Not happy with SH4? Write your own!

[badkarma]

Interesting post, especially for me as I'm a C# developer

I think I get who you're aiming for, the people who pass off SH4 as no good and say they could do it better, it's easy. For those people, your post is an excellent start on their education to how hard good coding is.
The problem is, it's also read by (and maybe taken to heart by) a lot of people who know that it's hard to code and they couldn't do it.. yet have bought a faulty product from a company.

Maybe the car crashing and killing the family was an extreme example, so here's a more down to earth one...

A new style of TV comes out, we'll call it Ultra-HD. You head to the local electrical store and after being told by the salesman how great it is, you buy one and take it home.
When you get it home you find that it switches itself off every 2 hours, sometimes the picture shudders or shows half of 1 channel and half of another.
What do you do?
At any point whilst you discover this TV's problems do you think "Hmmm, Radio Shack/Maplins sell wire and stuff, I might try making my own one of these over the weekend"?
Or, do you go back and demand that something is done so that the faulty equipment that they quite happily took your money for is made to work as it was specified.

The problem with the gaming industry is that it is acceptable to push out unfinished, not fully tested products and "sort them later". No other sales industry allows this, yet we gamers seem to just put up with it, and it's madness.

I don't expect everything in life to be perfect, I'm not that unrealistic, but some of the buggy junk that games producers throw out that they then fix later on when they get round to it, is rediculous.

I guess I'd sum up with, if SH4 (or any game) is faulty or not as described then complain directly to the creators (posting in endless threads on forums just gets lost) and/or take it back to your game shop for a refund.
Ranting that you can do better is no use (and most likely very very very wrong!) but also putting up with it means that SH5 is gonna be JUST the same

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by badkarma

Ranting that you can do better is no use (and most likely very very very wrong!) but also putting up with it means that SH5 is gonna be JUST the same

Ha! What SH5?

[Antrodemus]

Ha! What SH5?

Was that an informed prediction?



/hopes not...

[Floyd]

I've always found the design/modelling part of any project way more difficult than
the implementation/programming part. Imagine sitting in front of a white
paper and start to write down all (sub)systems that have to be designed
and "glue" them together (make a model) ... a nightmare.

Well, programming was real fun but it just takes too much time. If you can come
up with 200 lines of code a day (including design and debugging , so a really
optimistic value) and if a project has 200.000 lines of code (so rather small),
it will take you 1000 days or ~3 years of daily work to complete - so better forget it.

We should all enjoy the game, don't curse the devs and hope for a few
patches to fix the more or less annoying bugs. In this sense, happy hunting.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Antrodemus

Was that an informed prediction?



/hopes not...

I stated this in 2001 when SH2 came out, it still applies today. No sales = no future Silent Hunter. If Silent Hunter 2, which was a noble but crippled game, had not sold well, you would have never heard of SH3, let alone GWX or NYGM. People, in case you have not noticed, no one has made a real sub simulation other than Silent Hunter since 1994's Aces of the Deep. If you enjoy playing a sub simulation, you may want to think before posting a rant about some insignificant annoyance. If you have a criticism, by all means express it, but be reasonable, productive, and supportive. Show a little tact. Make it easy to distinguish your discussion from the spewmonkies who screech and foam like someone choked their dog over every problem, real or imagined. You are working with the dev team, in a partnership of player and developer, to keep naval sims alive. Because that's pretty much how it is, folks.


Just in case someone cannot read between the lines, let me black & white for you: If the game sells, they will consider future projects. If the game does not sale, it's on to Rayman: Raving Rabbits 2.

[joea]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

...it's on to Rayman: Raving Rabbits 2.

Oh wait...

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by badkarma

A new style of TV comes out, we'll call it Ultra-HD. You head to the local electrical store and after being told by the salesman how great it is, you buy one and take it home.
When you get it home you find that it switches itself off every 2 hours, sometimes the picture shudders or shows half of 1 channel and half of another.
What do you do?
At any point whilst you discover this TV's problems do you think "Hmmm, Radio Shack/Maplins sell wire and stuff, I might try making my own one of these over the weekend"?
Or, do you go back and demand that something is done so that the faulty equipment that they quite happily took your money for is made to work as it was specified.

You would be surprised to learn that you are close to reality. Let us take, say, sony. They make all things PlayStation. Now I could spin you yarns of tales of woe and worry about those dodgy, flimsy things. The average life expectancy of a sony PS2 lasser pickup must be, what, 1 year or so. I know this from a few guys that work for a living repairing them. They released the V9 series of the PS2 with a component defect that more or less guarantese your pickup will short circuit sooner rather than later.

Now take sony TVs. I had a very good friend whose Sony TV actually turned it self off. Oh boy. And he had it in for repair 4 times, they never fixed it. So, surprise surprise. Dumping buggy **** on customers is a well known practice. do not think The Man is after games customers especially.