Jost Amman
Hunter
More "Steam Love" for the devs... 
PC V2.0 Storms Brewing Dev Diary
- Thread starter Crater Creator
- Start date
How likely is it that a new estimate will be any better when we know they are really really bad at giving accurate estimates?
HammerDano
Survivor
sorry, but, what a silly defence for not even trying.
State what you intend...amend it as necessary...give explanations. simple. development is a living process...so is informing people.
have you guys not noticed how surprised, and informed people have felt ON HERE, by the posts shared from other sites? like Joel explaining why they stripped some things out...that stuff matters and it should be on THEIR OWN ■■■■ SITE.
Jost Amman
Hunter
I agree on this part, even if it doesn't make me go mad.
Riamus
Hunter
When have they NOT acknowledged that? They've said it a number of times. You just want them to give you dates, which they aren't doing. That isn't the same as not acknowledging that they are behind. In the end, almost all your posts come down to the exact same thing... being upset that they aren't following the dates they posted. No matter how many times you disagree about it, what we all expect from you if they did give you revised dates is more complaints about how they aren't hitting their new dates either. I doubt many here have any interest in hearing you complaining about new dates in addition to the original dates. I am very happy they aren't giving dates and I wish they hadn't given dates to begin with so we wouldn't have to listen to this every day.
You continue to go on and on about lack of communication, yet we are continually updated with information about what they are working on. Sure, some of that doesn't happen on the forum, but their various social media pages are just as official as this forum. I don't look at any of those, so I only find out what was posted there when someone quotes it here, but you don't see me complaining about it. It always reaches this forum and it isn't going to change anything if it is posted by TFP directly or by someone else. The news and information will still be the same thing. Besides, when it comes down to it, a forum is not a normal place to post news. Social media is the normal place, or at least just on the main website. You reach far more people that way than on a forum post that quickly disappears by a lot of random stuff (like this). I won't disagree that they could improve communication, but it isn't really any worse than most dev studios.
If you don't want to play the game until it's finished, then wait for 4.0 and don't bother checking here constantly for news. 4.0 is a long ways off. Check back in a year and see where we are. Check back in two and we might be ready for 4.0 soon. You'll save yourself a lot of anger and stress - both of which you clearly have. Why keep being upset when you can do something else while you wait? A lot of us do that. I have a few hundred games on various platforms that I can play while waiting if I don't want to keep playing this. Even if you don't have many other options, I'm sure you have some.
If you instead want to keep complaining about them being behind, go for it. That's your right. Just don't expect anyone to feel sorry for you, or for very many to agree with you.
faatal
Fun Pimps Staff
Dropping by the forums late or on a weekend does not take much time. No one tells me to, I just happen to be on my computer, probably going to play a game and like checking in. I also read a variety of messages on Discord from coworkers wanting to share something. Work from home is very different from the old days of having to go in and be in work mode as I can do 5 minutes of work and be done. No travel needed. Pop in or out as often as I feel like other than my wife getting on me if I work too much on a weekend if not doing something important.Hi @faatal , I see you're working on a Saturday... remember you can still call 1-800-911911 to report employer abuse!
On a more serious note: are you guys given a lot of freedom on your work schedule/hours? Just curious.
We have narrow core hours around noon where we schedule big meetings, otherwise people do what makes sense for their time zone or sometimes for other's time zone.
Oh, and that was about 1:30 am Friday night, which was still part of my Friday. I am a late night person and get up late most days.
Post automatically merged:
I guess. Not something on my radar currently.
faatal
Fun Pimps Staff
It is a property, but it does not work like that. You could put Smell on items, but it persists with the item, not you. It would fade out if you get rid of the items. SmellUse requires using the item.
faatal
Fun Pimps Staff
Based on my 34 years of getting paid to make games, at about a dozen different companies, 50% of the time when someone gives an estimate it is just plain wrong. The longer the task, the more wrong it tends to be and often massively wrong. The other 50% of the time they may be close or not too far off, but still can be off quite a bit. When wrong it is almost always underestimating. I have worked with guys who I learned to just x3 however long they said anything will take, which is my rule these days for even my own tasks.
Game development is full of unknowns. How do you estimate time of an unknown? By finding something close and trying to remember how long that took. Good luck, as most tasks were not done in a linear fashion but mixed up with other tasks.
Smells is like noise, but different, but wait the new smells is copying parts of noise, so does it even matter how long noise took you if you could even figure that out as we are not starting from square one. Months ago I told people, hey I could make it like noise and have it working in a day or so. That only gets your foot in the door, so really several days, then others wanting this change or that and hours of talking about it and more changes and has probably been a week of work so far of just my time, with Allan also roped in for hours of xml changes and testing.
A method you could do is say nothing until a release is a few weeks from being really done, then announce you will release it 3 months from now, which should mostly guarantee success, if there were such a thing. I think some companies do that, but it is really hard to be that patient with all the pressure to build hype and get products out the door.
And now my 5 minute drive by estimate is way off, but my wife is sleeping, so don't tell.
Riamus
Hunter
Thank you for writing that out for people. Even with my FAR more limited development work, I know how difficult it is to hit a specific date on something if you are giving the date closer to the beginning of development rather than the end of development. There are just so many things that can need to be changed or go wrong or whatever that you can't know about in advance. You can estimate a far longer time period, like that x3 you mentioned, but then you are not building the hype and people think you're taking too long. Of course, if you choose a shorter time period, you're likely to miss it, potentially by a LOT, and then people are also upset about it taking too long. There's no way to win when giving dates. But you're also right that not giving dates also hurts hype. People did get frustrated at hearing "it's done when it's done," but the overall tone from them was less angry than now when we have the missed dates, it seems.
I feel that focusing on the upcoming features rather than dates can build enough hype without dealing with missed dates, but I also have far less experience in professional software development (over 30 years non-professional, though) and so I can't really say what is best.