Cheat detection overzealous?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Did people even test this? You know, I hear that in the Soviet Union, programmers used to deliberately put bugs into the code, and if the beta testers didn't catch it, they were shot!

Given the crappy testing of many games (MOO3, Lionheart, JA2:Wildfire, etc.), this idea has much merit. I find it utterly incomprehensible how any "tester" can fail to find bugs that slap you in the face within 5 minutes of playing some game for the first time.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Arryn:
I find it utterly incomprehensible how any "tester" can fail to find bugs that slap you in the face within 5 minutes of playing some game for the first time.

That's perfectly understandable. Never heard of the "Law of Big Numbers" (or whatever you call it in English)? Remember there is only a handful of betatesters for Dominions, and AFAIK none of them is paid for the free time he devotes to bugtracking - heck, I even wrote a run-in-the-background backup utility just for that purpose. The simple fact that the 2.09 or 2.10 patches were never released should be enough of a clue that the testers aren't always idling.

Besides, when testing Dominions you're usually trying things like rituals and their effects, or scrutinizing the behavior of your units in the battlefield. You're not interested in competitive play and min-maxing strategies - and that's exactly what alchemy for gold is all about. So no wonder this one made it undetected into the patch.

[ June 24, 2004, 19:13: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

[Norfleet]

It should be noted that the Warlock and Skratti remained AWOL. Given that this was reported at the end of the LAST patch, you'd think that it would have been on somebody's test list.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
That's perfectly understandable.

Actually, I wasn't alluding to this patch at all. My reply was specifically geared towards the other games I mentioned.

The closest that Dom 2 has come, IMO, to brain-dead testing was the failure to catch the rather obvious Utgard bug in the 2.08, and I attribute that to IW having a non-rigorous/thorough test plan and/or the patch possibly being rushed out the door. What irked me even more is that IW spent 2 months to release the fix for that bug. Frankly, the 2.08 patch should have been recalled and re-released the next day with the fix (a misplaced semicolon, IIRC). The bug was found (by me) and the offending code spotted (by JK, IIRC) within literally minutes of the patch's release, quickly enough that I feel that taking the patch off the Shrapnel site, fixing it, and then putting it back up would have been viable, and certainly would have taken less support time on IW's part than what they spent over the next several weeks in replying to Posts.

But that's all in the past now and there's little point in dwelling on it. The only reason I quoted Norfleet's post is that not only did I find it amusing, but I've felt the same way towards the folks at Atari and various other publishers.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
It should be noted that the Warlock and Skratti remained AWOL. Given that this was reported at the end of the LAST patch, you'd think that it would have been on somebody's test list.

As various fanboys keep pointing out, the devs have a different idea of priorities than some of us have.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Arryn:
As various fanboys keep pointing out, the devs have a different idea of priorities than some of us have.

I was wondering how long it was going to take before people would start to accuse those defending the programmer as fanboys.

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Given the crappy testing of many games (MOO3, Lionheart, JA2:Wildfire, etc.), this idea has much merit. I find it utterly incomprehensible how any "tester" can fail to find bugs that slap you in the face within 5 minutes of playing some game for the first time.

Maybe we should exchange places. You do the betatesting, and I'll ***** every time I find a bug.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
Maybe we should exchange places. You do the betatesting, and I'll ***** every time I find a bug.

If you're serious about throwing down the gauntlet like this ... I accept your challenge.

EDIT: PS - I was the lead software QA engineer at my Last job (before my position was outsourced to Calcutta). I also spent hundreds of hours beta-testing and writing up bug reports for E&B and SWG (not that EA and Sony paid much attention to them).

[ June 24, 2004, 20:28: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Scott Hebert]

Heh. I gave the numbers of the Skratti and the Warlock to PvK, who said he was going to try to see if he could mod them back in. I might try that in a few minutes.

Anyway, after finishing a small project for Zen regarding research efficiency, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a very basic program to calculate research efficiency. If there is sufficient interest, I will see what I can do to tidy it up and beg space somewhere for it to go up.

Thanks have to go to Gandalf Parker for getting me interested enough to pursue basic computer programming again.

[guybrush threepwood]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
Anyway, after finishing a small project for Zen regarding research efficiency, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a very basic program to calculate research efficiency. If there is sufficient interest, I will see what I can do to tidy it up and beg space somewhere for it to go up.

What does the program do? Just wondering whether it overlaps with this?