Yet another revelation of lost features

**Oaty** · 04-20-2005, 10:34

Perhaps in the exp pack.

Quite a few games have unused features in the files and suddenly they become alive on the next release.

**Ginger** · 04-20-2005, 10:46

Out of interest, is it usual for games to ship with such lost bits of code and images? Im surprised that they dont strip it down to the functioning code rather than leave old dead-ends in there.

Since i know squat about developing a game, what are your opnions on this?

**Kraxis** · 04-20-2005, 12:39

It is quite obvious from the looks of the images (and many of them have only placeholders) that they were discarded quite early in the process. Only fair when you think about it. Who would want a popup image every time he or she trained a unit? That was tried in MTW and was generally disliked.

I doubt anyone can honestly use these images as we can't really create events ourselves and we don't sem to know where the events are to pup these 'new' images (they are btw not used at all as those that are used are in another position alltogether).
It might have been a brainstorming, but why would that end up in the game? To me it looks like they had honest intentions of having all this in the game but it was cut.

When wetalk about these little things and CA in the same sentence the result will invariably be: "Oh... another one."
Ever since STW have CA left little bits of cut features, the most famous from STW was the Medical School. And in MTW there was a great host of leftovers. And now we have even more... I'm beginning to think that they are having a great time watching us dig through it all and wonder at what this and that are.

**Butcher** · 04-20-2005, 13:32

"Look what you could have won..."

**Puzz3D** · 04-20-2005, 15:47

Originally Posted by Ginger

Out of interest, is it usual for games to ship with such lost bits of code and images? Im surprised that they dont strip it down to the functioning code rather than leave old dead-ends in there. Since i know squat about developing a game, what are your opnions on this?

As an electrical engineer, my opinion is that the features that are put in should be tested and verified to be working before the game is shipped. Going by the number of problems in RTW v1.0, I think not enough time is being included in the development schedule for testing, and this problem is going to impact the quality of the add-on as well as everything that gets released by this company.

**professorspatula** · 04-20-2005, 18:34

We mentioned all these things in a post a couple of weeks back. The graphics and text files tell of dozens of features missed out. Most of them are clearly geared towards the Roman game, almost as if playing as other factions was never the focus or important. Which to a limited extent is still the case.

**Mikeus Caesar** · 04-20-2005, 18:40

These sound interesting....maybe they leave the dead ends there so we can drool over things that possibly were going to be...

Who knows?

**Butcher** · 04-20-2005, 20:59

It's like the 'triumph point value' of each region.. makes you wonder, no?

**Puzz3D** · 04-20-2005, 21:25

Wonder about what? How good the game could have been? How about something less ambitious like having what is in the game work properly?

**Old Celt** · 04-20-2005, 21:30

My experience has been that the best practice for releasing software is to strip any unneeded code, images, or folders. You shouldn't clutter people's hard drives with unnecessary files. Leaving logs and dev text files can be a serious security risk too, as competitors will lock right on to them and get lots of free information. I think that these things were not cleaned out is a clear indication of a frenzied pace in the dev side of things.