Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Volourn]

Fuck off with your corrections, Seaking "BETTER THAN THOU" 4.

 

[coffeetable]

I can't see shit on that pic with the quests listed, but if it is formatted the way I think it is, we have over 80 quests.

between this + the quality of the code, im beginning to wonder if the programmers at obsidian are stuck in an early-90s time loop

 

[Sensuki]

There's so much useless shit in the classes, it's like they don't delete stuff as they change their code :/

 

[mutonizer]

Yea it's a bit crazy in there though they might clean up at some point.
Not sure if it's because it's too complicated for my dumbness, or too dumb for my cleverness but I checked out Wasteland 2 code to compare (since it's also unity engine) and it's nice and clean in there and I can follow along no problem...so there.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

It can still be impossible to make a useless character with bigger differences in attributes.

Maybe not useless but let's say noticeably less than optimal. Unless they do a lot more work on balancing stats (and talents), significantly increasing their effects (ie making them actually relevant) will only make for example Might/DEX/CON Fighter be much better at his job than PER/INT/RES one and the only reason you might make the latter one will be stat checks or something (which goes against Josh's goals).

However with low enough stat effects the guy larping the charming and intelligent weakling of a fighter will still be roughly as effective in battle (due to his class and talents) as the one that is supposedly a physical beast even with stats not being balanced for every class (which is overall an extremely hard thing to achieve) so he won't feel the urge to whine/complain/restart the game.

In short, stats having a big impact is risky and requires lot more work (to be balanced), stats having low impact is safe (boring for sure but safe).

 

[coffeetable]

There's so much useless shit in the classes, it's like they don't delete stuff as they change their code :/

this is a classic symptom of not having unit tests

 

[coffeetable]

what im trying to figure out is whether the obsidian programmers know their code is a travesty and just don't care, or if they don't realise how bad it is

because personally, a 4,000-line class like CharacterStats.cs would get me fired

 

[Duraframe300]

what im trying to figure out is whether the obsidian programmers know their code is a travesty and just don't care, or if they don't realise how bad it is

because personally, a 4,000-line class like CharacterStats.cs would get me fired

You could ask Adam Brennecke or we can summon Anthony Davis

Which I just did.

 

[coffeetable]

i already asked (in a more polite way) in the decompilation thread on the OEI forums. didn't get a response

 

[coffeetable]

likely answers:

"that's just how games programming is"
"tight deadlines force us to do hacky things like that"
"we're too tightly integrated with the engine to do unit tests"
"game lifecycles are so short there's no point in implementing good architecture"
"why would good programmers work with us when they can make >$120k anywhere else in the bay"
"why would good programmers work with us when we're a bunch of cowboys"

 

[Duraframe300]

i already asked (in a more polite way) in the decompilation thread on the OEI forums. didn't get a response

... And?

Random Thread XY doesn't exactly yield the highest possibility of response. You can also PM Anthony directly if you want. I'm sure he'll give you a response. Whatever it may be.

 

[fanta]

There's so much useless shit in the classes, it's like they don't delete stuff as they change their code :/

this is a classic symptom of not having unit tests

And of spaghetti OO clusterfuck in general. I was curious how much they do in functional style, looks like very little. Wanna write a short survey/review of the code? It's the first time we have first hand insight into legendary Obsidian programming.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

You guys are behaving as if the hacks at Obsidian actually give a fuck about the quality of their work. That bunch of old washouts already got your money.

 

[Cazzeris]

Nice box art, reminds me of Infinity Engine games for sure.

Now it's time to reveal WL2 CE box.

 

[Davaris]

likely answers:

"that's just how games programming is"
"tight deadlines force us to do hacky things like that"
"we're too tightly integrated with the engine to do unit tests"
"game lifecycles are so short there's no point in implementing good architecture"
"why would good programmers work with us when they can make >$120k anywhere else in the bay"
"why would good programmers work with us when we're a bunch of cowboys"

"Pack rat coding. Its the new shit."

No one's paying them to make reusable code. They are paid to make milestones. Next game, next game, next game.

 

[hoverdog]

You guys are behaving as if the hacks at Obsidian actually give a fuck about the quality of their work. That bunch of old washouts already got your money.

requesting dumbfuck tag for Derptastic Derpetic

 

[coffeetable]

And of spaghetti OO clusterfuck in general. I was curious how much they do in functional style, looks like very little. Wanna write a short survey/review of the code? It's the first time we have first hand insight into legendary Obsidian programming.

i spend enough time reading my own garbage code, and im paid for that

"Pack rat coding. Its the new shit."

No one's paying them to make reusable code. They are paid to make milestones. Next game, next game, next game.

when their shitty design is the root cause of such a landslide of bugs that mean you need a three+ months to get rid of just the major ones, and when it happens with such regularity that the company as a whole acquires a reputation for crap software, then maybe its time to think twice about whether a fire-and-forget approach to development is really the best idea

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

You guys are behaving as if the hacks at Obsidian actually give a fuck about the quality of their work. That bunch of old washouts already got your money.

requesting dumbfuck tag for Derptastic Derpetic

I noticed how you didn't counter my verifiable accusations of shoddy code work and started displaying your

 

[hoverdog]

You guys are behaving as if the hacks at Obsidian actually give a fuck about the quality of their work. That bunch of old washouts already got your money.

requesting dumbfuck tag for Derptastic Derpetic

I noticed how you didn't counter my verifiable accusations of shoddy code work and started displaying your

butthurt? I'm not the one who posts a variation of "HURR DURR OBSHITIAN RONK HERP REMOVE SAWYER DERP" every two pages on average. that's some quality angst problem.

 

[Davaris]

when their shitty design is the root cause of such a landslide of bugs that mean you need a three+ months to get rid of just the major ones, and when it happens with such regularity that the company as a whole acquires a reputation for crap software, then maybe its time to think twice about whether a fire-and-forget approach to development is really the best idea

You better speak to management about that.

 

[Jedi Exile]

You guys are behaving as if the hacks at Obsidian actually give a fuck about the quality of their work. That bunch of old washouts already got your money.

They hope to sell this game and make more money so you are wrong. It's the problem with Obsidian games in general. Also, PoE team is quite small as I understand it.

 

[mutonizer]

They hope to make a franchise, PöE and other games after that, so indeed they should care for clean and easily re-usable code, unless they want to start from scratch for PoE 2 and whatnot.

 

[Infinitron]

In before this code thing ends up being like the Pallegina voice acting

 

[hoverdog]

In before this code thing ends up being like the Pallegina voice acting

ALL THE CODE IS PLACEHOLDER

 

[Abu Antar]

I can't speak for registry stuff at the moment (apparently this is how Unity stores things by default and maybe it can be changed) but I can say that saved game stuff is moving in either the next Backer Beta or the following to %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity.

I'm in agreement myself about Registry-usage and using the "proper" spots for persistent game data - it's just bending Unity's defaults to our will

Good.