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I was playing Dota [0] the other day, and I was amazed at how robust of an experience it is, while having many many more layers of complexity. What is it that

I was playing Dota [0] the other day, and I was amazed at how robust of an experience it is, while having many many more layers of complexity. What is it that makes computer games such a robust experience and why can't we have that in front ends? I'm not talking only about web. Native toolkits are not much better either. [0] https://www.dota2.com/home https://www.dota2.com/home

Agentlien 5y ago
I've never been part of web development, so I've only seen one half of the equation. AAA game development includes dedicated teams of QA testers playing through the game each day, flagging all bugs they come across and verifying every bug which is claimed to be fixed. That's the best source of stability in my experience. At the biggest studio I've been part of (three offices, with about a hundred people in the main one) we also had a number of automated tests (AI running through certain missions and doing events together) where failures would alert those with contributing commits.
michaelt 5y ago
Are you kidding? The games industry has a much worse reputation for bugs than almost any other form of software development. Low-quality early-access releases, crashes, things clipping through one another, needing a patch on release day then a dozen patches thereafter, physics glitches sending things flying, interactions getting glitched so they can't be completed, cheaters in online play - these are all just accepted as normal by gamers.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Except for Factorio, which is rock solid.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Factorio has plenty of bugs. If you don't take precaution, they'll wreck your factory too. Or if you want an easier experience, you can turn enemies off, I guess.
- Agentlien 5y ago
  I'm certainly biased, being a game developer, but I feel this is a bit strong. Games are very complex and they're entertainment products, not safety critical applications. There have been a number of high-profile releases which have been rushed out the door and haven't been in a good state until quite a while later. And that's largely an issue of rigid deadlines and crunch. But for most games I feel it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. I wouldn't say it's accepted either, since it seems each game plagued by frequent crashes causes an uproar. I will concede that Early Access is often a mess. It used to mean you were literally playing the game before it was deemed ready for release and targeted at only a smaller set of die-hard fans. Now, both customers and developers seem to have lost sight of that. I've very rarely experienced crashes in modern games in my free time and when I've been tasked with analyzing reported client crashes at work they've been almost entirely due to running the game below minimum specs or crashes caused by MSI Afterburner. Clipping and physics glitches are also mainly caused by low-end hardware or other applications eating resources. If I look at which games I've been playing actively so far this year that'd be: Stardew Valley, Breath of the Wild, Super Meat Boy, HITMAN 2, The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Magic Carpet 2. Of these, the only crashes I've experiences were in the last of these, which is a DOS game from the nineties notorious for being buggy.
bestinterest 5y ago
I'm on the same boat as you. I'm envious of game devs, I do not know what went wrong in web land that we can not have great smooth user interfaces and smooth animations. I'm sorry but the DOM is not it and is holding us so far back its unreal. I really hope for a shakeup of some kind. Have a skim through this video [0]. An indie game using the Unity interface builder I believe. [0] https://youtu.be/bk6wkXI-42Q?t=617 https://youtu.be/bk6wkXI-42Q?t=617
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > I do not know what went wrong in web land that we can not have great smooth user interfaces and smooth animations. Design by committee, design by monopoly, and trying to shoehorn an application platform feature set into a document platform.

Agentlien 5y ago

I've never been part of web development, so I've only seen one half of the equation. AAA game development includes dedicated teams of QA testers playing through the game each day, flagging all bugs they come across and verifying every bug which is claimed to be fixed. That's the best source of stability in my experience. At the biggest studio I've been part of (three offices, with about a hundred people in the main one) we also had a number of automated tests (AI running through certain missions and doing events together) where failures would alert those with contributing commits.

michaelt 5y ago

Are you kidding? The games industry has a much worse reputation for bugs than almost any other form of software development. Low-quality early-access releases, crashes, things clipping through one another, needing a patch on release day then a dozen patches thereafter, physics glitches sending things flying, interactions getting glitched so they can't be completed, cheaters in online play - these are all just accepted as normal by gamers.

DonHopkins 5y ago
Except for Factorio, which is rock solid.
- Macha 5y ago
  Factorio has plenty of bugs. If you don't take precaution, they'll wreck your factory too. Or if you want an easier experience, you can turn enemies off, I guess.
Agentlien 5y ago
I'm certainly biased, being a game developer, but I feel this is a bit strong. Games are very complex and they're entertainment products, not safety critical applications. There have been a number of high-profile releases which have been rushed out the door and haven't been in a good state until quite a while later. And that's largely an issue of rigid deadlines and crunch. But for most games I feel it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. I wouldn't say it's accepted either, since it seems each game plagued by frequent crashes causes an uproar. I will concede that Early Access is often a mess. It used to mean you were literally playing the game before it was deemed ready for release and targeted at only a smaller set of die-hard fans. Now, both customers and developers seem to have lost sight of that. I've very rarely experienced crashes in modern games in my free time and when I've been tasked with analyzing reported client crashes at work they've been almost entirely due to running the game below minimum specs or crashes caused by MSI Afterburner. Clipping and physics glitches are also mainly caused by low-end hardware or other applications eating resources. If I look at which games I've been playing actively so far this year that'd be: Stardew Valley, Breath of the Wild, Super Meat Boy, HITMAN 2, The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Magic Carpet 2. Of these, the only crashes I've experiences were in the last of these, which is a DOS game from the nineties notorious for being buggy.

bestinterest 5y ago

I'm on the same boat as you. I'm envious of game devs, I do not know what went wrong in web land that we can not have great smooth user interfaces and smooth animations. I'm sorry but the DOM is not it and is holding us so far back its unreal. I really hope for a shakeup of some kind. Have a skim through this video [0]. An indie game using the Unity interface builder I believe. [0] https://youtu.be/bk6wkXI-42Q?t=617 https://youtu.be/bk6wkXI-42Q?t=617

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> I do not know what went wrong in web land that we can not have great smooth user interfaces and smooth animations. Design by committee, design by monopoly, and trying to shoehorn an application platform feature set into a document platform.