okay just read it. Didn't get the impression of anyone being "teed off".
This discussion has been had before (even here) but as someone who's worked a bit (and will be working again) on a large-scale PC strategy game, here's a thing or two about AI.
Only now, after decades of specialized programming for this one puropse, do we have a computer -- built to do this one thing -- that can beat the world's best chess player without cheating.
Chess is (programatically) a game with simple rules. The number of possible moves and outcomes is small enough such that people can (and do) memorize entire games.
Not sure this is a great analogy. The typical PC chess game of 15 years ago could destroy the average user. I don't think we're looking for an AI that can take on Kasparov here.
We'd just like one that doesn't do mind-numbingly stupid things.
Imagine a chess opponent that tries to charge your side with his king...
It seems like there are some relatively simple rules any human player would follow that the AI does not follow. The games is a great game, but it could be much better with better AI.
Not sure this is a great analogy. The typical PC chess game of 15 years ago could destroy the average user. I don't think we're looking for an AI that can take on Kasparov here.
His Chess analogy was great. For the record I completely disagree about the average chess game 15 years ago destroying the average user. If you define user as someone who hardly ever plays chess, which 99% of people fall into this category then sure. If you mean the average user as an average chess player, then no way. In fact as I'm typing this I seem to recall an old version of Chessmaster that you could beat in using that one chess setup where you win within 5-6 moves... don't remember what it's called.
We'd just like one that doesn't do mind-numbingly stupid things.
Imagine a chess opponent that tries to charge your side with his king...
This my friend is called BLUFFING! :grin: :2thumbsup:
It seems like there are some relatively simple rules any human player would follow that the AI does not follow. The games is a great game, but it could be much better with better AI.
Ahhh... but if you look closely nothing is simple. I do agree though the AI could use some work here and there.
:bow:
We'd just like one that doesn't do mind-numbingly stupid things.
Imagine a chess opponent that tries to charge your side with his king...
It's not as simple as that: charging the enemy with your king is a kick butt strategy for the human in every TW game there has ever been. In Shogun, it's what allows your handful of infantry to beat the enemy's handful. Heavy cavalry early in the game is extremely powerful, especially the 2HP regenerating high experience type you get with your TW generals. It's doing it with finesse that is important.
For what it's worth, I haven't noticed much of a problem of suicide generals in M2TW, whereas it plagued STW (many a campaign ends with a Japan full of rebels).
Actually chess is a good analogy because it is very finite. Everything is a simple grid, movement is limited for each piece, and there is no random factor whatsoever. Two dimensional and non-probabilistic, and it still took us forever to get an AI to beat the best humans.
And for an AI, random probability throws a tremendous amount of complexity into the mix. It's not tough to create a random number generator. It is tough to get an AI to comprehend probability though. Then you get into concepts like threat assessment, anticipation, acceptable loss... fundamentally the game is of a complexity that currently really takes an organic brain to appreciate. And AI's tend to suck at low information decisions involving probability.
This is why I argue that a rodent is the ideal target for AI development. It can maneuver in it's environment gracefully; it can judge whether somethings worth attacking or running away from or is a non-issue; it knows the basics of manipulating objects; it can remember previously successful patterns; and it can on occasion create small innovations. Now we give the rodent access to all the information an expert in whatever it needs to do would know. That leverages the strength of computers in data storage to make that little rodent "brain" know all the theoretically right things to do.
Compiling all the right rules is fine and can be challenging, but after that it just needs a tiny little bit of animal to bring it to life.
Research is way ahead of you JCoyote. They already have rat brain chunks flying modern high-tech military jets: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20041018/brain.html
:2thumbsup:
Lorenzo_H
03-05-2007, 23:16
I guess the answer to the original question is invariably no, or am I grossly wrong?
gardibolt
03-05-2007, 23:52
OK folks. Who let grandpa use the computer again??? :hide:
Heh, heh, you young whippersnappers. I'd come after you if I could find my cane and my teeth.....
:laugh4:
I guess the answer to the original question is invariably no, or am I grossly wrong?
Aye mate, the answer was no, we didn't get the patch over the weekend. Hopefully we'll have it any second now. :juggle2: :balloon2:
Heh, heh, you young whippersnappers. I'd come after you if I could find my cane and my teeth.....
:laugh4:
You know there is this particular smiley that I was desperately hoping the Org had that I was going to post instead, but the Org smiley list failed me! I'm working on finding it right now, if I find it I'll put it up here for ya. :grin:
pike master
03-06-2007, 01:10
to my knowledge they havnt done this until recently and from here on out they are going to be checking on the devs regular. and they apparently are having issues with CA participation in the forums.
"Well I popped over to the CA office in Southwater on Friday. The plan is for me to go down there twice a month just to be in the office, soak up the atmosphere, be more face to face with Mark O’ Connell (SenseiTW) and generally be a pain. So I went down there last Friday for the first time"
"A good bit of scran later and some chit chat about the forums and how we can make it better we headed over to CA’s Horsham office which houses one of the Dev teams….."
its not like they are come out and tell people that yeah we just went over to CA to get them to do better about interacting with the community and to get their act together. they have to be tactful.CA isnt the head of this deal , sega is and when CA isnt listening then some people gonna go up the chain of command and talk to someone who will.
lusted statement is not correct about him going down there on a regular basis. as you can clearly see in the first quote the representative arrived on friday for the first time.
Skyline Pete
03-06-2007, 03:55
How's about I drive up there (Brisbane) and deliver an esky of cold ones and tell them to keep up the hard work.
How's about I drive up there (Brisbane) and deliver an esky of cold ones and tell them to keep up the hard work.
Someone's going to have to explain what an esky is... I understand six-pack, 24 pack, back seat of a car filled pack, and keg.
Skyline Pete
03-06-2007, 12:18
Esky = ice box sought of contraption. google it for a picture.
24 pack = case of beer
pike master
03-06-2007, 13:43
dont do that until they actually do something worthwhile
SnowlyWhite
03-06-2007, 15:40
chess is not the analogy simply because chess play is something at, some ppl., train for years. And as you said, chess programms 10 years ago could beat 99% of the population who doesn't play chess regularly. Which is the SAME thing required from MTW; with the advantage that, contrary to chess, there are no players that train for years at it, there are no clubs and not a thousand of books about it....
There are also a ton of other advantages the computer has in a rts(my main complains are about how ai does in battles - the campaign ai I fully agree is hard to implement):
1. it moves instantly; what it orders really happens. He can't miss double click for single click, he can't forget to press alt when he wants to charge with his archers, so on. He can order all his units in... basically 0 seconds.
2. which is huge: if my militia goes against his militia(same numbers, same xp) I don't know who's unit gonna win and consequently if I have to reinforce my unit or not. I have to always start from the assumption that I might be unlucky.
He knows, because, well... he's the random number generator.In chess, you don't have this huge advantage because there's nothing random in chess.
Randomness actually helps a ton; ok, if the computer "cheats" and knows in advance what will be the result of that. Obviously, you could argue that, in the current implementation, he doesn't know; the idea would be to change the implementation(like - determining the result from the start and then just show the animations) not to complain about how you implemented it.
3. finally, the goal ain't to beat kasparov. On the contrary, the goal is that the human player, after some sweating and some playing, ends by beating the ai on... vh or whatever's the goal of the human.
The average human - not someone who only plays mtw for years on. Noone wants a game that constantly beats them... it sorta defies the purpouse of having fun which is reason why games exist.
It's not about designing another Hydra - for 99% of Elo rated players(not amateur players) Hydra doesn't exist anymore then Kasparov... you probably won't face any of the 2 ever and if you do, you know the result in advance. And chess master provides more then a decent challenge for players. Amateur players - but that's the tw series player base too - we aren't "professional tw players", there's no such concept.
Lastly, mtw is close to chess, not to go. You know his units in advance(before even starting the battle), you watch what he does with them(there are no new units showing up out of the blue in any square of the grid) and respond to his moves. There's no "teleporting"(which ok, is a huge issue when designing an ai).
Also the human player can do a limited ammount of moves in a defined timeframe... which is determined about his ability of handling the mouse(the fact the game is paused or not is perfectly irrelevant - you can calculate your responses done while the game is paused in the background without problems). Problem is if, with the given processing power, you can do enough calculations to respond to his move. It's not about predicting anything; computers are awful at predicting and starting to implement genetics and abilities to "train" your ai are things way over the game developing budgets. Noone expects that. It's about simply responding in a decent manner to the player's moves and calculating x "moves" in advance much like chess. With the advantage over chess that you could know(in a proper implementation) the result of a specific skirmish of 2 units in advance, while the player can't.
By no means I say it's easy, but in a 3 years timeframe or what's an acceptable production cycle... a decent result should be doable. Again, decent... no HydraMTW, but some... chessmaster, even abit worse, since on high lvls chess masters beats almost everyone, and we don't want that.
Furious Mental
03-06-2007, 16:01
Basically an esky is where you put your 24 pack. Australia's greatest contribution to human development. My understanding is that the unipeds and whatnot in areas marked on our maps as "Here be Dragons" refer to the esky as a "cooler". Anyway Brisbane is in Queensland, which means they hate everyone south of them, so I wouldn't drive up there.
pike master
03-06-2007, 18:09
i guess we might as well forget about the patch coming out anytime this week or the next.
Quickening
03-06-2007, 18:14
i guess we might as well forget about the patch coming out anytime this week or the next.
Any reason? Im fairly certain it will be out this week and if not, definately the next.
The Foolish Horseman
03-06-2007, 18:29
everybody who insults CA can leave this forum now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:stop: having a go at the programmers just because they won't release a patch when you want them to. Remember the old saying: "Good Things come to those who wait"
CA created the total war series, and if because their 11GB game is a little buggy in some places then just wait for a patch. The programmers are not exactly gonna give up their weekends ( unless Skyline Pete will go and deliver an esky full of Fosters) to check a patch that they could check on monday.
In the words of the Take That song " Just have a little Patience"
Aquitaine
03-06-2007, 19:37
>> Lastly, mtw is close to chess, not to go. You know his units in advance(before even starting the battle), you watch what he does with them(there are no new units showing up out of the blue in any square of the grid) and respond to his moves. There's no "teleporting"(which ok, is a huge issue when designing an ai).
MTW has almost nothing in common with chess from a programmatical standpoint. Two humans playing against each other in MTW might feel like it's similar to Chess (one of the reasons why chess has always been popular with strategy nerds -- it employs the basic tools needed to out-think and out-maneuver someone). But in terms of the rules of the game, MTW and Chess are nothign alike.
Yes, the AI can give orders simultaneously, but we can *figure out* orders more efficiently than it can. Just because it can order everyone to attack in less time than we can doesn't mean the decision is a good one -- it just means the implementation of that decision is slightly more efficient because it doesn't have to deal with mouse clicks.
I guess my point can be reduced to: if AI weren't an order of magnitude more difficult than any other aspect of game design, then we'd see a lot better AI in most games. The folks behind GalCiv 2 are ahead of the curve in this respect -- most game AI is a huge pile of 'if this, then this, weight that and then do this' while they're actually trying to make it 'learn' -- a real artificial intelliegnce, as opposed to an artificial batch of responses to stimulii. I don't know where on this specturm MTW2 falls since the GalCiv guys are a little more open about the guts of their game than the MTW2 guys are.
adembroski
03-06-2007, 19:50
They basic formula for game developement: Good, Fast, Cheap... pick two.
Unfortunately for us, and at no fault of the developers, is that publishers usually pick cheap and fast. Patches are required to make the games good. Pre-98, post-98, PC, Mac, Nintendo, or PS3, it all boils down to that basic axiom of all business. Good, Fast, Cheap, pick 2.
pike master
03-06-2007, 20:04
the only problem i have with general is that he doesnt appear to have moderator under his name.:no:
They basic formula for game developement: Good, Fast, Cheap... pick two.
Unfortunately for us, and at no fault of the developers, is that publishers usually pick cheap and fast. Patches are required to make the games good. Pre-98, post-98, PC, Mac, Nintendo, or PS3, it all boils down to that basic axiom of all business. Good, Fast, Cheap, pick 2.
I agree with you here, however as a developer you put out a list of fixes a week or two before the release of a patch you have to expect a percentage of the gaming population to gripe and groan.
Granted the majority are happy to see the list, but there is a small vocal minority that want it released yesterday. Been that way on many a game forums....
if my militia goes against his militia (same numbers, same xp) I don't know who's unit gonna win and consequently if I have to reinforce my unit or not. I have to always start from the assumption that I might be unlucky. He knows, because, well... he's the random number generator. In chess, you don't have this huge advantage because there's nothing random in chess.
The Total War AI never used to predetermine its combat results. The AI made it's melee matchups based on a comparision of the unit's combat stats as modified by the situational combat bonuses. The combat calculations would then be made in real time as the individual men engaged and went through their 1 second combat cycle. There was a chance it could loose an advantageous matchup due to randomness in the combat calculation, but that chance was small because the minimum combat advantage was 20% and usually 40% or more. A 20% advantage would win 6 out or 10 times for 60 man size units, and a 40% advantage would win 9 out of 10 times. If the AI's unit was stronger, it would make a direct frontal attack. If it was equal or weaker, it would make an indirect flanking attack. If it was weaker in a flanking attack, it wouldn't attack unless forced to, and would withdraw its army if its army was weaker overall than the enemy's army.
Randomness actually helps a ton; ok, if the computer "cheats" and knows in advance what will be the result of that. Obviously, you could argue that, in the current implementation, he doesn't know; the idea would be to change the implementation (like - determining the result from the start and then just show the animations) not to complain about how you implemented it.
Increased randomness helps the weaker player to win which could be the AI or a weaker human in multiplayer. The weakness could be in army strength or in how the army is used. For instance, I've seen the figure of 30% chance for a beginner to beat an expert in Backgammon which has a high random element to the gameplay. In chess, a beginner won't win a single game against an expert. Increasing the randomness is a way to give the presumably weaker AI more winning chance, but I think it's counterproductive in multiplayer if it can't be overcome within a single battle by skillfull play. For instance, in Backgammon you have to play many games before the skill of the expert is apparent. You can do that in Backgammon because the games go very fast.
I think the combat model will suffer as a simulation if you predetermine the combat result because you won't be able to take enough factors into consideration. Apparently, something like this has been done in the archers model where a hit is determined at the moment the arrow is fired. A consequence of this is that it's just as easy to hit a moving target as a stationary target because target motion is not being taken into consideration in the model. In the old physics based model, target motion is automatically accounted for with no additional calculation because a hit isn't determined until the arrow arrives. Likewise, volley effectiveness vs target distance and orientation are also accounted for in this model.
I loved RTW (my first TW game) so I bought M2TW. I love it too. Sure it has some issues. But so far that didn't stop me at all from playing and enjoying the game! I have been playing for many, many hours and still haven't encountered many of the issues on the bug list. So how much time do you think developers should spend playing hoping to accidentally bump into a situation?
A lot has been said about the increase of game size. Maybe it's also been said, but I haven't seen it: complexity increases exponentially with size. Balancing 1 ball is easy, 2 is getting harder, 3 requires quite some exercise, and 4 is already getting impossible. :juggle2:
Note also that patching is a VERY costly business: you have to keep paying those high-earning developers while you will never receive a penny for the effort. The time they spend on patches cannot be spent on R2TW, or Napoleon: TW, or whatever comes next. So I think we should appreciate CA's efforts in this a little bit more.
I really won't wait for any patch, because I'm getting rid of those pesky Timurids today. :smash:
Skyline Pete
03-07-2007, 06:46
( unless Skyline Pete will go and deliver an esky full of Fosters)
No one in Australia actually drinks that stuff =P
Personally I'm not too fussed when the patch comes out as I'll just have to re-mod all my changes again before I start playing.
Let's move discussion of patch release to this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=80775
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