Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero." • Hacker News Board

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#51

Post by matwood » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 1:54 PM UTC

jeffool wrote: post #39

matwood wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. Shipping is really hard - basically the end result of execution. A perfectly run project can still suck to work on at the end. The problem is that for most people the fun part of working on a project is the discovery phase when you're building something new. The last 20% of squashing bugs and going from "the code is working" to the "code is shippable" is generally not a good time.

I speak from a point of ignorance, I've never worked in the field. That said, if a project requires months of unplanned crunch time, it wasn't perfectly run. And I don't think anyone would say that crunch isn't commonplace. (At least, I think patio11 is referring to the culture of crunch time. Correct me if I'm wrong!) You probably know that, but, if not, (or for those who don't) here's some reading: http://en.wikipe…

I've read those articles when they were written, and have even read the book Death March. Those situation are obviously not how things should be.

Patio11 responded to Abrash saying near the end of the project there were rough patches and that eventually they all were tired of working on it. No matter how well run a project might be there will always be rough patches and you'll likely be sick of working on it at the end. Quake is a great game, but imagine running the same level or even worse, same portion of a level all day long looking for obscure bugs. Even if you planned for this time, doing this for weeks is going to suck at some point. It's just the nature of working on a long term project and taking it from working to shippable.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#52

Post by io » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 1:55 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #18

gregschlom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point, but I think that's really not what Michael Abrash was meaning here when referring to "heroes". His point is simply to show how hard it can be to finish a product, no matter how well or ill managed the team is.

Exciting as it was, we hit the same rough patches toward the end as any other software project. I am quite serious when I say that a month before shipping, we were sick to death of working on Quake. Finishing projects should not require this and anyone who tells you different is your enemy. I mean that.

I couldn't disagree more. Doing the grungy work of getting a big project ship-ready doesn't automatically mean there's a death march underway. It means you're a team that's disciplined enough, grown-up enough, to focus on the good of the project, as opposed to what's fun.

There's no reason that kind of work can't also be rewarding. Running a marathon is hard work, not pure fun, yet people find the endeavor rewarding.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#53

Post by JabavuAdams » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 1:59 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #18

gregschlom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point, but I think that's really not what Michael Abrash was meaning here when referring to "heroes". His point is simply to show how hard it can be to finish a product, no matter how well or ill managed the team is.

Exciting as it was, we hit the same rough patches toward the end as any other software project. I am quite serious when I say that a month before shipping, we were sick to death of working on Quake. Finishing projects should not require this and anyone who tells you different is your enemy. I mean that.

They may be your enemy in the sense of an employer / worker bargaining situation, but they may also be right.

Even in a well-run project, there are many factors that are outside the control or reasonable knowledge of the project workers (the unknown unknowns).

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#54

Post by JabavuAdams » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:03 PM UTC

imurray wrote: post #33

rubinelli wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll probably like another interesting article about a similar problem, the network code of X-Wing vs. TIE-Fighter and how they handled extremely high latency and packet drop rates: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3374/the_internet_suck...

I did. Thanks! Their arguments suggest UDP with no acknowledgements. If they had needed to send more data they might have needed slightly more sophisticated error correcting codes than repetition codes. Doing that and keeping the latency low could be a challenge however.

You might like RakNet: http://www.jenkinssoftware.com/

Whenever I think "I should roll my own semi-reliable protocol..." I look there first.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#55

Post by JabavuAdams » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:06 PM UTC

gregschlom wrote: post #2

I'm a huge fan of Michael Abrash and his writting style: He always starts with a totally unrelated story, and somehow manages to relate that to the topic of his article. Check out the other chapters on Quake here: http://www.bluesnews.com/abrash/ The story on the first one is truly inspiring as well.

How old's his daughter these days? He used to start his Doctor Dobb's Journal (DDJ) articles with anecdotes about his (toddler) daughter.

I'm guessing she's now older than I was when I was reading those articles.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#56

Post by JabavuAdams » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:14 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #30

erikpukinskis wrote: post #5

Quake was a huge part of my formative nerd years. I remember fondly the first time I ran the BSP calculation for a level I built, fired it up and crapped my pants at how smooth the rendering was. The game itself was pretty bizarre, but so many nerdgasms were had over the insanely beautiful shit they were able to render in real time. And then if you got a 3dfx Voodoo Graphics card you would get translucent water and b…

And then if you got a 3dfx Voodoo Graphics card you would get translucent water and bilinear filtering on the textures.... It's hard to explain to those who were not around the revolutionary change that occurred when GLQuake + the Voodoo card came out. It was one of the few 'holy shit' moments in my technological life. I knew then and there that everything changed going forward.

Seeing DOOM for the first time in my buddy's residence room had that effect on me.

The thing is I knew the math for 3D CG, but more from an academic angle. I'd also been playing some true 3D games like LHX. I "knew" that what I was seeing was just impossible -- there was no way it could be that fast on that hardware.

So, simplifying the problem from 6DOF 3D to 2.5D made a world of difference.

I love the idea that I might be able to turn an impossible problem into something solvable if I just constrain myself to solving a subset.

Something to keep in mind when stakeholders want everything all at once, with no compromises. Compromise / prioritization is what makes cutting-edge technology possible.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#57

Post by JabavuAdams » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:20 PM UTC

redfloatplane wrote: post #25

As a computer games development student, this feels very relevant to me (as, I'm sure, it does to other software developers). Even a project I'd like to do, on my own, for a week, is very hard to finish. There never really seems like there's a point to polish after I've learned what I wanted to learn. I'm battling this literally as I write this comment - this is only another way to procrastinate. I find keeping rigid…

As a computer games development teacher ... :)

There are ups and downs, and one gets used to dealing with them. It's just practice.

One of the most motivating things is to get positive feedback -- both from shipping features, and from human contact.

I always have times where I'm in a rut ... I don't want to work on the project ... but someone sees it and they think it's cool. Or maybe I get away from it for a few days, then look at it with fresh eyes and get re-motivated to fix just one more thing...

Also, you can use procrastination to your advantage. Don't play games or surf to procrastinate. Instead if you're burnt out on project A, switch to project B, or set up a server, or write a script, or exercise, or play music, or read a math book (I'm giving away my preferences).

Anything to recharge or to make progress on something else that needs to be done.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#58

Post by delinka » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

projectileboy wrote: post #46

patio11 wrote: post #13

I got the hero speech too, once. If anyone ever mentions the word "heroic" again and there isn't a burning building involved, I will start looking for new employment immediately. It seems that in our industry it is universally a code word for "We're about to exploit you because the project is understaffed and under budgeted for time and that is exactly as we planned it so you'd better cowboy up." Maybe it is differen…

3 guys wrote the world's first game that rendered a truly three-dimensional world, and they did it in software, and it ran at 20+ frames per second on my Pentium 75. It's not quite correct to talk about Quake the way you would talk about almost any other software project. BTW, if you're curious, Abrash goes into greater depth at the end of his "Black Book of Graphics Programming", which I think is now freely availabl…

Don't forget Wolfenstein 3D. While not directly germain to the topic at hand, this makes Quake second and probably more likely its development was handled like any other software project.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#59

Post by statictype » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:23 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #13

I got the hero speech too, once. If anyone ever mentions the word "heroic" again and there isn't a burning building involved, I will start looking for new employment immediately. It seems that in our industry it is universally a code word for "We're about to exploit you because the project is understaffed and under budgeted for time and that is exactly as we planned it so you'd better cowboy up." Maybe it is differen…

As far as I could see the article had nothing to do with exploiting programmers with visions of glory, but rather urging developers to finish what they start - a surprisingly difficult goal in our field.

Re: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

#60

Post by tincholio » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:28 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #58

projectileboy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 guys wrote the world's first game that rendered a truly three-dimensional world, and they did it in software, and it ran at 20+ frames per second on my Pentium 75. It's not quite correct to talk about Quake the way you would talk about almost any other software project. BTW, if you're curious, Abrash goes into greater depth at the end of his "Black Book of Graphics Programming", which I think is now freely availabl…

Don't forget Wolfenstein 3D. While not directly germain to the topic at hand, this makes Quake second and probably more likely its development was handled like any other software project.

I think you misunderstood the parent post. Wolf3D was not really 3D, nor was Doom after it, and many other FPSs that came around at that time. Quake was the first really 3D FPS (e.g. you could walk under a bridge without "tricks").

I don't know what development process they had at ID at the time, but given that it was a Carmack project, I very much doubt it was anything like "any other" software project.