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Why Timothy Cain creator of Fallout left Fallout 2 during development
- nailer 3y agoShort version: he’s the lead dev (and lead designer, and project leader, created fallout, and much more). There is a showstopper bug that is hard to reproduce they effectively bisect the code until they find it. They fix the bug. He is asked whose error it was by his boss, and to protect the person, he says it’s not important. His bonus - keep in mind he created a new successful IP from scratch - is drastically reduced as a result.
- rowanG077 3y agoWow. Insane that he lost his bonus for being a good lead dev. Some dev had put the classic `<=` instead of `<` in a for loop check and the for loop body promptly corrupted some memory leading to heisencrashes. It took weeks to narrow down with 10+ hour days. Once they did and fixed it the boss asked for a name who had written the offending code. Timothy did not bend. Boss was salty and cut his bonus.
- zabzonk 3y agowhenever i see '<=' in code, my bug detectors start twitching. to begin with, doing effectively two tests in one always seems to over-complicate things.
- symlinkk 3y agoSeriously?
- zabzonk 3y agoyep - i am not saying there are no cases for using it, but use of it is always worth looking at.
- CamperBob2 3y agoSame whenever I see a do...while loop. Nothing wrong with a do...while loop, but I've learned to look twice when crossing that particular street. Most loops that don't have bugs tend to support zero iterations seamlessly and inherently.
- dllthomas 3y agoIf you squint, aren't those the same case?
- zabzonk 3y agoum, a do...while always does something at least once - a for-loop not.
- dllthomas 3y agoI was trying to say that the difference between a for loop with < and a for loop with <= is roughly the same as the difference between a while loop and a do-while loop, and to whatever degree that's true they might be due suspicion for the same reason.
- jonhohle 3y agoI agree with parent. do-while communicates that a thing will always execute once, and maybe more, and a while or for loop (even in the higher level for-each/for-in case) may never execute at all. Being able to choose the right control structure (and data structures) can provide additional information to the correctness of the code than arbitrary choices which may perform the same function. Choosing the Most expressive options may or may not conflict with performance, in which case, comments are helpful to describe why more obvious approaches weren’t taken.
- dllthomas 3y agozabzonk is obviously correct about the behavior of the control structures - that's not something I ever meant to disagree about. The thread had had one poster state they find <= suspicious in a for loop, and another about any do-while loop. I don't think these are literally the same thing (hence "if you squint") but I think they share a meaningful similarity of adding an extra pass through the loop compared to the other form and I thought that was interesting.
- derefr 3y agox <= y isn't two tests. In a low-level sense, branch-if-greater-or-equal is one instruction even on RISC machines — and not one any more "complex" than branch-if-greater. In an abstract boolean-algebra sense, x <= y is the same as !(x > y).
- zabzonk 3y ago> x <= y is the same as !(x > y) i.e. two tests, or perhaps i should say logical operations. i'm not saying don't use '<=', but do check that it is doing what you think it should.
- derefr 3y agoLet me put it another way: the following are the same code: if: x <= y, do: foo(), else: nothing() if: y < x, do: nothing(), else: foo()
- AugurCognito 3y agoShouldn't the last statement be: if: y > x, do: nothing(), else: foo()
- rurban 3y agoNope, order of evaluation might matter with impure code.
- rowanG077 3y agoHow exactly? Well there is an extreme case where x and y are volatile but even then the order is implementation defined so I can't see a world where it matters.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
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- rgbgraph 3y agoThis form is basically always used for enumeration. Might as well just do (x != y); unless you're specifically looking to guard against erroneous bitflips that would be caught by the prior (x < y), but not the former. But at that point -- it's likely your result is going to be garbage. In essence they're the same; but one you never have to think about whether you're using it correctly. Can anyone find a reason not to swap out (x < y) for (x != y)?
- rowanG077 3y ago`<` communicates the intent way better. It also more readable Example: The loop should run as long as the counter is smaller than 10. `i /= 10` achieves the same thing but communicates something very different. It implies `i` may be changed inside the loop to become larger than 10. The condition itself implies a larger valid state space. It's a moot point anyway. Modern languages have much better looping constructs.
- olkingcole 3y ago(If I'm understanding correctly) one example is if have two places where you x++ in the loop, so if you make an error in there you might end up hitting both of them and incrementing from y-1 to y+1.
- urthor 3y ago[flagged]
- rincebrain 3y agoIf you have a bug and produce x+=2, you never terminate? One might argue corrupting much larger swathes of memory is better from a "fail-fast" perspective, but there's always tradeoffs.
- thrwy41 3y agoPerhaps it was him (and that is what they assumed when they cut his bonus)
- pimlottc 3y agoThe title has been changed from first person to third person, making it sound like it's a piece from some video game history vlogger. In fact, it's actually a first-hand account from the man himself. "Timothy Cain: Why I Left Fallout 2" would be a better title.
- hartator 3y agoSeems super unfair indeed.
- thrwy41 3y agoIs it? As the tech lead, it is his responsibility or fault either way that such errors do not make it the code or find them if that happens. If the project is delayed and you miss some big sale day or something, it does not sound so unfair that his bonus is cut. I am not fully sold on the idea of him losing a bonus is 100% because he defended the person who did it.
- thevagrant 3y agoConsidering how successful the game was, it was unfair. It would be different if it had flopped or the bug was released and impacted sales significantly
- h0l0cube 3y ago> Is it? It absolutely is. Timothy brought the company a whole new profitable franchise. Based on that alone it would have been fair to compensate him well. That he was also in the middle of building the sequel under duress made it also the sensible thing to do. Late 90s and 00s games companies were toxic places to work, and getting demoted or fired due to a simple off-by-one error in a memory unsafe language is not reasonable, it’s extreme. But it was still the norm for the unhinged management of these games companies that couldn’t grasp the huge risks involved with games development, and were also unwilling to appropriately budget or compensate their staff for it.
- gravypod 3y ago> But it was still the norm for the unhinged management of these games companies The oddest thing to me is that he claims he heard about this when opening the check. I don't know how I would have reacted to that but it would not be well. Definitely not with enough grace to go home before writing a resignation.
- gravypod 3y ago
- syngrog66 3y agoFallout fans might be interested in a game I've been building. (see my bio if curious.) Fallout, Idiocracy, HHGG and The Princess Bride are all heavy inspirations and influences on both its style and world design.
- sogen 3y agoTurn-based?
- wyldfire 3y agoWell...sort-of. it's definitely not realtime ;) Took a look and it seems like it's text-based IF like Infocom games.
- syngrog66 3y agoclose! its a text-and-terminal style UX at moment. so we have some Infocom/IF like-modes, but also have true Rogue-like-looking UI elements where those fit. (I should revise the project page to make clear. But Itch.io forced me to pick a category) I want the best of both.
- sogen 3y agoThanks!
- jsiepkes 3y agoI encourage everyone to also look at his follow-up video called "Listening To My Stories With Nuance": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyQgWh-XAxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyQgWh-XAxs
- gmerc 3y agoInterplay was bad all around. They lost BioWare to similar reasons. They cheated on the sales metrics (underreporting sales to Bioware ) on Baldurs Gate and other titles to scam them out their royalties but got caught. The resulting situation involving lawyers with Bioware walking with the in progress game and IP, the D&D 3.0 title Neverwinter Nights to Atari leaving Interplay without its even more successful innovator and dooming Black Isle. Fun fact - The master server design for neverwinter multiplayer was to large parts put in place to detect publisher royalty cheating not because of piracy concerns. And sure as hell Atari once tried to sell a large bunch of NWN expansion pack in Germany with copied keys, not understanding that the master server design meant uniquely issued keys rather than the 90s algorithmic ones. To this day Interplay lives as a zombified parasitic scam organism trying to attach itself to new opportunities every once in a while.