Mini update

[gilesgoat]

Just wanted to say that "despite everything is silent, stuff is IN FULL SWING/FULL FORCE" ( Power of the horse, full force (*) ! ) .

No kidding we been for months basically working 7/7 .. I have "powers that be" and "testers" constantly in touch with me on a daily basis, I keep getting "reports" of this and that and fixing "every minute detail" of stuff they find out.

This is definitely "one of the most tested SW we ever made" ( and it's still uneblievable to me how many "minute crap" they can find out ).

I dare to say in terms of pure work this is maybe "the biggest project we took so far", especially for the numbers of consoles/stuff we are in.

To be honest I am starting to get the point I really can't wait "it's done" to take a breathe and relax .. for five mins .. because there's already "more" at the horizon ...

But really it's been a non-stop thing .. since it started .. so far all going good but yeah "the amount of work is/been BIG" ..

[edit] - forgot (*) "bonus" if you find out where it comes from

[Whiteball]

Space Stallions?

Nice to hear everything is going well and more stuff to come possibly in the future also.
Will next time be easier having the multiplatform setup and such stuff in place already from this project?

[gilesgoat]

Space Stallions?

Nice to hear everything is going well and more stuff to come possibly in the future also.
Will next time be easier having the multiplatform setup and such stuff in place already from this project?

It SHOULD be, that's part of "the main goal" of this project to have something that can be re-used "a number of times" (*) for future multi-platform projects.

We are almost there, I am "on the last hurdle of this vision" with a thing that from one side "fucked me up a little" from another side "pushed me into the ultimate future" I know this step at some point had to happen I was hoping "not now" but IT IS NOW.

"Fucked me up a little" because if I could have used what I already had done before I'd be already 3/4 throught but instead no "had to do something totally NEW from scratch" but yeah at least I'll be "all the latest rage" ( and probably one of the not-so-many that done a thing like that )

(*) unless - and in a way hopeully - they ask me/we manage to convince them "next project" to go into .. "some other possibilities" that means I'll have "the lastet thing to study" which would be good but means "it'll be yet a new thing again".

I can only say I am working 7/7 week ends included, actually week ends are the only time I know I won't be "interrupted" by "The guys down there testing" finding more bugs for me to fix

Man if this thing is "ultra tested" I am REALLY at the point "I HATE THE SWITCH" for "TOO MANY CASES OF THIS AND THAT" trust me guys if I say "if you do a game for Switch, consider that all the time you'll spend for coding the game you'll spend an equivalent amount of time to make it 'Nintendo Compliant' ".

If you ever do a game really "make it only ONE BUTTON" TRY to make ONE "menu" like "Press A Button to play" and don't put more than 3 or 4 sentences in all you game.

NOTE that already here you'll have a problem if you go multi-lingual, because in English is "A Button", in Italian is "Pulsante A", in German you'll have probably problems with "A Taste" or "A Knopf" and to be honest in this moment of the morning I cannot remember if it's "A-KNOPF" like that but I DO remember that "A BUTTON" will fuck you because apparently HAS to be "A Button".

Plus you'll have fuckload of shit with people going in/out different user accounts, connecting/disconnecting from internet and not, flipping 100 times per minute across score tables ( and calling certain functions too many times ), ripping off the controllers and throwing them in the air while a warning-message-I-never-heard-of should appear, versions numbers that I am still not sure which one should start with '0' and which one with '1' but I got signalled wrong ( don't ask me WHY there's no WHY ), letters in the font someone thinks "are not visible enough" ( when you have to fit things like "Appuyez sure le manette gauche pour selectioner le tableau" erm... 'can't you be more synthetic' ? NO IT'S FRENCH ! ) mysterious bug you'll never understand and FUCK ME LOCALISATION ! OH GOD LOCALISATION ! Don't you EVER EVER design a font yourself unless you manage to TOTALLY lock in ENGLISH only and even that you'll have a problem while printing score tables because Ninendo IDs allow some Japanese chars ( and other emojy things ).

Anyway "luckily" most of it all been done I am now cracking my head on "the last hurdle" ( last console I miss ) you'll probably hear me swear a fuckload again when I'll be into the realm of those "online things that use CPP Lamba functions" and crap like that.

Anyway I still have SOME hair on my head and my forehead is still not totally smashed while hitting it on the desk.

When I'll be done, well APART from one I did not use its "native" thing ( but that allowed me to finish the stuff quicker ) I can say "I coded in all the known graphics libraries of any console/etc." I can definitely say "I coded for almost all consoles that are".

NATIVE !

[Deckard]

Is it the biggest Llamasoft game ? In itself rather than the whole conversion stuff ?

[gilesgoat]

Is it the biggest Llamasoft game ? In itself rather than the whole conversion stuff ?

I dare to say "it's something big in both ways" .. as "conversion" ( if you call it so ) it's one of the biggest jobs to date I've done, I've done a brand new 'game engine' for each different platform and is "compatbile within all of them", so far minus very LITTLE 'defines' the game code is 're-compilable on the fly' N times and it goes in N consoles.

If I'd be arsed to make "a megamakefile" it could probably compile all platforms in one go.

The game itself .. "is really quite something" begin something really "rarely seen before with particular mechanics".

It's the kind of game that "grabs you and and you won't let it easily"

I can't say really more .. anything more I would say would give away "too many hints".

[Markie]

Do we have a pre-Christmas release slot? Or at least is that what you are hoping for?

[gilesgoat]

Do we have a pre-Christmas release slot? Or at least is that what you are hoping for?

I am sorry CAN'T say anything about timings/when/where/who/what ... I am not allowed ..

[Markie]

Do we have a pre-Christmas release slot? Or at least is that what you are hoping for?

I am sorry CAN'T say anything about timings/when/where/who/what ... I am not allowed ..

Fair point! :-)

[gilesgoat]

OK another "Mini update" saying without saying ( too much ) ..

"The big thing" game speaking is since a while "totally completed" game-speaking/mechanics it's been "tested beyond nausea and over and over again" and IT IS ! It's TOTALLY DEFINED !

So were are we now ? Well on the "Certifications/comformity/complaiances/by-the-book/CERT/FQA/CQA/etc. " of "ALL the various platforms" 1/2 of which "could be done if they pass".

BUT HOLD YOUR BREATH ! This is NOT going to come out until ALL the platforms are done, it's going be be "all at once everywhere" when time will come BOOM ZAM BIG ANNOUCEMENTS/THINGS ALL OUT IN ALL PLACES.

Trust me guys I'll repeat it once more again .. "take the time X it takes you to code/invent/make a game/make graphics/whatever all from zero" .. then take all that time again and "if you really never had QUITE SOME level of pratice/knowledge in the field MULTIPLY IT by 1.5 or so ( if you do have some experience/you done all that at least twice multipy by 1 or maybe 0.9) " .. that "for each console" to pass all the steps it takes to make everything "just right".

"Quality/Conformity/Technical certification checks are BRUTAL" also I have to admit even TRY to make things "as simple as possible" it's actually hard UIs are such a bastard so many ways to make them fail.

Anyway it's going good my "last hurdle" is the Xbox/S for which I got to "reinvent" a totally new "engine" based on "last tech" ( cause the "lighltly older one I was hoping to re-use it's NO longer accepted" ) but it's going good, I think it's fun when they said UNIX was around 10,000 lines of code for the whole OS, that's nowadays the amount of code it takes ( and probably even more if you count better ) to display one triangle with a texture on the Xbox

"I can't count how many times I/we re-wrote the whole Unix", mind you the sole "core logic" of this game is over 30,000 lines ( and I keep wondering why backups are in the order of Gbytes ).

So for example ( again hope I won't reveal much hush hush .. ) "why the SW was 'delayed' two days ?" .. "because we were 'battling' with a setting about CERO ratings that had to be 'something' in a certain place but we could not 'select that something' from 'the tool' but then someone told us 'it has to be 0' but then turns out 'yes but not zero as in zero but zero as in something else' and then we had to use an 'export' from a thing and 're-import' from another to get the correct settings otherwise a 'validation process' was telling use we had an 'incorrect setting' triggering an error forbidding us to enter 'stage one' of 'pre-check' and had to spend another hour re-writing the 'testing scenarious for XXX' because some things were lightly modified an re-verify that 'all the following ( too big list ) guidelines are respected ( that if you are going to test them one by one is going to take proabably over 1 day ) ' and then finally after re-checking some "application settings" and filling up some fields that were missing about a weird-control-method-I-never-heard-about-wtf-they-invent ....

.. forms forms forms .. and sometime very strange questions tricky to understand ...

"Does your application call the function NDisplaySystemDialogErrorMessageIamNotTellingYouWhatThatAppearsOnceInABlueMoon() more than 8 timer per second from a non-main thread unless called from NWeirdFunctionNotListedInTheDocs() but no more than 3 times per minute ?" ..

.. Erm .. .. ( search all the sources .. ) .. ERm... NO ? .. I think it's a "No" ..

"Submit" ..

!ERROR : ValidatorMessageErrorWeKickYouInTheArseSWREJECTED : FAIL! FAIL ! FAIL ! FAIL!

You called the function "DisplayWelcomeMessage() in the main thread" BUT "If you user disconnects the controller while singing a song and pushing the A button 23 times per second this causes the NCountTheButtons23Times() function call DespairTheUserIsDoingThat() which enters the loop calling NDisplaySys ... 5.2 times per second ..

Check "Reccomendation 56872" "SystemDialogs" "Chapter 471, page 1234, note 23 'A' .. sorry no english translation Japanese documents only .. "

.. Erm .. "Yes" .. submit again ...

!WARNING : "As you selected YES you MUST provide a testing method to verify that please include documentation about .. "

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH ...

And at least here they TELL you what they want ...

You get the "simplified idea" ...

[arcaic]

Scared of asking really but I assume all these checks are not being done by 'real' people but instead have some sort of code or runtime checking stuff.

If that's the case why don't they make it available to devs like you then you wouldn't send up code that is going to fail the checks, or if you did you expect a ticking off.

[gilesgoat]

Scared of asking really but I assume all these checks are not being done by 'real' people but instead have some sort of code or runtime checking stuff.

If that's the case why don't they make it available to devs like you then you wouldn't send up code that is going to fail the checks, or if you did you expect a ticking off.

I am SORRY you are "dead wrong" here

THEY ARE DONE BY REAL PEOPLE ! Real people working N hours a day

Some stuff are automatic checks, they don't give you the SW because you get the errors/verifications the moment you submit ( and so you get the error report, you fix and you submit again ), but normally all those checks are done by "The Quality Control Team".

Some of that SW I think would be too complex to run on a local machine plus I don't think any of those companies want to have such kind of SW "out of thier hands" .. I suppose "could probably expose too many sensitive infos" so the thing is "you submit the stuff, it gets checked, you get results".

But "The real Quality Control/Conformance tests" ARE DONE BY REAL PEOPLE !

Usually you need to "book a slot" ( for when the team is available ), some N persons are assigned to it, they do the tests and you get the results.

There IS a VERY LONG CHECKLIST where IN THEORY you can perform all the checks by yourself, and "we try to" but TRUST ME this is ENOUGH to keep a person busy for at least some DAYS to run all the tests in sequence and anwyway it's time YOU have to spend testing and then GETS TESTED AGAIN by QA in ANY case.

So reality is "you do the best you can do", you throw to QA and wait .. and see what they come out with .. usually we never had "big problems" but it's in "shitty small details" that they catch you.

Keep in mind "all big/medium size/etc. companies" ( or those that can/want to spend money ) can sometime outsource all this stage ( and pay usually quite some money for it ) still "even if you have someone testing for you in advance" you still have to listen/fix/check whatever they tell you they found.

"The processes are usually a bit complicated" and "normally split into various segments/pieces" .. there are documents/forms for this, documents/forms for that .. "one piece gets made here another gets made there" .. some stuff is "instant" some stuff takes "some days" .. etc ..

You CAN ( and they do exist ) "make a job/company out all all this" .. "do me your .exe I'll do all the cert steps for you" .. oh yeah there are companies doing that .. and they are NOT cheap

Mind you thanks to all this I obtained A RARE thing "Complete Knowledge" ask how many people can say they know all the steps it takes from "I have an IDEA" to "there is the finished game on the console X" ... which "is a small satisfaction at least" for having to deal with all this

[phattslagg]

I’m guessing it has to be one of the “6 brand new games” mentioned in this ?

[gilesgoat]

I’m guessing it has to be one of the “6 brand new games” mentioned in this ?

.. maybe .. or maybe not ... maybe it's a thing by its own ... or maybe it isn't ? ..

[WiteWulf]

I’m guessing it has to be one of the “6 brand new games” mentioned in this ?

Hehe, just came here to post exactly the same thing

[WiteWulf]

Err, hello, wut?

https://sec.report/Document/0001213900-22-004051/