Terrible pathfinding in towns

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Originally Posted by blank

no they aren't ''losing'' money. They simply start making money a bit later, and with no major bugs they would likely make more in overall, no?

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However, a release will set hundreds of unpaid bughunters to work, allowing you to find bugs faster. Remember, the major bugs (apart from the bad A.I., and I think this may have been a design decision rather than a bug) weren't found until several months after release.

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I'd like to think i'm not the only one who'd rather wait a few more months for the complete game than have ridiculous bugs in them, like RTW/M2TW or Gothic 3.

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I quite agree, but R:TW had been in development for a long time and release had been delayed more than once if my memory serves me right. At one point the publisher is going to demand that they release it and start working on the next game.

The longer the product sits in the pre-publish stage the longer it just accumulates running costs like personnel wages, without any returns of investement. Roughly comparable to goods sitting in the damn warehouse instead of the store shelf. Of course the investors would like it to start earning the money put into it as soon as possible, even if the developers themselves would prefer to iron out the last glitches a while longer.

And what Ludens said about freebie bug-spotting.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

However, a release will set hundreds of unpaid bughunters to work, allowing you to find bugs faster.

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Then why didn't the bugs get fixed?

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Originally Posted by Ludens

Remember, the major bugs (apart from the bad A.I., and I think this may have been a design decision rather than a bug) weren't found until several months after release.

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Then what the hell were the testers doing if the (VERY noticeable) bugs weren't discovered before several months?

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Originally Posted by Ludens

I quite agree, but R:TW had been in development for a long time and release had been delayed more than once if my memory serves me right. At one point the publisher is going to demand that they release it and start working on the next game.

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Then i don't know, did CA deliberately leave the bugs in?

u know, talking about CA´s job here is like talking to a wall. I dont know what is behind all this, could be love or whatever it is but these people have the uncanny ability to stand by CA no matter what crap they release. No point in arguing cos they will just come up with some B.S. excuse to justify CA´s horrible way of working. Period.

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Originally Posted by neoiq5719

u know, talking about CA´s job here is like talking to a wall. I dont know what is behind all this, could be love or whatever it is but these people have the uncanny ability to stand by CA no matter what crap they release. No point in arguing cos they will just come up with some B.S. excuse to justify CA´s horrible way of working. Period.

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Your behaviour on this thread is certainly not very constructive itself. Unless someone can find a reasonable way to bring this thread back on topic, whether there is a fix for pathfinding in town, we are likely to close this thread. CA bashing is neither welcomed nor wanted, reasonable criticism is fair enough, but the attacks made here are unfounded, baseless and show dodgy reasoning and a severe lack of understanding about basic business economics and business models for game publishing firms and developing houses. Basically go find proper information on this subject or stop talking about it.

Foot

Didn't bother to read the entire thread :whip:, but anyway here's my :2cents::

1) Bugs get found when the software gets maltreated. Testers do a lot of things, but generally have enough knowledge and decency not to do that. Casual consumers & buggers have not. ~;)
2) The CA teams are not in the position say "here's the deal, we iron everything out and whatever it takes... so be it: quit nagging us!" because they'd be outta work the instant they say it.
3) On to pathfinding: well, based on my experience with RTW...
a) There appears to be a certain center within a unit, which is used to determine the general direction a unit has to go to... (forward, turning etc.);
b) However especially with large units: they don't fit in the smaller streets, or on walls, or in siege towers or between trees -> some of the unit gets stuck making the general calculations based on the unit center pretty worthless since the center isn't anymore where the unit itself is;
c) Buildings & trees count as obstacles (obviously), but hills on which buildings are built only partially count as such (that's why those ridiculous fences and stuff is place around them... makes it slightly less odd);
d) Those public gardens etc. count as obstacles as well, however a tree standing pressumably on the other side of the road, in engine terms is in fact part of the obstacle. May have been done with the idea "the garden is always to be surrounded by other buildings & this saves PC performance" in mind, may be not... whatever that's the case;
e) Units which are grouped are programmed to stay in formation; and to do that there's this "group center" simply the idea behind the unit center is being applied to multiple units as one unit of it's own.

Hopes this clears things up. At least thread's :focus: :yes:

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Originally Posted by neoiq5719

u know, talking about CA´s job here is like talking to a wall. I dont know what is behind all this, could be love or whatever it is but these people have the uncanny ability to stand by CA no matter what crap they release. No point in arguing cos they will just come up with some B.S. excuse to justify CA´s horrible way of working. Period.

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Railing against the game companies that have betrayed you is a cathartic pasttime, I'm sure, but it gets really old, really fast for everybody but you. I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I get annoyed when people whine about stuff that can't be changed when they are well aware that it can't be changed. There are things in this world which deserve your ire far, far more than a computer game that doesn't do exactly what you want while interacting with hardware and software that you don't understand.

I know, what irony; an EB developer says this to anybody. That should underscore how obnoxious it can get, and it can get really obnoxious. There was some guy who threw a tantrum when we told him the siege tower pathing was hardcoded and blamed us for not fixing it. What can we possibly say to someone like that without coming across as insulting? "I hope that at some point you learn to enjoy things?" I really have no idea.

hah I know exactly what you mean

I didn't realize the pathfinding was unchangeable when I made this thread, or I wouldn't have made it at all

See, that's fine - if you don't know about the obscure arcana of the RTW engine, I encourage you to ask about the obscure arcana of the RTW engine. ~:) This isn't something that you should know or care about unless you're working on a mod.