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Delay...Delay...Delay...
MMOhopper
Member Posts: 30
Thats all the information we find out about the realese of any of the upcoming popular mmorpg's. And yes, i know it takes time to produce a good game and delays are better than realesing an unfinished product *cough vanguard and dark and light cough* but why can't dev's just give us a true date, no matter how depressing it may be? I'd rather you tell me a game is coming out in decemeber and wait for it as opposed to telling me august and me getting more and more anxious each month. I mean for the next few mmorpg's we have abolutely no clear clue of their realese dates. We have guesses and estimations but no real facts. It is quite frustrating so i thought i'd just post about it 
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Comments
They can't give you a real date because software doesn't work like that. Why?
All software is different. Unlike building a building, building software requires paving new ground each time you start anew.
Life of an MMORPG "addict"
For 7 years, proving that if you quote "fuck" you won't get banned.
ANYWAY you had the right idea
Programming software is like building a building, first you start with the groundwork then work your way up. The difference between the 2 (other than almost 100% of the time if you really mess up people will die) with software you might have everything right, but then you have to go back and add things in, and that way you can get another spell, building, npc or even fighting animations, it might have something wrong. Whehter its a period instead of a colon, a capitol letter instead of a lower case. Or even just SSTeamplay other than SsTeamPlay. The smallest mistake will cause the program to NOT WORK. Thats why some programs will work fine, a patch comes out then it runs all crappy or not at all. Thats what causes crashes to happen most of the time.
This is why they cant have a set date, especially when coders are actually fiding out how to make new things work they'll want to add those in. But heres a sample of a JAVA code just for a small screen wth a button on it:
<Img src="http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/GUI/accessibility2/AccessApplet.gif">;
(or if the HTML didnt even work just copy paste this in your I.E: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/GUI/accessibility2/AccessApplet.gif )
SUN Is the creator of the java code which is used widely for all sorts of projects, so you can assume thats a safe site.
anyway that small button an dwhat not is made with this
import java.awt.Frame; import java.applet.Applet; import java.awt.Button; import javax.accessibility.*; public class AccessApplet extends Applet { public static void main (String args[]) { Framer f = new Framer("Accessible Applet"); f.setSize(300, 100); f.show (); } } class Framer extends Frame { public Framer(String title) { super(title); AccessApplet applet = new AccessApplet(); applet.start(); add (applet, "Center"); String descapplet = "This is a simple applet"; applet.getAccessibleContext(). setAccessibleDescription(descapplet); applet.add(aButton); } }NJeedless to say just think that code like this has to be written out for everything that happens, what to do when you hit "MAcro 1" what happens when you hit mouse button 1, what to do when a bullet hit person A. Behind the scenes its quite messy.
Anyway hope that helps enlighten why it takes so long, but dont get me wrong I feel you ever so much on this whole waiting thing, Viva la Darkfall!
In my opinion it's better to not give an ETA because whiners like you latch on to it and demand they hold true to it.
They can't give you a real date because software doesn't work like that. Why?
All software is different. Unlike building a building, building software requires paving new ground each time you start anew.
Actually building a building is a perfect way to describe it. Unforseen things like heavy rain, shortage of materials, design flaws, staffing issue's and budget etc. The two couldn't be more similar, think of the wembley stadium fiasco here in the UK, it took them years longer, the cost was millions of pounds more than they projected and ther were tonnes of problems.
Unfortunately games follow the same thing, a simple mistake made early on could take a lot of coding to be fixed. If you take a bizzare (and made up problem) like a character suddenly vanishing from the gameworld and database permantly. They need to recreate the problem reliable to see what causes it, Research into WHY it happens, then find the code responsible, fix that code, fix related code, then see if there is anything else that this could occur for (mobs/items/area's). Then they need to test again and try to recreate it to see if the fix is a sucess. When something goes wrong with code, you dont just waste the time spent fixing it, but the time spent undoing your original work as well.
That said though it is particularly frustrating especially when delays are only announced a week or two before you expected release of something. I quit WoW said my goodbyes to friends etc because it was may and TCoS was supposed to be coming into Open Beta, no delays announced etc, then at the end of may it was announced it was delayed till Q4 of this year.
Software devs in Japan have it right. They do not deal with marketing departments till after the software is done and ready for release. So usually there is no public announcement of a game till it is pretty much done.
Here in America we do things bass ackwards. Why are marketing departments releasing information years in advance? Why do they make up release dates that have no bearing on when a game will actually be released? I don't know and I wish it would stop.
Games should only be officially announced when they go gold. Going gold is usually a week or two before the retail boxes hit the shelves. Software developers should have a "when it is done" answer to anyone that asks "when?"
If those two changes were made it would satisfy both groups. The group that whines about delays and the group that whines about a project releasing too soon.
Marketing departments are the root of all evil!
/rant off
They can't give you a real date because software doesn't work like that. Why?
All software is different. Unlike building a building, building software requires paving new ground each time you start anew.
Actually building a building is a perfect way to describe it. Unforseen things like heavy rain, shortage of materials, design flaws, staffing issue's and budget etc. The two couldn't be more similar, think of the wembley stadium fiasco here in the UK, it took them years longer, the cost was millions of pounds more than they projected and ther were tonnes of problems.
Unfortunately games follow the same thing, a simple mistake made early on could take a lot of coding to be fixed. If you take a bizzare (and made up problem) like a character suddenly vanishing from the gameworld and database permantly. They need to recreate the problem reliable to see what causes it, Research into WHY it happens, then find the code responsible, fix that code, fix related code, then see if there is anything else that this could occur for (mobs/items/area's). Then they need to test again and try to recreate it to see if the fix is a sucess. When something goes wrong with code, you dont just waste the time spent fixing it, but the time spent undoing your original work as well.
That said though it is particularly frustrating especially when delays are only announced a week or two before you expected release of something. I quit WoW said my goodbyes to friends etc because it was may and TCoS was supposed to be coming into Open Beta, no delays announced etc, then at the end of may it was announced it was delayed till Q4 of this year.
Well even though the Stadium is still a stadium and 2moons is still 2moons I will say that its like fixing a car as well. Sometimes if you fix 1 code the added in code wont work well with previous (Or future) code which either requiers altering (which isnt done as much) or needing brand new code.
and dont forget those lousey times you jsut outright forget to hit "SAVE"
If you were coding it in Java it would be even worse because it has to convert to a intermediate language so that it can run all all platforms.
Has frustating has it can be to us, try imagining how it can be for the investors. The software industry is plagued by unreliable release dates and I'm not only talking about the gamming industry. Trust me, if you find a solution to this you'll be a millionaire in no time. Plenty of software engineers and other IT professionals are desperatly trying to find a solution and give reliable estimates of a time needed to build a middly complex software . The tools to predict how much time it will take to build a release are too young and too simple to be usefull.
Software engineering is a very young discipline and it has this kind of impact on every project it touches.
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