posted 08-05-99 11:58 AM ET        

About the boycott scheme: first, ten or twenty people not buying games in protest is hardly going to touch a company. Second: why the blazes should we care about the personalities of the game developers? What has that got to do with the quality of their products? I buy a game because I enjoyed the demo, or I know the company's quality from previous games. That is all that should matter.

I really like the game. Sure, it has bugs, but minor ones -- and there are very few flaws in the actual gameplay, at least to me. And for those of you who think it is flawed because if you play it one way you always win (or whatever it is): I play it MY way and I enjoy the game. Some of you seem to think that winning is the only thing that should matter.

If you do not enjoy the game, don't get the expansion, don't buy other games from Firaxis -- and, after your initial report, don't hang around abusing Firaxis and telling those who enjoy it why we should hate the game and its developers. Find something (else) that you do enjoy.

posted 08-05-99 03:29 PM ET         

Firstly like most of the posters here, actually probably more than "most" of the posters here don't hate the game. Infact most of us love the game. What we hate is the way "support" and "enhancements" are expected to generate nothing but glowing praise as they are handed down from the gods (Firaxis) even when they neither fix the bugs they claim to or add any enhancement to the game. See the missile bug for one that got away from several patches. I also dislike the way that suggestions in these official forums tend to be ignored and bug reports appear to generate little interest (apart from other sympathetic sufferers).

Secondly, the reason I will not be buying SMACX, Antetiam or other firaxis products is exactly because I know the reputation of the company: a group who are capable of writing the best games I have had the pleasure to play but appear to care so little about their user base that they dont listen to that, occasionally abusive, group.

Ninth and lastly I am not a beta-tester, I do not get payed to find the problems in the code nor to discover the manual is seriously innacurate, that SPs do not work as advertised or to find that, even though CIV was written many many years ago, the AI has still not advanced to the point that it understands even basic diplomacy or strategy (sorry but xenophobic AIs annoy me). Infact by going out and buying this game on the day of release I PAID for the privilige. Yes I have had many hours of enjoyment but these are matched by the hours of frustration pondering the game SMAC COULD have been.

Fourth and penultimatly I enjoy the game AND the debate, abuse, newbie bashing, sneeky tricks, politicing, and even the constant polls that these forums provide. These forums are here to discuss the game and that is what happens. Sure some of it is abusive and some of it is directed towards the developers but everyone gets it. If everyone came to praise firaxis and not to bury them WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT?

posted 08-05-99 05:27 PM ET            

Although you are certainly entitled to your opinion, I really don't think that you know what you are talking about. Let me briefly state why.

First, this forum exists to expressly discuss what is cool and what is not about this game. As such, if FX's can't take the negative remarks, then they shouldn't solicit them in the first place.

Second, Firaxis and EA ruthlessly hyped this game as the "Mother-of-all-TBS-games" and the use of the Demo was an intentional tease to get us to drop our dollars on the counter for a copy of the game. Also, BR and SM made more than a few public comments to increase anticipation and boost sales. Please don't misunderstand me here, a good sales campaign is a good idea. However, if you go out and tell everyone how big your shoes are, well you better have big feet to fill them. Fx's surely didn't.

Third, I'd be interested to know what you call an insult. Is my saying that you don't know what you're talking about an insult? No. It's just my opinion and has no more or less weight than your opinion of me or my opinions for that matter. Now if I were to say that "JKM is a big, fat idiot", that certainly would be an insult. However, no one has said anything of the sort. We are merely taking issue with the way that JKM interacts with his customers and questioning his opinions.

Fourth, you especially don't know what you are talking about when you say that all we do is complain about a game that we hate. In fact, you couldn't be farther from the truth. Before you comment the next time, I suggest you reference previous constructive criticism threads, TI threads and the Civ III list over at Apolyton. It may interest you to see that some of the most vocal "critics" are the most generous contributors in helping to debug this game and make the next one even better.

Fifth, I looked at your profile and you say you are a student. Are you the kind of student that tries to get the best grades? Or are you a student that puts in the minimum effort to get a passing grade? Guess what, players of TBS games fall into the same categories as well. It isn't all about "winning" as you say. Rather, it is about being challenged by the product. I for one learn more from my losses than I do from my victories. Needless to say, there is absolutely no way that you can debate that SMAC presents any appreciable challenge to any type of a gamer as long as you open your eyes to see the obvious biases. In addition, what has everyone so hot is that these are the same biases that existed in CIV II. Is it unreasonable to expect FX's to learn from their past mistakes?

Sixth(and thank god finally), whether you personally experience game bugs is rather meaningless as long as another customer experiences a bug that could have been avoided. This attitude is commonly referred to as a "Commitment to Excellence" and should be the mana for any business. In short, the only goal should be to ensure that a 100% quality product is delivered to each customer every time. JKM on the other hand spends his time trying to convince all of us that it's just OK to get it right within limitations as long as you try real hard and make good excuses. Maybe you should keep this in mind the next time you get on an airplane. I'll bet that you want the pilot and the maintenance crew to make damn sure that every system runs flawlessly each and every time they take to the sky. Or would you rather that they just try real hard and hope for the best? In short, you may be willing to give JKM a pass on this because it's only a game. OTOH, did you ever think that maybe some of us set our standards a little higher than you? Now please, I'm not trying to preach. But the people who set high standards are the ones that succeed in life. Certainly not the ones that do the minimums to get by.

posted 08-06-99 05:59 AM ET            

There is only one way that a bug is perpetuated from one product to another: the design is copied.

As previously stated, it is apparent that BR has a copy of the source of Civ2, and that SMAC was built by modifying that source.

Hopefully there are no legal issues for Firaxis or BR in editing the source of what became another company's property.

Perhaps it was done with the full consent of Microprose/Spectrum Holobyte/Hasbro, who surely retain much respect for SM and BR, as their own efforts have not always improved the product.

My main concern is that the design of Civ2 and consequently SMAC, is evidently not amenable to significant correction of many pervasive errors and weaknesses.

One reason for this is already known: the source does not reuse its own code, it repeatedly reinvents the code, approximately - a very bad programming practice. This is why the internal calculations and the user-side estimates of various deterministic quantities are in disagreement. Obviously, if the same functions and formulae were used in both cases, the results would always agree.

Secondly, the code is not adequately modularised. If it were, BR could put his finger on exactly where the missile range bug came/comes originates.

How do we recognise a bug? Every inconsistency is a bug. For example, when documentation disagrees with code, then they are both to be examined for error.

Bug-free complex software, does it exist? That may be difficult to prove conclusively, but programmers can at least write sanity checks at each entry and exit point.

What do we check for? To answer that, go back to the intention of the code, and analyse it top-down (or outside-in, as I prefer to describe it). Does each code section correspond to a clear intention? Does it manifestly implement that intention?

If you can't provide valid tests, in the code, that the values of the variables entering and leaving each section of code satisfy the intention for that section, then your program is written to be faulty.

What do these tests cost? Very little in time, and very little in space.

Often similar tests are required in many locations in the source. A very simple example is a test in C that a pointer to supposedly allocated memory is not NULL.

Several of the standard library functions in C are not logically valid, and therefore not safe. Classic examples include gets(), which should never be used; instead, one should use fgets() or write one's own, valid, string reading function.

When is code logically valid? When it peforms a clear function, tests the validity of its input, only accepts valid input, and its output is always correct for that input.

Sounds simple. The wonder of it is that it _is_ simple. The shame of many programmers is that they don't practise it.

Clearly Civ2 was written at a time when Sid and Brian were not in the habit of sound programming practice, and SMAC has inherited the consequent flaws. So it is, not surprisingly, partly incorrigible and unmaintainable.

Given software of this nature to further develop, I seek to analyse the intentions of its authors, then write replacement code that not only does the job correctly, but also throws a mighty big flag if anything at all untoward occurs. "Hey! You who are running me! This data is bad, and it went bad here!"

And when I say data, I do not mean "Register XYZZY contains $01c3fda5". The code is designed to reflect its author's intent, so it knows the same concepts that the author had in mind, so it says:

"Missile has gone out of range, because in the missile_movement() function you forgot to put in a check to stop it! If you imagine I'm going to let you spoil some poor gamer's day, forget it! The buck stops with you! Now!"

There's nothing fanciful about that degree of "intelligence", by the way, no matter what some programmers may say. Basic sanity checking of high-level objects and functions will achieve it with less effort than it takes to write (let alone "debug") the more bug-ridden, bug-hidden version.