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I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

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Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#131

Post by miahi »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #33
azemetre wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m starting to slowly realize how terrible it is working in environments where people simply aren’t curious. It’s so hard for me as an individual contributor to decouple this way of thinking. Curiosity is how we find better ways of doing things or finding out hidden flows that can be better. Incurious people are a contagion, but I want to believe you can make people curious. It can’t be innate. Every company talks a…

Don't blame the people, blame the environment. People might start off curious but eventually they keep running into political roadblocks and other nonsense, which slowly beats the interest out of them. If those are the kinds of people that continue surviving then those are the kinds of people which your environment cultivates.

Discussion from today: "Do you know if feature X works? A customer is asking about it" "No, it was disabled because of a bug a while back" "Hmm, found the ticket, it's from 4 years ago!" "Yes, basically it's a bug from a new version of a 3rd party software that made it unusable. At that point it was basically decided that we will not try to find a workaround, we just tell the customer that it's a 3rd party issue."

The funny thing is, all the people who made that decision left the company/project and now we have the option to change it. Can't wait to see what happens next, if the new leadership changes that or not (my money is on "not").

The other funny thing is, I can think of at least two workarounds that only need a day of work and a couple for testing it.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#132

Post by secant »

I feel like these problems are all around and often present in games. There's one that particularly infuriates me in Hearthstone, a Blizzard developed TCG, where when a game ends it causes the processor to furiously spin up and causes all kinds of anomalous behaviour like webcam cutting out, mic distortion and other generally laggy behaviour.

I'm aware that there's probably a lot going on at the game's end but I'm still utterly convinced there is a coding bug causing this amount of processor spiking but I lack the skills of debugging Unity, which is the game's engine, to determine what actually is going on. I guess that's the issue, the ability of conducting the research the kind in the OP article is extraordinarily rare even among game devs so these problems persist (Hearthstone is just turning 8 years old now) without anyone with the deep knowledge to rectify it.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#134

Post by tialaramex »

outworlder wrote: post #87
aliswe wrote: post #30

This is why you need a language (on a framework) with high introspection, with smart insights. Excuse my opinionatedism, but this is what .NET Core gives you. It even streams JSON serialization/deserialization without much memory requirements, iirc.

Nah. We just need to stop this idea that JSON(or similar formats) is an acceptable data storage mechanism. It's fine when interacting with low bandwidth APIs across different systems, where the need for debugging is greater than performance. But on a shipped game? Just bake this JSON into a better, binary serialization format. No need to parse data that seldom changes over and over again. It doesn't matter if you can…

This is GTA Online, so while it's a "shipped game" that JSON changes, Rockstar decides to offer the "Pfister Astron Custom" for $2.5M and they just change the JSON. I don't know whether it's fetched from their servers on startup, or whether it's on disk and just updated periodically, but either way choosing JSON is not as crazy as you seem to think.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#135

Post by blowski »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #129
blowski wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an extremely false dichotomy. There is also the solution that you set up your own company, or convince your manager your time is best spent on this. I’ve worked around too many startups ruled by developers. They’re being run into the ground because those developers think technical NFRs as defined by them are the be all and end all. They’re not. Those same developers will happily spend months fiddling with…

> There is also the solution that you set up your own company, or convince your manager your time is best spent on this. This is the definition of a flippant comment. Why should society require we become the lord of our own domain or a political chameleon just so that we can advocate for decent standards? Should people who live on flood plains "just move" when the tide comes in? Ridiculous. Understanding the bigger p…

What makes you think they didn’t understand the developers’ point of view? Maybe they understood it, but didn’t agree with it.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#136

Post by Tarragon »

lostgame wrote: post #133
Tarragon wrote: post #72

I assume there is an upcoming: Show HN: Passive karma farming to 10k Two submissions an hour, 24 hours a day...

Wow. I wanted to call you out for just being an asshole, but seriously - is this account just a bot? And who cares about karma on HN?

Both things can be true.

There's clearly a bot here but ddtaylor has commented on this thread, so there's also a person in there somewhere.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#137

Post by [deleted] »

blowski wrote: post #78
azemetre wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t trying to blame engineers that wasn’t my intention, but someone needs to own establishing the environment that actively encourages or doesn’t encourage curiosity. Talented people are found everywhere, but hopefully someone with authority over them doesn’t slowly poison the drive out of them.

Why should developers necessarily be trying to cut loading times? Perhaps GTA is phenomenally successful because they have good BAs and POs who are able to identify and convince engineers to work on what matters to the bottom line.

[deleted]

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#138

Post by samstave »

azemetre wrote: post #25
kevinventullo wrote: post #18

There’s an implicit story here which I find quite sad that not a single developer at Rockstar in the prior eight years had the autonomy or bandwidth to discover and fix this themselves.

I’m starting to slowly realize how terrible it is working in environments where people simply aren’t curious. It’s so hard for me as an individual contributor to decouple this way of thinking. Curiosity is how we find better ways of doing things or finding out hidden flows that can be better. Incurious people are a contagion, but I want to believe you can make people curious. It can’t be innate. Every company talks a…

My brother is the polar opposite of me when it comes to curiosity.

I ALWAYS ask questions like "How did this come to be, How much did this cost, who designed this and why" etc.

My brother gets annoyed that A) I ask and question everything, and B) Laments he doesnt know as much as me.

However, this is spurred by my ADHD... and I at times wish to be able to have a more precise control of my focus.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#139

Post by mypalmike »

outworlder wrote: post #87
aliswe wrote: post #30

This is why you need a language (on a framework) with high introspection, with smart insights. Excuse my opinionatedism, but this is what .NET Core gives you. It even streams JSON serialization/deserialization without much memory requirements, iirc.

Nah. We just need to stop this idea that JSON(or similar formats) is an acceptable data storage mechanism. It's fine when interacting with low bandwidth APIs across different systems, where the need for debugging is greater than performance. But on a shipped game? Just bake this JSON into a better, binary serialization format. No need to parse data that seldom changes over and over again. It doesn't matter if you can…

I'd guess that json is the least of their problems. Even with the fix, load time is still an unreasonable 2 minutes. This suggests they aren't doing any of the load performance things game devs have figured out over the decades, like streaming loaders and stacked memory pools.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#140

Post by pdimitar »

blowski wrote: post #118
s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screw this. Developers should advocate for their craft and for quality, and business metrics should hold an adversarial position to balance things out. We definitely should not be accepting the narrative that developers just do what they are told and don't push back on what we know is good for product - we are in a unique position of power, we should recognise this and use it for the betterment of the industry as a w…

Sounds like an extremely false dichotomy. There is also the solution that you set up your own company, or convince your manager your time is best spent on this. I’ve worked around too many startups ruled by developers. They’re being run into the ground because those developers think technical NFRs as defined by them are the be all and end all. They’re not. Those same developers will happily spend months fiddling with…

Even if your parent comment presented false dichotomy, you responding with the other extreme isn't convincing.

As a senior programmer I respect business priorities and I don't go fixing technical debt for months.

That being said, we the people suck at moderation. See, the problem I faced was exactly the opposite of what you encountered: I've been too accommodating and allowed myself to be micro-managed to the point of a manager telling me how should I do my job; that's when it finally clicked with me on what a toxic workplace have I landed back then.

So neither of both extremes is good. I agree business priorities have to be respected; absolutely. At the same time we shouldn't allow the businessmen to tell us we can't ever fix technical debt.

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