Let's talk about the elephant in the room: Content Bloat

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

You have the tools to “trim the fat” if that’s what floats your boat, that’s all you’re going to get.

What are you looking for, a detailed design document for the next year of development? I frequently post my plans for the game on the forums, I discuss them all the time on IRC, I file issues in github about features and content we can add, and I discuss other people’s ideas and contributions on a daily basis. What else do you want?

I don’t need your agreement. I communicate where the project is going and listen to people’s input, but I’m not asking for your agreement, I’m telling you what we’re doing. We’ve hashed this out multiple times, and bottom line I completely disagree with your opinions on this subject. No amount of insulting the contributors or repeating your ridiculous assertions is going to change how I run the project.

22

I’ve said it before, and apparently I must say it again: we don’t merge crap.

23

If my assertions are so ridiculous, why does this exact same topic come up at least once a week?

You say that you’re communicating where the project is going and that you’re telling us what you’re doing, but the problem is that it’s apparently not being communicated well enough - myself, and evidently a lot of people here, just see DDA as having little/no direction and just dragging in loads of mediocre content. If there is a strong direction - share it. We’ve been waiting for months /going on a year for Z-levels, NPCs and so on - I know progress is being made, but you can see how it doesn’t look like it from the outside. Weekly/bi-weekly updates (however short) help immensely, as do ‘projects we’re working on’ threads.

Rivet, I know you don’t merge crap (as in unusable, complete rubbish) and we thank you for your work. The problem is the ‘mediocre stuff’ - content which doesn’t do anything and is just more and more stuff with no meaning or need. Some of it seems vanity, some seems like people trying to put their mark on the game by changing a one or two values and some of it is ‘this is in the shop and not in the game so it must be added’ - some is good, but a lot just doesn’t look great.

Lastly, (and I’ve said it before) we’re all trying to help, to make things better and we’re all so passionate because we want the game to improve. I have the up-most respect and gratitude to anyone who devotes their free time to other people’s enjoyment, but that doesn’t mean that everything they do is golden or even worth while in a project like this. I hope no one feels insulted by anyone’s criticism - no one is being targeted directly and it’s all in the spirit of improvement.

24

Hmm. Maybe its the IRC stuff going on; are those of us that don’t venture into IRC missing a lot of the action/discussion? I don’t use IRC and can’t remember how many years ago I last did, is it basically a requirement to keeping up to date on the project and stuff? I could see how that could lead to recurring waves of forum goers (I’ve noticed quite a few new names here lately) asking/rehashing similar questions and threads (as this one). Maybe there is just a big chunk of us missing out on half (or more) of the conversation.

25

I follow github PRs and IRC discussion regularly, and my impression(also from my own PRs) is that anything goes in, as long as:

  • It doesn’t break the game.
  • It’s not outright horrible.
  • It’s not an engine change.

Yes, there is direction in terms of engine development, but not in terms of content development. Seemingly illogically, the strict direction in terms of engine development actually reinforces the problem, because any attempts to extend the engine to do things in a different way(such as getting rid of the reality bubble) get shot down, and so it becomes ludicrously expensive to do anything but “more of the same”. Case in point: Fires still freeze in time when you leave an area, and this won’t change any time soon. z-levels will happen sooner, probably(and maybe my view is unusual here, but I view z-levels as also “more of the same”, because while it enables new ways to design maps, it doesn’t change anything about the fundamental gameplay).

The bottom line is that I’m dissatisfied with the way the game is being managed compared to the way Whales did gamedesign, and that’s a really harsh opinion, as we all are aware of the numerous problems with the way Whales did things. However, the reason Whales Cataclysm was enjoyable, was because it had plenty of interesting ideas crammed into a tight package, CDDA on the other hand is drifting into the opposite direction.

In the end, to me personally, it doesn’t really matter too much. People are free to do as they like, and I have no need to convince anyone. I state here pretty obvious facts and consequences, and if you wish to either deny those consequences, or you don’t actually care about them, that is not my problem.

26

By the way, please don’t read my previous post as adressing anything but binky and his particular stalking horse, that was directed squarely at his often-proposed solutions. I probably shouldn’t have bothered, because he seems to have ignored everything I said.

  1. it’s literally impossible to get rid of the reality bubble.
  2. I’ve outlined a solution to the fire problem several times:
    put submaps with fires on them that leave the bubble on a “burning tile list”
    write a (potentially simplified) fire spreading algorithm that can evaluate several turns worth of burning quickly
    handle the inter-tile submap effects with… um, magic <_< (ok I don’t have everything figured out, I said it’s an outline)
    round-robin through the “burning tile list” during game idle time running the algorithm.
    serialize the burning tile list so it gets updated across saves.

The only other proposal I’ve seen has been “lock all tiles with fire on them into an extended active map and keep them updating as usual”, to which my response has been that I think without special handling it’ll lock up people’s computers in certain circumstances.
If there’s another proposal I don’t remember it.
I suspect this particular issue is a miscommunication somewhere.

[quote=“CIB, post:25, topic:5841”]z-levels will happen sooner, probably(and maybe my view is unusual here, but I view z-levels as also “more of the same”, because while it enables new ways to design maps, it doesn’t change anything about the fundamental gameplay).

The bottom line is that I’m dissatisfied with the way the game is being managed compared to the way Whales did gamedesign, and that’s a really harsh opinion, as we all are aware of the numerous problems with the way Whales did things. However, the reason Whales Cataclysm was enjoyable, was because it had plenty of interesting ideas crammed into a tight package, CDDA on the other hand is drifting into the opposite direction.[/quote]
I literally don’t understand what you’re saying. Are you saying I don’t come up with enough original ideas, that I reject new ideas, or that having more content somehow dilutes the game features? (or obviously it could be something entirely different)

If it’s the first, harsh, but I’ll take the criticism if so, but please be more specific.
If it’s the second, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, pretty much the only ideas I reject are ones that I either think won’t work or that don’t fit in the game, if you’re talking about particular implementations, I’ll often oppose certain designs and suggest an alternative, and I try really hard to provide concrete reasons why I think the way I do about it.
If it’s the third, it’s a much grayer area and I don’t have time to get into it at the moment, so I’ll pick it up later.

27

None of those things, really. It’s not related to having new features, or not having them. It’s related to rethinking the way the game works on the inside. To put it bluntly, you don’t take risks. I don’t blame you either, I’m just saying that this makes the problem of having “more of the same” worse, because at this point only people with a very, very deep understanding of the game engine can change anything other than trivialities and JSON, and even then you have to invest 10x the effort of what it’d take to code the feature from the ground up in a new game.

I don’t expect a fix to that. It’s a separate problem from content bloat entirely. But it makes the problem of content bloat worse, and there are ways to deal with content bloat for the time being, other than expecting some random dude to show up and clean up after everyone else.

28

Bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?

29

Bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?[/quote]
A more specific term would be "literally impossible to get rid of the reality bubble without either: A) stopping the game from running or B) rewriting most of the game’s map handling from the ground up. A lot of the map code depends on the reality bubble, and you can’t just remove it without strange effects popping up.

30

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:26, topic:5841”]1. it’s literally impossible to get rid of the reality bubble.
2. I’ve outlined a solution to the fire problem several times:
put submaps with fires on them that leave the bubble on a “burning tile list”
write a (potentially simplified) fire spreading algorithm that can evaluate several turns worth of burning quickly
handle the inter-tile submap effects with… um, magic <_< (ok I don’t have everything figured out, I said it’s an outline)
round-robin through the “burning tile list” during game idle time running the algorithm.
serialize the burning tile list so it gets updated across saves.[/quote]

This just in, KG goes against design documents and posts from other devs; announcing DDA will have MAGIC in it afterall. Wizards of the multi-verse chant “Huzzah!” in unison! :wink:

31

@i2amroy - but you do have MapGen in terms of handling specifics? This tool enables the coder to implement an array of different variables and flags to an “inactive” map tile. If you were, for example, to strap some decay (aging) effects to one of those map pieces, just as it had been through a time-travel patch of some months or years, you might be able to involve certain parameters such as weather/atmosphere, water and flora, and at last - fire and combustion.
I see little point to hesitating where the program is required to actually calculate something only to declare that individual perception of a smooth gameplay is a must. Can you expect the same from the Cry engine? Mustn’t you always update the game offline whenever a mandatory fix is issued? If we’re to follow the said bubble, than the codebase should follow to keep the vortex of possibilities from disabling evident reality parameters.

32

What you do to handle things outside of the reality bubble should be similar to what Kevin suggested here, flag maps and then rarely load them in, run a condensed “update” algorithm over them, and then unload them again. Keeping them constantly loaded is just going to make certain scenarios (such as a forest fire) grind the player’s computer processing to a halt, and potentially crash the game.

33

A small number of interesting ideas (those few that weren’t directly plagiarised from other IP) crammed into a package that was never even remotely finished or stable. We’ve remedied that.

One of the common traits of Roguelikes is that they usually have a LOT of different stuff in them, from monsters to items to activities to strategies. In that, C:DDA is quite the traditional Roguelike.

Remember, C:DDA is an expansion upon the original Cataclysm. Saying that there’s too much content in the game is missing the entire point.

34

The smoker was not plagiarized from any other IP. The similarity in names for that one is just a coincidence, since the person who added it (me) didn’t even know L4D had smokers at the time, and they are certainly nothing like the climbing frog-tongued critters from that game.

35

Coming from someone who plays modded Bethesda titles, I think there really is no such thing as too much content. There’s unnecessary content, such as nude lizard ladies you can pay to you.

But basically any content that fits the theme of the game and adds something fun and meaningful is okay in my book.

36

Devil’s advocate to that is just … something, ANYthing will always be ‘fun and meaningful’ to someone. Its the curse of community projects … more people = more opinions over what is or is not ‘fun and meaningful’ and if each person gets to make their own value judgement then (hyperbole states) you might as well blow up the levy and let the flood waters consume you. Some restraint is obviously a good thing (and I do see it here from time to time).

BUT, those naked lizard ladies are not only ‘fun and meaningful’ to some people, who would say you calling it ‘unnecessary’ was insulting, but maybe even ‘mandatory effing content that should never be removed’ to some more fanatical people. Since it is fun, meaningful, and mandatory for a crapload of people out there if that game was open source and community developed there would have been a thread crying that there wasn’t enough naked lizard tits (if TES lizards have tits).

It ends up a balancing act, really, and the devs can end up having to act like parents as much as coders (which is sad since, we should all be adults here, but there do happen to be people on the internet acting like complete children - I know, you just gasped too!). Hell, even those devs with more libertarian-style “anything goes” mantras as we have here suffer the parent-trap. “Go play … its your sandbox … do whatever you want and have fun” makes people think anything and everything that can or will go in, may. Yet you still see the same devs shout “oh crap, NO NO NO don’t put that in there” when someone goes too far, in their opinion (for instance: the bodily functions discussion craps crops up every few weeks for some reason). It can lead to confusion, just like in children, getting mixed messages.

The design document helps … it gives something to point to and say “we’ve all agreed that isn’t gunna’ go in the game … but make a mod for yourself and host it somewhere for you and your friends if you want, we don’t care what you do in your own home”. Mod manager helps too for sure.

I think Rivet’s famous “we don’t merge crap” is a good bumper-sticker, but can be hard to decipher because it is, also, vague. We can pretty much all agree unanimously that ‘crap’ includes crappy or needlessly complicated code, non-design-document things that just don’t fit the game’s overall theme, and obvious game breaking additions. ‘Crap’ could also mean, to some, 700 more identical guns when the ones we have are pretty much all identical as is … or Sasquatch as spawning monsters (Zomsquatch!) … or anything too overpowered that trivializes the game difficulty … or sex shops as a store in game where you can find and craft with various latex products (I mean, we already have some content of various fetish natures) … etc. So when that stuff goes in, people might see it as ‘crap’ even if ‘The Powers That Be’ do not. I considered asking Rivet to better define what she means, but I was scared to get on her bad side and/or come off pedantic. Maybe we should throw up a sticky here with a list of “No, just no” additions that will not go in … kinda’ like those signs at public pools - “No crap: no bad code; no bodily functions; no magic; no obviously insulting items just to troll… etc” and just update it as the new crazy banned things pop up, and then lockdown threads that push for that stuff instead of going through the motions again and again when “I wanna drink my pee; you can’t not let me, it exists in real life and anything in real life should be in game!!!1one” comes back around again.

Those mixed messages (and the even more obvious fact that people refuse to use the search function to look if their suggestions or comments have been discussed already) do lead to some of the reoccurring debates. Binky’s dead-horse and/or hornets nest he keeps kicking (… side note, should dead horses in game explode with wasps if you kick them? … eh … I digress) included, probably.

37

That’d work.

38

That’d work.[/quote]

The design doc contemplates Lovecraft-type magic, as with the current artifacts. D&D magic is Nope.

Not sure what makes an item “obviously insulting”: the wolf suit was folks taking a shot at some other forum for bashing furries, and the dinosaur suit was me implementing GlyphGryph’s one-off comment as an equally one-off PR. Both are replies to insulting conduct, but could themselves be taken as insulting.

39

That’d work.[/quote]
The design doc contemplates Lovecraft-type magic, as with the current artifacts. D&D magic is Nope.

Not sure what makes an item “obviously insulting”: the wolf suit was folks taking a shot at some other forum for bashing furries, and the dinosaur suit was me implementing GlyphGryph’s one-off comment as an equally one-off PR. Both are replies to insulting conduct, but could themselves be taken as insulting.[/quote]

Every rogue-like has it’s interesting/humorous quirks. The wolf and dinosaur suit are a ‘take that’ at other people’s maliciousness, but not malicious in themselves. Now if the description for the wolf suit said it belonged to a filthy, disgusting person who likes to fuck animals then yeah, it’d be pretty offensive.

40

[quote=“CIB, post:27, topic:5841”]None of those things, really. It’s not related to having new features, or not having them. It’s related to rethinking the way the game works on the inside. To put it bluntly, you don’t take risks. I don’t blame you either, I’m just saying that this makes the problem of having “more of the same” worse, because at this point only people with a very, very deep understanding of the game engine can change anything other than trivialities and JSON, and even then you have to invest 10x the effort of what it’d take to code the feature from the ground up in a new game.

I don’t expect a fix to that. It’s a separate problem from content bloat entirely.[/quote]
I do, the plan is to refactor the game code until it’s not such a tangled mess thant you can’t make sweeping changes without everything breaking. I’d freaking love to make large changes instead of grinding away at fixing the code.

It’s not “some random dude” it’s the supposed hordes of people who think bloat is a problem.

Bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?[/quote]
If you have a computer capable of running the simulations we do across an infinite area, please send it to me so I can verify your claim.