Is this it?

[TDK1044]

I can just hear Sales And Marketing now....."look, water's water, just change the color and call it the Pacific. change the scenery and the ships...oh, and I suppose the subs. when can we have it?"

Oh don't get me started on middle managers.....oh, too late!

Most IT project managers come from Bachelor of Anything (BA) schools, their simple job is to play with MS-Project, do some simple addition 'n substraction using Excel and spend an inordinate ammount of time on producing Power Point Presentations.....oh dear, etc.

Upper management find it hard to talk to developers, hence they recruit a lacky to do this work for them. The lacky, with his BA, runs around asking the devs for estimates. He then communicates this to upper management, who unfortunately live in their own world of PDAs and executive toilet keys. They in turn do a simple calculation of dev days * dev cost = too much money (it always equals too much money). Having no regard for anything other than the worn out mantra of "reduce costs" they insist the lacky reduce the estimates. And so begins another disaster in the world of software development.

Given that 80% of all IT projects are overspent, over time and fail to meet all requirements you'd think someone might actually one day wake up and smell the coffee.

So the end result is you have a company structured via Taylor Hierarchy with people at the top who want things done, people at the bottom who do things and loads of people in the middle who feck things up.

Of course, some companies are beginning to realise this disaster scenario and have replaced their lackys with tech heads. And these companies tend to fare much better.

The business threat of Open Source to these traditionaly structured companies highlights this very well. Which is quite nice in my oppinion


Remember, the revolution is only a T-Shirt away....mine says "I haven't got Tourettes, yer just a c**t!"

[Von Tonner]

Originally Posted by Bando

For what it's worth, maerean_m, I agree

Ditto, ditto. I admire your courage to come out and publically call it like it is.

[John Channing]

Originally Posted by scrapser

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the people who manage software projects at UBI were discussing the development status of SH4. This is of course assuming there is such an office or group within the company. Either they flat out don't care whether titles are finished or not...or something internal to the company took place that necessitated alotting such a short time to put it together. Perhaps they assumed it would be a knock off since it would be built off the SH3 model.

No need to wish. Here is one real life example...

Cristi Hriscu - Game design


HARBORS & CITIES

Having a whole planet at your disposal is not always a good thing. Especially when you need to built cities and harbors to populate this planet.

The majority want to see something “uber”, mega, hipper cool looking city… you have a radius of visibility of 20 km and you are alone. Scary, isn’t it!

If we think on Earth as it is in Silent Hunter IV to add harbors and cities to all that landmass it could became a pain if you need to do it traditionally like… take that tree put it there, take that building put it there. You may start to have nightmares and convulsions during the night and an old looking in the morning.

I’ve tried such a way in SH III and I indeed had nightmares… and… an old … looking… yeah!

Plus that you can’t have tons of polygons to make houses to look as it should look. When I think on cities I need to build in Silent Hunter IV I’m feeling like a cave man. A modern one!

In the 1st day - I’ve started with building a generic city and a generic forest. Combined this two and obtained a city surrounded by forest. I put those two things on the land and it looked good.

In the 2nd day - I’ve changed the vegetation with a winter one… and was looking good too. Still don’t have the courage to start a more offensive operation at a macro level. I was quite safe in my cave!

In the 3rd day – I’ve made kits for winter, summer, tropical, autumn… etc. All looks good at a first glance.

In the 4th day – I talk with programmers to not force me to put all by hand on that land mass. They said that it will be ok but I was still afraid.

In the 5th day – Programmers thinking!

In the 6th day – I’ve discussed with the thinking programmers … cause they always find a way to forgot what you asked them (I can understand them cause sometime are too crowded by “taskforces”)… and we found a solution… the city and forest where spread automatically all over the landmass and the city tiles had a controllers of urbanism level on them that allowed to show/hide some buildings according with a RAW data file for urbanism and a controller in the editor. The result was good. And all was happy.

In the 7th day – The Managers came and they said that the landscape look like …

In the 8th day – All where depressed…

In the 9th day – Still depressed…

In the 10th day – We made some changes on textures – just for quays. All the rest had remain the same. And we also made some new tiles with small improvements. We stay in the face of fate with pride.

In the 11th day – The mangers came! They saw the new look and they “fell in love” with it… with a small comment: They want it too look more Far Cry like. And we all fall in depression… again.

In the 12th day - We adjusted the vegetation and other stuff and we add a nice platform to the city tiles to not place it directly on ground and to look like a sky scraper in a farm courtyard. Was an acceptable compromise!

In the 13th day – The Mangers came and we don’t let them to say nothing cause we understand that the whole cities look like Greece, because of that platform but, because of the slope of the terrain and the huge amount of cities that we should have, we prefer to look like Greece even in Japan than to look like a skyscraper on a farm’s courtyard or to look like .

In the 14th day – I was thinking on how GOD could create the whole Universe in 7 day. I had conclusion that I was scared of. That day I was afraid to go outside to not be hit by a lightning. Now I have nightmares with the number 7 and 14… and I hear voices. But the result on cities is quite OK… yeah, even if they look like Greece! Now I need to go over another task: How I can make people on the coning tower, Control room and … other people wherever they are… to look alive… GOD, this is so scary!

As Mihai said... genius is making the impossible look easy.

JCC

[scrapser]

I friend recently told me to stop looking for logic in the world. You will get yourself in trouble every time.

Originally Posted by scrapser

I'm a software developer. I know the complexity of this field. I just find it baffling and at the same time inexcusable to see what has become of the software market in general. Half-baked software is now the norm!

Im not a software developer but i do study to be a software engineer now on my second year. I consider myself one of the better skilled people in my class. And tbh when i see the crap code my class mates writes from time to time it do send me wondering. I mean if they keep that standard when they leave uni then they shouldnt be able to get any jobs writing code, or maybe thats the problem, they do get jobs writing code

But i also have to hand it to the devs. When the deadline is running out it can be hard and often you sacrifice good code for crappy code that works but breaks easy. I dont blame the devs, i blame UBI for pushing games out the door to soon. I like Stardocks approch better. Its done when its done they dont work with set deadlines. Sure it might piss some people off but it gives you quality software.

Anyway i to havent played SH4 since it came out, but now with 1.3 ill give it ago again

[Seeadler]

Originally Posted by Lio

Its done when its done they dont work with set deadlines.

Like 3D Realms, they work on Duke Nukem Forever since 1997.
Become a developer of Duke Nukem Foreverand you never need any concerns about deadlines

[heartc]

---

[heartc]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Yes he is a Dev. We have several Devs as Forum members here, including the lead game designer.

Oh, Ok. Then he should be fired - like - yesterday. There is NO way that you talk about YOUR company like that. I'm working my ass of for my own company as well, and it isn't always fair, and it isn't always easy, but there is NO way I would spill my mouth about MY COMPANY in the public like that. Because in the end, the "+" you see on your bank account is from YOUR COMPANY. You made a deal with them: You work for them, you offer your skills for them, and for this, you get the "+" on your bank account. The deal did not include badmouthing YOUR COMPANY, let alone among YOUR COMPANIE's customers, while still readily accepting the money you get from YOUR COMPANY at the same time. So, if you want to badmouth YOUR COMPANY, you should leave it beforehand. Otherwise, you are a hypocrite.

Just my opinion. What the **** is wrong with people.

@heartc

Sorry mate but I completely disagree. Have you seen Metropolis or 1984 or Brazil ?

I suggest you read anything by Chomski, Robert Fisk, John Pilgner (sp?) or Mark Thurban....I think you'll then find that this "company" you so defend doesn't give a flying haggis about you.

In fact, your post makes me sigh in exasperation

[TDK1044]

Originally Posted by heartc

Oh, Ok. Then he should be fired - like - yesterday. There is NO way that you talk about YOUR company like that. I'm working my ass of for my own company as well, and it isn't always fair, and it isn't always easy, but there is NO way I would spill my mouth about MY COMPANY in the public like that. Because in the end, the "+" you see on your bank account is from YOUR COMPANY. You made a deal with them: You work for them, you offer your skills for them, and for this, you get the "+" on your bank account. The deal did not include badmouthing YOUR COMPANY, let alone among YOUR COMPANIE's customers, while still readily accepting the money you get from YOUR COMPANY at the same time. So, if you want to badmouth YOUR COMPANY, you should leave it beforehand. Otherwise, you are a hypocrite.

Just my opinion. What the **** is wrong with people.

All reasonable opinions welcome, heartc. No need to shout by using CAPS though.

I respectfully disagree with your position. The Devs have taken a lot of flak from people who were not in a position to know what those guys were up against with this project. All maerean_m did was post a different perspective that might actually make some people here engage their brain before their mouth.

Good for him. I applaud him for it.

[maerean_m]

Originally Posted by heartc

Oh, Ok. Then he should be fired - like - yesterday. There is NO way that you talk about YOUR company like that. I'm working my ass of for my own company as well, and it isn't always fair, and it isn't always easy, but there is NO way I would spill my mouth about MY COMPANY in the public like that. Because in the end, the "+" you see on your bank account is from YOUR COMPANY. You made a deal with them: You work for them, you offer your skills for them, and for this, you get the "+" on your bank account. The deal did not include badmouthing YOUR COMPANY, let alone among YOUR COMPANIE's customers, while still readily accepting the money you get from YOUR COMPANY at the same time. So, if you want to badmouth YOUR COMPANY, you should leave it beforehand. Otherwise, you are a hypocrite.

Just my opinion. What the **** is wrong with people.

Let us suppose you work for 3-4 month, non stop, including all Saturdays and Sundays. Every month has 170 working hours and yet they make squeeze another 90 (ninety) extra hours every month. You barely get to see you girlfriend\wife, let alone your parents. And what if you were the lucky guy that only worked 9h/day and others, like the Lead Designer, had to work until midnight (in many days) to get those subs working.

Let us suppose your colleagues are incredibly good professionals but the team is not left in peace to work its magic and the results are called SH4 v1.0 . If SH4 was a console game, there wouldn't have been any patch, including 1.1 . I dare you play SH4 out of the box.

After that, the team is scattered, working on other various projects and very few are left to work and create patch 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. Imagine the quality of the work done inside SH4 if only a couple of the team members could get it to the 1.3 state in such a short time. It means the project was almost there, it just wasn't allowed to be completed.

In the end, let us suppose that you begin to see the bosses coming to work in brand new, incredibly expensive cars, even though no dev team member received any bonus money.

After 4 months of continuous work, you are so tired you're getting physically ill.

So I'm wondering, what do you actually mean by "MY company"? I'm just one of the 3000 working-ants there. I work to earn a living, I'm not their bought out slave, the way you seem to think.

I come here, among friends, to talk about the game we all love and play in our spare time (including mine). And maybe improving the game, using the tools each one of us has. So the game gets in a state in which I can read the posts here and be proud about Silent Hunter 4. Imagine how the dev team felt when they were presented with the dvd containing SH4 v1.0 and they read the posts here .

Thankfuly, Subsim is not "Ubi forums". If you want an official opinion about SH4, you go there and talk to the support team guys (that we didn't meet and don't even know in what country they're located in).

I'm not trying to hurt anybody, all I'm talking about is being allowed to be proud about my work. Doesn't everybody?

Edit:

Did you know that SH4 team never got the time to actually play the game (like stop working and play it for a month (or a week, or a day)) ? Only the testers did play it, but they only report bugs they understand, because they don't play Silent Hunter the way you do. They didn't notice the stadimeter was buged when using imperial units (you guys were the only ones that reported it).



So, What the **** is wrong with people?

[Von Tonner]

You get my support maerean_m. I own a few companies and I can tell you I would be proud to have a staff member who has the pride you have in your work and is not timid or afraid to point out shortcomings within the company you work for. You are not a mindless robot - yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.

Edit:

Did you know that SH4 team never got the time to actually play the game (like stop working and play it for a month (or a week, or a day)) ? Only the testers did play it, but they only report bugs they understand, because they don't play Silent Hunter the way you do. They didn't notice the stadimeter was buged when using imperial units (you guys were the only ones that reported it).

So, What the **** is wrong with people?

omfg
that actualy explains alot and gives some insight into how this buisness works. I didnt like UBI befor and i like em even less now. But christ how can you make games with testers who dont know the genre. And not putting time off for the devs to test the game is ludacris.

The UBI executives should walk the plank
UBI and EA what a pair

[heartc]

Originally Posted by Uber Gruber

I suggest you read anything by Chomski, [...]

I would rather kill myself.

@maerean_m: Thank you for finishing the sim.
P.S. A slave cannot quit.