0.9.2 - What went wrong: My take

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peter980
Posts: 1601
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 am

0.9.2 - What went wrong: My take

I wanted to add my opinion, why I think 0.8.8-0.9.2 update had a lot of issues.

It is most ambitious update I've seen in House Party story.

Many more script changes compared to regular stable release. Also, most of the changes interact with old content, leading to many side effects.

On top of that, a lot of engine changes, either to support new scripting stuff, or just optimize the game more.

What worries me is that going forward, it will be more and more difficult.

The more content is added, the more side effects will happen, and more chances for new bugs, that break old and new content alike.

The more game grows, the complexity rises almost exponentially. Especially, if plan is to update all characters to have Ashley amount of content.


Not really sure if there is good solution for this, but I would expect that future releases may become even slower then now, due to amount of time that will be needed for future QA/bug-fixing cycles.
Mckernan
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2018 5:35 am

Re: 0.9.2 - What went wrong: My take

peter980 wrote: Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:56 pm I wanted to add my opinion on these amazing online casinos and why I think 0.8.8-0.9.2 update had a lot of issues.

It is most ambitious update I've seen in House Party story.

Many more script changes compared to regular stable release. Also, most of the changes interact with old content, leading to many side effects.

On top of that, a lot of engine changes, either to support new scripting stuff, or just optimize the game more.

What worries me is that going forward, it will be more and more difficult.

The more content is added, the more side effects will happen, and more chances for new bugs, that break old and new content alike.

The more game grows, the complexity rises almost exponentially. Especially, if plan is to update all characters to have Ashley amount of content.


Not really sure if there is good solution for this, but I would expect that future releases may become even slower then now, due to amount of time that will be needed for future QA/bug-fixing cycles.
It is what it is, I suppose. Would bringing someone else on board to help with this be out of the question?
Last edited by Mckernan on Sat Sep 24, 2022 4:53 am, edited 2 times in total.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: 0.9.2 - What went wrong: My take

It was really a few fundamental project management-related failures. To make things VERY short...too much (either in terms of volume or complexity) work was committed to without the resources in place to complete said work/related tasks. Just about everyone tried something new or something existing in a new way, baby steps were skipped in a few instances and huge leaps were taken, and in the process our eyes drifted off what it would take to deliver an acceptably satisfying product at our usual level of quality in the amount of time we had. Also, having effectively 25% of our deliverable staff on vacation for a week wasn't optimal in terms of timing either :P

From here on we'll be scaling our approach back to be more in line with previous release cycles. So maybe a couple quests to encompass a single storyline and necessary connecting interactions, the usual amount of code tweaks or feature additions, graphical improvements OR optimizations, and bug fixes. We may first spend a bit more time on stability, optimization, and bug-related tasks, but in general, it's back to a normal pace.
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