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trønderen21-Sep-20 6:08

trønderen

21-Sep-20 6:08

That's the Father Who Creates Electric Eeels.

mrmellen21-Sep-20 7:30

mrmellen

21-Sep-20 7:30

Except for the crazy ones - the tunatics.

jeron121-Sep-20 7:33

jeron1

21-Sep-20 7:33

Yes, when they listen to Sole music.

"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
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I don't understand human behavior

W∴ Balboos, GHB21-Sep-20 7:50

W∴ Balboos, GHB

21-Sep-20 7:50

They love listening to la-Scale-a, or when doing home renovations and they come across a screen dorsal, but neither happens very off-fin.

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

honey the codewitch21-Sep-20 3:31

21-Sep-20 3:31

Disclaimer: This post is about a game - but it's also about pointy haired decision makers.

I'm not much of a gamer, but I will play compelling games for a bit between doing better things.

However, Mad Max really is an excellent offering, and is the only Mad Max game that was in any way decent. Unfortunately, there will never be a sequel because of reasons involving George Miller and Warner Bros.

The Mad Max game servers are shutting down Oct 31st after 5 years of service. Unfortunately the game requires a server connection to unlock a trophy/achievement which will no longer be possible after Oct 31st. Warner Brothers shows no sign of issuing a patch to remove the online requirements so you will no longer be able to earn the platinum trophy/achievement. Bummer.

This is a great product and it deserves a better send off. They should patch it. People are still buying it 5 years after its release. (I did)

I really wish people that wrote code would maintain it.

Why do people abandon code that is still making them money?

I don't get it. One small patch and they keep their 5 years of users happy, and can keep milking the income from the game for a decade like Nintendo did. $Shucks | :-\$

Real programmers use butterflies

Sander Rossel21-Sep-20 4:03

Sander Rossel

21-Sep-20 4:03

honey the codewitch wrote:
Why do people abandon code that is still making them money?

Apparently it's not making as much money as you think it is.

The popular games get ports, remasters and in ten years a remake.
Those are the money makers!

Best,
Sander

sanderrossel.com
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honey the codewitch21-Sep-20 4:04

21-Sep-20 4:04

I'm not saying it's making a lot of money. But one small patch to remove a requirement for 100% completion would keep existing and new customers happy for code that people are still using.

And it's still on sale for $20 a pop on the PS4, IIRC. I bought it a few months ago.

Real programmers use butterflies

dandy7221-Sep-20 4:53

dandy72

21-Sep-20 4:53

They'd much rather see you buy whatever new games they're pushing these days.

That's the real reason, and I'm sure you know it.

I still play GTA Online (in fact I've only started getting interested in its online component less than 2 years ago), and I do wonder when they'll pull the plug. For that reason, as far as I'm concerned, they can keep delaying GTA 6 for as long as they want.

That being said, I'm absolutely convinced it's the bugs that will eventually drive most people away. That, and the fact that they hardly do anything about modders who use bastardized code that corrupts sessions.

DerekT-P21-Sep-20 4:57

DerekT-P

21-Sep-20 4:57

The patch may be small, but... first they have to work out if anyone is still around who knows the code. They have to find the source code. They may need to massively reverse-engineer the code, if not. They need to work out the (small) patch. They need to test the code. They need to package the patch. They need to publish the patch. They need to advertise the patch (if there's no auto-update). That's a hell of a lot of work for a five-year-old application that isn't making much money, just to keep existing users happy and maybe sell a few more copies. Much better that existing players get frustrated and buy a new game at twice the price.

I use a small, free, screen-capture tool called Jing, from TechSmith. It integrates with Screencast (optionally) to share screenshots in SWF format, though I very rarely use that. With the demise of SWF, TechSmith brought out a replacement published for Jing, but the interface is really clunky - I much prefer Jing. However Jing tries to handshake Screencast at startup to check it can upload SWFs, and now refuses to start; a perfectly good bit of software consigned to junk for a very similar reason. [But... disable networking at startup, and Jing will report an error, but carry on regardless... Smile | :)

]

honey the codewitch21-Sep-20 5:50

21-Sep-20 5:50

I use Microsoft's snipping tool. It ships with windows, you just have to know where to find it. IMO the interface is minimalistic and out of the way, and lets you take portions of screens which is almost always what I want anyway. Big Grin | :-D

Real programmers use butterflies

DerekT-P21-Sep-20 6:10

DerekT-P

21-Sep-20 6:10

yeah, I know about snipping. Jing's just easier - there's an unobtrusive "always on top" icon to invoke it, drag/single click to select any area, then I can draw, type text, highlight (in selectable colours) then either save or pop into clipboard. It tells me (dynamically) how big an area I'm selecting too, so I can also use it as a pixel tape measure.

honey the codewitch21-Sep-20 6:12

21-Sep-20 6:12

it sounds like the same tool, frankly

Real programmers use butterflies

DerekT-P22-Sep-20 6:58

DerekT-P

22-Sep-20 6:58

My point was that perfectly good software often gets junked just because no-one can be "bothered" to make a small patch to maintain compatibility with other systems.

(And it's definitely not the same tool, completely different interface and from TechSmith, not Microsoft. Just as free, though.)

David Schiffer21-Sep-20 4:55

David Schiffer

21-Sep-20 4:55

Don't switch back, instead install adblockers and anti tracker software like Ghostery and uBlock Origin and make sure to disallow everything that is 3rd party, then on each site you wish to visit open up for the features you wish to use apart from those delivered by that site directly. Some of these, i.e gstatic you may wish to allow on all sites as that contains oftentimes necessary scripts for the functionality of that site. Never let them bully you into accepting anything non functional, even if that means that you can no longer use their site. If they make it so or too difficult to opt out of everything with them, simply cancel your membership and move on. That is the only way these spammers will ever learn. Most important, never allow googletagmanager as that is the very source of their spyware, if you allow that, a whole host of spyware will attempt to install spyware cookies on your machine, so called "tracking cookies".

Nelek21-Sep-20 8:01

Nelek

21-Sep-20 8:01

can it be that you wanted to answer to the thread below this one?

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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musefan21-Sep-20 5:01

musefan

21-Sep-20 5:01

I fully agree, trophies should never become impossible to achieve. Online ones are the worst, because even when they are not impossible they can become extremely difficult over time.

I hear it's pretty difficult to get trophy requirements changed on PSN, not sure how true that is though.

Do not escape reality : improve reality !

Rage21-Sep-20 5:27

Rage

21-Sep-20 5:27

honey the codewitch wrote:
Mad Max game

Na, I thought Sam and Max when seeing your post. Laugh | :laugh:

OriginalGriff21-Sep-20 6:01

OriginalGriff

21-Sep-20 6:01

honey the codewitch wrote:
Why do people abandon code that is still making them money?

Why do car insurance companies try to hike the price up in second year? I'm no more risk, the car is a lower value ... it just means I swap insurance companies every year.

And when you ring them to say you won't be renewing, they magically can offer you a better deal.
I'm a customer: be fair with me and I'll stay with you. It costs you nothing to advertise or market for my business each and every year; there is no commission to pay a comparison site - just the same price (or thereabouts) you offered last year ...

I don't understand them either.

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