NationStates Jolt Archive

Bugs, Bugs, and Bugs. Every time a new computer game comes out, it has bugs. I know the why, the why is that people want their money, they want to get the product out as fast as possible so that they can soon rake in the money. However, most of the time they have to create a patch, or several to fix the bugs. Why didn't they just do things right the first time?! Also, is it me or does it seem like only games made for computers have bug issues. I never really heard of an XBox game, or a Wii game having bugs. Maybe they do, I dunno. I wonder if companies actually would make more money if they released a product that didn't have so many bugs in them, someone should do a study on that. Anyways, have you guys ever had problems with a computer game because of bugs?

Yes. I've never had any really super bad experiences with bugs before. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Generally, with games like MMOs or high-tech PC games, I wait a few months for some patches to be released.

I've never had a problem of the point of unplayability, but bugs are kind of irritating. However, I imagine it's a tradeoff; people want games, and they want them within a certain timeframe. From a cost-benefit perspective, it may be far easier to release the game and address bugs through patches than to delay release and risk losing sales.

However, given that I don't know the first thing about the game industry, I can't really say much more than that.

Two bugs ruined my day a while ago, where games were unplayable. Call of Duty 4 singleplayer worked perfectly fine, but multiplayer wouldn't start at all. I returned it in disgust. I got C&C 3 and that didn't even install. I curse copy protection for all eternity.

Console games have plenty of bugs, IMO just less game breaking ones as everyone has the same system.

I always dread buying new games because its so much stress to get them working

console games never really have this problem, which is probably a key reason why they still exist

Well, there will allways be bugs at a game at anypoint. If you just look for it you will find it ;)

This is why more game companies need to be like Stardock--the company responsible for the Gal Civ games, among others. They're constantly talking with fans and players to work out the very best features for the game. Even the company CEO will go on their forum to chat with players from time to time.

Bugs, Bugs, and Bugs. Every time a new computer game comes out, it has bugs. I know the why, the why is that people want their money, they want to get the product out as fast as possible so that they can soon rake in the money. However, most of the time they have to create a patch, or several to fix the bugs. Why didn't they just do things right the first time?! Also, is it me or does it seem like only games made for computers have bug issues. I never really heard of an XBox game, or a Wii game having bugs. Maybe they do, I dunno. I wonder if companies actually would make more money if they released a product that didn't have so many bugs in them, someone should do a study on that. Anyways, have you guys ever had problems with a computer game because of bugs?
Unless the program is hello world, there will be bugs. You have millions of lines of code to deal with (Firefox is two million lines of code, excluding the code it links in from system libraries). To up the challenge, the tools you work with also have bugs. Debugging is actually the hardest part of programming, which is why it is often given to programmers fresh out of college.

Wii and XBox games have bugs too, but how are they supposed to address them? Mail you a new game disk every two months?

Know why games are so buggy? Because of their complexity. A gigabyte is about a billion bytes (or 1,073,741,824 to be exact. Computers use binary, after all). Since a byte is 8 bits, that's 8 billion bits. A bit is a 1 or 0 and a byte is the smallest usable unit of memory. Modern games often contain several gigabytes. ONE wrong bit can and will change an entire byte. One wrong byte can ruin an entire line of code and a ruined line of code could turn an otherwise perfectly good game into an often literally unplayable mess.

Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Anytime you have a large and complex system, you have a larger chance of malfunction than a smaller, simpler system. That's how the universe works. Complexity brings both greater good and greater bad. You get more functionality, but also more malfunction. Complex machines and systems are also harder to repair. With a wheelbarrow, you have the bucket, a wheel and axel, legs to support the wheelbarrow when it's not being lifted up and moved, handles, and something holding it all together. Fewer parts to malfunction and break. Fewer parts to repair. With a dump truck, you have the truck bed, three or more more wheels, fuel tank and lines, cab, engine (which, itself, is complex and made up of many different parts, etc. More parts to maufunction and break. More parts to repair. More wear and tear.

Same thing with games. With simpler Atari-style games, you have less coding. You have fewer places for bugs to appear. With a few months, any one person with programming skills can make a complete Atari-style game. With modern 8 gigabyte games, you need entire teams of people. You even need a small team to keep the project moving together. More people to screw it all up. More coding to be screwed up. You have a bigger, better game, but Murphy's Law will balance that out with glitches and malfunctions.

I don't own a computer, so it's not an issue for me.

My new Kubuntu 7.10 install is being a pain ... doesn't find the sound card.

I'm a programmer, bugs keep me in employment! :p

I like the way the Elder Scrolls games are designed to allow user-generated mods and quests. There are patches for bugs and mods that expand on the capabilities of the games. Limitations are based only on the engine and core programming of the game.

Ratchet & Clank games are pretty bug-free. And impossibly fun. Blow $#!% up!

Unless the program is hello world, there will be bugs. You have millions of lines of code to deal with (Firefox is two million lines of code, excluding the code it links in from system libraries). To up the challenge, the tools you work with also have bugs. Debugging is actually the hardest part of programming, which is why it is often given to programmers fresh out of college.

Wii and XBox games have bugs too, but how are they supposed to address them? Mail you a new game disk every two months?

I wish I had a college noob to debug *my* code. A mistake in my code managed to cripple the company servers for two hours yesterday.

I wish I had a college noob to debug *my* code. A mistake in my code managed to cripple the company servers for two hours yesterday.

You are too good for a college noob. He would end up so underworked, that he would just end up lurking 4chan all day.

I wish I had a college noob to debug *my* code. A mistake in my code managed to cripple the company servers for two hours yesterday.

I am the company programmer and acting Sys Admin (the real one is on holidays), so I can do a lot worse!
And no, I don't have any other person as backup.

Bugs, Bugs, and Bugs. Every time a new computer game comes out, it has bugs. I know the why, the why is that people want their money, they want to get the product out as fast as possible so that they can soon rake in the money. However, most of the time they have to create a patch, or several to fix the bugs. Why didn't they just do things right the first time?!Short-sighted management combined with poor programmers spoiling the work of the better ones. Game programmers at places like EA are basically paid to excrete tons upon tons of code at the largest pace possible, the result be damned if it sells. Also, only the true deal-breakers need be fixed, as non-critical bugs don't impact sales enough to worry about.

Also, is it me or does it seem like only games made for computers have bug issues. I never really heard of an XBox game, or a Wii game having bugs. Maybe they do, I dunno. I wonder if companies actually would make more money if they released a product that didn't have so many bugs in them, someone should do a study on that. Anyways, have you guys ever had problems with a computer game because of bugs?Traditionally, console games have been subject to strict quality control prior to publishing, preventing most large fuck-ups from making it - the developer had little choice. Though this practice is now eroding, console and PC games becoming ever more similar.

Unless the program is hello world, there will be bugs. You have millions of lines of code to deal with (Firefox is two million lines of code, excluding the code it links in from system libraries). To up the challenge, the tools you work with also have bugs. Debugging is actually the hardest part of programming, which is why it is often given to programmers fresh out of college.

But now that consoles are starting to use patches, we're starting to the see the "why pay testers for a few months when we can use them for a few weeks to get the worst of it, make the consumers pay to find the rest and patch it later" mentality that's oh so common on the PC side starting to rear it's ugly head.

But now that consoles are starting to use patches, we're starting to the see the "why pay testers for a few months when we can use them for a few weeks to get the worst of it, make the consumers pay to find the rest and patch it later" mentality that's oh so common on the PC side starting to rear it's ugly head.

I know. There's a reason why console games are often less buggy. Once a console game is done, it's done. You couldn't make patches for console games. So a developer is going to make it as glitch-free as time and money will allow.

With PC games, you buy the core, sometimes broken, game. Then, you buy patches to fix what should have been fixed before the game was released. Then you buy expansion packs. Said packs might contain new glitches, so you buy more patches. A $50 game is now a $150 game.

Console games have bugs, yes. I invite you to play Turok: Evolution for an example (particularly if you use the in-built cheat system - they don't seem to have even playtested it with those on, despite including it as a very visible menu option, as there is one bug with the invisibility cheat on which prevents you from progressing in the game. :rolleyes:).

Even Ocarina of Time, greatest game ever, had bugs, including the infamous swordless Link trick.

Although modern languages and compilers are much better equipped to identify and deal with messed up code nowadays, all it takes is one letter wrong in a variable name or a single miscoding with pointers to bring the whole thing crashing down.

Console games have bugs, yes. I invite you to play Turok: Evolution for an example (particularly if you use the in-built cheat system - they don't seem to have even playtested it with those on, despite including it as a very visible menu option, as there is one bug with the invisibility cheat on which prevents you from progressing in the game. :rolleyes:).

Even Ocarina of Time, greatest game ever, had bugs, including the infamous swordless Link trick.

Although modern languages and compilers are much better equipped to identify and deal with messed up code nowadays, all it takes is one letter wrong in a variable name or a single miscoding with pointers to bring the whole thing crashing down.
I'd love to see a console game segfault.

I never really heard of an XBox game, or a Wii game having bugs.

They're usually not so big that the game becomes completely unplayable but they're there. A couple of my own examples:

-In NHL 07 for the Playstation 2 there was a certain player (I forget the name- he was on a Swedish team) where if you tried editing him the game would lock up. The same thing happened when you tried creating a 20th team. My brother also told me (but I've never experienced it) that if you replace your goaltender with your backup during a period and at the end of the period go back to your starter the game freezes. Other than that, the game itself worked fine.

-In NHL 2K8 for the XBox 360, I tried playing a game between a created team and the New York Islanders and no matter how I set it up (changing the home venue, sweaters, who the home team was) the game never loaded. I had to "create" the Islanders just to get the game to play.

-NHL 08 (XBox 360) won't allow you to create a 31st team, even though it doesn't stop you from trying to make it nor force you to save over another created team if you're over 30. The team just won't register.

-This is something I discovered just today: in Madden NFL 08 for the XBox 360, you can score touchdowns/field goals/safeties, etc. at will but the scoreboard won't add anymore points after 255, even if you score again. I'm guessing it's a computer thing, since most computer-based forms don't allow you to type in more than 256 characters in a row. Also, for some reason if you create an 11th team and save it to the system, the game for some reason won't recognize its existence unless you put that team under a different profile.

Those are the ones I remember. They weren't major and weren't glitches I couldn't get around but they are present on the consoles, at least now. Something had to give considering how complex the games are getting (sometimes needlessly slow- with all these attempts at "cool graphics" the games can get awfully slow to load and I just want to play a game. Where's Tetris when you need it?).

Haven't played games for a while, but the last one I bought and played had a really suckful bug in it. It was Titan Quest. It wasn't bad a game in single-player, albeit a tad long and repetitive.
The problem came when I was 1/2 way through the game single-player and decided to try out the multi-player. It went ok as well, except for one major thing:
It saved over my single-player game.
The problem here was that in multi-player I could use the teleport circles to jump to where the other players were and join in their game. This meant jumping past a small section I hadn't yet completed in single-player to the Minotaur cave. Together we killed the Minotaur. When I loaded up my sp-game, I was stuck just past the Minotaur cave unable to go back in. The next part of the game wanted something I was supposed to have picked up after killing the Minotaur.
I teleported back to the last place I was in my sp game and could go no further. In that part I had to hitch a ride on a boat to cross the sea. Unfortunately, since the game had saved me as being passed the cave, it had set the ship on the opposite side of the sea - in front of the cave.
Thus I was totally stuck.

Gave up on the game at that point and haven't touched it since.

Ya think it wouldn't have taken much to have two save games - a sp game and a mp game.

Alpha is the new Beta and Beta is the new Gold.

And I mean, sure, console games do have bugs and it's only getting worse, but PC games are buggier than console games by far, and the reason that is so is because the ability to patch the game makes the developers think that they can just fix all the problems they have later.

Haven't played games for a while, but the last one I bought and played had a really suckful bug in it. It was Titan Quest. It wasn't bad a game in single-player, albeit a tad long and repetitive.
The problem came when I was 1/2 way through the game single-player and decided to try out the multi-player. It went ok as well, except for one major thing:
It saved over my single-player game.
The problem here was that in multi-player I could use the teleport circles to jump to where the other players were and join in their game. This meant jumping past a small section I hadn't yet completed in single-player to the Minotaur cave. Together we killed the Minotaur. When I loaded up my sp-game, I was stuck just past the Minotaur cave unable to go back in. The next part of the game wanted something I was supposed to have picked up after killing the Minotaur.
I teleported back to the last place I was in my sp game and could go no further. In that part I had to hitch a ride on a boat to cross the sea. Unfortunately, since the game had saved me as being passed the cave, it had set the ship on the opposite side of the sea - in front of the cave.
Thus I was totally stuck.

Gave up on the game at that point and haven't touched it since.

Ya think it wouldn't have taken much to have two save games - a sp game and a mp game.I never got that far through Titan Quest. All the skills really lacked area of effect capabilities. The closest thing I saw was spells that would fragment.:rolleyes:

is it me or does it seem like only games made for computers have bug issues.

PC games do tend to have a lot more bugs than console games, especially ones that cause crashes. The problem is that a pc game can't be tested on every possible hardware configuration before it is released. Computers also have different operating systems and drivers. You might see serious bugs on one system that would never appear on another. If you want to play PC games you have to resign yourself to the fact that you will have to spend a bit of time getting some games to work. I got Unreal Tournament 3 last week, which by the way is a great game. :gundge:
It was crashing on my PC because of issues with my sound card and I had to get a different version of OpenAl, which significantly reduced the sound quality. If the PS3 version crashed like this I would be outraged but I can forgive them for quite serious bugs on the computer if they release a patch soon.

i had a good one in Quake 2 where the BFG beam/ball/thingy just hung in mid-air in front of the gun and moved round the level with me. one shot fired, tens of enemies dissolved... it was sweet :D

only problem was it made it difficult to see where i was going :P



mostly no problems with console games, and that's part of the reason i moved to playing on consoles (that and not having to worry about updating hardware ever). there's an irritating one in Test Drive Unlimited for the 360 i'm playing at the mo. when i pause it for any good length of time (5 mins or more) the disk spins down. when i un-pause it, the disk doesn't spin up again, meaning it can't load the next section of the map. i get an error saying the disk is unreadable and i have to restart :mad:
the upshot is i have to drive around aimlessly with one hand if my gf calls and i don't want it to crash :p

mostly no problems with console games, and that's part of the reason i moved to playing on consoles (that and not having to worry about updating hardware ever).

The only problem with the console approach is that they are becoming more like a PC as time goes by.

You have permanent storage and an internet connection. That opens up the door to post-release patching. I think some games are already taking this approach now.

Bugs, Bugs, and Bugs. Every time a new computer game comes out, it has bugs. Why didn't they just do things right the first time?! I wonder if companies actually would make more money if they released a product that didn't have so many bugs in them, someone should do a study on that. Anyways, have you guys ever had problems with a computer game because of bugs?

What do you expect them to do? Have the game played by all of their employees for months before giving it the thumbs up?

"Boss, at the fourth level, when you try to jump up the fountain while simultaneously pressing all of the numbers and G,J,D,U and A on your keyboard while having a steel katana equipped and carrying 47 health potions there's a chance you will fall into the fountain which means you will have to reload the autosave that occurred 29 seconds back..."
"Holy Shit, Great job John, I can't imagine what would have happened if we would have missed that!"

:rolleyes:

Coding is extremely hard to do, The reason why console games hardly have any bugs is probably because a console is made mainly for gaming. Although it would be nice to write a bookreport using a nunchuk controller :p

Although it would be nice to write a bookreport using a nunchuk controller :p

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

All of these projects run on a PC. You can download them too!
I've been using the same wiimote framework for a few home projects too.

The head-tracking video is superb!

Alpha is the new Beta and Beta is the new Gold.

And I mean, sure, console games do have bugs and it's only getting worse, but PC games are buggier than console games by far, and the reason that is so is because the ability to patch the game makes the developers think that they can just fix all the problems they have later.

Like I said, they make more money that way because they don't have to test as long or thourghly and they can get the game out earlier. I'm sure that alot of developers don't want to but some of the publishers have been getting really greedy and nasty lately, especially their PR.

Back in the days before the internet new computer games were tested properly before being introduced to the market because there was no way to get bug-fixes to the buyers.

Then came those game magazines with CDs and things started to decline.

Now it's just bad. I don't even think I know a single game that didn't need to be upgraded to 1.1 or 1.2 to run properly.

I never got that far through Titan Quest. All the skills really lacked area of effect capabilities. The closest thing I saw was spells that would fragment.:rolleyes:

Wow, neither of you finished TQ nor the expansion, Immortal Throne? Despite my totally shitty video card (read: graphics occasionally would wonk out on me), I managed to get to the end, and thus if I didn't delete my old install, I would have been able to play on the next difficulty level. Of course, it starts you back at the first town again.

As for spell AOE capabilities, you need to put a lot of points into that side bar, with the big plus button. Storm magic was strong like that. All the classes were good like that. The range class (Hunter) had a volley attack, which I used and it's pretty handy.

I found up playing the whole thing multiplayer. I went as a tank and my husband has a beast-master hybrid.

Of course, playing multiplayer makes the game harder than it would normally be, but I have no clue how we did it but we beat the Titan at the end of the game without using any of the boosts provided at the location.

its just a fact of life that when you program something there is a very high chance at some point there is going to be a bug.

all you can do is try to work out the obvious ones and let it play out.

I'd love to see a console game segfault.

Heh, I was referring to PCs at the time.
I'd love to see any console bug along the same lines, though.

Heh, I was referring to PCs at the time.
I'd love to see any console bug along the same lines, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcNAYgs32ug&NR=1

The reason there are fewer bugs on consoles versus pcs is simple. Each console is effectivly identical to every other console of the same type.

My xbox is identical to your xbox which is identical to everybody elses xbox. It has the same hardware, same software, and same capabilities. On the other hand, my computer configuration is different than your configuration.

When designing for a console, there's no worry about hardware limitations, incompatability, software conflicts, or anything like that. With PCs there is. With a myriad of different configurations and capabilities, bugs are bound to crop up a lot more often.

Actually, there was a time in Deus Ex where I accidentally closed a door that has infinite health and infinite lock picking. There was no key, since you had to push a block to open it. Well, the block didn't work, so I just used cheats.

Don't know if it's technically a bug or not, but Civ IV just about kills my computer every time I try to play it. Poor decrepit machine.

I like the way the Elder Scrolls games are designed to allow user-generated mods and quests. There are patches for bugs and mods that expand on the capabilities of the games. Limitations are based only on the engine and core programming of the game.

I liked Elder Scrolls II, Daggerfall, for all its bugs...

quests not being continued, not getting any rewards, falling through walls while climbing, falling through floors while running, falling after you jump, having dungeon rooms not attached to any other part of the dungeon (and you HAVE to get to that room, good luck!).

It was, in short, a pitfall of bugs, but yet so entertaining everytime a new bug popped up (Aside from the fact that you had to start over a zillion times).

Don't know if it's technically a bug or not, but Civ IV just about kills my computer every time I try to play it. Poor decrepit machine.

Your machine is a bug! :p Or you could try and run it on lower detail... you know, turn down the graphics.

Your machine is a bug! :p Or you could try and run it on lower detail... you know, turn down the graphics.

Tried that. Poor thing's on its last legs anyway. My goal is to eke enough power out of it to finish college, then upgrade to something that can run both my games and my engineering software (unlike this, which really doesn't do either).

Wow, neither of you finished TQ nor the expansion, Immortal Throne? Despite my totally shitty video card (read: graphics occasionally would wonk out on me), I managed to get to the end, and thus if I didn't delete my old install, I would have been able to play on the next difficulty level. Of course, it starts you back at the first town again.

As for spell AOE capabilities, you need to put a lot of points into that side bar, with the big plus button. Storm magic was strong like that. All the classes were good like that. The range class (Hunter) had a volley attack, which I used and it's pretty handy.

I found up playing the whole thing multiplayer. I went as a tank and my husband has a beast-master hybrid.

Of course, playing multiplayer makes the game harder than it would normally be, but I have no clue how we did it but we beat the Titan at the end of the game without using any of the boosts provided at the location.

Yeah, my combined Storm and Hunter character blasted her way throughout the entire game on all three difficulties easily(or rather, more easily than most, as it was still difficult.)

I never did play online, though. I usually dislike playing games online, so whenever I see a game company sacrifice a feature I'd really like to see in a game in favor of putting in multiplayer instead(especially for games where it doesn't make much sense) I cry. :(

I'll go with the guys that say debugging is hard. Try it if you don't trust me. I had to send a homework at uni-a program basically doing read and write actions to/from binary files, based on parameters(it looked like a Linux command). It had around 350 lines and took me 3 days to debug. I got used to hating the debugging part, especially the dreaded "segmentation fault-core dumped" one.

Knotthole Glade;13376453']I'll go with the guys that say debugging is hard. Try it if you don't trust me. I had to send a homework at uni-a program basically doing read and write actions to/from binary files, based on parameters(it looked like a Linux command). It had around 350 lines and took me 3 days to debug. I got used to hating the debugging part, especially the dreaded "segmentation fault-core dumped" one.

Ah, I love those vague error messages, forcing you to have to read every single of the million or so characters you put in trying to figure out where you messed up, because that's oh so easy. :rolleyes:

With the advent of internet capabilities for consoles their games will start being semi-buggy when released and require patches.

I made perhaps a 10,000 line program once; a fairly simple game, in fact. I never finished it, because by the end it had become so buggy I didn't even know where to start.
I got completely messed up when trying to add multiplayer. Networking isn't my strong point.

The reason there are fewer bugs on consoles versus pcs is simple. Each console is effectivly identical to every other console of the same type.

My xbox is identical to your xbox which is identical to everybody elses xbox. It has the same hardware, same software, and same capabilities. On the other hand, my computer configuration is different than your configuration.

When designing for a console, there's no worry about hardware limitations, incompatability, software conflicts, or anything like that.

And half the dev teams still can't get things to run at a steady frame-rate :rolleyes:

Knotthole Glade;13376453']I'll go with the guys that say debugging is hard. Try it if you don't trust me. I had to send a homework at uni-a program basically doing read and write actions to/from binary files, based on parameters(it looked like a Linux command). It had around 350 lines and took me 3 days to debug. I got used to hating the debugging part, especially the dreaded "segmentation fault-core dumped" one.

Ah, I love those vague error messages, forcing you to have to read every single of the million or so characters you put in trying to figure out where you messed up, because that's oh so easy. :rolleyes:

Ever tried a debugger?

Ever tried a debugger?

I'm actually not much of a programmer- I think the last time I did it was dabbling in Q-Basic about twelve years ago or so, but I do remember the messages which did get frustrating.