The Delusion is Strong in this One

[manybellsdown]

Its like when everyone wanted to be able to sit in Everquest 2. I remember the devs going THE MODELS ARENT BUILT FOR IT!!!! and people yelling THEN JUST ADD KNEES.

Made my head explode every time. People just have NO idea!

Oooh we get this every 6 months or so in a little game I play. "we shud b able 2 sit on furniture". And every time someone explains to him that it requires new artwork for every model and clothing type. They always think they're the first person in 8 years to have thought of this.

Also like clockwork people complain that the poker minigame is "rigged", either to let people sitting in certain seats win, or to allow you to win only so much and then make you lose. The best part ... all of the game code (save the RNG) is open-source. I like to link them to the code library and say "show me where it's programmed to do that. Oh, you can't read the code? Then STFU."

[thehuckster]

Its like when everyone wanted to be able to sit in Everquest 2. I remember the devs going THE MODELS ARENT BUILT FOR IT!!!! and people yelling THEN JUST ADD KNEES.

Made my head explode every time. People just have NO idea!

It's not just a matter of changing the model to add knees. Whether it takes a day or a month, should they spend time on features which add absolutely nothing to gameplay? If sitting down were a gameplay element, such as to rest and gain stamina, then they should work on it. Otherwise it's time better spent on other issues which DO affect gameplay.

[Chanlin]

Having been a former code monkey myself I just have to chime in here. I learned the basics of programming in High School and for the advanced programming class we got the entire last 4 months of school to work on a project in groups of three. We decided to make a game. That was 5 days a week for an hour and a half per day for 4 months and even coming in on a few weekends to work on it. Which means we put roughly 360 hours into coding this beast (we were ambitious and tried to make an RPG style game in Pascal*).

At the end of the 4 months we had only a demo of what we wanted the final project to be. We had a town complete with shops and NPC dialogue, an Equipment and Inventory system for the main character complete with 200 individual items, an intro cinematic (if it can be called that I mean pascal is really limited), a working random dungeon/maze generator that rendered the maze from a first person perspective (took us quite some time to get that working just so), and a combat system that allowed for randomized encounters.

I've never tried to code a game in more modern languages, but I'm sure just as much work and more is involved.

EDIT:: Was just thinking, if you really want tell the guy to find RPG Maker and try making a game with that. Even with a good portion of the more difficult work done for you it still takes a monumental amount of time to make even a simple game with that.

*Pascal is a fairly old programming language for those not familiar with computer programming. The version we had ran from DOS.

[Geek King]

*Pascal is a fairly old programming language for those not familiar with computer programming. The version we had ran from DOS.

And yet, most of my college programming was done in Pascal, using vi running on a HPUX mainframe.

I'm just going to go yell at some kids on my lawn now...

[Crossbow]

Wha-huh? $200? For a game? You really do get the special ones, Seraph. I'm not sure his budget would cover a bug fix from my company.

[Dips]

Gotta love the "It's simple!" guys when it comes to programming.

Oh, God. Yes.

We've got people begging us to add this extra feature to our program because they don't want to buy it seperately.

"It should be easy!"

Here's the thing. Other people already make a product which does that and they sell it for, say, $400. That plus our our program ($600) is a total of $1000 for two programs which do everything you want and do it well.

On the other hand if WE tried to make that product and bundle it with ours it would end up costing MORE than $400 per unit to recover our costs and it wouldn't even function as well because the other company has been doing it longer and is better at it. Not to mention our market base is more limited meaning the development costs would be divided among a smaller number of people. The cost of program with the feature would probably be $1500 or more.

Of course you point all that out to customers and they refuse to believe we can't just snap our fingers and add the feature without raising the price.

And repeating that their budget is some ridiculously low number does nothing to change what things cost. Period. If that were the case I could just walk into a gas station and declare I have two dollars budgeted to fill my tank and make it so.

Cripes, people are dumb.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I'm guessing the guy saw the "$5 game" on a site and thought something like "If that only costs $5 I wonder what I could get for $200?"

But yeah, it's abundantly clear he's utterly clueless about games. I haven't done much coding but even I know that a relatively simple app can be a lot of work.

[Tama]

Just curious, is Python the modern-day Hex system or something?

(I am a total coding newbie)

[Racket_Man]

as another former coder/programmer I have to say this

Even with knowing all of the rules/setup/moves/whatever it si REALLY hard to code even the simplest game.

back in the dark ages of text only programming I did just that. my last semester in one college I had no programming or computer related classes and I was bored. HMMMMM what could I do for fun???? why not write a Monopoly game simulation in BASIC. SIMPLE RIGHT??????

YEAH RIGHT. it took me a good part of the semester but I did it. all of the printed rules, dice moves, house and hotels (and the related checks and balances), property mortgages, banks, Chance and Community chest decks (with proper rotation and one time around the deck use), the Utilties and RRs, the Tax squares, the consecutive double roll rule and in jail and get out of jail sequences and bankruptcy (ie. player looses everything). I even used the standard player tokens to represent each player. you could print out status reports for each player.

The only non-canon thing I put in was where the Chance and Community Chest penelties accumulated into a pot which was won by landing on Free Parking (a popular non-rule addition) and an unlimited bank for game as a whole.

I learned A LOT about system design ie. how to plan and split things up, proper error checking and recovery routines, file structuring and alpha/beta testing planning.

[Argabarga]

Simple doesn't always mean easy

The forces that create aerodynamic lift that allow heavier-than-air flight are simple

Designing and fitting 5,000,000 components into a working 747 that follows those "simple" forces, that's tough.




It's like...

What do you mean I CAN'T go back in time?! We're currently going forward, and I'd like to go BACKWARDS! Can't you understand that? It's a SIMPLE concept!!!

[RealUnimportant]

And repeating that their budget is some ridiculously low number does nothing to change what things cost. Period. If that were the case I could just walk into a gas station and declare I have two dollars budgeted to fill my tank and make it so.

I love this analogy, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[ArcticChicken]

The only non-canon thing I put in was where the Chance and Community Chest penelties accumulated into a pot which was won by landing on Free Parking (a popular non-rule addition)

For years I thought that was one of the rules.

[Seraph]

For years I thought that was one of the rules.

...you mean...it isn't? O_o

[houdini]

What do you mean I CAN'T go back in time?! We're currently going forward, and I'd like to go BACKWARDS! Can't you understand that? It's a SIMPLE concept!!!

That's absolute genius! I'm borrowing that next time someone asks me for something "simple". It'll save on swear words...

[mhkohne]

...you mean...it isn't? O_o

Nope, but so many people play with that house rule that lots of folks believe it is. I certainly did for a long time.

The sad part is that that house rule extends the game considerably. If you've ever thought Monopoly took too long, that rule may be part of your problem.

The other common house rule that can extend the game is extra money for landing directly on GO. You should only get your $200, not any extra amount.

Personally I think that a house rule of ending the game on first bankrupcy could be a good idea, as I'm quite convinced that Monopoly normally goes on way too long. (You count up cash and proprty to determine winner at the end point)