August 22nd release and Arcen AMA.

[Misery]

I don't think Chris needs you to defend him every time there's some kind of criticism.

Maybe, but I'm also really bored.

Not much else to post about right now.

[x4000]

Just got back into town.  A couple of responses:

1. The raptor looks very dark right now because of the shader I created for her, which I need to update to be better.  It's a WIP in some respects.

2. Regarding the unprofessionalism of delays, I can't argue with that or defend it.  I'm not looking to try to, either.  However, finances are super tight and we're trying to walk a fine line between getting things out in time and getting things out well.  In the end I've wound up putting in a bunch more money than I had intended or thought I was able to ($45k in the end of extra personal funds to make it to the revised deadlines, overall at this point).  I really did not want to spend this personal buffer money, and thought that we could get around that.  However, I looked at the project and felt like it was not where I wanted to release at the time, and so we have a delay and yet more money drain on my end.

Is that what I want?  Of course not.  And talking about doing things differently next time is a bit silly, since I am not doing it this time by choice.  "Next time you go down the stairs, it's a good idea not to trip and fall down the stairs."  Thanks... I'll keep that in mind.   In other words, this is a product of still being in recovery mode from events earlier in the year.  Hopefully with time and balance on this, we'll even out and not have to do this again.  It's certainly not something that I've been doing for the hell of it, though, I can tell you that!

[tombik]

Just got back into town.  A couple of responses:

1. The raptor looks very dark right now because of the shader I created for her, which I need to update to be better.  It's a WIP in some respects.

2. Regarding the unprofessionalism of delays, I can't argue with that or defend it.  I'm not looking to try to, either.  However, finances are super tight and we're trying to walk a fine line between getting things out in time and getting things out well.  In the end I've wound up putting in a bunch more money than I had intended or thought I was able to ($45k in the end of extra personal funds to make it to the revised deadlines, overall at this point).  I really did not want to spend this personal buffer money, and thought that we could get around that.  However, I looked at the project and felt like it was not where I wanted to release at the time, and so we have a delay and yet more money drain on my end.

Is that what I want?  Of course not.  And talking about doing things differently next time is a bit silly, since I am not doing it this time by choice.  "Next time you go down the stairs, it's a good idea not to trip and fall down the stairs."  Thanks... I'll keep that in mind.   In other words, this is a product of still being in recovery mode from events earlier in the year.  Hopefully with time and balance on this, we'll even out and not have to do this again.  It's certainly not something that I've been doing for the hell of it, though, I can tell you that!

Well you misunderstood my point again, even though I tried harder to convey my message this time.

Finances are irrelevant when picking a release date. It is about internal optimizations, which is irrelevant when it comes to actually picking a release date. I am not arguing, or criticizing that you took longer than you expected. It happens. What I criticize is how this gets fully translated into new release dates, almost on a day by day basis. 3 days of delays, but multiples of it seems unprofessional, not the total amount of time. I think delay of 1 month instead of 10 delays of 3 days is better. And if you wont use the last 17 days, so what, just make an early release, whiich would look much better.

To sum it up: Internal delays might be inevitable, while external ones (the ones that public knows about) not. Your fault is taking the two as inseperable, causing the point of my criticism.

[x4000]

Shifting a release date forward is much harder to do.  Press get caught flat-footed, it causes issues with partners and advertisers, etc, etc.  The reality is that we'd more likely be trapped into a later release date, and thus be committed to those finances.  It's possible that I am misunderstanding your point, but from my perspective of the checklist of things that have to happen for a release, a delay is a lot easier than a push-forward.  Delays are a lot more common, and I think a sudden early release of a game would almost be more alarming than a pushback (why the sudden dump of a game into the public -- what corners were cut, etc?).

My point is mostly that there isn't an easy answer here, and I believe I've chosen the lesser of the various evils when looking at the overall ecosystem.

[tombik]

Shifting a release date forward is much harder to do.  Press get caught flat-footed, it causes issues with partners and advertisers, etc, etc.  The reality is that we'd more likely be trapped into a later release date, and thus be committed to those finances.  It's possible that I am misunderstanding your point, but from my perspective of the checklist of things that have to happen for a release, a delay is a lot easier than a push-forward.  Delays are a lot more common, and I think a sudden early release of a game would almost be more alarming than a pushback (why the sudden dump of a game into the public -- what corners were cut, etc?).

My point is mostly that there isn't an easy answer here, and I believe I've chosen the lesser of the various evils when looking at the overall ecosystem.

Okay, now I understood your reasoning better. Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me.

[x4000]

Of course -- thanks for the reasoned discussion, too.

[Cyborg]

Some developers announce release quarters rather than release dates, and only when there is an actual release date is there an announcement.

[x4000]

Sure, but that doesn't work when things are in the very short term.  There are dozens of people we have to coordinate with, and they need some idea of what we're planning.

[crazyroosterman]

I've been away for 5 days (on holiday to Liverpool for those who are curious) and just thought id ask before I go to bed if anything particularly interesting has been happening development wise?.

[x4000]

Lots of interesting stuff.  Stay tuned for the next couple of days!  I'm writing this while waiting on some stuff to compile, heh.

[Draco18s]

Lots of interesting stuff.  Stay tuned for the next couple of days!  I'm writing this while waiting on some stuff to compile, heh.

[crazyroosterman]

Lots of interesting stuff.  Stay tuned for the next couple of days!  I'm writing this while waiting on some stuff to compile, heh.

that's something I've never heard of before so may I ask what you mean when you say your codes compiling?.

[Pumpkin]

Lots of interesting stuff.  Stay tuned for the next couple of days!  I'm writing this while waiting on some stuff to compile, heh.

Spoiler for Hiden:

that's something I've never heard of before so may I ask what you mean when you say your codes compiling?.

Things are more complex than what follows, but I hope it gives a clear insight of the process of compilation.

Computers only understand a specific binary language. As it's very cumbersome for humans to directly write binary programs, they created a code where each small word is easily translated into binary instruction. This code is named assembly language and the process to convert it into binary program is called "assembling" (and the program automatically doing it is called "assembler").

However, nearly each model of CPU has its own assembly language. Moreover, writing complex programs in assembly language is still very cumbersome. To solve that, modern computer science invented programming languages. They are more or less abstract but are in fine translated into assembly language and then into executable binary programs. The process of translating programming language into assembly language (and implicitly into binary executable) is called compilation (and the program doing that automatically is named a "compiler"). As the programming languages are complex and the programs are big, that process might take some times, from less than a second for several lines of code to many hours for titanic projects.

Among the programming languages, there are also script languages which are not compiled but rather interpreted. There are also the hybrid languages such as Java, but that's a whole other story.

I hope I made no mistake in my simplified overview. I'm sure the many experts here will correct me if I did.

[x4000]

Yep, that's all pretty spot on.  The difference with C# is that the code is very fast to compile, so it's just a few seconds at most.  So how could I have time to write anything in that span?

Well, doing a game build in unity is a LOT more time-consuming because it has to compile the shaders for the target platform, build up several GB of data and package it, etc.  Just for one platform that takes about 3-5 minutes at the moment, so I can wind up sitting around for 15 minutes while all three are building.  I can't do much during that time when it comes to actually working directly on the game, so I do peripheral things... like this!

[Draco18s]

There are also the hybrid languages such as Java, but that's a whole other story.

Java is weird.  I'd still call it a "compiled" language, it just compiles to Java bytecode rather than pure binary bytecode.  The Javabytes are then interpreted by/on the JVM.
But it lets you do some really cool and magical* things.  Such as creating or modifying classes at runtime, making 2+2 equal 5, or over-writing std::in and std:out with blank methods, protecting them against further modification or recreation, and hiding exit().

*sun.misc.Unsafe