PC I heard Roland loves graphs. Here's one showing the development progress of 7d2d.

M

Mephistopheles

New member
I'm going to refrain from interpreting this data, I'll let you all do that and discuss your interpretations if you'd like. I just thought I would share this.

https://i.imgur.com/axRhXS4.png

axRhXS4.png


And for those who want the actual numbers in case you want to check my math, here is the data. (Rounded to the nearest week or .25 months)

0 months - A1

+4 months - A5

+5 months - A6

+6.5 months - A7

+8.5 months - A8

+12 months - A9

+15.25 months - A10

+19.5 months - A11

+22.5 months - A12

+27.75 months - A13

+31.25 months - A14

+37.5 months - A15

+46.75 months - A16

+49.75 months - A16.4

+62.75 months - (TODAY)

 
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I'd love to see this against other games.

Would be fascinating to see if other developers have the same experience.

Thanks for the graph.

 
this graph doesn´t tell us anything. The progress per alpha is shurely not the same now than it was back in the early alphas. btw short alphas ruined the game because you allways had to start over.

 
The graph seems quite reasonable, considering that over time the amount of content, and the complexity increases steadily.

Also, imagine that A17 is released within the next 2 months, and that straight line at the top would have it's right hand end bumped up a line to A17, giving a gradient that is not overly different to that of the A16 line.

Also, given that it's a fairly arbitrary line where a developer decides to drop an update, and the steps from one alpha to another become less meaningfull.

But lastly, I do believe they have let down their players by drawing out this alpha so long. I've stopped playing A16. Subsistence is now taking up my time, and it seems a good game so far, with a lot of similarities to 7D.

 
this graph doesn´t tell us anything. The progress per alpha is shurely not the same now than it was back in the early alphas. btw short alphas ruined the game because you allways had to start over.
Click to expand...
This graph shows exactly how many months were spent between alphas, as well as cumulative time spent going from A1-AX. You're right, progress per alpha SHURELY has varied over time, and the graph tells you all of that. Perhaps you didn't take note of the labels designating what the X and Y axes represent? Really, it's all there, you just have to know how to read a simple line graph, but maybe that's expecting too much from someone who spells surely with an H?

 
Its normal that projects slow down implementing new features.

The codebase gets more and more complex, having more interacting elements. More testing and tweaking required.

Kind of the 80:20 rule...

 
This graph shows exactly how many months were spent between alphas, as well as cumulative time spent going from A1-AX. You're right, progress per alpha SHURELY has varied over time, and the graph tells you all of that. Perhaps you didn't take note of the labels designating what the X and Y axes represent? Really, it's all there, you just have to know how to read a simple line graph, but maybe that's expecting too much from someone who spells surely with an H?
Click to expand...
Wow, well clearly you have a motive for making this graph, so enlighten us, what is your point exactly?

 
I'd love to see this against other games.
Would be fascinating to see if other developers have the same experience.

Thanks for the graph.
Click to expand...
That might be challenging, because all the other EA games released about the same time turned into vaporware in half the time, were released already or are made by literally 2 persons(looking at you, Project Zomboid).

 
This graph shows exactly how many months were spent between alphas, as well as cumulative time spent going from A1-AX. You're right, progress per alpha SHURELY has varied over time, and the graph tells you all of that. Perhaps you didn't take note of the labels designating what the X and Y axes represent? Really, it's all there, you just have to know how to read a simple line graph, but maybe that's expecting too much from someone who spells surely with an H?
Click to expand...
If you don't mind a suggestion, you could draw a line that would show A17 if it were released next weekend, and shade the area between that line and the horizontal line that would be corrected if A17 would be released after a thousand years. That would show the possible range of this next line in the graph

 
This graph shows exactly how many months were spent between alphas, as well as cumulative time spent going from A1-AX. You're right, progress per alpha SHURELY has varied over time, and the graph tells you all of that. Perhaps you didn't take note of the labels designating what the X and Y axes represent? Really, it's all there, you just have to know how to read a simple line graph, but maybe that's expecting too much from someone who spells surely with an H?
Click to expand...
No, it shows just the alphas. What your assuming it that all the alphas are the same. I am 100% positive that A17 is bringing in more development than like Alpha A5 or any of the others. So it this case the graph actually shows nothing about development because the Alpha scale is not equal.

 
How does this show development progress?

This is just a graph of alpha releases. Absolutely nothing to do with development...

Talk about clickbait.

 
I think the chart is supposed to show that updates of different scope take different amounts of time.

At a glance that seems to work out.

 
Its normal that projects slow down implementing new features.The codebase gets more and more complex, having more interacting elements. More testing and tweaking required.

Kind of the 80:20 rule...
Click to expand...
Pretty much this for me.

I would have expected that as the game grew, the time between succeeding Alphas - all else being equal - would tend to EXPAND not CONTRACT.

To add to that, A17 is such a content rich Alpha that it's been doubly subject to that general trend.

 
I think the chart is supposed to show that updates of different scope take different amounts of time.At a glance that seems to work out.
Click to expand...
See that's why I'd love to see how other games were developed.

I wonder if there's a pattern.

Maybe lots of them experience a large update about the same time.

Wouldn't that be fascinating?

Anyway, that graph, more than anything else, shows just how large and important this update is.

Now I'm even more excited to see A17.

F3fWjAU.gif


 
See that's why I'd love to see how other games were developed.
I wonder if there's a pattern.

Maybe lots of them experience a large update about the same time.

Wouldn't that be fascinating?

Anyway, that graph, more than anything else, shows just how large and important this update is.

Now I'm even more excited to see A17.

F3fWjAU.gif
Click to expand...
I would imagine, if you could assemble such a comparative graph, that it indeed WOULD show a large blip, at least for Unity games. The recent engine updates will have no doubt presented challenges for many developers making Unity-based games, indeed, some I'm specifically aware of, who've had to deal with the process of moving across their projects to the new releases of Unity.

 
A graph of release dates only really shows a trend of releases, which is not the same as work being completed. Something like this would more likely help roughly predict the release dates, but that's about it.

In order to know how much is being done between releases, we'd have to have access to their Issue/Project Tracking software (Jira, Trello, etc). THAT would show all the stories they've worked on since the last release, how difficult the work was to complete, and burn-down charts showing the rate of progress. I'm not sure The Fun Pimps would necessarily want that to be public, though.

One of the issues with early-access development is that you have to get things done that aren't always presentable to the layperson. All the coding fixes could probably be summed up in a few paragraphs, but I doubt many people fully grasp the amount of work a one-sentence issue takes to fix. New graphical changes, menu updates, etc are easy to show off, but that's not always the works that needs to be done.

 
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