Buggery! Games Makers Reject New Law

Im no programmer or going to try and understand this, but if a standard API exsisted wouldnt that API have bugs which the programmers would have to correct a possibly missing some of those errors before retail, therefore making the point of it mute?

like i say i dont understand programming, in fact my limits are a few lines of html, and tinkering with my autoexec.bat & config.sys back in the day, but i refuse to believe standardising programming specifics would eliminate glitches and bugs.

something has to be done even if it's a mandatory minimum of 1 year support, I don't know about you guys but if I come across a bug that prevents me from completing a game, I'm either going to want it patched or my money back.

@h doesn't that depend on the nature of the patch?

if it's just for gameplay enhancements, say to improve bot AI or put you in a better spawn point, then I wouldn't call that defective.

if it;s fix a minor annoyance, like bots getting stuck on scenery then yeah it's defective but not worthy of "money back now".

crash or game progression bug = "money back now", imo

does nobody honor godwin's law any longer? pfft!
(cf. optimusp)

Not so much. Ideally the API programmers know their stuff, do the code carefully and well, so that it does not have to be repeated in thousands of programs by other programmers, and it is done so it can be simply and efficiently used. As the API is reused (and maybe part of the system, like DirectX) it can be cleaned up over time. It was meant to manage the quality of code to, ideally reducing bugs and reducing them over time. But in the real world things often do not work that way, the stress of high output and low quality programmers gets in the way. The difference between the worse and best programmers is something like 1000 times, not 1000 % (10 times) but 1000. If you find a 1000x programmer you stick him in a room call him "House" and let him go. You will probably find few 100x programmers, and a ten times programmer is probably still not that crash hot. Unfortunately industry has not nailed down this work division for us, where the really good programmers take on the quality load for the rest of us. by doing most of the work in firmwares, drivers, abstraction layers, API's, middle ware and libraries etc. The really good analysts and designers need to make things simple and efficient too. In a gaming OS you would spend a lot of time defining the interfaces and functions with a mind to how the code will work. In a perfect system it would be perfectly bug free, and the application programmers merely call functions and design some control logic, even logic, movement and actions could be defined in data files, I do not know of such a system (though some authorware can come close to the last bit, but are often weak in ability).

When some people are stuck with research essay creating.

[25 Feb 2010, 13:45: Message edited by 'tyrion']
No Spam! Ta!