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Help me to solve the mystery of time ...

SamuelVargSamuelVarg Member Posts: 598
edited May 2013 in Off-Topic
Time is a mystery in a programers world. I have yet to decode how the time works in the gaming world of a Forgotten Realms programer.

It's not like Blizzard time when you can double the amount of given time to get a fairly accurate guessing about what they are talking about.
For example: If Blizzard say "It will be out in about one year", the time of the release would happen in about two years from that statement.

In the gaming world of Forgotten Realms everything is "hopefully fairly soon".

This mystery needs to be solved. How does time work for a gaming programer?
Post edited by LadyRhian on

Comments

  • LadyRhianLadyRhian Member Posts: 14,694
    Which Forgotten Realms are you talking about? Pen and Paper? Maybe you mean "Beamdog time" instead? Blizzard is a company, Forgotten Realms is a world.
  • SamuelVargSamuelVarg Member Posts: 598
    Since I was talking about "programers" and Blizzard I thought it was clear that I was talking about the BG-series. The "forgotten realms time" was a pun about the fast ticking clock in the BG-games.
    But if we should name companies I think Overhaul is the correct.

    How do we solve the mystery of time in Overhaul?
  • CerevantCerevant Member Posts: 2,314
    With rare exception, programmers can predict with reasonable reliability how long it will take to implement something. Further, in the vast majority of cases, the feature or bug fix being implemented works correctly (bug fixes more often so than features). There are two remaining items that contribute to this uncertainty:

    1) Bugs that existed before, which have yet to be discovered
    2) Bugs that were created as a side-effect of a new feature or bug fix

    #1 is driven by the size and complexity of the project. BGEE and BG2EE are massive projects, and the IE is a poorly designed, highly complex system. The number of bugs we have fixed is well into the thousands, and clearly more than half of those are fixes for bugs that were in the original game. (actually, a good number of those were "they way things oughta be" enhancements, but that's another debate)

    #2 flows from #1 in that there is little if any specification for the game, and the architecture of both the engine and the content lend themselves to a high degree of coupling: global connections and side effects that are relied upon in semi-random places in the code.

    Bugs cause schedule uncertainty because a) you can't predict when they will be discovered, b) you can't predict how severe they will be and c) you can't predict how long it will take to fix them. So, we could be ready to ship tomorrow, and find a crash bug today. Now do you fix the bug or ship and fix it later? Choose carefully, because half of your audience will be outraged either way.

    Here's the good news: the BGEE engine is getting more stable every day, and BG2EE will be using the same engine. The BG2 content is much better designed than the BG content, in that quests and plot lines are much more self contained and robust than BG. Add to that, most of the development staff for the new content have 5-10+ years of experience developing for the IE.

    We are definitely headed in the right direction.
  • SamuelVargSamuelVarg Member Posts: 598
    That was a very serious answer to a not so serious question. ^^
    But thanks! :-)
  • CerevantCerevant Member Posts: 2,314
    I recognized that your question was half-serious, but this is something that I think everyone could benefit from understanding better.
  • SamuelVargSamuelVarg Member Posts: 598
    Fair enough.
  • mlnevesemlnevese Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
    @SamuelVarg A monk should not be worrying about irrelevant things such as time. Only your inner light is important and it's timeless... ;)
  • SamuelVargSamuelVarg Member Posts: 598
    mlnevese said:

    @SamuelVarg A monk should not be worrying about irrelevant things such as time. Only your inner light is important and it's timeless... ;)

    Bloody hell. I'm being lectured by a novis ...
  • OneAngryMushroomOneAngryMushroom Member Posts: 564
    edited May 2013
    Programmers never release early or late. They release precisely when they mean to.
  • SamuelVargSamuelVarg Member Posts: 598
    OneAngryMushroom said:

    Programmers never release early or late. They release precisely when they mean to.

    I said almost the same thing to my girlfriend the other night ...

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