Its a shame that twitch deletes VODs of past streams after a few months. The streams from Cryptics QA lead a couple of years ago didn't exactly paint a great picture of Cryptic management with regards to bugs. The time allocated to find bugs, send back to the dev and then confirm fix or not fixed was very tight even for a small game studio. As they worked six months in advance, things were done, committed to code (working or not), and moved onto the next episode or event. Then one week ahead of release a couple more days were allocated to the most severe bugs. Most bugs reported when they went live were already in JIRA as QA had found them already.
I will be interested to see how DECA handles the content vs bugs/maintenance balance as they take over, the fact the next episode has been delayed is promising.
You might be able to find that in the Cryptic YT channel, as they have some 10 forward streams there I can't remember how many though
He did do a segment with Mike on the official stream and should be up there yes, but I was referring to his own personal channel where he did several streams.
I don't think I ever had to experience that but I gave my example there so emphasize that the take away from your post isn't that Cryptic can't spell check, but rather that it doesn't take much to break the code and the flaw not always in the most obvious place.
Well here's the thing. Cryptic inherited STO from Perpetual, including the release deadline. The fact STO was released in a playable state at all was a miracle in itself. The code is speggetti, but still going strong after... what? 14 years? And in a game engine that was never designed for the things STO does.
Honestly at this point the little quirks are amusing, and are prime examples of the fact you never know how one bit of code may interact with another bit of code. Sometimes we get funny bugs out of it. Other times we get annoying bugs. BUT that is honestly the nature of ANY long living MMO. It is a constantly evolving creature, and there will always be something that doesn't play well no matter what is done.
Yeah it's just that there's those who think only reason Cryptic hasn't fixed all bugs is they're either malicious or incompetent and there will be massive paragrim shift there with DECA (not likely as DECA is probably also in the business to make money and thus will act accordingly and will not do things that cost a lot with very little if any returns).
I think the Connie Shuttlebay has been fixed. While its been a while I do remember that part missing, and the last time I visited it the doors were back in place.[/quote]
I visited the tos bridge last night, and yes, everyone was seated properly and the shuttle bay is fixed! Couldn't believe it, looked so much more... idk, normal, natural. So i visited the pioneer bridge next, they were all seated, but the shuttle bay was missing part of the rear door section. Watch your step, that next one is a doozy. lol
Gosh i really like the pioneer bridge layout. I do wish the resolution on the belfast bridge monitors was better, another one of my favorites. A bit off topic, just wanted to say it.
edited- i obviously dont know how to quote properly
I think the Connie Shuttlebay has been fixed. While its been a while I do remember that part missing, and the last time I visited it the doors were back in place.
I visited the tos bridge last night, and yes, everyone was seated properly and the shuttle bay is fixed! Couldn't believe it, looked so much more... idk, normal, natural. So i visited the pioneer bridge next, they were all seated, but the shuttle bay was missing part of the rear door section. Watch your step, that next one is a doozy. lol
Gosh i really like the pioneer bridge layout. I do wish the resolution on the belfast bridge monitors was better, another one of my favorites. A bit off topic, just wanted to say it.
edited- i obviously dont know how to quote properly
remove the "/" from the first quote tag and it should work (like I did in this message), also I'm guessing the Pioneer shuttle bay is different from the Connie one with is why they both haven't been fixed
edited- i obviously dont know how to quote properly
remove the "/" from the first quote tag and it should work (like I did in this message), also I'm guessing the Pioneer shuttle bay is different from the Connie one with is why they both haven't been fixed
Thanks for the tip. I think you're right about the bridges being different. I am glad to see the little glitches being tidied up. I also wanted to try the quote out.
It's funny that code can effect other things, but it's not just digital systems that have that problem. the old MK114 Fire Control was all analog. you would adjust one synchro and suddenly 2 more in an unrelated panel were acting up. partially because prior techs would jumper voltages from one point to anther. and no documentation, of course. same thing with code. a dev gets lazy, calls a routine from something else, so now they are sharing some variable somewhere, so the next guy comes along and gets the helmsman back in his seat and the phaser hardpoints are now off by 60 pixels
It's funny that code can effect other things, but it's not just digital systems that have that problem. the old MK114 Fire Control was all analog. you would adjust one synchro and suddenly 2 more in an unrelated panel were acting up. partially because prior techs would jumper voltages from one point to anther. and no documentation, of course. same thing with code. a dev gets lazy, calls a routine from something else, so now they are sharing some variable somewhere, so the next guy comes along and gets the helmsman back in his seat and the phaser hardpoints are now off by 60 pixels
Often time it's less about the dev being lazy and more about dev being under an unreasonable deadline, that's generally the result of 99% of those weird dependencies, you had to get it done yesterday and what you did kind of works even if it's not even close to optimal.
The code is proprietary to Cryptic, so yes, it's alien to everyone who doesn't know Cryptic's code, and if it's further encrypted (to protect Cryptic's IP), it's gonna look like hieroglyphics (trust me, this is what most game files, I've looked at, look like),
and it's certainly spaghetti because if you weren't there to build it, you will struggle to find which strand to look at and to pull without collapsing the settled mound too much, or destroying the strands.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
The code is proprietary to Cryptic, so yes, it's alien to everyone who doesn't know Cryptic's code, and if it's further encrypted (to protect Cryptic's IP), it's gonna look like hieroglyphics (trust me, this is what most game files, I've looked at, look like),
and it's certainly spaghetti because if you weren't there to build it, you will struggle to find which strand to look at and to pull without collapsing the settled mound too much, or destroying the strands.
As long as they have an egyptologist, a linguist and a chef on staff everything will be fine.
The code is proprietary to Cryptic, so yes, it's alien to everyone who doesn't know Cryptic's code, and if it's further encrypted (to protect Cryptic's IP), it's gonna look like hieroglyphics (trust me, this is what most game files, I've looked at, look like),
and it's certainly spaghetti because if you weren't there to build it, you will struggle to find which strand to look at and to pull without collapsing the settled mound too much, or destroying the strands.
As long as they have an egyptologist, a linguist and a chef on staff everything will be fine.
The code is proprietary to Cryptic, so yes, it's alien to everyone who doesn't know Cryptic's code, and if it's further encrypted (to protect Cryptic's IP), it's gonna look like hieroglyphics (trust me, this is what most game files, I've looked at, look like),
and it's certainly spaghetti because if you weren't there to build it, you will struggle to find which strand to look at and to pull without collapsing the settled mound too much, or destroying the strands.
As long as they have an egyptologist, a linguist and a chef on staff everything will be fine.
Paging Dr. Jackson.. Dr Daniel Jackson to the blue phone please
there are still bugs in the cardassian sector that havent been fixed for almost 7 years.
the doors on dyson sphere missions have been bugged for about 3 years now.
Federation Klingons still do not have access to modernized klingon appearance options given to KDF klingons. (this was actually addressed on a dev stream about a year ago) Nothings been done.
I would honestly answer, that if its not tied to literally breaking the game, or the cash store/lobi stuff, they dont really fix much.
If it's like the missing body parts and price has changed bugs! Never!
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
Lets not start going down rabbit holes. Some bugs have a higher priority than others. Not only that, sometimes a bug is hard to track down. It took them a year to track down what I call the Season 7 Accolade Bug. Switching from random drops to the Rep System kinda mucked up the Accolade Armor unlock for some characters that earned it pre-Season 7.
Just because one particular bug does not get fixed as soon as someone wants it to be, doesn't mean it won't be fixed at all. It might just be a lower priority than others. And then there's the fact that it may or may not be reported, thus... are the Devs supposed to be psychic and know what we want them to look at without us telling them?
Bug reporting should be as detailed as possible to help them track it down. Saying "X doesn't work, plz fix" does not really say what is going on. The Devil is in the Details. More information means more to work off of.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Bug reporting should be as detailed as possible to help them track it down. Saying "X doesn't work, plz fix" does not really say what is going on. The Devil is in the Details. More information means more to work off of.
I keep repeating this as well, more often then not the issue is not in the most obvious place, it can be several steps down the line and saying "x is broken" doesn't help even if you're referring to what used to be called Twitter.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
Exactly. To the average person it probably looks easy. See something broken, well it must be that thing. But... we are not only talking lines of code, we're talking STO Spagetti code.
To give an idea of how complicated it can be... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kBRC2co7Y
Sattler: How many lines of Code are there?
Arnorld: 'Bout 2 million.
The first 25 seconds is pretty relevant. Not knowing what you're looking for... you got a LOT of lines of code to sort through. And it can be so much as a SINGLE CHARACTER wrong our out of place that can cause problems. Just look at the AI in Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Details can help narrow things down. In essence... those 2 million lines of code as referenced in Jurassic Park can be narrowed down to maybe a couple thousand. I admit I am no coder, but I understand how complex these things can be. Even just programming a basic chip to alternate two LEDs can potentially be HUNDREDS of lines of code to get the timing right. Did that in a basic electronics class. Thankfully my teacher did show me a shortcut to doing that, but did note that I was trying to do it the "correct" way. It just would have taken a LOOOOOT of copy/paste.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Has anybody ever complimented you on your creative writing? Not everybody can pull off being a fan-fiction-coder
Actually... yes. I do have some stories posted that people liked.
And one of them IS a Star Trek story. And my current claim to fame is, even after all these years, I STILL have the ONLY Star Fox/Wing Commander crossover on this sight I have my stuff posted on.
It was only my second story so I admit its probably pretty rough compared to some of my later works.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Oh and another thing about Aliens: Colonial Marines the error was not in the most obvious place aka the code for the AI behavior itself but rather it was in the part that told the game where the Xenomorph was, so in essence what happened there was that game couldn't tell where the Xenomorph was and thus couldn't use the more advanced AI and reverted to the default behavior set (that was more primitive).
But from the players point of view what seemed to be broken is the enemy AI.
Thus again the flaw can be at non-obvious place and saying "x is broken" at the worst case scenario might mean going over all the code related to "x" one by one and depending what that system is there could be millions of lines of code and even then there could nothing obviously wrong but due to a way line a and line b interact they're causing line c to act in ways its not suppose to.
Worse yet, things outside of the program can cause problems.
For example, one of the reasons that companies often use outdated compilers (and/or interpreters) is that the updated versions can introduce even harder to track down bugs, usually because something in the company's programs was coded in one way because of a bug in the compiler that could be avoided with a particular kludge, or there was some "undocumented" feature that someone used in a pinch because of a time crunch, that does not exist in the newer version, etc. When that happens, going over even a simple program line by line looking for errors might turn up nothing unless the person doing so knows about the difference in the compilers very, very well and recognizes one of those situations.
And STO has updated their compilers at least once since the game came out, which is the reason they had to drop support for Windows XP a few years ago, and possibly why they could use lighting 2.0 and updated graphics before that, though I don't think they mentioned the compiler as such back then. STO seems to have weathered updated compilers and whatnot well enough, though in the case of the lighting (whether or not it was made possible by a new compiler back then) it permanently broke day/night cycles.
If a company has commissioned some blackbox code (code that was written outside the company that they don't have the source code for) and whoever they got it from has not maintained it for a while (like for instance the software house it came from went out of business) it can be even worse because they have to deal with any weird output with a kludge of some sort if they cannot recreate that blackbox's function in some other way.
One of the companies I worked for in the past had a pair of ancient PCs running DOS 6.2, each attached to a peripheral they could not do without since the drivers for that peripheral would only run under DOS, and that wasn't even the strangest setup I have seen. Companies often get locked into all sorts of weird things because of how contracts, licenses, EULAs, and other business deals and whatnot interact with things like return on investment and other realworld considerations.
One thing that I have discovered recently is there is a definite connection between the trait bug and the other bug where you captain appears in space instead of you ship. Everytime my captain appears the traits go down. Now I can refresh the traits save one that's a ground trait. I don't know if that's a common thing or if it was mentioned earlier in the thread but I figure it couldn't hurt to mention it and maybe give some help the dev team.
"There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life." - Ten Bears (Will Sampson)
Comments
He did do a segment with Mike on the official stream and should be up there yes, but I was referring to his own personal channel where he did several streams.
Yeah it's just that there's those who think only reason Cryptic hasn't fixed all bugs is they're either malicious or incompetent and there will be massive paragrim shift there with DECA (not likely as DECA is probably also in the business to make money and thus will act accordingly and will not do things that cost a lot with very little if any returns).
I think the Connie Shuttlebay has been fixed. While its been a while I do remember that part missing, and the last time I visited it the doors were back in place.[/quote]
I visited the tos bridge last night, and yes, everyone was seated properly and the shuttle bay is fixed! Couldn't believe it, looked so much more... idk, normal, natural. So i visited the pioneer bridge next, they were all seated, but the shuttle bay was missing part of the rear door section. Watch your step, that next one is a doozy. lol
Gosh i really like the pioneer bridge layout. I do wish the resolution on the belfast bridge monitors was better, another one of my favorites. A bit off topic, just wanted to say it.
edited- i obviously dont know how to quote properly
remove the "/" from the first quote tag and it should work (like I did in this message), also I'm guessing the Pioneer shuttle bay is different from the Connie one with is why they both haven't been fixed
Often time it's less about the dev being lazy and more about dev being under an unreasonable deadline, that's generally the result of 99% of those weird dependencies, you had to get it done yesterday and what you did kind of works even if it's not even close to optimal.
I don't about the pasta or Hieroglyphics but the code might as well be an alien language so someone who isn't familiar with it.
It probably isn't written in APL either, so probably no Hieroglyphics or other weird symbols.
The code is proprietary to Cryptic, so yes, it's alien to everyone who doesn't know Cryptic's code, and if it's further encrypted (to protect Cryptic's IP), it's gonna look like hieroglyphics (trust me, this is what most game files, I've looked at, look like),
and it's certainly spaghetti because if you weren't there to build it, you will struggle to find which strand to look at and to pull without collapsing the settled mound too much, or destroying the strands.
As long as they have an egyptologist, a linguist and a chef on staff everything will be fine.
a Xeno-linguist since it's an alien language
Paging Dr. Jackson.. Dr Daniel Jackson to the blue phone please
the doors on dyson sphere missions have been bugged for about 3 years now.
Federation Klingons still do not have access to modernized klingon appearance options given to KDF klingons. (this was actually addressed on a dev stream about a year ago) Nothings been done.
I would honestly answer, that if its not tied to literally breaking the game, or the cash store/lobi stuff, they dont really fix much.
Just because one particular bug does not get fixed as soon as someone wants it to be, doesn't mean it won't be fixed at all. It might just be a lower priority than others. And then there's the fact that it may or may not be reported, thus... are the Devs supposed to be psychic and know what we want them to look at without us telling them?
Bug reporting should be as detailed as possible to help them track it down. Saying "X doesn't work, plz fix" does not really say what is going on. The Devil is in the Details. More information means more to work off of.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
To give an idea of how complicated it can be...
Sattler: How many lines of Code are there?
Arnorld: 'Bout 2 million.
The first 25 seconds is pretty relevant. Not knowing what you're looking for... you got a LOT of lines of code to sort through. And it can be so much as a SINGLE CHARACTER wrong our out of place that can cause problems. Just look at the AI in Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Details can help narrow things down. In essence... those 2 million lines of code as referenced in Jurassic Park can be narrowed down to maybe a couple thousand. I admit I am no coder, but I understand how complex these things can be. Even just programming a basic chip to alternate two LEDs can potentially be HUNDREDS of lines of code to get the timing right. Did that in a basic electronics class. Thankfully my teacher did show me a shortcut to doing that, but did note that I was trying to do it the "correct" way. It just would have taken a LOOOOOT of copy/paste.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
but i doubt it is sufficiently documented.
Has anybody ever complimented you on your creative writing? Not everybody can pull off being a fan-fiction-coder
I have no such doubts. The game was patched today and I'm claiming my free ship
Actually... yes. I do have some stories posted that people liked.
And one of them IS a Star Trek story. And my current claim to fame is, even after all these years, I STILL have the ONLY Star Fox/Wing Commander crossover on this sight I have my stuff posted on.
It was only my second story so I admit its probably pretty rough compared to some of my later works.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
But from the players point of view what seemed to be broken is the enemy AI.
Thus again the flaw can be at non-obvious place and saying "x is broken" at the worst case scenario might mean going over all the code related to "x" one by one and depending what that system is there could be millions of lines of code and even then there could nothing obviously wrong but due to a way line a and line b interact they're causing line c to act in ways its not suppose to.
For example, one of the reasons that companies often use outdated compilers (and/or interpreters) is that the updated versions can introduce even harder to track down bugs, usually because something in the company's programs was coded in one way because of a bug in the compiler that could be avoided with a particular kludge, or there was some "undocumented" feature that someone used in a pinch because of a time crunch, that does not exist in the newer version, etc. When that happens, going over even a simple program line by line looking for errors might turn up nothing unless the person doing so knows about the difference in the compilers very, very well and recognizes one of those situations.
And STO has updated their compilers at least once since the game came out, which is the reason they had to drop support for Windows XP a few years ago, and possibly why they could use lighting 2.0 and updated graphics before that, though I don't think they mentioned the compiler as such back then. STO seems to have weathered updated compilers and whatnot well enough, though in the case of the lighting (whether or not it was made possible by a new compiler back then) it permanently broke day/night cycles.
If a company has commissioned some blackbox code (code that was written outside the company that they don't have the source code for) and whoever they got it from has not maintained it for a while (like for instance the software house it came from went out of business) it can be even worse because they have to deal with any weird output with a kludge of some sort if they cannot recreate that blackbox's function in some other way.
One of the companies I worked for in the past had a pair of ancient PCs running DOS 6.2, each attached to a peripheral they could not do without since the drivers for that peripheral would only run under DOS, and that wasn't even the strangest setup I have seen. Companies often get locked into all sorts of weird things because of how contracts, licenses, EULAs, and other business deals and whatnot interact with things like return on investment and other realworld considerations.