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I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

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Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#181

Post by w0mbat »

tomschlick wrote: post #172
firefoxd wrote: post #170

Another take: Dev 1: Hey, I think we can improve the load time by fixing X, Y, and Z. Dev 2: that's neat, create a ticket so we can keep track of that. Product 1: hey, what's this ticket about? Dev 1: oh, that's to speed up the load time. It's a quick fix. Product 1: was that in the requirements? Dev 1: No, but it will be a huge improvement. Product 1: ok, I'll mark it as Tech debt, and put it in the back log. ~~ Man…

That's why you stop asking permission to make quick fixes and just submit the PR. Obviously there is a balance here but if you can't "steal" a few hours in a week from the product driven roadmap to do so then there is something wrong in the engineering culture.

Absolutely. If something is oddly slow, I run the profiler to see what's going on. If the profiler shows me something boneheaded like this that is a big win to fix, I fix it. Obviously I make sure the tests still pass, but then I check it in. If someone is going to give me shit for improving the product, that is not somewhere I want to work.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#182

Post by makecheck »

A really cool example of good debugging especially without the source.

Also a good reminder that the slow thing may not be what you think and if you aren’t profiling you don’t really know what’s going on.

And an even better reminder that typical “metrics” trying to assess developer value can be pretty meaningless. This is the kind of code change that would drastically improve everything but show up as a blip on some of the pathetic measurements out there, e.g. hardly any lines of code or whatever.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#183

Post by tomschlick »

lmm wrote: post #180
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any orgs explicitly ask the engineers themselves decide how to allocate a certain percentage of story points in a given sprint? Product people are great for selecting which features to build out and which bugs to address, but are poorly equipped to decide how to prioritize things like: performance optimizations, bugfixes that haven't (yet) been reported by the end users, code refactoring, paying down tech debt, mo…

My first job worked like that. We explicitly had a 25% stream of technical improvements. It worked pretty well.

Same. When I was a team lead I always pushed for 30% of all story points being for maintenance / tech debt that product couldn't touch.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#184

Post by tomschlick »

w0mbat wrote: post #181
tomschlick wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you stop asking permission to make quick fixes and just submit the PR. Obviously there is a balance here but if you can't "steal" a few hours in a week from the product driven roadmap to do so then there is something wrong in the engineering culture.

Absolutely. If something is oddly slow, I run the profiler to see what's going on. If the profiler shows me something boneheaded like this that is a big win to fix, I fix it. Obviously I make sure the tests still pass, but then I check it in. If someone is going to give me shit for improving the product, that is not somewhere I want to work.

The boy scout "leave it better than you found it" mantra has always served me well. Hell, sometimes that small fix can lead you down a rabbit hole that uncovers fixes to larger problems that have been plaguing an app for an eternity.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#185

Post by blobbers »

kingcharles wrote: post #158
outworlder wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, unless they have a really clever system to do hot code reloading, EVERY SINGLE DEVELOPER AND TESTER would have been plagued by these load times. I wonder if the watercooler rooms at Rockstar are exceptionally furnished as a result.

Sometimes testers aren't even working with the full data set. And testers might have some seriously shit-hot hardware that is max spec too. When I was developing everyone would go buy the absolute best PCs out there at the start of every new game to make sure they lasted through dev.

Max spec wouldn’t make a difference. 7 years later, still slow.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#186

Post by blobbers »

kingcharles wrote: post #157
barrysteve wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customer has put up with 6 minute load times, but a low framerate kills sales quickly (unless you're Star Citizen).

And kills reviews. Most reviewers won't freak about the load time, but the framerate they will.

Alright, this comment thread has some potential R* devs. (Jokes jokes)

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#187

Post by rendaw »

tomschlick wrote: post #172
firefoxd wrote: post #170

Another take: Dev 1: Hey, I think we can improve the load time by fixing X, Y, and Z. Dev 2: that's neat, create a ticket so we can keep track of that. Product 1: hey, what's this ticket about? Dev 1: oh, that's to speed up the load time. It's a quick fix. Product 1: was that in the requirements? Dev 1: No, but it will be a huge improvement. Product 1: ok, I'll mark it as Tech debt, and put it in the back log. ~~ Man…

That's why you stop asking permission to make quick fixes and just submit the PR. Obviously there is a balance here but if you can't "steal" a few hours in a week from the product driven roadmap to do so then there is something wrong in the engineering culture.

The solution is for ICs to stick their necks out, go over the product manager's head, and ignore the org chart? Not get a new product manager who cares about the product?

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#188

Post by dylan604 »

tomschlick wrote: post #184
w0mbat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. If something is oddly slow, I run the profiler to see what's going on. If the profiler shows me something boneheaded like this that is a big win to fix, I fix it. Obviously I make sure the tests still pass, but then I check it in. If someone is going to give me shit for improving the product, that is not somewhere I want to work.

The boy scout "leave it better than you found it" mantra has always served me well. Hell, sometimes that small fix can lead you down a rabbit hole that uncovers fixes to larger problems that have been plaguing an app for an eternity.

What of those odd stories where somewhere else in the code another dev realized the segment of code was doing strange things and create a work around that now breaks because of the cowboy anything goes attitude changes? Usually with comments talking about it "being very weird to do this, but it works"

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#189

Post by highstep »

asdff wrote: post #149
baby wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably wrong. I remember e-commerces trying to quantify how many millions of dollars they would lose when clicking would take too much time on their websites. EDIT: things like https://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cos... > Amazon’s calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. Google has calculated that by slowing its search results…

That's ecommerce. This is a video game and a unique one at that, so there are other factors at play. I don't think many people go "game took forever to load, guess I'll play for less time then." There could even be a bullwhip effect, a long load time might make you want to stay playing for a longer period of time.

the load times were soooooo bad. Insultingly bad. It doesnt seem like you understand the true extent to how horrible rockstar managed this issue. I definitely quit playing for exactly this reason, even at the expense of spending less time with a good friend who i played with. Rockstar is a garbage disrespectful company for allowing this to go on for so long.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#190

Post by gabereiser »

tomschlick wrote: post #172
firefoxd wrote: post #170

Another take: Dev 1: Hey, I think we can improve the load time by fixing X, Y, and Z. Dev 2: that's neat, create a ticket so we can keep track of that. Product 1: hey, what's this ticket about? Dev 1: oh, that's to speed up the load time. It's a quick fix. Product 1: was that in the requirements? Dev 1: No, but it will be a huge improvement. Product 1: ok, I'll mark it as Tech debt, and put it in the back log. ~~ Man…

That's why you stop asking permission to make quick fixes and just submit the PR. Obviously there is a balance here but if you can't "steal" a few hours in a week from the product driven roadmap to do so then there is something wrong in the engineering culture.

Ask for forgiveness not for permission. Whole heartedly agree.
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