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I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

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Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#191

Post by tomschlick »

dylan604 wrote: post #188
tomschlick wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

If the tests dont fail thats not my problem.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#192

Post by tomschlick »

rendaw wrote: post #187
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.

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?

The product manager shouldnt be the boss of an engineer. Thats what engineering managers are for. Product / Eng managers work together to set goals of what they want done, it shouldnt include how they want it done, and exclude potential side fixes. Thats how you kill the morale of an engineering team.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#193

Post by xyst »

Panzer04 wrote: post #179

How can not a single person have hooked up a debugger and just paused it during the 5 minute load time? Especially given the difference between story and online mode? After eight years?

proprietary software combined with a small circle of people that play GTA5 and have the technical ability to disassemble code

also: corporate life, original devs rotated out. new team that has been maintaining is just adding features, new micro transactions, or building new heists

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#194

Post by sassy_quat »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #122
sassy_quat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you incapable of understand sarcasm? In fact you're arguing from Appeal to Authority now. I just, I don't understand. The weird thing is that your argument is extremely convincing at first glance even though the entirety of your argument is in a link to wikipedia?

Sharing knowledge and understanding doesn't have to be an argument.

Just what do you expect my response is going to be to that? I certainly don't understand anything more now. You bring up someone obscure and state he is representative of what I could conclude is all teachers urging for reform of our education system? Maybe after reading the previous arguments by COMPLETELY SEPERATE PEOPLE I have been mislead.

Not to be personal or anything, but I went to public school.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#195

Post by DeathArrow »

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.

>That's why you stop asking permission to make quick fixes and just submit the PR.

If the company pays me to close tickets and Jira stories, why should I care about improving its products?

If the company pays me to actually improve its products, then sure, I would do that.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#196

Post by viktorcode »

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.

The most likely explanation is they never used this launcher themselves. That applies to QA department as well.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#197

Post by vexna »

DeathArrow wrote: post #195
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.

>That's why you stop asking permission to make quick fixes and just submit the PR. If the company pays me to close tickets and Jira stories, why should I care about improving its products? If the company pays me to actually improve its products, then sure, I would do that.

Because the existence of the problem bothers you implicitly. Or because it’s usually a good way to a promo

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#198

Post by superjan »

DeathArrow wrote: post #195
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.

>That's why you stop asking permission to make quick fixes and just submit the PR. If the company pays me to close tickets and Jira stories, why should I care about improving its products? If the company pays me to actually improve its products, then sure, I would do that.

Usually for perf issues like this, you and your colleagues also suffer. It is not just the time you lose waiting, but you also drop out of flow/get distracted and your productivity suffers more. The end user gains are just a side benefit.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#199

Post by billllll »

rendaw wrote: post #187
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.

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?

I agree with Tom: a well functioning eng org allows engineers to fix critical bugs without going through a bureaucracy. This empowers the engineers and makes them a product owner as well, though you need good engineers who care.

If you force every little bug to go through the product manager, you take time away from the PM to do big picture things by forcing them to track every little thing that's broken, and create a lot of friction for even the littlest bug to be squashed. This fosters an eng culture of "not my problem," which leads to bugs slipping through the cracks for years.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#200

Post by redredrobot »

ALittleLight wrote: post #50
jdwithit wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 to the other replies here, I think it's very poor form to throw the engineers under the bus for not being curious. The most likely explanation is they were under insane time and resource constraints, especially in the games industry. They wrote something that worked, then were forced to move on to the other 5000 tasks in their backlog that had to get done before release. When you're already being told to crunch 80…

The problem with this way of thinking is that it basically absolves everyone of blame. Bad stuff happens and nobody's at fault. You point to the managers, because the engineers were so busy, but the managers are going to claim they were busy too. Again, from the manager's perspective - the managers aren't even in a position to understand the problem or the reasons for it.

You're pretty quick to act like there is a lot of blame to be allocated, but GTA 5 is arguably the most successful game in history. With games that truly have technical problems so bad they ruin the game, people don't complain - they just don't play it.

Maybe a long load time just wasn't that important for the success of GTA.

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