New Post from Dan@FIRAXIS at CivFanatics.com

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
http://www.avault.com/articles/getar...jmorris&page=1

Jeff, please dont troll us


seriously, since you posted the link, dont forget two things:
1) communities and organized efforts created around the existance of bugs will turn into hordes of negative pr and much lower sales on the next title if the company doesnt address the issues
2) the longest living (sub-)communities on apolyton are the ones depending on positive things: civ2, ctp2 customisation, civ2/ctp/smac multiplaying, smac fiction writing. in fact, if you could take all the posts that where ever made on apolyton, bugs and troubleshooting would be a small number compared, to scenarios, modification and multiplaying...

I think the best way to describe it is this...

You buy a house and contract to have it built. Now you expect to have plumbing, electricity, etc. as would any house you have built. But this house has no plumbing. However, the contractor biulding the house assures you you'll have plumbing within 1 month, and he also assures you new developments in building house technology will allow you to have electricity too!!! However at a minimal price...call it an expansion pack if you will. So you'll get to have a tv just like all the other houses! Now are you happy or are you mad?

[boney1]

In light of infogames recent actions apolyton should be careful about what mods it has on sight. Could the strategy forum be forced to close down?

What are infogames trying to prove?

[Jack_www]

When one writes code for any program, be it a game or other kinds of software there will most likely going to bo bugs in it. The reason for this is that humans are not perfect, and people do make misstakes, but that why you test programms so that you can catch the bugs that are in the code. Testing a program cannot find all the bugs in a program, but i done right can make the bugs that do exist so rare that the most users will most likely never incounter them. When writting code for a program one sould strive to write code that does not have any bugs in it. One thing to note as well that the earlier a bug is found in a program the less time it takes to fix it and thus is cheaper to fix.

With Civ3 it seems to be rushed out the door. I have no idea why they left the bugs with the air units in the game though. I do like civ3, and for the most part it does not have major bugs in it. If I were to make a game for a pc I would make sure I had the time and money to not only devolope the game, but to test it througly as well so that the game would bug free as it can be. In the case of firaxis it just looks like they ran out of time and money to beble to fix the bugs in it and include all that they wanted to put into the game. My major complant is not with the game but with firaxis and infograms and how they treat their costumers like crap. I also do not come to these forums just for the bugs in Civ3, and if Civ3 had no bugs I would still come here. I also dont want bugs in the games I buy.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by CB2034
actually some games do create a new icon when they are updated. a game i purchased not too long ago created a new icon when i updated it. Crimson Skies updated the icon, and also i believe uo updated the icon when it patched as well... so alas... it is common knowledge that some patches DO update the icons

ROFL. Some people take everything seriously. Oh boy.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by number6


You know what I never noticed that problem in Civ2. As a matter of fact I don't even remember patching Civ2 at all. I probably never tried to fortify a fighter in open terrain because it did not make sense. I think it is more unforgivable to state something in the manual as a feature and that feature does not work for the human player, but the AI players can use that feature. If I had noticed the fighter bug from civ 2 it would not have detracted from the game play and I am sure I would not even bother to complain about it. It's when the bugs are so obvious and surely could have been caught by play testing that I get upset. We are not talking minor bugs here. Yes, it is a disgrace upon the name of Civilization and Sid. It's such a cop out to blame the publisher's deadline as an excuse for releasing incomplete code.

Oh you never noticed it. Well perhaps you noticed the waves of destroyers the AI would ram to bits on your coastal fortresses? This dumb behavior was scrapped in one of the patches and made the game a good bit more fun. There you have another bug in Civ2 that has nothing to do with unrealistic actions like the example I mentioned.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Moraelin

No, the real idiocy is that people like you find it normal to pay just to be beta-testers. It's this kind of flaming fanboy that drags the quality down for the whole rest of us.

... flaming fanboys who try to defend the Sacred Right To Release Buggy Games (TM). And I've had it up to here with that kind of an idiocy.

Aaah yes, the inevitable name calling ensues. A flaming fanboy dragging down the "quality" indeed. And idiocy even.
Very eloquently stated, Moraelin. I'm impressed.

However, instead of foaming at the mouth and furiously hammering your keyboard at me for things I did not claim I'd like to suggest re-reading my post.
I was merely commenting on the attitude of some people here who seem to regard every bug as an unforgivable sin, and like to use that opportunity to stress how big a failure Civ3 is.
I object to that kind of behavior.
I do not applaud the presence of bugs, however. Nor am I claiming that because there were bugs in Civ2, they can be in Civ3. Neither do I claim that bugs should go unaddressed.

So to put the message in a more condensed form so that even people with some difficulty in comprehension abilities might be able to pick it up:

1) People shouldn't overreact on the discovery of every bug. The game is as playable as Civ2 was (I use Civ2 as a natural criterion.) We are not paying beta testers.
2) Every effort should be made to discover and remedy present bugs.
3) Not overreacting doesn't mean approving on the presence of bugs.

[Malleus Dei]

There's several issues with the acceptance of bugs in software.

First off, the game producers should refuse to release a flagrantly buggy game. Their individual and group pride in their work and their committment to excellence should make them see to it that their work was sufficiently tested - both privately and publicly - in order to expose and eliminate any flagrant bugs. There is NO EXCUSE - I repeat NO EXCUSE - for any software product to be publicly and/or commerically released with flagrant bugs extant. No programmer with any sense of professionalism should ever permit this to happen to his work. You test, you fix, and then you test and you fix again and again and again and again until you finally get it right. There is a word that almost always applies to software released without such testing: the word is "shoddy."

Second off, the user community of any upgraded product should demand a public beta test for the upgrade - loudly. Public testing ensures that users have signed off on the fact that there are no flagrant bugs, and allows the identification of any subtle but significant ones so that they can be eliminated before public release.

Third off, no user community should be so desperate for any software as to prostitute themselves for it and defend not only its bugs but the "right" of that product to have major bugs. That's called enabling, and it is simply sick behavior. The user community needs to be demanding the excellence it is paying for as well as accountability instead of acting as product fanboys ("Oh, it's so complicated and wonderful a product that it's okay if it has showstopping bugs.") That entire position is despicable, whether you are talking about an operating system, a driver, or a game.

Oh, and as to the guy who said I shouldn't have Bill Gates' job? If I did, your software would probably be many, many times more reliable. And your comments about it would be listened to very, very carefully. To some of us, bugs are not an option and the user is king.

Bottom line: there is no excuse, no justification, no rationalizion, no fanboy enabling that anyone can ever make for commercial software that is released with showstopping bugs. None.

Quality assurance. Pride in your work. Public testing. Listening to user feedback. A committment to excellence. Testing and testing and testing and testing and testing and then testing some more. This is how you make software that works and stands the test of time.

Rushing things out the door? That just makes expensive junk.

[Hex]

It really is IMPOSSIBLE to write code that does not contain bugs. The bugs included might be rather small, but there are bugs. One thing is really remarkable about civ3 is that during the 20 or so hours I've managed to play the game it has crashed only once and that one time was due to the fact that my hard disk was full. (Windows didn't manage to report that to me.)

Of course that air superiority bug is rather bad, but they are fixing it so I'm not really angry. The people who think that they can write perfect code should actually try to code something perfect and functional. Test it for 3 years and then if you don't find any bugs tell me about it and I'll start worshipping you as my code god.

PS. Diablo 1 was buggy as hell when released. Have you ever tried playing multiplayer? There are a lot of CHEATS and these cheats could be considered as bugs.

[rid102]

It really is IMPOSSIBLE to write code that does not contain bugs.

Not quite, but you're right in that it's very very difficult. Commercially non-viable in most cases, at the very least.

E.g. Safety critical systems: these are typically designed and tested to levels of pedantry that simply aren't funny. They have to be. If the software doesn't work, people get injured or even die.

Even the most apparently rigorously designed software can still have fatal flaws though, e.g. Ariane 5.

Malleus Dei is 100% correct when he says that software should not ship unless it is at least free of "showstopper" bugs. There is both the professional reputation of developing company and also of the developers themselves.

If Firaxis knew that e.g. Air Superiority was broken then IMHO that is unprofessional of them to release it. This is a "showstopper" bug IMHO because the software is not conforming to specification (i.e. it is not behaving as the game rules suggest).

Other aspects e.g. game balance, is another kettle of fish entirely though.

[Frito]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Oh, and as to the guy who said I shouldn't have Bill Gates' job? If I did, your software would probably be many, many times more reliable. And your comments about it would be listened to very, very carefully. To some of us, bugs are not an option and the user is king.

Now you think that you could do a better job then the richest/most sucessfull man in the world...HA. I'm glad you have such a realistic view of the real world and that you think so highly about yourself. Nobody is defending the bugs, we're saying we don't want them but we're not dumb either.

[Malleus Dei]

>It really is IMPOSSIBLE to write code that does not contain bugs.
>The bugs included might be rather small, but there are bugs.

You are totally wrong here. It is indeed possible to do just that - I have done it, other people have done it. There large programs that are bug-free. It can be done: it just takes time, focus, dedication, effort and testing, testing, testing, and more testing. And then more testing.

>Now you think that you could do a better job then the richest/most sucessfull man in the >world...HA.

A better job? Perhaps not. (But the success story of Bill Gates has had several boatloads of luck in it: look up the history of the various early PC operating systems and you will see just how very lucky Gates was with DOS.) But if I ran Microsoft I guarantee you one thing: its product quality would be much, much higher than it is now because I would insist on it as the least that is owed to the customers. It probably wouldn't be as profitable, but the product quality would certainly be higher.

And there wouldn't be a single knowable security hole in any of the operating systems or browsers the company ever released, either.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
First off, the game producers should refuse to release a flagrantly buggy game. Their individual and group pride in their work and their committment to excellence should make them see to it that their work was sufficiently tested - both privately and publicly - in order to expose and eliminate any flagrant bugs.

Well it would be nice to live in a perfect world, however we dont. All you have to do is look over the past 14 years or so of computer gaming to see that. As computer games get more complex you think that there will be some sort of reverse of the bug trend? Add to that fact that publishers will do what they have to to for their bottom line thats just not going to happen. They are in it for the money, not to make you happy, get use to it.

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Second off, the user community of any upgraded product should demand a public beta test for the upgrade - loudly. Public testing ensures that users have signed off on the fact that there are no flagrant bugs, and allows the identification of any subtle but significant ones so that they can be eliminated before public release.

Demand what you like, you wont get it. You'll get what they give you. You think the general public will do anything about it? No, they will ***** and moan and then buy it when it comes out. Happens all the time. And the larger the user community the less likely you could get them to do anything much less reach them. I would be shocked if more than five percent of people who buy Civ3 have ever visited this site. As for a public beta the only thing they are really helpful on are compatibility issues. Most of the time when you find a bug in open beta its already been reported and is on the list because of a closed tester. Closed testing is where most of the bug work is done and for good reason, the least not being a set reporting sop.

And as I said before just because its on the list doesnt mean it will get fixed anytime soon. You add a publisher who likes to stick their nose in the patching process (like Infogrames is noted for) things are going to get slower and more of a pain is the ass.

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Third off, no user community should be so desperate for any software as to prostitute themselves for it and defend not only its bugs but the "right" of that product to have major bugs. That's called enabling, and it is simply sick behavior. The user community needs to be demanding the excellence it is paying for as well as accountability instead of acting as product fanboys ("Oh, it's so complicated and wonderful a product that it's okay if it has showstopping bugs.") That entire position is despicable, whether you are talking about an operating system, a driver, or a game.

And no critic should be so clueless to ignore real life as you are. Funny I dont see anyone defending the "right" of games to have bugs in this thread. What they are saying is that it happens and whinning about the fact that it does aint going to change a thing. Get use to it, life aint perfect. Also one thing that kills me is every board where there is a flame war about bug I see someone yell "fanboy", and the real stickler is those persons are the ones that have no idea what goes on in the development of a game. I see it holds true here also.

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Oh, and as to the guy who said I shouldn't have Bill Gates' job? If I did, your software would probably be many, many times more reliable. And your comments about it would be listened to very, very carefully. To some of us, bugs are not an option and the user is king.

I think the saying "Talk is cheap" covers this quite well.

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Bottom line: there is no excuse, no justification, no rationalizion, no fanboy enabling that anyone can ever make for commercial software that is released with showstopping bugs. None.
Quality assurance. Pride in your work. Public testing. Listening to user feedback. A committment to excellence. Testing and testing and testing and testing and testing and then testing some more. This is how you make software that works and stands the test of time.

No excuse other than life aint perfect, and you'll never be in a position to do anything about it. Lighten up Frances.

All this talk about bug free code is kind of amusing. While I am unhappy about the number and type of bugs found in Civ 3, I do realize that bug free code is usually impossible. There are ways to prove a program mathematically correct, called formal methods I think, but these proofs become exponentially expensive to perform and probably are not practical for game development or any commercial software for that matter. Even using mathematical proofs is no guarantee that code is going to be bug free, but it minimizes the probability of them occurring. A program of Civ 3's complexity will have bugs, that is not in question. What I find disturbing are the blatant bugs displayed in Civ 3. You would think a seasoned development house such as Firaxis would know how to avoid obvious bugs wouldn't you? The only thing I expect from a commercial software developer is to minimize the number of bugs before releasing the software for sale and that is where I think Firaxis has failed miserably. I can live with the fact that bugs exist in code, especially a game. I don't like what I see coming out of Firaxis though.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Oh, and as to the guy who said I shouldn't have Bill Gates' job? If I did, your software would probably be many, many times more reliable. And your comments about it would be listened to very, very carefully. To some of us, bugs are not an option and the user is king.

How long have you been a programmer? Not just a home-grown hacker, but will commercial software and real customers with high expectations and deadlines that impact the company's bottom line?

From reading that statement, I would guess never.

[Hywel Dda]

As yet another software developer, I weigh in with my opinion that, whilst it is certainly impossible to ensure that a software release does not contain bugs, it is nevertheless wholly unacceptable to release software that has very visible bugs or shortcomings in it, that people will spot straight away.

Any quickly visible bug or quirk *should* be caught by the alpha-testing stage, let alone the beta.

And during by 20-year career, it has amazed me how people have become more and more accepting of - and less and less likely to criticise - and even ready to defend - very buggy software releases. CivIII is a case in point (though more from shortcomings than actual bugs).

Why are people on this thread defending Firaxis position here? I am a great fan of their games but that does not mean that I'm prepared to put up with short measure *especially* in situations where we were definitely promised better. The theoretical impossibility of eliminating every little bug does *not* justify the premature release of software with very definite shortcomings.

[yin26]

Hywel Dda: Your words, sir, are like manna from heaven. Salute!

[Platypus]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
"Obviously you dont work in the software industry. Bugs are a fact of life, like death and taxes. You can't ever get rid of all the bugs, its impossible because human beings are fallible."

Nonsense. It is humanly possible to produce perfect code. I have seen it done, and I have done it myself. It takes talent, dedication, focus, testing and a committment to excellence - but it CAN be done.

It's possible, but the time required to write a non-trivial program and verify it to be bug-free exceeds the market lifetime of the program rather sooner than some people seem to think.

The employee you want is one who is committed to the goal of producing bug-free software. The employee you don't want is the one who thinks that buggy software is acceptable.

I disagree. The employee you want is the one who is committed to the goal of returning maximum value to your company. That usually goes hand in hand with minimizing bugs, but not always. The obvious counterexample is when trying to kill that last bug will cause the ship date to slip past a hard deadline and result in a contract being voided. Other less extreme examples are possible too, but I hope the point is clear enough.

Ahem. I have written software, in about 9 different languages. I have written DRIVERS - heck, you might even be using one that I wrote.

Yeah, yeah. I've written drivers and other kinds of code that's more difficult than drivers. For three years I specialized in high-availability clustering. I've been paid to write as an expert on how to produce quality software. Despite all that, I admit that every non-trivial program I've written has had bugs - despite every validator I've run it through, every unit test I've written, and every month that highly skilled QA people (or customers) have spent torture-testing it. Any programmer who doesn't make a similar admission is simply deluding themselves and attempting to mislead others. Even SEI capability-level 5 shops (of which there are two in the world) have produced code with serious bugs, with serious consequences.

Bug-free software can be written; it's been done. At the very LEAST it can be what you constantly strive for. Anyone with the attitude that bugs are not only inevitable but acceptable is striving not for excellence but for mediocrity.

On this we agree. Even though it is an almost provably unattainable goal, bug-free software should nevertheless be a goal. "Bugs are inevitable" should not be used as an excuse. If a bug is identified, the proper response is "oops, we'll fix it". If the bug "should have been" found and fixed sooner - subject to reasonable standards of skill and diligence, plus constraints of business survival - maybe there should be an apology as well. "Stop whining" from a developer or apologist is just as counterproductive and inexcusable as "you suck" from the person who found a bug. If you ask me, we've been seeing far too much of both on this thread.

[Platypus]

Originally posted by Malleus Dei
Oh, and as to the guy who said I shouldn't have Bill Gates' job? If I did, your software would probably be many, many times more reliable.

...and it would also be many years from completion, not benefiting a single user anywhere. Actually no, it wouldn't, because your version of Microsoft would have gone bankrupt years ago and you'd be looking for a job in some other industry. To adopt your own phrasing, there is NO EXCUSE for any software developer to be so hung up on self-delusional no-bugs grail quests as to interfere with the business goals of their employer. NONE. And that's true in every other industry too.

[Platypus]

Originally posted by rid102
If Firaxis knew that e.g. Air Superiority was broken then IMHO that is unprofessional of them to release it. This is a "showstopper" bug IMHO because the software is not conforming to specification (i.e. it is not behaving as the game rules suggest).

No, that's not a show-stopper. Nobody's going to die from an air-superiority bug in a game, and applying medical-equipment or flight-control standards to a game is a false analogy. We don't know if fixing the bug might have caused Firaxis to miss a contractual deadline, which would have "stopped the show" in a much more concrete way.

BTW, have you ever seen any software that conformed to the spec in every respect no matter how trivial? I've seen a lot of software in my over-a-decade in this industry, and I don't think I've ever seen any that met that unreasonable standard. Half the specs I've seen were self-contradictory in some subtle way or other (specs have bugs too), so it wouldn't even be possible. That's not a workable definition of "show stopper"; such a definition must necessarily include impact/severity, frequency of occurrence, cost to fix, damage to reputation if not fixed, maybe even professional pride, but it's never as simple as people here seem to think.

[Platypus]

Originally posted by number6
All this talk about bug free code is kind of amusing. While I am unhappy about the number and type of bugs found in Civ 3, I do realize that bug free code is usually impossible. There are ways to prove a program mathematically correct, called formal methods I think, but these proofs become exponentially expensive to perform and probably are not practical for game development or any commercial software for that matter.

Exactly correct. Such programs are called verifiers, validators, or model checkers. I've written one, and used a couple of others. There are several major problems with the entire genre, including but not limited to the following:

• As you point out, the state space grows very quickly to the point where the time required for validation exceeds the lifetime of the universe. It happens sooner than you think. State space explosion is the #1 problem in this field, and quite a few brilliant researchers have spent their whole careers trying to address it...sadly, to little practical avail.
• Successful validation only proves that the program meets the requirements as given to the validator as input, and that input can have its own bugs.
• Both the algorithm and the requirements must usually be specified in a validator-specific language, which inevitably means that what you're validating is not the actual running code. The only system I know of that applies serious validation techniques to real code is Dawson Engler's MC, and that technology is still in its infancy.

I apologize for interjecting a little software-engineering reality into what is obviously a very satisfying (but uninformed) pig-pile, but it just seemed necessary. The perfect is the enemy of the possible, and I'm really big on exploring the possible. Maybe we can get back to something related to games now, instead of pretending to be software-engineeering expert.

[Asesino_Virtual]

ALL programms have bugs. Visible or not, there is always a bug.

[yin26]

Then again, that's not the issue, is it?