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Software development model - 11/21/2015 12:33:07 PM

guytipton41

Posts: 351
Joined: 2/26/2011
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline

Hi Folks,

If someone was to put together a team of volunteers to do a major upgrade of AE - possibly not using any of the legacy code base - what development model would you favor?

1. Overlapping waterfall with level A/B/(C) requirements.

2. Agile with use cases/user stories.

3. Expert driven development - developer is SME on subsystem.

4. Something else?

Possibly some of the AE development team have some (strong) opinions about what worked and what didn't. Agile and Waterfall have the advantage that the coding skills are disconnected from the domain knowledge skills.

Cheers,
Guy

Ps. I've never done any game development - mainly just large scale real time training systems.

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RE: Software development model - 11/21/2015 7:43:46 PM

Rising-Sun

Posts: 2082
Joined: 11/5/2009
From: Clifton Park, NY
Status: offline

Well what I like to see is tactical naval engagement in real time, since the players cant control it but watch it. In 3D would be nice, not sure how air engagement would be like, but it can be done. Having 3D models over landscapes and making it even more interesting. I would very much like to see this happen someday.

_____________________________

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Post #: 2

RE: Software development model - 11/21/2015 11:04:49 PM

Mobeer

Posts: 662
Joined: 1/17/2007
Status: offline

Not a member of the AE team, but:
- using volunteers who can come or go, so expecting a fixed team to complete large chunks of work seems unwise
- not too clear on deadlines or goals, so the approach needs to allow for changes

Then a Agile approach would seem the way forward

(in reply to Rising-Sun)

Post #: 3

RE: Software development model - 11/22/2015 4:15:55 AM

wdolson

Posts: 10398
Joined: 6/28/2006
From: Near Portland, OR
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: guytipton41

Hi Folks,

If someone was to put together a team of volunteers to do a major upgrade of AE - possibly not using any of the legacy code base - what development model would you favor?

1. Overlapping waterfall with level A/B/(C) requirements.

2. Agile with use cases/user stories.

3. Expert driven development - developer is SME on subsystem.

4. Something else?

Possibly some of the AE development team have some (strong) opinions about what worked and what didn't. Agile and Waterfall have the advantage that the coding skills are disconnected from the domain knowledge skills.

Cheers,
Guy

Ps. I've never done any game development - mainly just large scale real time training systems.

I notice you're in Houston. A friend of mine is an Agile project manager in Houston.

In any case, the original WitP was developed by three guys in a room together. I've only been involved in the one game project (AE) and we did things somewhat different from other game development projects, but from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team.

I've worked in engineering since the late 80s, 90+% has been working on software or firmware. Most of it has been embedded systems, which is a very different critter from typical business software project. I've never worked with any of the models you mention. I've been on teams and operated alone, but most of the teams I was on predated the naming of Waterfall and before Agile became a thing.

On things like avionics, which I worked on with a number of companies (always commercial aircraft), formal design and development processes like Waterfall are the norm, especially in flight certified developments. The development plan can be less stringent for things that don't have to fly.

The AE project is the only one I've worked on since 2001 that involved much of a team. Right now I'm the only full time programmer the company has and they have one part time programmer who isn't working out all that well.

You might be able to call the AE team an Agile team. I don't know what a real Agile team looks like, so I can't tell you for sure.

In any case, it helped a lot for the programmers to understand the systems they were modeling. Just throwing programmers at the who don't know project might not work as well.

Bill

_____________________________

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

(in reply to guytipton41)

Post #: 4

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 3:51:39 AM

guytipton41

Posts: 351
Joined: 2/26/2011
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson

I notice you're in Houston. A friend of mine is an Agile project manager in Houston.

In any case, the original WitP was developed by three guys in a room together. I've only been involved in the one game project (AE) and we did things somewhat different from other game development projects, but from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team.

I've worked in engineering since the late 80s, 90+% has been working on software or firmware. Most of it has been embedded systems, which is a very different critter from typical business software project. I've never worked with any of the models you mention. I've been on teams and operated alone, but most of the teams I was on predated the naming of Waterfall and before Agile became a thing.

On things like avionics, which I worked on with a number of companies (always commercial aircraft), formal design and development processes like Waterfall are the norm, especially in flight certified developments. The development plan can be less stringent for things that don't have to fly.

The AE project is the only one I've worked on since 2001 that involved much of a team. Right now I'm the only full time programmer the company has and they have one part time programmer who isn't working out all that well.

You might be able to call the AE team an Agile team. I don't know what a real Agile team looks like, so I can't tell you for sure.

In any case, it helped a lot for the programmers to understand the systems they were modeling. Just throwing programmers at the who don't know project might not work as well.

Bill

Hi Bill,

I'm also a agile (small a) Project Manager. I've worked for most the major aerospace companies over the years. Started with B-52 flight software and moved to training simulations. Used to be a fairly hot code slinger but now I do spreadsheets and PowerPoints.

(small a) means we just pretend to be agile to make our organization look modern and forward thinking - at heart we still think waterfall.

The simulation I work on now has the main loop running in real-time at 80Hz (12.5 ms frames +/- 100us) with some robotics/mechanical subsystems running contact dynamics at 1000Hz, so we're all about wringing the last erg of performance out of our 64-core 512GiB RAM simulation boxes.

I had been thinking that an AE2 could be kicked off by writing up a set of requirements or user stories. Something like what Albert has written up for ship repairs. If those were parsed into a pseudo-code or UML a non-programmer could go in and tweak the assumptions and what not. Have no doubt, a set of detailed requirements or user stories for this beast would run at least a 1000 pages.

Cheers,
Guy

(in reply to wdolson)

Post #: 5

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 4:36:34 AM

wdolson

Posts: 10398
Joined: 6/28/2006
From: Near Portland, OR
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: guytipton41

Hi Bill,

I'm also a agile (small a) Project Manager. I've worked for most the major aerospace companies over the years. Started with B-52 flight software and moved to training simulations. Used to be a fairly hot code slinger but now I do spreadsheets and PowerPoints.

(small a) means we just pretend to be agile to make our organization look modern and forward thinking - at heart we still think waterfall.

The simulation I work on now has the main loop running in real-time at 80Hz (12.5 ms frames +/- 100us) with some robotics/mechanical subsystems running contact dynamics at 1000Hz, so we're all about wringing the last erg of performance out of our 64-core 512GiB RAM simulation boxes.

I had been thinking that an AE2 could be kicked off by writing up a set of requirements or user stories. Something like what Albert has written up for ship repairs. If those were parsed into a pseudo-code or UML a non-programmer could go in and tweak the assumptions and what not. Have no doubt, a set of detailed requirements or user stories for this beast would run at least a 1000 pages.

Cheers,
Guy

A major company has the money to pay someone to sit down and write 1000 pages of requirements. With something like AE2, it would require someone to do that as a volunteer effort and people tend to get bored doing things like that for free. The problem is volunteers have a tendency to quit when they get too bored.

Bill

_____________________________

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

(in reply to guytipton41)

Post #: 6

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 11:55:15 AM

guytipton41

Posts: 351
Joined: 2/26/2011
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson

A major company has the money to pay someone to sit down and write 1000 pages of requirements. With something like AE2, it would require someone to do that as a volunteer effort and people tend to get bored doing things like that for free. The problem is volunteers have a tendency to quit when they get too bored.

Bill

Hi Bill,

Boredom doing documentation is a problem with me as well. At 50 lines per page that's the equivalent of writing 50 ksloc of code. I could probably knock out a major component like air combat, land supply or naval pathing in 50 ksloc.

Is the number of ksloc in AE covered by the NDA?

Cheers,
Guy

(in reply to wdolson)

Post #: 7

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 12:36:09 PM

guytipton41

Posts: 351
Joined: 2/26/2011
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Well what I like to see is tactical naval engagement in real time, since the players cant control it but watch it. In 3D would be nice, not sure how air engagement would be like, but it can be done. Having 3D models over landscapes and making it even more interesting. I would very much like to see this happen someday.

Hi RisingSun,

This is a tough one. For the common case of base defense someone would have to write a tactical battle simulator sub-system that would take as inputs:

1. The local map.
2. Some initial disposition of defending ships.
3. Some concept of tactical doctrine on a per nationality per year basis.
4. An actor model for the various fleet, task force, element and ship commanders.
5. A run-time engine to take all these inputs an come up with a repeatable and enjoyable encounter.

In the real world the commanding officers of the defending force and attacking force would study maps, look at resources, (hopefully) talk to the ship commanders and come up with some courses of action.

Now all of this could be doable - look at the CoOp mode in World or Warships where a team of players duke it out against 'bots. It would be best to find an existing free and open source software tactical naval simulator and add in the hooks to feed inputs in and get results back. Or work with the developers of a tactical naval simulator to do the integration.

One big issue would be testing and validation. With an actor based model and a healthy dash of random numbers the range of outcomes could be dauntingly large.

Cheers,
Guy

(in reply to Rising-Sun)

Post #: 8

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 2:28:57 PM

Rising-Sun

Posts: 2082
Joined: 11/5/2009
From: Clifton Park, NY
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: guytipton41

quote:

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Well what I like to see is tactical naval engagement in real time, since the players cant control it but watch it. In 3D would be nice, not sure how air engagement would be like, but it can be done. Having 3D models over landscapes and making it even more interesting. I would very much like to see this happen someday.

Hi RisingSun,

This is a tough one. For the common case of base defense someone would have to write a tactical battle simulator sub-system that would take as inputs:

1. The local map.
2. Some initial disposition of defending ships.
3. Some concept of tactical doctrine on a per nationality per year basis.
4. An actor model for the various fleet, task force, element and ship commanders.
5. A run-time engine to take all these inputs an come up with a repeatable and enjoyable encounter.

In the real world the commanding officers of the defending force and attacking force would study maps, look at resources, (hopefully) talk to the ship commanders and come up with some courses of action.

Now all of this could be doable - look at the CoOp mode in World or Warships where a team of players duke it out against 'bots. It would be best to find an existing free and open source software tactical naval simulator and add in the hooks to feed inputs in and get results back. Or work with the developers of a tactical naval simulator to do the integration.

One big issue would be testing and validation. With an actor based model and a healthy dash of random numbers the range of outcomes could be dauntingly large.

Cheers,
Guy

I imagine it does take a lot of work and testing, if you think on the other hands what it would be like when it is done. Depending on the team players and languages you are using to build this projects. Best bet is write down and draw patterns on how you want this to be done and as well others may give you some ideas too. I know this wont happen anytime soon, very much like to see this before I die lol.

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Post #: 9

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 7:40:53 PM

Mobeer

Posts: 662
Joined: 1/17/2007
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: RisingSun
Well what I like to see is tactical naval engagement in real time, since the players cant control it but watch it. In 3D would be nice, not sure how air engagement would be like, but it can be done. Having 3D models over landscapes and making it even more interesting. I would very much like to see this happen someday.

PacLink tried to do this with Carrier Strike and Pacific War. It could make a scenario in Carrier Strike from Pacific War, though I don't know if it ever progressed far enough to return the results. Storm Eagle Studios also used a similar idea between their campaign and battles in games like Distant Guns.

These links demonstrated an issue in the handling of battles. For example Carrier Strike battles last up to 3 days, whereas Pacific War turns lasted a week, and WitP typically a day (though customisable). This gives problems if a battle takes more than a day to resolve - just for example:
- the battle engine needs to allow forces (espcially planes) to rebase
- what happens if ships enter port (or leave port)
- how does the game engine handle task force movements in the strategic map compared to the battle map, for example if a convoy travels a narrow straight that is closed off on the strategic map?
- what happens if 2 battles occur at once?

Potentially the game data can be shared every midnight between strategic and battle engine, but then this can wipe out the careful positioning of forces by a player.

The old Great Naval Battles games took a different approach, of trying to model everything in detail all the time, but they ended up with much simplification when planes, troops and supplies got involve.

(in reply to Rising-Sun)

Post #: 10

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 11:02:12 PM

Numdydar

Posts: 3211
Joined: 2/13/2004
Status: offline

There was another thread about doing WitP 2.0 a few months ago. Someone wanted to put some money into actually paying people to develop a new version. I wonder what happened with that

(in reply to Mobeer)

Post #: 11

RE: Software development model - 11/23/2015 11:52:42 PM

wdolson

Posts: 10398
Joined: 6/28/2006
From: Near Portland, OR
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson

A major company has the money to pay someone to sit down and write 1000 pages of requirements. With something like AE2, it would require someone to do that as a volunteer effort and people tend to get bored doing things like that for free. The problem is volunteers have a tendency to quit when they get too bored.

Bill

quote:

ORIGINAL: guytipton41
Hi Bill,

Boredom doing documentation is a problem with me as well. At 50 lines per page that's the equivalent of writing 50 ksloc of code. I could probably knock out a major component like air combat, land supply or naval pathing in 50 ksloc.

Is the number of ksloc in AE covered by the NDA?

Cheers,
Guy

I don't know how many lines of code are in there. I've never found a decent code line counter, and it's sort of a red herring measure anyway. Probably the most complex piece of code I ever wrote was 1-2K lines of code. It took me about six months to write it. It was elegant and very tight and it was used quite extensively in the 777 test program and they never had a problem with it.

I've written much larger programs that took less brain power to write.

Bill

_____________________________

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

(in reply to guytipton41)

Post #: 12

RE: Software development model - 11/24/2015 2:20:56 AM

Alfred

Posts: 6685
Joined: 9/28/2006
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

There was another thread about doing WitP 2.0 a few months ago. Someone wanted to put some money into actually paying people to develop a new version. I wonder what happened with that

He had no idea how much money it would cost, thinking that a small amount would suffice.

Alfred

(in reply to Numdydar)

Post #: 13

RE: Software development model - 11/24/2015 11:59:49 AM

guytipton41

Posts: 351
Joined: 2/26/2011
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson

I don't know how many lines of code are in there. I've never found a decent code line counter, and it's sort of a red herring measure anyway. Probably the most complex piece of code I ever wrote was 1-2K lines of code. It took me about six months to write it. It was elegant and very tight and it was used quite extensively in the 777 test program and they never had a problem with it.

I've written much larger programs that took less brain power to write.

Bill

Hi Bill,

My experience has been that the real tricksy code bits average out with the brainless bits if the project is large enough. Using a tuned COCOMO model I wouldn't expect to be off by more than 25% in the estimate for required man-hours for a project over a quarter million lines of code. Our current project is currently at ~11.5 Msloc (about the size of Windows) and is less than 100% over budget!

Cheers,
Guy

(in reply to wdolson)

Post #: 14

RE: Software development model - 11/24/2015 2:04:06 PM

robinsa

Posts: 183
Joined: 7/24/2013
From: North Carolina
Status: offline

Sorry for the possibly stupid question but as a novice programmer I must ask. What is Msloc?

(in reply to guytipton41)

Post #: 15

RE: Software development model - 11/24/2015 9:27:32 PM

Numdydar

Posts: 3211
Joined: 2/13/2004
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

quote:

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

There was another thread about doing WitP 2.0 a few months ago. Someone wanted to put some money into actually paying people to develop a new version. I wonder what happened with that

He had no idea how much money it would cost, thinking that a small amount would suffice.

Alfred

And here I was hoping that we had a billionaire on the forum that was willing to sink a mil or two into development. If I ever win the lottery I know where some of my money is going

(in reply to Alfred)

Post #: 16

RE: Software development model - 11/24/2015 9:45:29 PM

Alfred

Posts: 6685
Joined: 9/28/2006
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

quote:

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

There was another thread about doing WitP 2.0 a few months ago. Someone wanted to put some money into actually paying people to develop a new version. I wonder what happened with that

He had no idea how much money it would cost, thinking that a small amount would suffice.

Alfred

And here I was hoping that we had a billionaire on the forum that was willing to sink a mil or two into development. If I ever win the lottery I know where some of my money is going

The individual wanted a particular "scenario" created. Can't recall the parameters which were not already covered by one of the existing scenarios, both official and by modders. Apparently AE is deficient in covering the PTO.

After several declarations of his serious intent to fund the development from his real estate earnings, Symon responded that he could do a bespoke custom made scenario to the requested standard of accuracy. It would entail entering into a legal relationship evidenced by a signed written agreement. IIRC, just for a single scenario the cost would be about $100,000 and take about 3 months.

These were conditions which our real estate professional considered to be unnecessarily formal. After all, anyone competent could just whip up the scenario in a fraction of that time frame for a fraction of the cost. Now how often have I heard such comments from people who have never designed any computer game but know all there is to know because they once wrote a short macro for an excel spread sheet and of course all the details (such as OOB) already "exist" on the internet.

Alfred

(in reply to Numdydar)

Post #: 17

RE: Software development model - 11/24/2015 10:15:39 PM

Numdydar

Posts: 3211
Joined: 2/13/2004
Status: offline

I agree

. Which is why I said a mil or two was needed

. And with a ROI of about 0.01 too

(in reply to Alfred)

Post #: 18

RE: Software development model - 11/24/2015 11:36:10 PM

wdolson

Posts: 10398
Joined: 6/28/2006
From: Near Portland, OR
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

The individual wanted a particular "scenario" created. Can't recall the parameters which were not already covered by one of the existing scenarios, both official and by modders. Apparently AE is deficient in covering the PTO.

After several declarations of his serious intent to fund the development from his real estate earnings, Symon responded that he could do a bespoke custom made scenario to the requested standard of accuracy. It would entail entering into a legal relationship evidenced by a signed written agreement. IIRC, just for a single scenario the cost would be about $100,000 and take about 3 months.

These were conditions which our real estate professional considered to be unnecessarily formal. After all, anyone competent could just whip up the scenario in a fraction of that time frame for a fraction of the cost. Now how often have I heard such comments from people who have never designed any computer game but know all there is to know because they once wrote a short macro for an excel spread sheet and of course all the details (such as OOB) already "exist" on the internet.

Alfred

There is such a thing as a "go away price". When you really don't want to do a project, but someone keeps pestering, you quote an exorbitant price to make them go away. What is really crazy is when they bite. I think that's how my sister ended up working full time for over $100 an hour.

Oh and definition of terms:

ksloc - thousands of lines of code
msloc - millions of lines of code

The bottleneck to getting any all new game developed is not so much the money, but finding the people with the free time to do it. With the economy the way it is, there aren't many competent programmers with the free time to take on a major project. It also helps quite a bit to have programmers who know what they are simulating. You also need programmers with the skills to program native code and know how to optimize for speed. A lot of younger programmers have been spoiled by very high level programming languages that are fast enough for what they are doing, but not fast enough for a game.

For the data people, you need people who know a lot about the subject and know enough about business practices to organize the data into formats the programmers can take and incorporate into the game. There are a lot of people out there who can do research, but they don't have the skills to organize it. I ran into this with another project. I had several people generating content for a program I was developing. Only one really understood why I needed to get the data into the format I did (she was an unemployed programmer) and only one other could be trained to put it in the right format. I didn't have the unemployed programmer for very long, so I had to have the other person format the content from everyone else. Fortunately she was a skilled editor.

Organizing the entire project has to be someone with a fair bit of project management skill plus some experience leading projects outside of a corporate setting.

With an AE2 project, even if there was lots of money, you would either have to train some people who don't know much about the subject but have the technical skills you want. There is a good chance they might not be very enthusiastic and just work for the paycheck. Or you need to find people with convertible technical skills, who are available, and know the subject.

Bill

_____________________________

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

(in reply to Alfred)

Post #: 19

RE: Software development model - 11/25/2015 12:08:45 PM

guytipton41

Posts: 351
Joined: 2/26/2011
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: robinsa

Sorry for the possibly stupid question but as a novice programmer I must ask. What is Msloc?

Hi Robinsa,

Millions of source lines of code.

Cheers,
Guy

(in reply to robinsa)

Post #: 20

RE: Software development model - 11/25/2015 4:41:09 PM

Rising-Sun

Posts: 2082
Joined: 11/5/2009
From: Clifton Park, NY
Status: offline

I been doing a lot of coding, alter games for better realism for a long time. Never charge anyone for this, even on my free time. I can understand people gotta have money to make a living. All I can say is look for players or fans that are interesting helping out, one thing is having those software that aren't cheap. A lot of debugging and testing can be pain though, just try something simple and work your way up.

If you want, its worth a shot, having a project and players/fans may donate to help out on this. Some games out there have succeeded doing this, like Path of Exiled and few others.

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Post #: 21

RE: Software development model - 11/25/2015 5:30:47 PM

Mobeer

Posts: 662
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quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson
...from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team...

I'm curious about this, since you've mentioned it here and in a more recent post. Why is fast data access important for turn based game where turns can take many minutes to complete?

(in reply to wdolson)

Post #: 22

RE: Software development model - 11/25/2015 5:48:08 PM

witpqs

Posts: 26087
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Mobeer

quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson
...from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team...

I'm curious about this, since you've mentioned it here and in a more recent post. Why is fast data access important for turn based game where turns can take many minutes to complete?

At the very least speed is important in the orders phase. They already make compromises and approximations to speed things up there.

_____________________________

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Post #: 23

RE: Software development model - 11/25/2015 7:27:48 PM

robinsa

Posts: 183
Joined: 7/24/2013
From: North Carolina
Status: offline

Thanks for the reply to my question.

Writing a board game of this type as open source project is something that has crossed my mind many times but I do not have the time nor do I have the knowledge to do so.

I have been thinking that the Unity engine could be used for a project like that which would make it easy to update, enhance and maintain. Does anyone know if the unity engine would be suitable for this kind of project?

Sometimes I wish I could spend more time on this kind of stuff. I love creating and this would be the ultimate creation, too bad I wouldn't even haven time to write a module for the game as is! :D

< Message edited by robinsa -- 11/25/2015 8:28:16 PM >

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Post #: 24

RE: Software development model - 11/25/2015 11:08:14 PM

LoBaron

Posts: 4776
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From: Vienna, Austria
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From personal experience I have learned that both systems have their strengths and weaknesses (and both got a lot of em).

Waterfall approach excells on big tasks where a proper functional design / technical design can close a lot of coding and logic gaps that are easier to miss with an Agile/Scrum approach. But usually the result is less intuitive from a user perspective, progress is more difficult to track, and good ideas arriving late to the party are often ignored.

Agile on the other hand always comes along with the lurking danger of carrying your administrative overhead through the whole development process and creating a 'moving target' (a project scope that continuousely changes caused by habitually added late requirements). Also, taken the above into consideration, Agile Projects can get out of hand quickly because the big overall documentation is often missing.

If a part of a project is very abstract and complex at the same time - source code stuff for example - I would go Waterfall all the way. On the other hand, as soon as you move closer to the user centered aspects of a project, Agile has the perfect tools to define the requirements and flesh them out as you move forward.

What is true of the above obviously depends on the quality of the PM to a large ammount. If I was a PM and not a solution architect (thank god I am not a PM, much better for my nerves...) I would try and pick the best of both worlds.

But for your specific requirements Agile will most probably be the way to go.

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Post #: 25

RE: Software development model - 11/26/2015 12:33:49 AM

zuluhour

Posts: 5244
Joined: 1/20/2011
From: Maryland
Status: offline

Seems to be a project for a group of WWII buffs serving life sentences together.

(Oh, yeah and they would have to be young enough!)

*ps Bill, Alfred, Michael, I am grateful for your sacrifices making this happen and continued support. Best bang for my buck gaming experience
I've had, and I would be truly embarrassed to reveal how many hours I pushed counters around long before I saw a computer.

*pss While I would of course be interested in a AE-2, I doubt I have enough time left to learn it, &*^% halfway to (..) (I'm not telling.

(in reply to LoBaron)

Post #: 26

RE: Software development model - 11/26/2015 2:37:26 AM

wdolson

Posts: 10398
Joined: 6/28/2006
From: Near Portland, OR
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson
...from what I have learned about game development, it is different from most business software projects. For one thing, this sort of game needs fast data access and you need to have some hardware understanding in the development team...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mobeer
I'm curious about this, since you've mentioned it here and in a more recent post. Why is fast data access important for turn based game where turns can take many minutes to complete?

You may have seen a lot of people having slow down problems when they get a new computer. That's due to problems with DirectX and multiple processors, but it also illustrates how AE is still fairly graphic intensive. There is a lot of processor activity to draw the map.

Turn processing is also massive. Much of turn processing has been streamlined to be as fast as possible, but it still can take several minutes to complete.

Bill

_____________________________

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

(in reply to Mobeer)

Post #: 27

RE: Software development model - 11/26/2015 6:20:19 AM

Alfred

Posts: 6685
Joined: 9/28/2006
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: wdolson

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

The individual wanted a particular "scenario" created. Can't recall the parameters which were not already covered by one of the existing scenarios, both official and by modders. Apparently AE is deficient in covering the PTO.

After several declarations of his serious intent to fund the development from his real estate earnings, Symon responded that he could do a bespoke custom made scenario to the requested standard of accuracy. It would entail entering into a legal relationship evidenced by a signed written agreement. IIRC, just for a single scenario the cost would be about $100,000 and take about 3 months.

These were conditions which our real estate professional considered to be unnecessarily formal. After all, anyone competent could just whip up the scenario in a fraction of that time frame for a fraction of the cost. Now how often have I heard such comments from people who have never designed any computer game but know all there is to know because they once wrote a short macro for an excel spread sheet and of course all the details (such as OOB) already "exist" on the internet.

Alfred

There is such a thing as a "go away price". When you really don't want to do a project, but someone keeps pestering, you quote an exorbitant price to make them go away. What is really crazy is when they bite. I think that's how my sister ended up working full time for over $100 an hour...

Quite correct to raise the point of "go away price". It may have been Symon's intent. But on balance I don't think that was Symon's intent because the prospective client wanted to own the IP right over the scenario. IOW what was being asked was not your typical modder's scenario where the output is not intended to be commercialised (with no remuneration expected by the scenario creators), instead it being made freely available to all and sundry. Taking into account the high standard of work which was being sought by the individual, it seemed to me that Symon viewed it as a commercial undertaking and therefore issued commercial conditions. I don't know if Symon would have been charging at lawyer or computer programmer rates. At lawyer rates, it doesn't take much to run up a $100,000 bill.