https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/c2xapo/i_thought_...
"Totally joking with that post. I have no hard feelings. I really thought it was awesome how much some members of your community took to the game and made it so much better based on your feedback and play style."
It makes a bit more sense if you imagine the developer's intended way to play the game being a glass bridge across a chasm, and speedrunners literally shatter the bridge and glue the pieces into a ramp that they jump a dirtbike off.
Source: I've been speedrunning for 7 years and my full-time job is in the speedrunning community
I've never understood this need to take pot shots at the devs while running, but it happens all the time during events like GDQ. Even when the developers are on the line chatting while the game is being played (which just seems straight up rude.) It also ignores all the complexity involved in making and shipping a game, which is definitely non-trivial.
Whenever this gets under my skin, I simply remember the classic: "I could place chunks of fat in a bathtub and call it art!" "Maybe, but you did not, Beuys did."
Haters gonna hate, it just shows their ignorance.
Several early 3D games increased player moment speed when holding strafe and forward at the same time. (Doom, EQ, etc.) That’s just incompetence and really should be described as such.
Now some games may have intentionally copied common bugs for style reasons etc, but more often titles are just rushed out with many known bugs and or vastly insufficient QA.
It's also one that doesn't impact core gameplay for most people. Heck, a lot of players will feel quite clever for discovering and using abilities like that in a game.
Fixing bugs like that require not fixing other bugs. They may have been aware of the issue and chose to fix other, more pressing bugs first. I'd strongly hesitate before labeling someone incompetent because their linear algebra didn't quite do vector math correctly in every case.
I'm also surprised to hear you describe the devs of Doom as 'incompetent', given their widespread praise in the engineering community, specifically for their code.
> Now some games may have intentionally copied common bugs for style reasons etc, but more often titles are just rushed out with many known bugs and or vastly insufficient QA.
So in some ways, those bugs become a part of the culture. That's an interesting avenue to explore, but it's an aside from my point that insulting the devs (who probably aren't the ones making decisions about QA or release schedules) undermines a relationship speedrunners could have with the developer community.
Unfortunately, QA costs money. Developers cost lots of money. Finding, root causing, and fixing bugs therefore costs lots and lots of money. You cannot just fix bugs forever, at some point you need to evaluate the current amount of money you've spent making the game and compare that to what you think you'll be able to make back on it. Does fixing that bug end up costing you more than you'll make back? Who knows, but it's a very real, complex prioritization problem that I don't think you are giving enough value or depth.
But, if we're comparing failure modes, can you at least agree that there's a pretty significant difference between:
* The tacoma narrows bridge, where there entire bridge was totally destroyed narrowly avoiding loss of life, AND * A bug in a video game that impacts the movement speed in a not-negative way for 90% of the players?
Like, if the strafe-bug was destroy millions of dollars in infrastructure and killing people I'd be on your side. But who cares if the 20th game has the same bug that doesn't affect most players in any way?
I agree it'd be better if games had no bugs, but if I had to choose between a game being 1% more fun, or a game not-having the strafe-bug I take the game that's 1% more fun every-time.
There's a nearly infinite set of tasks that sit in front of game-devs. The first thing you learn is that everything is an opportunity cost.
Nobody’s life is at stake in these games, but the gaming industry is both gigantic and competitive. So, a hypothetical 1% difference is enjoyment really can translate into 10’s of millions of dollars. Now, I don’t think this specific bug means a 1% drop, but it also does not take significant resources to fix.
Also, it’s not just about immersion this has real impact on game balance. Can players run away from enemy X often makes a huge difference in terms of fun. Balance assuming people are running sideways and people get stuck playing that way, balance assuming normal running and tension feels fake because they can easily escape.
Collectively obvious game bugs have killed off several game companies and represent billions in lost sales. As an industry that’s clearly extremely important even if we are just talking about entertainment.
This is where you are wrong. Even small fixes can destabilize builds. Every change needs code review, testing, a build, release (and possibly release notes). You need to schedule time to work on it, which means prioritization meetings and advocating why this bug should be fixed and not the other large pile of bugs.
Maybe you need to update some unit tests or automated feature tests. Maybe stop by the level designer's desk to make sure there weren't any baked in assumptions about player movement and space. Probably a good idea to chat with a gameplay designer as well to make sure it wasn't intentional (and also to validate that the fix doesn't actually make the game less fun.)
Wouldn't hurt to go to a playtest and mention that it's been changed, see if anyone on the team notices.
Actually, come to think of it, maybe you could put your fix behind a console command! Then you could quickly flip back and forth and see what you like better. But that also means adding a little more code and probably a little more documentation.
Sure, on the face of it you've just changed one arithmetic function. But there is a ton of hidden work and complexity that surrounds that.
As someone who made games for a living, there's a huge amount of unseen work that goes into even small changes. Players consistently underestimate the complexity of even minor fixes.
Not making the mistake in the first place should generally prevent the issue even if it was never fixed in any game ever. I am calling it incompetence specifically because it’s the kind of mistake you make when you don’t know what you’re doing.
PS: If detecting and fixing an issue like this is a significant issue for your team, that’s a much larger issue you need to deal with.
You seem to believe this notion that it is possible to write bug free code. Which suggests to me you’ve never written anything serious because you’re comments are textbook examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Sure, some games are released buggy. But even there, blaming the developers just demonstrates how little you experience you actually have with professional software development. You think developers are really that stupid that they don’t know when their own games suck? Usually bad games get released because of financial and/or time restrictions rather than a lack of pride from developers. And often bugs will just be placed on a snag list and prioritised in order of estimated time to fix vs the severity of the bug. Which means many of the bugs you described would just never be financially beneficial to patch.
You keep talking about the monetary impact of bugs while ignoring the fact that software development is a business and thus saving will always be cut where needed. Having your development time prolonged by 12 months to fix bugs most people won’t even see is perhaps the single most expensive and unnecessary way to drive your development.
Frankly I’m astonished anyone would believe development happens the way you idealise, let alone dare to call other engineers incompetent for not writing perfect software.
Errors with collision detection are one of the most common speed running exploits and in excess can make games unplayable. Broken quest chains are similarly exploitable, but in excess result in an unplayable mess.
Anyway, cost is really not the driver for most of these issues it’s poorly scoping what can actually be finished in a given time and budget. I have no idea what your background is in game dev, but it sounds like you don’t understand the overall development process.
I’d already addressed that when I said the kind of bugs you’re complaining about wouldn’t have an effect on sales.
> Anyway, cost is really not the driver for most of these issues it’s poorly scoping what can actually be finished in a given time and budget
That is exactly what I’d just said except you’ve overlooked that development time is still an expense.
> I have no idea what your background is in game dev, but it sounds like you don’t understand the overall development process.
Not my current role but my previous job was a lead developer. So I was not only hands on but I also had to manage workflows and budgets. Basically all the stuff you’ve just claimed I don’t understand ;)
Comparing a minor bug with player speed calculations in an edge case scenario with the total collapse of a bridge. They are on totally different scales. One cost lives. The other is a minor inconvenience at worst. When bugs are found you triage them, and if the expected cost to fix is greater than the expected benefit gained, you don't fix it. The benefit gained from fixing an edge case movement bug like this is minimal, so it will often be left unfixed. This isn't incompetence, it's just prioritisation.
It’s like blaming knife manufacturers that they’re incompetent because you accidentally slice your finger while cutting vegetables. Except the kind of gameplay bugs you’re describing aren’t security vulnerabilities and can’t be used to cheat in multiplayer games (outside of speed running where these kinds of cheats are often allowed). At some point you have to accept responsibility for your own actions; you guys are deliberately trying to break games to get faster speeds so it’s hardly a surprise that you’ll find ways to break games.
velocity.x = (RIGHTKEY-LEFTKEY)*speed;
velocity.y = (BACKKEY-FORWARDKEY)*speed;
Compared to building even a 2d side scroller let alone 3D worlds it’s not meaningfully more complex or slower.
PS: For a spaceship to move like that it would need equally huge engines on all sides. A design like the space shuttle with big engines on one sides and little ones for rotation seems much more logical outside of possibility low speed zero g docking.
No, it alters gameplay balance, but it doesn’t break it any more than shooting your film at 24 FPS breaks the cinematic experience. At this point, it has such a storied history in video games that “fixing” the problem may make the game less fun to many people, despite being more accurate.
That is one way to see it, another is to add extra depth to gameplay by introducing secret areas only accessible through gaps that you can only cross if you move diagonally.
Designers often acknowledged these bugs, especially in older games. The classic Tomb Raider games, for example, has several secrets only accessible through outright breaking the engine. One very obvious example is in TR1 a health pickup is only accessible if you keep jumping upwards at a corner of a pillar which causes Lara to move forward a single unit and eventually, due to some collision bug, she teleports at the top of the pillar which is otherwise inaccessible... and the only reason you could know about this health pickup is because due to the painter's algorithm used to draw the level, sometimes under some angles the pickup is drawn in front of the pillar even though it should be invisible.
Also strafe-jumping has been a common tactic in FPS games (especially multiplayer games) to the point where games reimplement it in engines that otherwise work 'properly'.
For a spaceship to accelerate like that...
Additionally, there are constant charity events that are moving millions of dollars annually. For example, a week long event just closed that raised 3 million US dollars for Doctors Without Borders. Those events need staff full time to support their mission, plan for future events, etc.
Perhaps a way to inject some visceral excitement into an eSport. Also makes it feel like more of an accomplishment.
We may only be hearing about this story because this kind of language increased its chance of being shared.
[I don’t think the developer resented the speed runners. He sounded flattered and amazed to me. But it’s sometimes hard to judge tone of voice from just text.]
Why though, what does it add to the discussion? Why does it matter if a tiny indie developer gets a bit of exposure to his tiny little game? "It's just an ad" sounds needlessly cynical and dismissive.
To see people speedrunning as a negative is just...odd. People played it, and not only that, put the time and effort in to explore it and share with friends. What's the problem? How is spending literal hours collecting secrets and brute-forcing new tech "destroying" the game? Someone's clearly never run a game of D&D before, because I'd be ecstatic if people took literally anything I created and expanding it into a new form I couldn't have gotten on my own.
Imagine, instead of complaining about the exposure, the game's creator used the feedback for another level (LEAVING the exploits in) and leaning on them as intended tech instead of seeing it as some "look how they massacred my boy" pity party. Crazy, doesn't even have to rewrite any engine code, just design a new level that emphasizes the new tech for these speedrunners.
Average Joes can still play the "normal" version to practice, then ramp up to the new one. Why piss on a community that's shining a light on and celebrating your work? Author even ends with "It was difficult to watch them do this to my game but I learned to love watching them" - so is it just a clickbait title? Have I been played? Should I have listened to DJ Khaled?
> but I learned to love watching them. Their skill truly amazes me.
I got the impression that the game's author is seriously happy about all this. The timing of the article before a speedrunning event looks like it is intended for maximal publicity.
I'm not sure where you got the impression you did about the content of the article?