4 ms·

Doesn't suprise me. I was watching a video where they had devs watch a speedrun for HL:2, and they said that there are a ton of hacky fixes that never got prope

by dx87 6y ago

Doesn't suprise me. I was watching a video where they had devs watch a speedrun for HL:2, and they said that there are a ton of hacky fixes that never got properly fixed. They said that same code is now in HL:Alyx, and that it's funny looking through the code for a modern AAA game and seeing comments like "Quick hack to get demo stable for E3 2005. Add permanent fix after show".

daemin 6y ago
Yep, that happens all the time. Some quick fix is added before a trade show and 2-3 years later it's still there and going into the release. The reasons vary but it's usually one or more of: people forgot, issue was created but was never important enough to get worked on, the fix works fine and the comment should be removed, the code path is no longer executed.
bogwog 6y ago
Professional game development seems to revolve around the art of quick hacks. Gamers aren't going to care whether your code is clean or not, and they sure as hell won't want to wait for you to tidy it up.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  But the weird thing here is that Source is based on GoldSrc which was based on Quake; apparently, instead of learning from years of experience and building a brand new engine without the baggage, they decided to just keep building on top of the old stuff? I mean to a point I get it, but if some code is unmaintainable, you don't keep trying to fix it, you have to decide to replace it. Valve has no excuse, they make crazy amounts of money, they can fund the development of a new engine from scratch easily. They just choose not to.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    Quake is full of hacks and bug too.
  - eertami 6y ago
    >Valve has no excuse, they make crazy amounts of money, they can fund the development of a new engine from scratch easily. They just choose not to. It admittedly gets a bit more difficult when these hacks and quirks are part of what create the unique feel of your game engine. People have played CS at such high levels for so long that switching engine at all is likely going to introduce some difference in feeling, even if you think you've accounted for all the unique bugs and interactions. If you remade Quake 3 in a new engine, people are going to hate it. See Quake 4, for example. Source 2 would still be a nice jump for CS:GO, but the team just doesn't have the resources at present to get this all done. Dota 2, being the style of game that it is, isn't as affected by a difference in feel as a first person twitch shooter.
    - areoform 6y ago
      > Source 2 would still be a nice jump for CS:GO, but the team just doesn't have the resources at present to get this all done That is surprising. I had assumed that CS:GO was an incredibly steady cash cow. IIRC, CS:GO pioneered the digital collectibles + loot box market, and has somewhere between 600k to 1.1M+ active players during any given day. https://steamcharts.com/app/730 https://steamcharts.com/app/730 The trading market also seems particularly active and Valve takes a cut of each transaction of their digital goods. It's an attractive model. There are dedicated companies that have sprung up around it and seem to prosper. Other indirect indicators seem to be green as well. Back when it was a phenomenon, it sold at least 25M+ units before it was made free-to-play. This is on par with Minecraft. The installed player base is in the hundreds of millions. It's essentially a giant social network with multiple monetization opportunities. I am struggling to see how this wouldn't be profitable. Surely, Valve must make enough in a month to hire 50+ people and give them 18 to 24 months to re-write the engine?
      - bogwog 6y ago
        The guy who wrote the tweet in the OP regularly posts publicly about the internal structure and politics at Valve. Reading through that gives me the impression that money is never a factor at Valve, and it's all about 1) whether anyone cares enough to work on a project and/or 2) whether someone is trying to impress/kiss-ass to climb the social pyramid. I can't imagine the idea of rewriting CS:GO from scratch just to improve maintainability is going to get very far. Plus players will 100% notice even the tiniest changes, and will complain about it forever. A game like CS:GO will never die, just look at the player numbers for its predecessor which has 6000-7000 daily active players.
  - toyg 6y ago
    > instead of [...] building a brand new engine without the baggage Time to bring up this classic post: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    I think it's reasonable to remember that Half-Life 2 or Source goes back to days when Valve was still just a gamestudio. So they didn't have the resources they have now. Yes original Half-Life, expansions and Counter-Strike were popular, but Steam for one wasn't a thing. But they weren't printing money yet. So spending time on engine with a ambitious game wasn't something they had money or time for. And then Global Offensive is title originally developed by third-party. So I don't think those guys either were going to put huge effort in engine. And once it got going, there is little push to replace it again. Specially when it's raking massive amounts of money in even in the state it is...
gameswithgo 6y ago
There is a video like that for every game ever made.
- JamesSwift 6y ago
  I think anything that follows a traditional release cycle (i.e. you cut a release instead of push continuous updates to a server) has these accidentally-permanent hacks. Every mobile application I've worked on certainly has.
Bjartr 6y ago
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

by dx87 6y ago

daemin 6y ago

Yep, that happens all the time. Some quick fix is added before a trade show and 2-3 years later it's still there and going into the release. The reasons vary but it's usually one or more of: people forgot, issue was created but was never important enough to get worked on, the fix works fine and the comment should be removed, the code path is no longer executed.

bogwog 6y ago

Professional game development seems to revolve around the art of quick hacks. Gamers aren't going to care whether your code is clean or not, and they sure as hell won't want to wait for you to tidy it up.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
But the weird thing here is that Source is based on GoldSrc which was based on Quake; apparently, instead of learning from years of experience and building a brand new engine without the baggage, they decided to just keep building on top of the old stuff? I mean to a point I get it, but if some code is unmaintainable, you don't keep trying to fix it, you have to decide to replace it. Valve has no excuse, they make crazy amounts of money, they can fund the development of a new engine from scratch easily. They just choose not to.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Quake is full of hacks and bug too.
- eertami 6y ago
  >Valve has no excuse, they make crazy amounts of money, they can fund the development of a new engine from scratch easily. They just choose not to. It admittedly gets a bit more difficult when these hacks and quirks are part of what create the unique feel of your game engine. People have played CS at such high levels for so long that switching engine at all is likely going to introduce some difference in feeling, even if you think you've accounted for all the unique bugs and interactions. If you remade Quake 3 in a new engine, people are going to hate it. See Quake 4, for example. Source 2 would still be a nice jump for CS:GO, but the team just doesn't have the resources at present to get this all done. Dota 2, being the style of game that it is, isn't as affected by a difference in feel as a first person twitch shooter.
  - areoform 6y ago
    > Source 2 would still be a nice jump for CS:GO, but the team just doesn't have the resources at present to get this all done That is surprising. I had assumed that CS:GO was an incredibly steady cash cow. IIRC, CS:GO pioneered the digital collectibles + loot box market, and has somewhere between 600k to 1.1M+ active players during any given day. https://steamcharts.com/app/730 https://steamcharts.com/app/730 The trading market also seems particularly active and Valve takes a cut of each transaction of their digital goods. It's an attractive model. There are dedicated companies that have sprung up around it and seem to prosper. Other indirect indicators seem to be green as well. Back when it was a phenomenon, it sold at least 25M+ units before it was made free-to-play. This is on par with Minecraft. The installed player base is in the hundreds of millions. It's essentially a giant social network with multiple monetization opportunities. I am struggling to see how this wouldn't be profitable. Surely, Valve must make enough in a month to hire 50+ people and give them 18 to 24 months to re-write the engine?
    - bogwog 6y ago
      The guy who wrote the tweet in the OP regularly posts publicly about the internal structure and politics at Valve. Reading through that gives me the impression that money is never a factor at Valve, and it's all about 1) whether anyone cares enough to work on a project and/or 2) whether someone is trying to impress/kiss-ass to climb the social pyramid. I can't imagine the idea of rewriting CS:GO from scratch just to improve maintainability is going to get very far. Plus players will 100% notice even the tiniest changes, and will complain about it forever. A game like CS:GO will never die, just look at the player numbers for its predecessor which has 6000-7000 daily active players.
- toyg 6y ago
  > instead of [...] building a brand new engine without the baggage Time to bring up this classic post: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
- Ekaros 6y ago
  I think it's reasonable to remember that Half-Life 2 or Source goes back to days when Valve was still just a gamestudio. So they didn't have the resources they have now. Yes original Half-Life, expansions and Counter-Strike were popular, but Steam for one wasn't a thing. But they weren't printing money yet. So spending time on engine with a ambitious game wasn't something they had money or time for. And then Global Offensive is title originally developed by third-party. So I don't think those guys either were going to put huge effort in engine. And once it got going, there is little push to replace it again. Specially when it's raking massive amounts of money in even in the state it is...

gameswithgo 6y ago

There is a video like that for every game ever made.

JamesSwift 6y ago
I think anything that follows a traditional release cycle (i.e. you cut a release instead of push continuous updates to a server) has these accidentally-permanent hacks. Every mobile application I've worked on certainly has.

Bjartr 6y ago

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.