Author Topic: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller  (Read 14309 times)

HarvesterOfEyes

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #40 on: December 22, 2012, 05:31:25 AM »
Give us a copy of the code, and...



;)

I've had that job before in my life. It's not easy work, but it's not impossible either.

As you say, just let me have the code.

Septipheran

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #41 on: December 22, 2012, 06:43:23 AM »
I was able to catch the last half of this, very cool that they played my Last ITF Ever video throughout the whole thing. :)

dwturducken

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #42 on: December 22, 2012, 02:49:58 PM »
I'm still learning programming, mind you, and I'll admit to not really having a solid grasp of OOP, but this is C or C++, right? Things are never as simple as I think they are, but the fact that things like the add-ons here and the Vidiot maps add-on exist means that some of the reverse engineering has already been done. Someone like Titan getting their hands on the code could mean months rather than years, right? Particularly with the number of skilled and motivated volunteers ready to answer the call?
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

HarvesterOfEyes

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #43 on: December 22, 2012, 03:47:25 PM »
In principle this system currently functions fairly well and we know pretty intimately how it's supposed to behave.

Figuring out what the code is doing is not all that hard under those conditions. I've been in worse fixes. [At least the original coders spoke English.]

Thunder Glove

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #44 on: December 22, 2012, 04:10:42 PM »
I'm thinking that maybe Matt's just trying not to get our hopes up too high.  I desperately want it to happen, but reviving CoH at this point is a longshot.

That makes me sad and sick to my stomach all over again just thinking about it.

Kaos Arcanna

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #45 on: December 22, 2012, 06:22:43 PM »
While I would be thrilled if COX came back, at this point I'd be even more thrilled if one of the fan driven projects made it to publication and proved to be a roaring success. There'd be heart attacks at NcSoft! :D :D

srmalloy

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #46 on: December 22, 2012, 10:13:54 PM »
Also hearing a few things Matt said did make me sad. He pretty much said the likelihood of a brand new team being able to work on CoH is nearly impossible, they wouldn't know how to do anything.

That's assuming that they try to go in and work on the existing code, instead of doing module-by-module rewrites as they go. Development wouldn't be as fast, but we'd get cleaner code out the far side.

Mister Bison

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #47 on: December 22, 2012, 10:24:08 PM »
Give us a copy of the code, and...



;)


By the way, their server code is pure C. But having C code is better for reengineering than no code at all, even with full spec. You can try to encapsulate things and make it work the same outside but be clean inside, little by little, you grow the boundaries of rewritten code. Or you can encapsulate it in "don't modify, strange magic" routines for later.

Plus, we are all players than played countless number of hours on the game, so we know at least partially how it works on the largest boundary.
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Kistulot

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #48 on: December 22, 2012, 10:31:48 PM »
That's assuming that they try to go in and work on the existing code, instead of doing module-by-module rewrites as they go. Development wouldn't be as fast, but we'd get cleaner code out the far side.

It still needs to bolt on somewhere.
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Mister Bison

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #49 on: December 22, 2012, 10:34:37 PM »
It still needs to bolt on somewhere.
You know what, working code works. For rewriting, you have all the code they have that works. Rewrite a part, see if anything doesn't work anymore, fix, repeat, rewrite done. Is that the bolt you need ? You even have steel beams attached.
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Codewalker

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #50 on: December 22, 2012, 11:48:12 PM »
That's assuming that they try to go in and work on the existing code, instead of doing module-by-module rewrites as they go. Development wouldn't be as fast, but we'd get cleaner code out the far side.

Module by module rewrites don't help when there are systems that the entire design of which was flawed from the start, and need to be rethought instead of adding more band-aids.

Things that a paid development team couldn't justify spending time on because they "work" as-is, but a volunteer effort would be all over.

Nothing wrong with pure C, though. You can do a lot with pure C, including object-oriented designs, cross platform compatibility, and things that most people think you need a fluffier language for. TBH, if I was going to write a game server, that would probably be my language of choice just because you can get down to the low level when you really need to without having to fight the compiler.

Mister Bison

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #51 on: December 23, 2012, 12:25:39 AM »
Nothing wrong with pure C, though. You can do a lot with pure C, including object-oriented designs, cross platform compatibility, and things that most people think you need a fluffier language for. TBH, if I was going to write a game server, that would probably be my language of choice just because you can get down to the low level when you really need to without having to fight the compiler.
Nothing wrong with Bash scripts, you can also do a lot with those :-)
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Be careful what you wish for. You can theoretically do anything with any language, but some have it easier than others, and some can't humanly do it. C is good enough mostly, but clearly we had time to improve since.

Personnally, I would go with a subset of C++, the one that you can still understand how it works without pulling all your hairs out (for instance, namespaces and non-virtual members and static methods are pretty straightforward, but can do a lot to organize the code and ease the programming via autocompletion. Some template metaprogramming is also cleaner than macros, but you have to do it wisely.)
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mikoroshi

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #52 on: December 23, 2012, 12:27:22 AM »
Mister Bison just made my head go boom.
If you see me posting here, you need to tell me to stop it and get back to writing.

silvers1

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #53 on: December 23, 2012, 12:27:51 AM »
A shame it isnt written in C++.   Procedural systems tend to be a bear to maintain.
I have quite a bit of experience with both types of systems (although zero in gaming.)
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Starsman

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #54 on: December 23, 2012, 04:05:40 AM »
Nothing wrong with Bash scripts, you can also do a lot with those :-)
</sarcasm>
Be careful what you wish for. You can theoretically do anything with any language, but some have it easier than others, and some can't humanly do it. C is good enough mostly, but clearly we had time to improve since.

Personnally, I would go with a subset of C++, the one that you can still understand how it works without pulling all your hairs out (for instance, namespaces and non-virtual members and static methods are pretty straightforward, but can do a lot to organize the code and ease the programming via autocompletion. Some template metaprogramming is also cleaner than macros, but you have to do it wisely.)

The only real issue with C (and also C++) in my eyes is that it's too "dangerous" in the wrong hands. If you do things too fast, if you are not careful enough, or if you simply are not experienced enough, it offers a lot of doors for you to accidentally cluster@#$% everything.

At the end of the day, the best language is the one you know the best. Has nothing to do with "laziness" about learning other languages, it simply is about being experienced enough to have learned what not to do.
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

Victoria Victrix

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #55 on: December 23, 2012, 06:22:17 AM »
Hey it could have been written in Assembler by the American Airlines reservation systems programmers.  With undocumented on-the-fly patches.
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dwturducken

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #56 on: December 23, 2012, 07:23:44 AM »
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess there isn't an over-abundance of comment lines, either. :)

// The following code is a kludge, but any change will make the game unplayable.
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

HarvesterOfEyes

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #57 on: December 23, 2012, 02:10:14 PM »
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess there isn't an over-abundance of comment lines, either. :)

// The following code is a kludge, but any change will make the game unplayable.
That would actually surprise me.

...but then I'm used to having to debug code where the comments are so out-of-date that they are just as likely to be the opposite of the truth as truthful.

EDIT: spelling
« Last Edit: December 23, 2012, 07:44:09 PM by HarvesterOfEyes »

Septipheran

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #58 on: December 23, 2012, 08:37:51 PM »
I remember when Posi mentioned that the code would be too hard for anyone else to handle. Personally I think GuyPerfect and Codewalker would be up to the challenge...

FatherXmas

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Re: Livestream Q&A with Matt 'Positron' Miller
« Reply #59 on: December 23, 2012, 09:43:28 PM »
Honestly I've called such projects Software Archeology back when I was marketed as some hot shot young coder at the consulting company I first worked at out of college.  Being dumped into a project of poorly documented spaghetti code written by people no longer around to consult was something I use to relish.  Analysis, documenting and finally refactoring the code into something more manageable was always an interesting endeavor.

However the one of the last of such projects I did nearly broke me, which was to write in house diagnostic software to test a custom designed CCU (google AMD 2900 bitslice) which was bought from other company and it used an undocumented instruction set.  So first I had to take an AMD 2900 parts book, the schematics to the board and the hex dump of the normally installed software, the supposed source code listing used to generate that hex file and figure out the instruction set.  Then write a compiler and then write the diagnostics software.  (Yes the company I was working at didn't receive any development tools when they bought the product from the original owners/developers).

Fun times.  Last low level project I worked on.
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