“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed” • Hacker News Board

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#361

Post by Adlai » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 8:35 AM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #272

rkangel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issues with estimating, particularly something like this, mostly comes down to meta-ignorance: you don't know what you don't know. Given a particular problem of a similar sort to something he's worked on, an experienced engineer will be able to list 10 different issues that might crop up. An inexperienced engineer won't know of those potential problems and will just see the most optimistic path possible. When you're…

This is a crucial observation. "Hofstadter's Law" at work: any unfamiliar task will take longer than planned, no matter how much extra time there is the plan. You can't account for your ignorance with padding, you need some kind of actual knowledge. The result, then, is that there are only a few ways to actual make an AAA game. One is to hire some quorum of people who've already made one, so that they can bring you u…

You missed the recursion:

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#362

Post by Narishma » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 8:48 AM UTC

Thimothy wrote: post #349

jandrese wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any PC Only "AAA" titles anymore? I'd think stuff like the Witcher 3 and XCOM 2 are more in the AA range. It is such a murky definition.

The Witcher 3 is also available in last gen consoles, and although XCOM 2 has not been announced for consoles (it's still in development), the first XCOM was released even for iOS and Android.

Current-gen consoles (PS4 an Xbox One).

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#363

Post by gambiting » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 8:55 AM UTC

homulilly wrote: post #285

gambiting wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$30k USD, converted from GBP for the convenience of US readers ;-)

So for practical purposes isn't that even less? The cost of living is a bit higher in the UK as I recall.

Well after taxes I take home ~1300GBP(~2000USD)/month. The cost of living is higher,but then - I'm in the North East of England, which is comparatively cheap. I do get 25 days of paid holidays + unlimited sick leave. Other companies over here pay a lot more, but then...I love what I'm doing. It's a hard decision man.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#364

Post by collyw » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 8:55 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #301

pimlottc wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frightening is the variability of daily productivity. Some days everything comes out the first time, you're using the right framework and you finish 20% of the project with 10 lines of code. Other days, you lose hours chasing down a bug from a single typo, or debugging an obscure corner case incompatibility between two libraries. And there's no sure way of telling what kind of day you'll get next.

This is almost correct - I think if you work all the time to keep it simple, the days of badness are fewer

They can still exist. Its not always in your own code.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#365

Post by gambiting » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 8:57 AM UTC

hlfw0rd wrote: post #125

gambiting wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. I work as a programmer in one of the largest studios in the UK and make $30k/year. Games industry is brutal with wages.

Please quit. If not out of self respect, then to protest these horrid rates for software engineers everywhere.

You know, I would. My partner is also a programmer, works in the same city, is the same age as me, and makes $15k more than I do. But then again...I absolutely love what I'm doing. I work on a AAA project that is going to be one of the major releases of 2015/2016 and that millions of people are going to play. The work is great, the people are fantastic...I love it. It's only the pay that is shit. But do I really want to be doing something that I won't enjoy just to have more money? Probably not.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#366

Post by collyw » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 9:01 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #279

Joeri wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue that I'm struggling with as I picked up experience and learned how to estimate better (read: higher) is of becoming a wet blanket. People will rave about this awesome thing we could do, and I'm the one saying "no, we can't, and this is why". That's why Steve Jobs said to stay foolish, it lets you chase after ideas that a rational person would consider too risky or just plain impossible.

The flip side of meta ignorance is the curse of experience. Inexperienced people are more likely to take big risks because "they don't know any better." Most of the time, these risks predictably don't pan out, but sometimes they do!

When two implementations look similar, inexperienced coders are unlikely to know which one represents the bigger risk.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#367

Post by erikb » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 9:01 AM UTC

dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

I'm so surprised that there are people who actually have a sense of things. I try to tell others all the time that in software having an inexperienced developer you need to multiply with 3x for best hopes and with 10x for common case, sometimes even experienced devs ending up between 2x and 5x.

People often don't believe me, some reason being that some developers really deliver on time and sell it as finished but then having the rest of the team fixing bugs and working around strange APIs for months. Often it's just that they also haven't experienced the pain of developing something of reasonable scale and stability.

No man, these are not tears, I just got something in the eye.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#368

Post by erikb » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 9:04 AM UTC

rkangel wrote: post #46

I'm actually finding it reassuring to see some of these 'our project failed, sorry' messages coming up. It reassures me that kickstarter is actually being used to fund new things, rather than just as a marketplace for existing products, where you don't even have to have found any capital up front.

You'll probably see that less and less. People start to learn that the end user is a horrible investor. A real investor knows that out of 10 projects more than 5 will fail. The end user doesn't. He gets really angry at any fail. A few months back there was a blog post in "lessons learned about kickstarter" style where they basically said you need to make sure it's already well funded and nearly beta before you go to Kickstarter and have a shot.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#369

Post by erikb » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 9:07 AM UTC

DjangoBKN wrote: post #299

That was both scary and sad. As a fellow who is starting out to make a game too.

Learn from it by thinking smaller. When you started out making GTA5+1 and in the end have a new Tetris you are still in the top 10% of people who tried, I think. Really, cut down everything you can and some you can't. Remember that the first iPhone came without copy&paste. Good luck!

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#370

Post by victorNicollet » Thu, Aug 13, 2015, 9:08 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #275

They mention problems with collision detection, which indicates they were writing their own game engine. Why? There are good game engines available, and writing one is a big job.

Collision detection, in a platform game, is an user experience problem rather than a well-specified mathematical problem. If it feels like you should have landed on that ledge, you don't care what the capsule-versus-AABB test says: you expect me to "fix" the game.