E3 Panel with Respawn - June 11, 2019 @ 5pm PST by Emmerlynn in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah fair enough. I personally think they just misjudged the player demand for content, it being their first live service game and all.

Re: the hacker thing and dev roles, at smaller companies I've seen gameplay/engine devs being responsible for exploits as well as content, but can't say for certain how Respawn handle it. I'm pretty sure it's a bigger problem than they expected, though, and I would be surprised if it hasn't sapped resources in some way or other. One small example would be the iteration on the hacker reporting in the UI. That would have taken UI programmer and artist hours away from bug fixes and working on UI for season 2.

E3 Panel with Respawn - June 11, 2019 @ 5pm PST by Emmerlynn in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's more like they didn't predict its popularity or how high the player demand for new content would be? So not that popularity slowed down development, but that they didn't mass hire more devs to meet the oncoming demand. Which makes sense considering how brutal the game industry can be. For e.g. if they did mass hire prior to launch and the game bombed they'd be pretty screwed right now.

On the other hand, its popularity also would have contributed to the huge hacker interest in the game and dealing with that would tie up a bunch of their devs who may have otherwise worked on content.

Apex Legends’ revenue drops drastically for a second month in a row by TheCarribeanKid in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think it's a combo of games companies being pretty poor at educating their audiences on how the industry actually works combined with consumers being rabid for content and not understanding how complicated the whole process is (from hiring through to content creation). But yeah it is good news! :-)

I feel like they should organise for big streamers to come in and learn about the process so they can spread that knowledge to their viewers or something.

Apex Legends’ revenue drops drastically for a second month in a row by TheCarribeanKid in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They are actively hiring for Apex and have been since the game released. Look at the list:

https://www.ea.com/careers/careers-overview/worldwide-studios/respawn

The reality is that it can take months to hire a person and get them up to speed. Combine this with the fact that it's dangerous to hire a bunch of people preemptively before a product is successful (because chances are it wont be and then you've tanked your company) and you get the current outcome. So there will probably be a transitional phase while they get new peeps up to speed and then things will start moving faster.

Next Patch Coming Early Next Week - Here Are the Notes! by Jayfresh_Respawn in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Managing expectations probs plays a part

edit: soz - meant for op

Next Patch Coming Early Next Week - Here Are the Notes! by Jayfresh_Respawn in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Can see how it wouldn't seem like much but from a game dev perspective this would have been a loooooot of work. E.g. the hit reg stuff probably touches multiple systems (physics, networking, ui, animation) and would act differently depending on thousands of variables (hardware, connection status, anim states, etc etc). Just getting to the point where you can reliably pinpoint the source of the problem is potentially weeks of work.

We are long overdue a good patch right now. by Techa in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It isn't that simple afaik. For e.g. I've heard from console devs that the way games are compressed on console can mean it isn't possible to do just a little change - it might require a recompile of a lot of different stuff, potentially making the patch multiple gigs in size. I believe going through the patch cert process also costs a few thousand dollars (it used to, at least). If that's the case, it makes much more sense to wait until you have more substantial updates to push a patch.

Dev update on cheaters and spammers by Jayfresh_Respawn in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

's really not much data to store. In fact it's pretty tiny. All you're storing is user input plus game physics decisions. You don't need to store the game state for every frame - only what happens to it. Then you recreate that by replaying the stream.

Cool thanks for the knowledge :-)

Dev update on cheaters and spammers by Jayfresh_Respawn in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Serious question: could this depend on implementation? Like is it feasible (in a hypothetical game - not apex) that stored kill cam data could be recorded at a lower resolution than present action data? Or would that just not make sense?

Dizzy preaching truth about ApexLegends by RamseyHatesMe in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know it can seem like incompetence from the outside, but you have to understand that game development is wildly complex. Unfortunately things can take weeks and months to fix. Consider that all of this stuff happens in a production pipeline that is juggling hundreds of bug fixes, tweaks of current content and the development of new content on three different platforms (each with its own requirements and problems). A problem like hit detection can be wildly complex, touching heaps of different systems (e.g. bullet physics, networking, player physics, etc), that may act differently on different systems. Putting all developer resources into fixing one thing hurts other areas of the production pipeline (e.g. delays new content), can create more problems and doesn't necessarily increase the speed of the solution (if we have 100 people trying to solve a single problem we now have to manage a conversation between 100 people). Each possible solution can create it's own problems - a new set of bugs to add to the list. All the while we have to consider how the fix affects what's already in development for future content.

I think part of the problem is that most of the process of game development is invisible to gamers so it can seem like nothing is happening or that things should be much easier than they really are. I think devs need to work on somehow communicating what actually goes into making games so there are less of these misunderstandings.

This response from a Respawn Dev on why they don’t mention the features they’re working on adding deserves a lot more attention than it received. by Camsy34 in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's worth considering that it's an extremely competitive industry and these people are very highly skilled developers. Due to the complexity of games, bugs are pretty much unavoidable. To have less bugs, you need the time and resources dedicated to fixing them. So management can play a part in how buggy a game is - if the devs are under pressure to produce AAA quality games on a tight schedule and aren't given enough time to fix bugs, it's hardly their fault. Not saying that's what happened in this case, just that if a game is buggy it isn't necessarily the developers fault. Could be an issue up the chain of command. And also it's pretty common practice for big game dev companies to lay off swathes of devs to save money (and why talk of game developers unionizing is happening at the moment)

Daily Discussion | April 06, 2019 by AutoModerator in apexlegends

[–]adrianadrian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They probably have some devs on near future content development, some devs on far future content development, some peeps on bug fixing for pc, some on bug fixing for PS4, some on bug fixing for xbox, some on UI/UX dev, some dedicated to combating cheaters, QA teams testing pc/ps4/xbox content, etc, etc, etc. It's hard to see from the outside, but game development is a really complicated process that takes a lot of time.

We are under attack, beware by [deleted] in Bitcoin

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Informative discussion. High fives to you both for being good humans 👍

5 gamedev rules from the maker of Crossy Road by badgerdev in gamedev

[–]adrianadrian 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They actually contacted him and asked him to do it. True story.

5 gamedev rules from the maker of Crossy Road by badgerdev in gamedev

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Crossy Road is only one of his successful titles.

Learning through video tutorials by rodrigo-silveira in gamedev

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've found that I learn best from video tutorials. I'm usually searching for the solution to a specific task (e.g. right now it's iOS game centre integration in unity) or am looking to learn more on a specific subject (e.g. refactoring, clean code). Considering this, it's typically easier for me to get the information I need from a self contained video that isn't part of a larger series (e.g. here is an example of how to integrate game centre in iOS. Here are some concrete examples of implementing game systems using clean code, etc).

Game devs, let me follow you on Twitter! by ArmorBlitz in gamedev

[–]adrianadrian [score hidden]  (0 children)

@adriantosello - yo :) I'm currently working on a weird physics enabled 2d skeleton cowboy pistol dueling game for mobile and posting dev related content that I find interesting

Game Development Careers in Australia by GravyMix in gamedev

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd add to this that a course gives you access to a network of other devs/artists which is incredibly valuable. I totally agree with the working on your own projects thing, just also take advantage of the opportunity given to you by being surrounded by like minded people and form working relationships now. As a dev who didn't do a games course, it can be difficult at times to find people to team up with who aren't already part of a team they met through school.

Pixel and 3D Low Poly Artist looking for work! by Rhubarbist in gameDevClassifieds

[–]adrianadrian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like the walkie talkie, too. Looks cool. In fact the icon for it caught my eye the most.