Developer Story Time with Old Man Davis

[Kane]

I'm Roguey.

 

[Cursed Platypus]

I'm Roguey.

 

[Delterius]

Anthony Davis I actually have a question for you. And I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Is Josh Sawyer actually Roguey? And in the unlikely event that this isn't true, is he afraid of her?

All of these speculations about who Rogey is.

I would have thought it was obvious.



I'm Roguey.

Gods this raise so many questions. So is Josh afraid of you? Is there a restraining order of some kind involved?

 

[Sensuki]

I'm Anthony Davis.

 

[Anthony Davis]

BTW, this is a pretty good primer for Choice in video games. I like the steps they take in establishing terminology that will be used in future episodes on this topic.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-feeling-of-agency

 

[Excidium]

I'm Roguey.

I knew you were Josh all along.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Roguey is a joint Obsidian account, established to secretly troll the Codex after Bethesda barred them from openly posting here.

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey is a joint Obsidian account, established to secretly troll the Codex after Bethesda barred them from openly posting here.

That's a good one. The join date fits, too.

 

[Roguey]

I'm pretty sure my first post here was complaining about the undeserved cult of personality surrounding Chris Avellone. His Arcanum LP ultimately proved me right.

Somehow along the way I ended up becoming a personality cult of one for a different Obsidian employee.

 

[2house2fly]

which one

 

[Excidium]

which one

Green shirt girl

 

[Sensuki]

Somehow along the way I ended up becoming a personality cult of one for a different Obsidian employee.

Do you eat meat?

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I'm pretty sure my first post here was complaining about the undeserved cult of personality surrounding Chris Avellone. His Arcanum LP ultimately proved me right.

Somehow along the way I ended up becoming a personality cult of one for a different Obsidian employee.

So Roguey is the manifestation of the Obsidian employees have for the MCA gets here.

 

[Roguey]

Somehow along the way I ended up becoming a personality cult of one for a different Obsidian employee.

Do you eat meat?

No. What a strange digression.

 

[Sensuki]

When did you stop eating meat?

 

[Roguey]

When did you stop eating meat?

Somewhere in the Mid-2000s.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Beta Protocol

Heh.

'Thorton, you're a great agent and a good guy, and I'm sure there is a girl out there for you, but I only see you as a brother."

 

[Rake]

I hope if Obsidian makes a sequel to have all the romances be that way to the romancefags. Instant GOTY, if only for the in BSN.

 

[Sensuki]

When did you stop eating meat?

Somewhere in the Mid-2000s.

Hahahah. I see what you did there.

 

[Sannom]

I hope if Obsidian makes a sequel to have all the romances be that way to the romancefags. Instant GOTY, if only for the in BSN.

Isn't Mina the only one that would be affected by this? SIE is all lust and is finished with you after the medical lab incident, and Madison's romance ended... badly. I don't count Scarlet because I'm pretty sure she's the romance Avellone wanted to cut but couldn't.

 

[thesheeep]

I think, after reading the last 10-or-so pages in this thread, I am fairly confused. I will go to bed now.
Maybe I will wake up tomorrow and remember nothing of this.

 

[Infinitron]

Anthony Davis Can you tell us at what a point a game is typically considered to be in beta? Is it always as simple as "'feature complete' = beta"?

 

[Sensuki]

I thought feature complete was alpha and content complete was beta, and then the final polish was applied?

 

[Fens]

Anthony Davis Can you tell us at what a point a game is typically considered to be in beta? Is it always as simple as "'feature complete' = beta"?

going by the latest trends, i'd say it's in beta as soon as it hits the shops

 

[Anthony Davis]

Anthony Davis Can you tell us at what a point a game is typically considered to be in beta? Is it always as simple as "'feature complete' = beta"?

Well obviously the joke answers have already been covered... which actually aren't that jokey because they do seem to be true in many cases.



The definitions may change from company to company, but I don't think they would change by much. Also, most of these deadlines are scheduled out far before they are reached. Their actual timeline can be adjust as scope shrinks and grows.

Alpha is usually when the major feature work is done. Production is not done yet, in other words, there are probably still levels to create, items to create, and minor features to implement. Typically this is also where the last major cuts should happen. Major cuts SHOULD have happened to scope back down before Alpha hits, but sometimes it happens.

Beta is when production and feature work is done. The only thing that should be done in this phase is polish and bug fixing. That's it.

Remember, there can be bugs in art, design and programming. A HUGE misconception is that all bugs are programming bugs.

If an artist makes a 6000 poly crate, and then a level designer stacks 50 of them in a level where you are already pushing hard to deliver your framerate, guess what, that's a bug that gets written up as a bad framerate (or a crash if it floors the console) and it goes to a programmer. A programmer might spend an entire day trying to figure out what the problem is before handing it off to a a designer to delete some crates.

If a designer creates content for a random loot generator that will cause 15,000 items to be put into a pool to be selected for drop, that's enough to hammer a console or a PC too. In this example, it was both a programming bug and a designer bug. The programmer in this case should not have used a grow array to store the possible loot drops, or should have set a hard limit, and the designer should have selected better keywords for the drop.

I'm not trying to pass the blame, there are more than enough programming bugs too.

Anyway...