How software development actually works (and how Facepunch is Failing) - Rust

rust -probably- could not have brought into feature completion with traditional development schedules solely on garry's mod's funding and there was no way the general public would have paid for a feature-incomplete game that actually looked like a feature-incomplete game. incremental development has proven to be very . profitable . for a lot of the sandbox-type games with the incredible success of garry's mod, minecraft, dayz, where new novel grandly-changing mechanics are welcomed and to a certain respect expected without a traditionally defined endgame state and so it makes sense to pursue that kind of development track for that kind of game for that kind of market

[QUOTE=thelionnessa;46400915]I had to Google the term iterative. For the record, Garry's bank account disagrees with the OP.[/QUOTE] If the OP said that Garry didn't know how to make money, then your point would be accurate. Considering at this point that the motivation to make Rust a good game isn't likely about making money, at least not to the same degree they already did with the early access, then your point doesn't hold water.

[QUOTE=Prescription;46400892]I'm not saying Facepunch is not successful, or questioning their effort, etc... Here is my main point to all of this: If they take what they have currently implemented, and spend the next couple weeks really working it over, and refining it, knocking out bugs, etc.. they will have a very efficient and functional baseline. That's not to say in the interim, they cannot be doing artwork, LOD's, sound work, etc.. Once they have a clean baseline, they should take a methodical approach to implementing a new component or feature, and spend the time assessing the impacts of integration. If someone thinks that the developers should keep implementing new stuff rapidly, and slowly addressing issues with the current code, that's their opinion. I was just pointing out that it may be good to take a step back from all that and really refine what they have....[/QUOTE] What you just said speaks volumes to your lack of participation in the alpha testing of the experimental servers or lack of actually paying any sort of attention to what they're doing. If you had you would know that's almost exactly what they've spent the last month+ doing. The game is running 10X better then it was a month ago and dozens upon dozens of bugs have been fixed. You clearly aren't actually watching the development of the game but somehow felt you had enough knowledge to complain about it. Why don't you take a gander at the @rustupdates twitter for the last month.

[QUOTE=Dreldan;46400981]What you just said speaks volumes to your lack of participation in the alpha testing of the experimental servers or lack of actually paying any sort of attention to what they're doing. If you had you would know that's almost exactly what they've spent the last month+ doing. The game is running 10X better then it was a month ago and dozens upon dozens of bugs have been fixed. You clearly aren't actually watching the development of the game but somehow felt you had enough knowledge to complain about it. Why don't you take a gander at the @rustupdates twitter for the last month.[/QUOTE] Im not sure what you are rambling about, but its not coherent or relevant to anything. Take a gander at the post saying "Stuck in my house", "People glitching through walls", "why i'm quitting rust", "I keep getting DC from Servers", "problems with very large buildings and stairways to heaven" etc... and realize that there are major issues with the current code that are making game play intolerable, or impossible... Now please stop posting Bullshit in this thread and leave room for intelligent conversation, which you are not a part of.

[QUOTE=Prescription;46399961]Is it to create a functional game that people will enjoy? If so, then why are they spending time adding bucket helmets, boots that look like frogs.. etc.. and not addressing the basic functionality of the game.[/QUOTE] This is why I'm going to call bullshit on your credentials -- you don't know the development process. Should artists and animators be addressing the basic functionality of the game? And you have ignored the dev-blog entirely? You know, where they discuss the fact that [I]they are addressing the basic functionality of the game[/I]? You can put lipstick on a pig, man. You're just one of the morons who bitches because you want your game now. Claiming to be a software developer doesn't mean shit, nor does programming work-flow efficiency software make you knowledgeable about video game development.

[QUOTE=Prov3rbial;46401063]This is why I'm going to call bullshit on your credentials -- you don't know the development process. Should artists and animators be addressing the basic functionality of the game? And you have ignored the dev-blog entirely? You know, where they discuss the fact that [I]they are addressing the basic functionality of the game[/I]? You can put lipstick on a pig, man. You're just one of the morons who bitches because you want your game now. Claiming to be a software developer doesn't mean shit, nor does programming work-flow efficiency software make you knowledgeable about video game development.[/QUOTE] awesome uninformed statements, with no merit or credibility... way to provide no substance to a conversation. +1 for ignorant post.

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401081]awesome uninformed statements, with no merit or credibility... way to provide no substance to a conversation. +1 for ignorant post.[/QUOTE] Ah, shit. I didn't realize you were a troll. My bad, man. Keep eating those goats or whatever the hell it is you do.

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401081]awesome uninformed statements, with no merit or credibility... way to provide no substance to a conversation. +1 for ignorant post.[/QUOTE] idk why people should believe you either giving the fact that we have no idea what you've worked on or what you actually do. [QUOTE=Prov3rbial;46401099]Ah, shit. I didn't realize you were a troll. My bad, man. Keep eating those goats or whatever the hell it is you do.[/QUOTE] and all you're doing here is shit posting so the only troll here is you I guess? being a software developer means he's probably pretty familiar with the process so why dismiss it so insultingly like that?

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401019]Im not sure what you are rambling about, but its not coherent or relevant to anything. Take a gander at the post saying "Stuck in my house", "People glitching through walls", "why i'm quitting rust", "I keep getting DC from Servers", "problems with very large buildings and stairways to heaven" etc... and realize that there are major issues with the current code that are making game play intolerable, or impossible... Now please stop posting Bullshit in this thread and leave room for intelligent conversation, which you are not a part of.[/QUOTE] And as i said, if you had bothered to follow any of the development of the game you would see that these issues are being worked and that some of the newer issues that came up are because of the developers trying to cater to the whiners by giving them coded locks. Most of the current bugs that have been introduced are not because of new items but because they were working on fixing other issues. You clearly don't seem to be very familiar with how game testing works at all. As I said it is clear that you have not actually been actively participating in the alpha testing or following the development of the game for very long at all and your trying to give yourself some sort of ego boost by stating you know how they should be doing their job because you work for a software developer. You can mark all my posts as dumb as much as you want but it doesn't make anything I said any less true. literally like half the stuff you just listed was addressed int he latest dev blog. Take a minute to get off your high horse and read about the game.

[QUOTE=KmartSqrl;46400167]Anyone with a real answer to this will be a millionaire hahaha[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=J!NX;46400382]funny thing is, Garry IS a millionaire, isn't he?[/QUOTE] He is. Boy, it's a good thing Garry's Mod was completely bug-free from day one or else it'd have been a commercial failure and garry'd be on the streets. OP, this thread is embarrassing and you have only yourself to blame. P.S. man, ratespamming us is gonna change our minds.

You sound like someone who has just learnt about software development methodologies and decided to make a ranty post about how he dislikes the current development strategy. I can literally break down your paragraphs into questions I had to tackle for my thesis at University some years ago, so I therefore question whether you actually have real experience in the software industry given you assume it's easy to stick to one methodology without having to tweak it along the way. First, I need to state that I'm a game developer and have been for 7 1/2 years. In that time, I've also developed standalone applications. My side-hobby, which I also class as my job, is developing websites. I'm going to write this reply from a game development point - something you're not able to understand. I'm not sure how it compares to Rust, but our: - Game client is 230,000 lines of code, - Game server is 190,000 lines of code, and - Our (custom) 3D engine is 80,000 lines of code. [B]Basic Functionality vs. Art[/B] In my company, we have developers and what we call content developers. Developers, like me, are the guys who stare at Visual Studio all day. We deal with anything code based - new features, code fixes, tweaks, so on. When we have a bug reported to us, it's our job to debug the applications to figure out which single line of code or variable is causing the bug - this is a lot more difficult than you may think in game development because it may be slightly different for every player. This can takes hours and I've often spent a day or two investigating a single bug. Our content developers are the guys who add new content to the game. They don't deal with anything source code related - in fact, they don't even have access to it. They add their new item, test it in-game and that's their job done. Our patch notes have often been 1-3 lines of 'Added [new feature]' (if at all), 10 lines of 'Added [new item]' and 10 lines of 'Fixed [bug]'. What you can't appreciate is the work the developers have to do to add a new feature into the game. What may seem insignificant to you may be 5,000 lines of code spanning across 2 weeks - and multiple headaches and code re-writes in-between - yet the only thing you see is one line on our patch notes which say we've added this new feature and 10 new items. [B]Alpha[/B] I see this bashed around a lot. Rust [I]is[/I] Alpha - we know. We expect bugs. We expect things to change. This is what you were warned about and what you bought. I didn't buy Rust almost a year ago because I thought it looked like an incredible game. I bought it because I thought it had the [I]potential[/I] to be an incredible game - I understand what Alpha is and I put my trust into Garry and Facepunch to deliver an incredible game. 710 hours later (~550 hours on legacy) and I'm still here. When game breaking bugs get added, I get frustrated just as anyone else, but I don't moan about it. I understand that as much as we can test a feature internally, we can't test every single scenario. Case in point: I spent July this year creating a new feature from start to finish. It took me around 2 1/2 weeks to finish and we spent another 2 weeks bug testing. Even though we found (and fixed) around 20 bugs before it's release, almost immediately a few of our players managed to find some bugs. Without a huge QA team, which we and Facepunch don't have, it's impossible to test every scenario. [B]Development[/B] I'm not sure if you've mistaken iterative for another methodology, but Rust is very much iterative. Design, create, test, release. I can only assume you think it's not iterative because bugs find their way through? This was covered - it's impossible to test every scenario and even the simplest thing like restarting the server can slip your mind when you're focused on any bug impact on the actual game. How many AAA games over the past two years have had to have day-release patches to address bugs they couldn't pick up internally? These are teams with multi-million pound budgets. One thing I think Facepunch is lacking is developers. We seem to have some great content developers (just looking at the Trellos show this), but we could do with a couple of new developers - Garry actually said this a few days ago. Our game is tiny compared to Rust - we have around 1,000 concurrent players at any time with around 150,000 unique logging in every month. I know personally that the stress of this can really get to you - when something goes wrong, it's up to you to fix the issue as soon as possible. I can only imagine the pressure Garry and the team are under given the size of Rust. Another area might be the big update release - Friday may not be the best day to do this (I'd say Monday is better!). Given that Facepunch is only a 20 minute drive from me, I've been so close to applying for a developer role because I almost feel bad for the crap they go through every day - I should drive over and buy them a beer or two because they deserve it. You don't understand how disheartening it can be to spend hours, days and weeks on something only to have it belittled as 'nothing' by players. I'd be interested to see if anyone else in this discussion has similar experience to me in the game industry. tl;dr - There are problems and they will be fixed. Current bugs won't stop development of new features. Developers (the guys who spend their days coding) aren't content developers (the guys who spend their days modelling). (This post may be equally as rambly or make no sense)

Feels like gmod10 days again.... When it went steam and Garry got struck by lightning. Garry and facepunch are NOT a professional development team. Stop acting like they are and you will roll with the acceptance of the cult following.

[QUOTE=J!NX;46401114]and all you're doing here is shit posting so the only troll here is you I guess? being a software developer means he's probably pretty familiar with the process so why dismiss it so fast like that?[/QUOTE] I'm a software developer myself. I'm also the king of England, and Lord God of the Martians. See, I can claim any credentials I want online (and just in case you didn't catch my drift, so can he). The point I was making, which you apparently missed, was that one of the things he's upset with is the inclusion of new art assets. Prescription wants the entire team focused on functionality, but, like I said, why the fuck would anybody expect artists and animators to help with functionality? There are different teams at FP with different expertise fulfilling different roles. There is no focus fire in development. I'm not interested in his credentials, I am interested in his arguments. They're stupid, by the way.

I'm confused though, why the dumbs? I somewhat agreed with you I was just curious and you totally ignored me. Since what you made could be very different, and that's a big deal is all. [QUOTE=Prov3rbial;46401175]I'm a software developer myself. I'm also the king of England, and Lord God of the Martians. See, I can claim any credentials I want online (and just in case you didn't catch my drift, so can he). The point I was making, which you apparently missed, was that one of the things he's upset with is the inclusion of new art assets. Prescription wants the entire team focused on functionality, but, like I said, why the fuck would anybody expect artists and animators to help with functionality? There are different teams at FP with different expertise fulfilling different roles. There is no focus fire in development. I'm not interested in his credentials, I am interested in his arguments. They're stupid, by the way.[/QUOTE] I'm also curious about his credentials, the difference is I'm not flat out insulting him and being immature. And claiming to be a software dev is a lot different than those 2 things, Jesus Christ. Stop being so over dramatic. There are like a bajillion people who develop software out there, how is it so unbelievable?

[QUOTE=J!NX;46401187]And claiming to be a software dev is a lot different than those 2 things, Jesus Christ. Stop being so over dramatic. There are like a bajillion people who develop software out there, how is it so unbelievable?[/QUOTE] Lol. I was making dazzling use of, "rhetorical tools." And I doubt he's a programmer, like I said before, because he doesn't seem the understand the process. Somebody who does? iDyn. Read his post up above. He made the same point I just did.

I'd like for the professional developer Prescription to explain to me how the things listed below in last Fridays devblog are not working towards accomplishing all the things you just complained about and suggested they should be doing? You could not have shoved a shoe any further into your mouth. Networking Tweaks, Audio Fixes, Coherent UI Updates, Wall Glitching, Performance. Please go read the devblog and explain to me what they should be doing differently?

[QUOTE=Prov3rbial;46401216]Lol. I was making dazzling use of, "rhetorical tools." And I doubt he's a programmer, like I said before, because he doesn't seem the understand the process. Somebody who does? iDyn. Read his post up above. He made the same point I just did.[/QUOTE] the difference is iDyn does it by not being a total smart ass / being edgy [QUOTE=Prov3rbial;46401063]You're just one of the morons who bitches because you want your game now. [/QUOTE] like there there are better ways to analyze why he's wrong

[QUOTE=J!NX;46401187]I'm also curious about his credentials, the difference is I'm not flat out insulting him and being immature.[/QUOTE] I'm not. Just break down what he said: "I work for a software company, and have performed in several roles." Not i am a developer, or programmer. He works for a software company. Every line and point he makes has to specifically to do with project management. He outlines project flow, talks about tasks, and development strategies. He is focused on goals, and "getting to 'baseline'". It is very obvious he is a project manager.

[QUOTE=utilitron;46401350]I'm not. He can talk the talk, makes no difference if he can walk the walk. just break down what he said: "I work for a software company, and have performed in several roles." Not i am a developer, or programmer. He works for a software company. Every line and point he makes has to specifically to do with project management. He outlines project flow, talks about tasks, and development strategies. He is focused on goals, and "getting to 'baseline'". It is very obvious he is a project manager.[/QUOTE] Very good observations. I have spent time as a QA Analyst, Project Manager, and Business Analyst (Currently). That does not detract from the basic points I was trying to make. There is a methodical approach to handling issues, promoting new features, reducing the introduction of critical issues... This post went south though a long time ago when people started in on personal attacks.

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401376]very good observations. I have spent time as a QA Analyst, Business Analyst, and PM. That does not detract from the basic points I was trying to make. There is a methodical approach to handling issues, promoting new features, reducing critical issues... This post went south though a long time ago when people started in on personal attacks.[/QUOTE] I have respect for project managers. I do. I work with them everyday. But you are looking at this as a feature-set product and not as an R&D project. Game development is way closer to a time and materials R&D contract than to a hard dead-lined production release.

Nothing wrong with the game thus far. The Devs listen to what we want to see in the game and progress is coming along more and more every day. Yes there are issues but part of the process. I for one think its fun that we all get to participate while the game is developed. As a software developer (as you claim) you should understand the need to refine what is there before adding aesthetics more than anyone. Not every game dev needs to get mired in project development strategies and similar

[QUOTE=NexusOne;46401444]Nothing wrong with the game thus far. The Devs listen to what we want to see in the game and progress is coming along more and more every day. Yes there are issues but part of the process. I for one think its fun that we all get to participate while the game is developed. As a software developer (as you claim) you should understand the need to refine what is there before adding aesthetics more than anyone. Not every game dev needs to get mired in project development strategies and similar[/QUOTE] Again.. I never claimed to be a software developer, and you hit my point perfectly "you should understand the need to refine what is there before adding aesthetics more than anyone."

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401459]Again.. I never claimed to be a software developer, and you hit my point perfectly "you should understand the need to refine what is there before adding aesthetics more than anyone."[/QUOTE] While you didn't claim to be a software developer, your entire thread OP is telling them what they're doing wrong as software developers.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;46401516]While you didn't claim to be a software developer, your entire thread OP is telling them what they're doing wrong as software developers.[/QUOTE] And? One does not need to be a software developer to understand the process.

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401521]And? One does not need to be a software developer to understand the process.[/QUOTE] Well... Its like the managers of a Denny's telling the chefs at a sushi bar they aren't cooking their fish right.

[QUOTE=Dreldan;46401244]I'd like for the professional developer Prescription to explain to me how the things listed below in last Fridays devblog are not working towards accomplishing all the things you just complained about and suggested they should be doing? You could not have shoved a shoe any further into your mouth. Networking Tweaks, Audio Fixes, Coherent UI Updates, Wall Glitching, Performance. Please go read the devblog and explain to me what they should be doing differently?[/QUOTE] Prescription can you tell me how this isn't refining what they currently have in place? So far everything you've said they should be doing it looks like they are doing. Also the LERP fixes should be listed above as that has to do with the positioning system which should improve the combat system.

[QUOTE=utilitron;46401564]Well... Its like the managers of a Denny's telling the chefs at a sushi bar they aren't cooking their fish right.[/QUOTE] Kind of, but not really. Its like a Project Manager who understands the process that needs to be followed, but not the specific c+ that needs to be coded... I'm not saying they are coding wrong...

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401590]Kind of, but not really. Its like a Project Manager who understands the process that needs to be followed, but not the specific c+ that needs to be coded... I'm not saying they are coding wrong...[/QUOTE] And if their process slightly differs from yours does that really make it "failing" or wrong?

[QUOTE=Prescription;46401590]Kind of, but not really. Its like a Project Manager who understands [B]the process that needs to be followed[/B], but not the specific c+ that needs to be coded... I'm not saying they are coding wrong...[/QUOTE] And who are you to decide what process [B]needs[/B] to be followed by the devs? You don't understand game development, and this thread proves it. Your $20 didn't buy you that. It bought you a license to Rust on Steam now and for when the game is finished.

Also for their bug/general support, they are not applying ITIL v3 methodologies so add that to the list of shit they aren't doing correctly. Seriously, what did you expect to accomplish by the OP? As stated earlier not everyone needs to adhere to a process that you have seen in action at places you have been employed. The game is progressing in leaps and bounds and shit is being fixed and refined everyday. Also tell me, is your perspective that of a Player or a server admin?