Banishing the Revenants 27-Jan-2011

[TheAncient]

You don't have a realistic grasp of how slow Jagex is with development.

 

Compare the amount of developers, not the amount of employees.

 

Also, we've gone to far off-topic, this topic is about the community event, if you want to rant about Jagex being slow developers, make a new topic.

 

Treyarch and IW are separate developers. MW2 was made by IW, Treyarch made Cod. The last Cod game treyarch made was WAW and Bops engine i'm pretty sure is significantly different. Let's not forget that Jagex probably also has basic templates that they use to prime new developments, especially quests. To be fair, there is a significant amount of completely new and complicated features that treyarch added to Bops.

 

You ignored and failed to address any of my other points.

 

If you really care, only about 15% (7+8%) of treyarch's employees count as game developers, which puts the total number of developers somewhere around 30-35. (http://www.linkedin.com/companies/treyarch) We know that RS has at least 50 developers on it.

 

By the way, your graphic argument is invalid, as they are being created at the same time as the other things are coded, so they don't take up more time.

And let's not forget they based this game on the same engine they used to create all the Call of Duty games before that, that also takes away a lot of the development time.

 

By that logic you have to ignore time for making graphics for RS, which I believe was one of the main arguments supporting Jagex's slow development time. And no, you still have issues with clipping & compatibility that you have to address in terms as a coder. And why you wouldn't include graphics and only coding as part of development makes no sense.

 

Bro, you like my cool story? I'm ready for whatever new faulty logic you're ready to provide as a veil for your stubbornness.

[TheAncient]

Another interesting point to bring up is the likelihood that Jagex's debugging issues are probably a result of their terrible coding. What do I mean by terrible coding? They hardcode so many things in this game it's ridiculous (for example, there is no actual variable of "magic damage" that modifies your magic damage. In fact, each magic-boosting item individually boosts damage, so the final damage boost is quite different than the nominal one). Had they had the foresight and coding intuition to set aside a new "magic-boost" variable, such an issue wouldn't exist - moreover, it'd be much faster to code). Another example is the terribly complicated and convoluted formula for melee max hit.

 

Hardcoding is a sign of coding immaturity and ineptitude. Based on how poorly designed and coded certain things are, you can reasonbly extrapolate that a lot of Jagex's development time is unnecessary debugging (which is VERY time consuming)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_coding

[Riemis]

How the hell did we get from JageX needing to put a little more effort in their community events to comparing Runescape with Black Ops? How far are you going to prove your damn point? A point you just made up and about which you found out you could easily use it in your advantage.

Want to prove JageX is slow? Fine, get an different company to do their job and see if it goes faster. Comparing these two games just doesn't make any sense at all and you would get that if you weren't so determined to be right, or should I say it in your words? Stubborn.

Show me numbers, show me statistics, show me graphs, ANYTHING that could prove that JageX isn't working fast enough, but don't start comparing as main argument.

 

And one final question: Why?

Why do you have problems with the way JageX updates the game?

 

 

Yes, I ignored and failed to address any of your other points, like everyone else seems to do these days. Just dodging questions and starting new ones in their advantage, it's like politics here.

[thojohn22]

You don't.

 

10+ maps, 1 guy can make a map in about 3-4 days. Make it a very detailed map, take around 5 days then.

Phyisics and AI should be in their game engine already and should only take tweaking.

Gameplay for single player, I guess that's about 2-3 storylines? Wouldn't even want to start counting the ones RS has.

Achievements? Simply for all games, lamest thing ever. Really, I don't need to know someone bought that, or killed that guy or had that many kills with that weapon. Not even hard to implement, just increase a global variable.

Weapon balance: Compare the amount of weapons of COD with the amount of RS. And I agree, some of RS weapons aren't balanced too. But so has almost every game.

Theatre mode: It's just the high poly versions of the models, and some tweaks here and there.

Soundboard: Over 750 different songs, with a lot of dynamic area sounds, and sounds effects like eating, hitting,... Making the sound for a gun is as hard as making the voice for a boss. Record it, edit it, implement it.

Ingame statistics are just reading the right variables.

RS has 10 year of regular content updates.

 

 

That said, every game is different and is hard or almost even impossible to compare. Some games rather go for graphics, others for gameplay. COD is and stays a shooter.

 

 

Oh and I read the other posts: COD Black Ops still uses the IW Engine. As did the previous COD versions.

And I didn't count in the time it takes to model the graphics.

[TheAncient]

How the hell did we get from JageX needing to put a little more effort in their community events to comparing Runescape with Black Ops? How far are you going to prove your damn point? A point you just made up and about which you found out you could easily use it in your advantage.

Want to prove JageX is slow? Fine, get an different company to do their job and see if it goes faster. Comparing these two games just doesn't make any sense at all and you would get that if you weren't so determined to be right, or should I say it in your words? Stubborn.

Show me numbers, show me statistics, show me graphs, ANYTHING that could prove that JageX isn't working fast enough, but don't start comparing as main argument.

 

And one final question: Why?

Why do you have problems with the way JageX updates the game?

 

 

Yes, I ignored and failed to address any of your other points, like everyone else seems to do these days. Just dodging questions and starting new ones in their advantage, it's like politics here.

 

Now that you've backed away from your ridiculous argument, let's take a look at the bigger picture.

 

First, it's relevant commentary that shows how lame and terrible Jagex can be. If I see a half-baked update like this, I have good reason to voice my opinion why I think Jagex does a bad job coding. This update itself is bad but not terrible. It's not as if I'll just say "oh this is a terrible update" and not give any precedent for why I think so. This "update" is just one among many such lazy updates that shows a trend of ineptitude and disregard.

 

I already showed you some numbers and statistics. What do you want me to do, graph them in 10D space, integrate all the functions and provide you some formula for the overall "laziness" of jagex? Do you want me to define a laziness coefficient and provide it to each update, then sum all of those laziness values together?

 

I have a problem with the way Jagex updates the game because I am avid fan of RS. As much as I love the game, I hate the developers.

[TheAncient]

You don't.

 

10+ maps, 1 guy can make a map in about 3-4 days. Make it a very detailed map, take around 5 days then.

Phyisics and AI should be in their game engine already and should only take tweaking.

Gameplay for single player, I guess that's about 2-3 storylines? Wouldn't even want to start counting the ones RS has.

Achievements? Simply for all games, lamest thing ever. Really, I don't need to know someone bought that, or killed that guy or had that many kills with that weapon. Not even hard to implement, just increase a global variable.

Weapon balance: Compare the amount of weapons of COD with the amount of RS. And I agree, some of RS weapons aren't balanced too. But so has almost every game.

Theatre mode: It's just the high poly versions of the models, and some tweaks here and there.

Soundboard: Over 750 different songs, with a lot of dynamic area sounds, and sounds effects like eating, hitting,... Making the sound for a gun is as hard as making the voice for a boss. Record it, edit it, implement it.

Ingame statistics are just reading the right variables.

RS has 10 year of regular content updates.

 

 

That said, every game is different and is hard or almost even impossible to compare. Some games rather go for graphics, others for gameplay. COD is and stays a shooter.

 

 

Oh and read the other posts: COD Black Ops still uses the IW Engine.

 

We're comparing a development time of 1.5 years, not of RS's whole lifetime to 1.5 years for bops. TO make a fair comparison over 10 years we'd have to think of every single cod game.

 

Other than dungeoneering, which I agree is a large update, the other RS updates are tiny in comparison. Curses? Aside from the quest that would take like an afternoon to code (excluding debug time and graphics). GWD? Maybe 2 days to get a basic model of nex going.

 

Bops maps are orders of magnitude more complex and detailed than RS.

 

As far as soundboard goes, RS just uses random in-house people and effects, and they have a lot of the same (and boring) sound effects. There aren't that many new sound effects that have been recently introduced. Treyarch actually hired external people and employ a lot of different sources for their sounds.

 

Theatre mode would require a LOT of debugging and thought to design properly.

 

Bops weapons are actually VERY well balanced. Pretty much NOTHING is overpowered. A lot of thought and time went into designing them.

[thojohn22]

And how is this an update? The wildy update hasn't even come yet, and the wilderness is just an event where JaGeX employees have fun with people ingame. (Although I too think that's not necessary. Oh and they did already an event where they spawned monsters (The halloween thing with zombies)).

 

 

Designing a new game is much easier then to keep coming with new ideas for over 10 years.

 

Quests, pure coding could maybe take a day, 2 at max. But your forgetting some parts.

Coming up with the idea of that quest. Writing all the conversations. Tweaking the storyline.

And trust me, if you want to do it good, these things take a lot of time. And you can say the quests are very good (storyline based). And not such random quests like WoW (take this item to that person, although One Small Favour?!?)

 

 

And really, for sound, it takes longer yes. Getting a gun to a random desert and recording the sound takes longer then going in a Soundbooth and recording a voice.

 

And what I imagine with theatre mode is some sort of cinematic cutscene, which isn't hard since they have all the high poly models for normal baking. It just takes a lot of time to render. But that's what render farms are for.

[TheAncient]

And how is this an update? The wildy update hasn't even come yet, and the wilderness is just an event where JaGeX employees have fun with people ingame. (Although I too think that's not necessary. Oh and they did already an event where they spawned monsters (The halloween thing with zombies)).

 

It's clearly something that's meant for users to do and to spend time on. Not officially an in-game update but it's still something Jagex planned on having us be active with.

[Riemis]

I don't get how you call this an update, it an event, nothing more. Every month we have a no-update week. The coding argument is a thing you brought up in your last post, and I believe (Notice the "believe", I am in no way stating that it did happen) they have fixed a lot of these coding issues last year, it wasn't a content year remember? They announced they would focus more on existing content.

I know everyone has been using that as last years excuse for lack of good updates, but (according to me) JageX made that right with all the patch notes and little updates that made a lot of things easier.

I'm sorry about your numbers and statistic, but to me none of them seemed to strongly prove your point.

 

I'm not going to make a very long post out of this, someone might just respond with saying I'm stupid.

Seriously Grimy, that was unnecessary.

[thojohn22]

And how is this an update? The wildy update hasn't even come yet, and the wilderness is just an event where JaGeX employees have fun with people ingame. (Although I too think that's not necessary. Oh and they did already an event where they spawned monsters (The halloween thing with zombies)).

 

It's clearly something that's meant for users to do and to spend time on. Not officially an in-game update but it's still something Jagex planned on having us be active with.

 

No its not, they just anounce it, so we know they are organising it, and maybe give a little more attention because they feel it's something special. And if they don't have any game updates with it, it's not THAT special, or they don't talk to game developpers.

[Golvellius]

I made a chart in honor of the amazing discussion happening right now in this thread.

 

[Bladewing]

how does this discussion have anything to do with efficiency?

 

anyway i fixed your chart

 

[bedman]

Not again...

[brunokiller]

I made a chart in honor of the amazing discussion happening right now in this thread

 

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i222/trembake/natureofefficiency.png

 

It's 'activities', not 'minigames'....

[TheAncient]

Designing a new game is much easier then to keep coming with new ideas for over 10 years.

 

Quests, pure coding could maybe take a day, 2 at max. But your forgetting some parts.

Coming up with the idea of that quest. Writing all the conversations. Tweaking the storyline.

And trust me, if you want to do it good, these things take a lot of time. And you can say the quests are very good (storyline based). And not such random quests like WoW (take this item to that person, although One Small Favour?!?)

 

No, theatre mode is the ability to record any game that you have played. Using this mode you can see the match through any player's perspective, in first person or third person. Considering the size of maps, length of matches, and amount of detail, both recording games and exporting them in a time- and size-efficient manner to whoever wants to download them is pretty difficult. They download fairly quickly, which has always really impressed me.

 

The coding argument is a thing you brought up in your last post, and I believe (Notice the "believe", I am in no way stating that it did happen) they have fixed a lot of these coding issues last year, it wasn't a content year remember? They announced they would focus more on existing content.

 

I won't fault you for being wrong here, but just to clarify - I mean jagex systematically has issues with how they code. They've fixed a lot of small things, but that's pretty much a result of the problem I outlined (they sometimes have bad coding, so it takes longer for them to code than for other developers)

 

--

 

Golvellius, I like your graph. A step in the right direction. Your next step is to learn some math! Maybe you should start with pre-algebra.

[Zaps]

Bops weapons are actually VERY well balanced. Pretty much NOTHING is overpowered. A lot of thought and time went into designing them.

Pre-1.06 patch, the AK-74u was the most overpowered weapon in the game. I would shoot a guy from 2-3 feet away with a shotgun, and by the time I rechambered the bullet, he had enough time to turn around and gun me down with the 74u.

 

Outside of that, I agree.

 

The 1.06 patch 'nerfed' the 74u with Grip and the hipfire ability of the 74u.

[TheAncient]

Bops weapons are actually VERY well balanced. Pretty much NOTHING is overpowered. A lot of thought and time went into designing them.

Pre-1.06 patch, the AK-74u was the most overpowered weapon in the game. I would shoot a guy from 2-3 feet away with a shotgun, and by the time I rechambered the bullet, he had enough time to turn around and gun me down with the 74u.

 

Outside of that, I agree.

 

The 1.06 patch 'nerfed' the 74u with Grip and the hipfire ability of the 74u.

 

Really off topic here, but I always did much better with normal AK and famas than 74u grip/rapidfire, idk why >> i'm like 1.5 on 74u and 1.8 on ak/famas

[Low C]

I leave this thread and come back to Call of Duty game development and coding in comparison to Jagex Coding. :mellow: I'm majoring in business with a concentration in computers and I've seen how much code goes into just one action such as running. All of a sudden everyone is an expert in programming and javascript, yet they don't even address the topic at hand, that being Banishing the Revenants! Back on topic, anyone got any feedback as to what happened at this event? Or are we going to continue talking about how jagex should code 6 updates a month rather than 3.

[foursideking]

Kinda sad the way jagex is killing off the revs..'Hey everyone, we're f'ing up the game again and letting you guys pay for it...who wants to kill revs!'

[Golvellius]

how does this discussion have anything to do with efficiency?

How does killing revs community event have anything to do with ak-47s and "hard codeing"?

Nice chart too bad there isn't any correlation between the things grouped together on the right end.

They should be more spreadout to the far left. (especially the need to tell other people what to do and veteran syndrome)

[Dire_Wolf]

@Golv

 

How is the community event where we will Banish the revs, a emergent gameplay? Is it because Revs weren't intended to be hunted down?

[Youmu]

I'm lolling at most of the responses in this thread.

 

Just because you guys don't seem interested in a community event doesn't mean you have to say crap about Jagex again... I mean I won't even want to go and kill revenants, but do you see me complaining about this? No!

 

(So it's not just game updates after all...)

[TheAncient]

Its relevant because, like I said before, Jagex is pretty pathetic in its attempts to generate "emergent" gameplay

 

This event is just one example among many and more to come

[Danqazmlp]

Time to get this discussion back on topic. If you want to flame Jagex for reasons other than community events do it elsewhere. Any posts not about this community event are liable to be removed and actions taken from this point on. Discuss the community event or don't post, it isn't hard.

[Doomster]

At the moment, Revs are high risk, low reward - now if they were offerring a chance of a free pop at some PvP kit dropping Revs....