cpoint: releases

[dorzak]

What I would like to have seen mentioned, at least once, in the article is CS 1.6 final, both steam and non-steam versions. This is a CS site, right?

[garry]

cs 1.6 is an update - not a final product. so shut your fucking mouth.

[cheetarah654]

-=]PM[=-ColdBrand wrote..

I'd say that's really, really wrong. Think about some of the best games in recent days on the console - Halo, ----->GTA 3, GTA:VC, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, <-----Metroid, Splinter Cell - none of these were made in Japan, and most were made right here in the USA.~Try and geuss what there was wrong! ^_^

it was just cause you said "none were made in japan, and MOST were made in america

[Mr. T]

This CP topic was far more interesting than the first one. GJ guys, it was really interesting... about Daikatana... I think it was DOOMed (haha, the main guy worked on DOOM) from the start.

[DeathsDisguise]

I thinkwe need to refer to the projectsmily arcicl about Condition Zero. here i'll post it for you who are to lazy to go over to the site



Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Does Not Exist

By Bishop - projectsmiley.com

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---------------------------------



An investigative team from the German gaming magazine "SchtickEmUp" reported today that work on the upcoming and highly anticipated computer game Counter-Strike: Condition Zero has not even begun, nor will it ever.

"With release dates getting pushed further and further back we thought it was time to do some digging", a member of the magazine stated, "Upon breaking in to the CS:CZ division of Ritual Entertainment we found only two people, a graphic artist who was fabricating another screenshot, and a copy writer/web designer who was preparing another news release."

Many fans are expressing grief and outrage as the game was due for release this coming October.



Sorry I thought that was really funny./ But anyways I will accpet delays if the game is good. I am currenly invovled in a beta of a game that is supposed to come out on may 6th. in the beta it doesn't look that way. bugged and all features are not avaible in game yet thats no good

[Jason X]

DeathsDisguise wrote..

I thinkwe need to refer to the projectsmily arcicl about Condition Zero. here i'll post it for you who are to lazy to go over to the site



Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Does Not Exist

By Bishop - projectsmiley.com

-----------------------------------------------

---------------------------------



An investigative team from the German gaming magazine "SchtickEmUp" reported today that work on the upcoming and highly anticipated computer game Counter-Strike: Condition Zero has not even begun, nor will it ever.

"With release dates getting pushed further and further back we thought it was time to do some digging", a member of the magazine stated, "Upon breaking in to the CS:CZ division of Ritual Entertainment we found only two people, a graphic artist who was fabricating another screenshot, and a copy writer/web designer who was preparing another news release."

Many fans are expressing grief and outrage as the game was due for release this coming October.



Sorry I thought that was really funny./ But anyways I will accpet delays if the game is good. I am currenly invovled in a beta of a game that is supposed to come out on may 6th. in the beta it doesn't look that way. bugged and all features are not avaible in game yet thats no good

So? ---- I was involved with a beta that ended on the day it said despite the fact that it was OBVIOUSLY incomplete.



And if you must know the title - it was NEOCRON - which you can read the POOR review it got in Pcgamer, all because it was not complete. --- so if a company is beta testing a game they should NOT release it till everything is done.



Hopefully CS2, HL2 and even CS 1.6 will be finally released bug free or at least VERY close to it.



:-)

[RoBoBubba]

As a part-time programmer I can tell you this: Sometimes you get a flash of brilliance (however faint it may be). Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night with a new idea and are up till the morning writing it down. It's part of being creative.



Programs that get scrapped because the designers realized a competely better way of coding SHOULD turn out better. Programs that get redisigned because they didn't fit the criteria put forth by a legal agreement, marketing, or because the total cost of the project will go over budget are going to be in the toilet.

[Vayalent]

Alot of good points made, well ok some but better than I expected.

[EternalDead]

Well, lo and behold, it sucked more ass than a pedophile's vacuum.

That is the greatest thing ever said by one human being. Anyways its kind of weird, i go to work and i see Duke Nukem Forever, CS:CZ, Half Life 2 and some game called Team Fortress Online all coming out soon. I don't know it just feels creepy. Like the end of the world is coming creepy.

[-=]PM[=-ColdBrand]

cheetarah654 wrote..

it was just cause you said "none were made in japan, and MOST were made in america

No no Cheetara,Im talking about how he said those we're good games!

Those games stunk,the ones I pointed out,BTW that first person shooter video goes to prove that the media hates video games,AND IT PISSES ME OFF SOOOOOO MUCH JESUS THEY're SOOOO ARROGANT

[stooopid]

Lets talk about "software engineering". The idea here is to have two objectives:



The first objective is to decrease the variance of delivery time on a module. Simply put, you try to improve the accuracy of your prediction about when the module will ship by accounting for the amount of time required for the development phases.



Once you have accomplished the first objective, you can work on the second. The second objective is to decrease the expected delivery time. Having accounted for the various phases required to develop the module in the first phase, you can then look at these work phases and try to reduce the length of time they take. This will reduce the overall delivery time while maintaining a minimum delivery expectation variance.



Clearly, Valve and many other developers are having trouble with the first phase let alone the second. Perhaps they didn't go to college. Its hard to tell. In either case, they have never heard of software engineering. It is likely, however, that they change the ship date drastically for other reasons -- marketing. I haven't figured out why yet but when I do I will post it here.



-stooop

[asspennies]

I don't know stooopid, I think you're taking a classically scholastic view of the situation when it requires a much more fundamental view of the business itself.



When I was a working as a software engineer we had the 4-point compass. It was a pretty simple system. Let me explain.



Cost

Performance

Features

Time



Cost being lowering cost of development. Performance being quality control and optimization. Features being maximizing the feature set. Time being minimizing time to release.



We used to say to management, "Pick any two." That was our game. We could maximize any two of those points on the proverbial compass. The other two, well, they'd suffer. Invariably management would ask for three points or all four, but that's kind of besides the point.



It seems like Valve chose "Performance" and "Features." I'm plenty happy with that. Everyone else should be, too.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

That "compass" seems pretty reasonable, honestly, and it's pretty easy to see how any remaining two aspects would suffer when the focus was put on two other aspects.



I have to admit, now I'm wondering how many of us have worked or do work as software engineers. Granted, I worked for the state, so usually features were king, development time and performance the middle ground, and cost a distant last. :)



When it comes to games, it has to be stable, and the features usually are a huge factor (assuming, of course, that the gameplay itself is solid). However, if you spend 10 years developing your incredible features, only to realize that those features were all done by other companies several years prior, then you've failed.



Essentially you need to figure out what the most you can do in a reasonable time is. VALVe seems to have done this with HL2, assuming it does indeed come out on schedule. ID Software is of course pushing the bar up a little higher, and paving the way for the next generation of graphics. Until that technology matures, however, I think HL2 will remain competitive, thus not having delayed its features too long.

[station]

The other probable reason for the CS:CZ delay is that the corporate muscle behind it all can relase it across multi formats (Xbox, GC blah blah etc) at the same time and make maximum profit.



If it is released on PC and sucks, whose gonna buy the console versions? When you consider the Rizz (as an example) has already said he'll be buying an Xbox solely for the exclusive content, they stand to make a huge amount of money from CS:CZ

[sillytuna]

Ok, as one of many cs players also involved in commercial game development over the last decade...



Firstly location makes bugger all difference to dev time. There are good teams in the US, Europe, and Japan. And there are bad ones.



Bad management, pain in the arse publishers, and bad luck all contribute to being late, but often the developers get "told" the game must be done by such and such a date, even when they doubt it can be done. Telling the publisher or the developer management team that the release schedule is dumb usually has little effect. They usually feel they can tell you how long it'll take, even tho they don't actually know. Often the publisher puts undue pressure on the developer, and often the development team simply screwed up.



Long and short of it, if a product is slightly late then that's normal. If a product is up to a year late and comes out at thanksgiving or xmas - it'll be a rush job to hit the high sales period and you can usually tell. If it's more than a year late then you may as well roll a dice as to whether it'll be any good because someone obviously has money to burn! Dev'ment costs are 7 figures+, and you need to be selling 250k units upwards to have a hope of getting your money back on these titles. Late products are bad news.



HL2 wasn't publicised until recently - it may have taken 5 years, but is it actually late as opposed to simply a long and expensive dev'ment period? Not so with CS:CZ.