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Triple AAA quality


Springheel

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For the creators out there. Sometimes we get caught up in trying to make TDM look as professional as possible. It's worth remembering that even the professionals cut corners to get things done. :)

 

I know I feel better about errors slipping through when I see similar things in AAA titles.

 

I highly doubt anyone noticed this UV problem while playing:

post-9-0-23068600-1493910065_thumb.jpg

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Yeah it's funny noticing things like that in AAA games, I never used to really spot these things but since starting mapping I do all the time.

 

And then of course there are very obvious bugs that can be funny too like the AI spinning

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef1TN7Paki8

 

:D

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Exactly. When someone reports a stuck AI or a map error, it feels crappy. But I find it helps to remind yourself that even the professionals make mistakes:

 

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There are so many expensive titles out there that are released, patched, and still contain a lot of things that might be considered not worth escalating to fix (*coughcough nUbisoft*).

It's kinda sad that most of the people who do this are the bigger studios - under strain of budget, deadline and the man - but it's fun to find them:)

 

They don't pay as much attention to their babies as a smaller studio might...

With the exception of games coming from early access or greenshite, eg - Logic Artist's, Clandestine or Madruga Work's, Planetbase - that often don't get "fixed" because, "hey I'm rich now! / "now we have enough cash to make our new game!").

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=821256249

But with these kinds of titles the QA/QC often comes from "the fans" or through feedback reports by kind souls. Or fan patches...

A good example of fan and/or kickstarter-based quality control and bug report is War for the Overworld [bedrock beta] by Brightrock.

Those guys have been good at collaborating on bugs and game issues with players since day 1.
But I'd give the medal to No Man's Sky...

Valve seem to have fixed pretty much every exploit, glitch and mapping error for Left4Dead and it's only taken... 9 years.

When churning out a franchise every year or so, that nets profit regardless, I guess it doesn't matter as much.

 

 

 

I think it's a good thing - it's how we learn best: through both our own and other's mistakes (so long as our own mistakes aren't fatal...).

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I fixed hundreds of similar bugs in Bloodlines over the years, among them lots of floating objects and map holes where you could see out of the map if you were in the right place, like in the first TDM "New Job" mission release. But then Troika shut down before they could fix pretty much anything except for the worst issues and it seems that Activision QA at that time was so bad, they didn't even play the whole game through with all the different clans!

Edited by wesp5
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heh, Hackti/slacktivision was fun for COD aimbots and MP trainers.

VtmB is one of my favourite games to revisit, wesp - have you seen:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/bloodlines-antitribu
for more clans and a few fixes?

Did you work on The Final Nights..? That fixed a bunch of problems, before breaking them again :P

I don't think Troika ever played Arcanum in MP either... (not that it was meant to be)
The removal of turn-based-combat meant enemy ranged units, like skelly archers, were insanely fast.

Reckon Messiah is probably the best example of an older game that I paid top dollar for, that was the biggest bugged-out mess I played during that period (back in the days of hacking adlib to play through PC speakers...).

It was only after the recent steam sales that it became necessary to create a guide on how to fix all the problems people were getting trying to run Farcry 2 on their modern, 64bit powerhouses at 120FPS.

The only AAA titles that I've never had issue with have usually been running in DOS, like Sid Meiers' Covert Action (which I still haven't finished 100%).
MPS and people like Apogee knew how to set a good standard. A mate who worked on Fables for MS, near the old Bullfrog building and Criterion offices, does the same thing as you - but he understands a lot of stuff that my brain won't accept. He's way smarter than me...

I'm glad there's people like you in the world, still tinkering with the classics :)

It's all good fun, and I hope people take feedback as I would - as a way to improve and learn more.
Also, so others can see and understand, gain inspiration or ideas and learn more and improve.

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I don't feel bothered a lot by such minor bugs like floating brushes, bad texturing, etc... as long as the overall design and the story is good. So when I play FMs I not only look for texturing, visuals,...but also try to focus on whether the story is feasible and captivating and whether I can detect some overused cliché "concepts". For example you often stumble upon somebody writing "I've lost my ring while swimming in the pool." or "I have put something valuable in my secret compartment. I better write it down in my diary for the player to know."

 

But one really can't complain about this when looking on how many clichés some AAA games use :laugh:

 

 

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VtmB is one of my favourite games to revisit, wesp - have you seen:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/bloodlines-antitribu

for more clans and a few fixes?

 

Did you work on The Final Nights..? That fixed a bunch of problems, before breaking them again :P

 

Reckon Messiah is probably the best example of an older game that I paid top dollar for, that was the biggest bugged-out mess I played during that period (back in the days of hacking adlib to play through PC speakers...).

 

I make the Bloodlines Unofficial Patch on which both the Antitribu Mod and The Final Nights were build, so pretty much any fixes in there are mine anyway ;). But I know that the Antitribu Mod changed so much stuff, that it created a lot of new bugs, which Lenuska still has to fix in the next update!

 

If Messiah is the Source engine game from that time, it could use an Unofficial Patch on it's own, if it has problems, but I'm still busy with Bloodlines and I don't think there is a community for Messiah. Which is a shame as I think it's a very underated Source engine game that I had a lot of fun playing.

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I'm wondeirng if Stumpy is speaking from experience..? ;)

 

--

 

Hey that's awesome,,! Idk that. Thanks from me and a bunch of ppl I know:)
Yeah those mods did bring about a few new bugs, and none of them made the damn werewolf fight any more fun (I think I've only once not "godded" it because... it kinda sucked).

Also - I think you are thinking of Dark Messiah [of might and magic] which is awesome and pretty polished.

I wouldn't bother with Messiah (published by Interplay, the 3rd person possession/shooter game) at all. It is kinda lame and "GoG" version suffers many issues that were present in 2000.
Most versions people will have now have the Jesper Kyd soundtrack replaced by Fear Factory (I just crack for my disc version ;P).

It's kinda fun, but sometimes nostalgia is best left in the past...

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That report of a problem with the fleeing noble in A New Job bummed me out a bit, but then I saw this and thought, well, at least we're doing as well as the professionals. :)

 

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I found a sword hanging in mid air in witcher 3, passed it a few times while doing some quests, not sure how it got there as I haven't killed anything near it.

After 3 hours of play its still there.

 

Reminds me of all the other items that can float in mid air in other games without any real good reason as to why.

Skyrim was good at leaving things hanging in the air, kill a group of beasties, only take coin and gems, go back later corpses have de_spawned, but their weapons just hang there.

Edited by stumpy
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I found a sword hanging in mid air in witcher 3, passed it a few times while doing some quests, not sure how it got there as I haven't killed anything near it.

After 3 hours of play its still there.

 

Reminds me of all the other items that can float in mid air in other games without any real good reason as to why.

Skyrim was good at leaving things hanging in the air, kill a group of beasties, only take coin and gems, go back later corpses have de_spawned, but their weapons just hang there.

Any time I remember what AAA quality can be I just play Skyrim, yeah.

 

Or as of lately, ME:A

 

In fact this entire channel is one gigantic reminder of just how much AAA doesn't mean quality.

I highly recommend watching the Mafia 3 video to see just how bad open world can get now.

Edited by V-Man339

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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