Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Hey guys, With the knowledge that these forums are rife with a lot of ignorance regarding the game development process, I thought it would be interesting to spin up a thread that allows software/game developers here on the forums to shed some light on Game Development and what it means for SWTOR in its current state. Feel free to shoot your questions this way, and I will try my best to shed some light on sticky subjects. Also if you are a game/software developer, speak up and help join the conversation for the sake of collective knowledge on more realistic expectations for this game! P.S. I am totally aware that this will get lost in all the controversial threads and may never see the light of day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Oh also, I do not claim to know everything, but I like sharing knowledge and helping people out if they are having issues with something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chromiie Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Can you show us your creditenals? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdstephen Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Please explain to the forums the process of nerfing/buffing classes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Can you show us your creditenals? Unfortunately some of my bigger credits either never saw the light of day or are currently under NDA, but I actively maintain Pushbutton Engine, which is a robust component based game engine for the web. I have programmed various modules for games for the web, desktop, mobile and installation pieces. (Mainly games for something like and auto show) After working on a AAA game for a year and a half that got cut, I don't work on huge teams anymore, but I have experience with them. If you need any more affirmation, PM me or reply to this thread and we can talk about programming and such Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Please explain to the forums the process of nerfing/buffing classes. Nerfing/Buffing classes is a process mostly handled by the design team. While I am not a game designer (I am a architect/programmer) I can attest for how complex the actual process is. From a development standpoint, Nerfing a class is currently THE most efficient way to to balance out all the classes classes. It is really simple logic. If you had to make the decision to either buff 3 classes or nerf 1, and the outcome in both scenarios will yield the same results balance-wise, which one would be the most economical? Changing 1 class is always easier than changing 3. It leads to less implementation from programmers, which leads to less risk of bugs. Nerfing/Buffing is pretty broad so I hope that helps shed light Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apocalypsezero Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 How time consuming is Bug hunting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrikeOfLight Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 (edited) I have some questions for you, if you would like to answer! ~In YOUR opinion, how good/bad do you think Bioware has done up to this point? ~What would you tell the developers if you had the ability to speak to them face to face? ~What are their biggest mistakes, and biggest successes? ~What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? Thank you. ~Strike Edited February 6, 2012 by StrikeOfLight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nullcrobicus Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 hai guise i make games for auto shows, that gives me authority to tell you how SWTOR is developed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boobaffet Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 I have some questions for you, if you would like to answer! ~In YOUR opinion, how good/bad do you think Bioware has done up to this point? ~What would you tell the developers if you had the ability to speak to them face to face? ~What are their biggest mistakes, and biggest successes? ~What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? Thank you. ~Strike i see your fun o meter went down again.. why? i dont recall that the game changed, you lost a game of huttball cause you got knocked off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marinus_ Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 (edited) Unfortunately some of my bigger credits either never saw the light of day or are currently under NDA, but I actively maintain Pushbutton Engine, which is a robust component based game engine for the web. I have programmed various modules for games for the web, desktop, mobile and installation pieces. (Mainly games for something like and auto show) After working on a AAA game for a year and a half that got cut, I don't work on huge teams anymore, but I have experience with them. If you need any more affirmation, PM me or reply to this thread and we can talk about programming and such Why does WoW have such great character control and smooth use of abilities, and SWTOR does not? Is it as simple as WoW has had several years to perfect their processes, or is it something in the hardware/programming that SWTOR will never be able to fix? I heard that WoW has the delay, but we don't actually perceive it because of the way the animations work. Or something like that. Is there any merit to this? Do you think we will see better character control, less ability delay, and overall smoother combat in the future? EDIT: Thanks for doing this. Hard to tell what rumors and explanations you can trust on the forums! Edited February 6, 2012 by Marinus_ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 How time consuming is Bug hunting? Bug hunting is VERY decieving. The process (from my experience) goes a little like this: 1) User sees bug and reports it 2) QA sees ticket and tests to confirm the bug exists (this can take a long time if the bug reproducible on only certain machine configs) 3) QA pushes to producers, which discuss how important the bug is 4) Producers then decide in which sprint/cycle the bug should be handled and by which team 5) The time comes for the bug to be fixed by the programmers. And when that time comes to fix the bug, a number of things can go wrong. - Dev can't reproduce the issue on their machine (quite common) - Dev discovers that the bug has to do with another module with a different team (also very common) Bugs that seem so simple to fix have taken me weeks to work out. Not to mention the tireless testing and deployment issues one needs to face before seeing their bug-fixing code in production. The bigger the team, the more cumbersome it can be to turn around a bug. That being said, some can be easy for a programmer to fix, might take a couple hours for him to track down the offending code and fix it. But even for an easy fix like that it can take weeks or months before it is deployed in game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoyaPooch Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Don't let the naysayers discourage you. This is a GREAT idea for a thread. I understand there will be bugs but I love the game and I mainly PVP with some PVE thrown in. I have 3 basic questions: 1) The daily WZ quest (3 wins) is just a nightmare because you can go on streaks of 3 or 4 straight wins without getting credit. They know the problem and even semi-claimed that it was addressed in a previous patch. The PVP community as a whole thinks this should be an easy thing to fix. Clearly it is not. Why is this in your opinion? 2) I have a very decked out computer that runs every other game flawlessly in the highest settings (Skyrim, League of Legends, Warcraft, etc.). Why does this game stress my system out intermittently? 3) I keep hearing about the horrible game engine (HERO) and it's memory leak. Can you explain this to me as I'm not sure what people actually mean by this. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daMarek Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Did you keep up with the missing High Resolution Textures issue? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=175553 If so do you buy the official reply and see a fix coming soon enough? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Why does WoW have such great character control and smooth use of abilities, and SWTOR does not? Is it as simple as WoW has had several years to perfect their processes, or is it something in the hardware/programming that SWTOR will never be able to fix? I heard that WoW has the delay, but we don't actually perceive it because of the way the animations work. Or something like that. Is there any merit to this? Do you think we will see better character control, less ability delay, and overall smoother combat in the future? EDIT: Thanks for doing this. Hard to tell what rumors and explanation you can trust on the forums! Well let me start off by saying that WoW has an amazing team of talented artists and animators that do some amazing things. I still love the animation in TOR, but I think WoW has a leg up as far as animation goes in some respects. The characters have a weight to them that is very magical As far as ability delay goes, I believe Blizzard has had a lot of time to improve the responsiveness off a character. Part of it is code execution and the other part is magic done by the developers to trick you into thinking something is more responsive than it actually is. The iPhone is a great example of this. Apple are UI geniuses and created a very responsive os for phones. Part of this is apples hard tie to the hardware, and the other part is in their UI design, if FEELS more responsive because it has cool animations and even though some tasks take longer on the iphone vs Android, the iPhone makes every task feel natural and responsive. I think Bioware has a lot of talent on the art side and constant refining will get animation to a much more confortable place than it is now. Polish. Polish. Polish. Thats the name of the game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IThrowRocks Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 I am curious to know whether or not a dev team would actually design a faction to be better than the other. The evidence seems to be stacked that the swtor dev team has favored the imperial side. You obviously don't know the true answer but from your point of view do you think blatent favortism would actually happen or do you think this is really an honest mistake? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Did you keep up with the missing High Resolution Textures issue? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=175553 If so do you buy the official reply and see a fix coming soon enough? The official reply is legit. The texture atlas issues are real for games! That being said, I think there are also some other design decisions that can help with the issue, (Like giving the Player Character only hires textures). I am confident Bioware is searching for the best answer from a design perspective Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 I am curious to know whether or not a dev team would actually design a faction to be better than the other. The evidence seems to be stacked that the swtor dev team has favored the imperial side. You obviously don't know the true answer but from your point of view do you think blatent favortism would actually happen or do you think this is really an honest mistake? IMO I wouldn't assume it to be intentional. We are all human beings, we are all biased in one way or another. I can't deny that if a writer is more stoked about Empire storytelling, that he will write a better story for the Empire. I think Bioware will shift around some of their resources to better balance out Devs with a passion toward a specific faction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asuka Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Armchair mmo developer stuff never ends well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
defiantlegacy Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Unfortunately some of my bigger credits either never saw the light of day or are currently under NDA, but I actively maintain Pushbutton Engine, which is a robust component based game engine for the web. I have programmed various modules for games for the web, desktop, mobile and installation pieces. (Mainly games for something like and auto show) After working on a AAA game for a year and a half that got cut, I don't work on huge teams anymore, but I have experience with them. If you need any more affirmation, PM me or reply to this thread and we can talk about programming and such Sounds like you'd fit in well with the SWTOR team. I honestly don't think you're qualified to take on the task you've set yourself, then again neither are most of the devs who respond here. Hope you do better! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scar Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Well let me start off by saying that WoW has an amazing team of talented artists and animators that do some amazing things. I still love the animation in TOR, but I think WoW has a leg up as far as animation goes in some respects. The characters have a weight to them that is very magical As far as ability delay goes, I believe Blizzard has had a lot of time to improve the responsiveness off a character. Part of it is code execution and the other part is magic done by the developers to trick you into thinking something is more responsive than it actually is. The iPhone is a great example of this. Apple are UI geniuses and created a very responsive os for phones. Part of this is apples hard tie to the hardware, and the other part is in their UI design, if FEELS more responsive because it has cool animations and even though some tasks take longer on the iphone vs Android, the iPhone makes every task feel natural and responsive. I think Bioware has a lot of talent on the art side and constant refining will get animation to a much more confortable place than it is now. Polish. Polish. Polish. Thats the name of the game Wait, you didn't take the opportunity to bash the devs or the engine. I think you might have lost some credibility with some of the forum dwellers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 I have some questions for you, if you would like to answer! ~In YOUR opinion, how good/bad do you think Bioware has done up to this point? ~What would you tell the developers if you had the ability to speak to them face to face? ~What are their biggest mistakes, and biggest successes? ~What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? Thank you. ~Strike 1. I think they have done a fantastic job considering the size and scale of the game that they are building, they have created an MMO that will draw in people who never thought in their lives they will be playing MMOS. Don't think that is a bad thing either. 2. Biggest Mistake: They have had trouble with Hero Engine. Not performance necessarily, but collaboration. The project/ team grew rapidly and the technology gave them a couple of bumps with development. Is this and issue now? I don't think so, I think it just caused them to spend longer than they hope in developing the initial release of the game. 3. What do you mean? An African or European swallow? ... AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Wait, you didn't take the opportunity to bash the devs or the engine. I think you might have lost some credibility with some of the forum dwellers. I realize the game has issues! But my expectations are set on real life development experiences, and this game is far from a bad one thus far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 Don't let the naysayers discourage you. This is a GREAT idea for a thread. I understand there will be bugs but I love the game and I mainly PVP with some PVE thrown in. I have 3 basic questions: 1) The daily WZ quest (3 wins) is just a nightmare because you can go on streaks of 3 or 4 straight wins without getting credit. They know the problem and even semi-claimed that it was addressed in a previous patch. The PVP community as a whole thinks this should be an easy thing to fix. Clearly it is not. Why is this in your opinion? 2) I have a very decked out computer that runs every other game flawlessly in the highest settings (Skyrim, League of Legends, Warcraft, etc.). Why does this game stress my system out intermittently? 3) I keep hearing about the horrible game engine (HERO) and it's memory leak. Can you explain this to me as I'm not sure what people actually mean by this. Thanks 1) It is safe to note that mistakes and miscommunications happen all the time. Bioware def got burned for claiming a fix. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and be more proactive when releasing Patch Notes 2) The game is an entirely different scale than a single player game. At one time swtor has almost 100 (or more maybe) putting crap into the game. Managing optimization is such a dense code base takes time, maturity, and a hell of discernment. I personally am not happy with performance, but I realize that Bioware are not idiots, and knows the issues that the engine has, and are scoping out fixes for it. Things do need to be prioritized though, and that is why they don't get fixed immediately. Me being able to play the game at 50-70fps on my high end rig is good enough for Bioware to prioritize more game breaking bugs. 3) HERO is likely not leaking memory, it is likely some production code within scripting or the other higher level systems. All games have memory leaks to some extent and will be addressed like any other bug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy_Saenz Posted February 6, 2012 Author Share Posted February 6, 2012 hai guise i make games for auto shows, that gives me authority to tell you how SWTOR is developed You don't have to take my word, it's okay. But just to let you know writing a rendering engine for a car simulator is the same as writing a rendering angine for an mmo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts