A better way to do it would be to have the game create the portal first, create a small island around the portal, and THEN generate the world around it. This way the portal is always placed correctly, the player is always somewhat safe (unless they're insanely unlucky and a lavaflow spawns above the portal XD), and the player can build a bridge to mainland or whatever if necessary. No problems.
Alternatively, for the first gate, simply use the generated portal as the origin, and base all relative positioning from that.
The first gate should always be direct, imo. After The Nether is generated, then the offset can make sense.
Or, hard code the link, so that even if the gate is shifted, they still connect. This would cause continuity issues with the fast travel aspect, of course, if used more then once.
ok once again i was trying to stop the credential pulling and hostile activity by making that statement it was not meant as a jab to you personally Emily. so feel free to not be offended. I just really dont like it when someone makes a good point of discussion they get smacked down by lame people.
Initially I thought hardcoding would be a good solution, but it seems it wouldn't work well because of the whole 16 meter shifting thing - you'd have an issue with portals making travel too fast by players purposefully shifting where the nether portal is generated. You could have 2 portals that would allow you to travel 500m in virtually one jump.
I think Notch finding a few people to collaborate with would be a good thing. He's obviously the last say in how things work, but having people present alternatives he may not have thought of would probably do some good for the development process.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark
"Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology"
-Larry Niven
In all honesty, I'm getting tired of this topic. I think everyday there is someone on here complaining about the bugs/notch and then, just like clock-work, Notch's protectors jump in and reply in defense of Notch. Now I can understand both sides but this whole thing is getting sad...why are we making such a big fuss out of this? If people complain wouldn't it be more effective to just ignore them? If no one replys to these compaints I wonder if these forums will get better then slug fests like this topic.
Back onto topic though it does confuse me that Notch didn't test some of these things more thoroughly before releasing them. I know he's on a tight schedule but I have to say In my own Games Design experience I try everything out first then If I'm happy with the results it put to one side ready for release. If a problem comes up later on that I hadn't come across then it will be fixed. But with the portals it seems only a couple of testing results can create this outcome so maybe he was just lucky enough to not happen or he didn't test it enough.
Remember, portal behavior is likely not a bug. In terms of gameworld rules, it behaves, most likely, exactly as it should.
it is in terms of gameplay that it doesn't. How often do you think Notch actually just sits down and plays Minecraft, I wonder?
This is the developers blindness I was speaking of. It takes a player to find gameplay errors, even if they are not actually errors. It's unavoidable, really.
Well, I'm very proud how this thread has gone. It's a true testament to the thread creator's, me, intelligence and awesomeness.
No, seriously, this has been a great thread to read. I'm glad everyone is being civil and oddly enough I can more easily understand others' opinions without getting angry. Who would have known?!
While the technical talk has gone a tad over my head, I think I still have a firm enough grasp of game-making to understand the portal issue. If Notch changed it so the first portal created was made on flat ground in the Nether and then the rest of the Nether generated around it, it would make the first portal work correctly. But every other portal made after the first one would still be susceptible to the same multiple portal generation bug. What Notch needs to do is make it so a portal gets created in a certain amount of space, like 16 blocks by 16 blocks, where there is room for it and then link it back to the one portal in the minecraft world. Although, this would still lead to problems where building two portals in the minecraft world lead to the same portal in the Nether or if there are spots in the Nether where a 16 by 16 block area is completely filled, then there won't be a space for a portal.
Gah, it's making my head hurt trying to solve this. This is why I'm not a game developer. That and all the other reasons.
...
Notch assumed they would work and didn't test them
i'm a software developper and former game developper, former because the hour was driving me crazy, and this is one thing i was doing very often when i started, assuming things would work, and i learned that, while some time you have good developping phase due to some good feeling or something, other time you hit a wall and nothing work like expected..
Lucky... im aiming at testing games when im older.. then go on to programming! :smile.gif:
Fixing the bugs should not be on his TODOODLE list thingy... not yet anyway. get the game to late alpha, see that everything works as it should. then fix the bugs... but the major bugs.. like teleportation.. not "my leaves arnt falling down!".
This is the developers blindness I was speaking of. It takes a player to find gameplay errors, even if they are not actually errors. It's unavoidable, really.
the developers blindness is very real... there's some times, when i code feature on a software, i find myself testing ,finding bug, noting them and later, i kind of automatically hop over them because i know how the software work and i know that i'm not suppose to do that.. that's why Q&A dep exist... i mean you cant find every problem by yourself.. and i think notch did pretty good by himself as of now..
Lucky... im aiming at testing games when im older.. then go on to programming! :smile.gif:
Fixing the bugs should not be on his TODOODLE list thingy... not yet anyway. get the game to late alpha, see that everything works as it should. then fix the bugs... but the major bugs.. like teleportation.. not "my leaves arnt falling down!".
It depends on the serious nature of the bug though. Some of the bugs mean that the game doesn't work as it should, often we work around them as players but it's up to Notch what is working correctly in his mind.
Have you ever done any serious programming or game development? No? Didn't think so.
this is the statement that i was referencing. i think we can agree that this statement was inflammatory and rude.
like i said not a jab at the way they do things where your from. by using absolutes i was trying to get the point across more effectively. which worked he has not posted a rebuttal.
As a developer I have serious problems believing you. Any serious developer doesn't just assume stuff works. You can't test everything, but you do test a large part of your own software. Your approach would get you fired at any serious business.
didnt i said "when I started"..? also when you ( not you specifically ) do code 8 hours a day, 5 days of the week, you start to understand part of the code you use more often and you stop testing them, assuming they work because you did write them many many time... that's what i meant..
As a developer I have serious problems believing you. Any serious developer doesn't just assume stuff works. You can't test everything, but you do test a large part of your own software. Your approach would get you fired at any serious business.
didnt i said "when I started"..? also when you ( not you specifically ) do code 8 hours a day, 5 days of the week, you start to understand part of the code you use more often and you stop testing them, assuming they work because you did write them many many time... that's what i meant..
you are right most of the web applications i wright now i only test at the very end because i have written things smiler to them so many times it hurts my brain. i hate this pissing contest that always happens in this forum.
I'm going to risk looking ignorant by speaking after only reading the first few posts.
I am a software developer and a craftsman. I don't write games that I release, but similarities between writing a game and a good application exist. You have a set of requirements, and your goal is to meet the requirements given some resources (time and money are the primary resources.) Many questions weigh in on quality:
[*:f7nppuvj]Was the project on schedule?
[*:f7nppuvj]Was the project on budget?
[*:f7nppuvj]How many requirements are met?
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the result intuitive?
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the result stable?
This is where games differ a bit. Applications are judged by their ease of use and stability. Games are generally judged by these criteria (ignoring the budget/schedule/rquirements criteria that are common.)
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the game fun?
[*:f7nppuvj]Does the game provide the experience it promises?
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the game playable?
"Fun" is hard to define and is different for all people; we'll toss it out as subjective.
For a game to provide the experience it promises, the developers have to be careful with how they describe the game. This is why it's typically difficult to find information about a game in development until it is very close to release. History is littered with games that promised exciting features that were diminished or cut to reach schedule or budget concerns. Duke Nukem Forever is the classic example of overpromising but underdelivering. (Yes, I know it will release. My opinion is it looks disappointing and the time for games like it lapsed at least 10 years ago.) Blizzard is good at delivering exactly what they promise; they do this by keeping their mouths shut and rarely mentioning a feature until it's in a gameplay demo.
For a game to be playable, there is some magic threshold of bugs that you must not exceed. Fallout 3 is a notoriously glitched game, but I was able to do 3 playthroughs with maybe 2 freezes and no quest-blocking glitches, so it was acceptable. When I played Knights of the Old Republic, my computer corrupted my saves roughly once every third save and if I didn't turn the graphics detail to very low on one particular level the game would lock up. This was unplayable.
It's a game developer's job to meet their budget and schedule, deliver on the promises made to users, and keep the game playable. The easiest way to accomplish this is to underpromise and overdeliver: only talk about features that are finished and let the users be surprised by the things that you weren't sure would make the cut. Blizzard does this. iD does this. They're the two highest-quality game development shops around. It's not because their programmers are very talented (though I believe they do get hiring preference), it's because they don't promise what they can't deliver.
How does Notch fare? I think this update shows not well at all. For the Halloween update, he promised several major features. That's a lot of work on a tight deadline. Then, he spent the bulk of the time between announcement and deadline finalizing his office. That's great; it was important work. If you look at his Twitter stream you can see he didn't sit down to bang out the bulk of the biome and portal code until only a week or so remained. He was working on stuff the day of release. This is a loud warning siren to any developer worth his chops: release day is when you're supposed to be drinking beer and celebrating, not wishing the compiler would move a little faster. Notch overpromised and underdelivered, and it puts him in the company of Ion Storm, 3D Realms, and a few other game developers whose names are basically mild swears.
The fact is, Notch rushed the development of these features. The only thing you get when you rush software development is a steaming pile of manure. The largest and most important features of the Halloween update do not work as intended. It is wrong to release code that is not only hastily written but untested if you are charging money for access to your product, with one exception I'll reserve for later.
Yes, the game is in "alpha". I think that's an excuse and an abuse of the term. Alpha releases of software are as-is; they're only tested on development machines and not guaranteed to work anywhere else. Alpha releases consist of incomplete features and most of you wouldn't recognize them as a "game". Take the leaked Doom 3 alpha from yesteryear; it consisted of about 10% of a level (more if you used noclip) and a few enemy encounters. You could use the console to spawn some monsters and weapons not initially present, but many console commands crashed the game. You don't release an alpha to paying customers because an alpha is not release-quality.
This game is more appropriately somewhere between alpha and beta. "Beta" is supposed to mean "all features are implemented and no known bugs exist but it hasn't been heavily tested; please find bugs." Google and other big players have changed public perception to mean "It's release-ready but we still want to add features; expect a few bumps and known issues." Minecraft is somewhere between; Notch hasn't finished enumerating features but he's charging money for access to the game as-is. I don't feel like it's ethical to charge for alpha products and I feel like minecraft is too unstable to be beta.
Single player survival was fine before the update. There were some minor bugs and inconvenient omissions, but the vibrant community makes it clear the game was playable and stable enough for people to accept it. After the update, there's been a large loss of playability. The monster spawning is bugged and relentless; all but the people who really love combat are in agreement that Peaceful is the only solution. Building portals can be risky and in the worst case destructive. Things that worked before the update don't work anymore (tree leaves.) The game is overall worse than it was before the update, with no promise of making it better any time soon.
The overpromise means it's going to be a long time before everything is fixed, too. Notch has got several fires to put out now. To fix the portals, he can't work on the monster spawning. To fix monster spawning, he can't work on tree decay. If he's working on any of that, he's not fixing SMP bugs. If you think about this long enough, you see the value of releasing one feature at a time and polishing it before moving to the next. Even in alpha/beta software, it makes sense.
Think about what happens if this pattern of "implement a lot of stuff fast then fix it later" continues. Every rushed new feature will introduce a few more bugs. Eventually, the game will consist of lots of features that would be fun, if they worked. Then Notch will have no choice but to fix them all. Will Minecraft be playable or fun when this stage is reached? Who knows. I'd much rather Notch take things one at a time.
I feel like the worst part of the whole thing is you have no option to regress to a more stable version. I've been a part of projects like this somewhere in limbo between alpha and beta before; I've always provided links to every version of the software. This is good for your customers because if you really hose things up in one release, they can avoid that release. In Minecraft I don't get that option; I was automatically upgraded to the buggy Halloween update and I have no way to go back. This is even more reason to not release something unless it's known to be good: players have no recourse if an update breaks the game in an unforseen manner.
For an example of this pattern done right, see the browser game Kingdom of Loathing. It is in perpetual beta, and is completely free. The developers release new minor features at a pretty good pace (1/month has been the pace for a while with major content every six months or so.) It's rare that content releases with a game-breaking bug that isn't fixed within hours. It hasn't always been this way; early in the game's history there were bugs so bad they had to revert to older backups of everyone's character (they used a world event as an excuse; very clever.) Over time, you can tell they've spent more and more time testing features to completion before mentioning them at all, let alone releasing them to players. I doubt their programmers are any more or less talented than Notch, but they create the illusion by never promising what they can't deliver.
I don't think Notch is an untalented programmer. His product is amazing and that he was able to get these features in at all in a month means the Minecraft codebase is fairly flexible. That's a credit to him. I think he's inexperienced: it takes a while for the pain of overpromise to burn enough that you remember it and keep your mouth shut about new features. I'm not going to quit playing Minecraft just yet, and I don't think Notch has any obligation to me whatsoever, but I do hope he takes this experience to heart and starts putting polish on features before releasing them. Not only does it satisfy customers more, it makes you look more talented.
So no, I argue that fixing bugs is a part of every phase of development. Released bugs are things you have to fix before you can proceed to new features; let enough of them slip and suddenly it's not so fun to work on the project anymore because you can't do what you want.
@SittenSpynne Kudos on a very well thought out succinct post. I really do agree with your points made, a lot of games developing nowadays can't be broken down into such clear stages especially with Minecraft. Alpha should be seen as a codename for the project like Indev, Infdev and Classic before it.
Anyway I think we can all agree that we want Minecraft to get bigger and better overtime!
As for Notch setting his goals and making them public thats part of him being open, I listened to podcast where Notch explained how people have messaged him about him being "Egotistical and showing off by putting how many paid users there are on his site in a counter" and how he explained all he wants to do is be open and honest with the community, IMO more game developers should be like Notch, at least he hasn't released a buggy full game and made us pay for updates with bug fixes in them that quite a few big developers do.
Heh, saw this post and since I know I'm behind in podcast listening I guess I'd like to reply xD. I do enjoy seeing the counter on the front page. I know it's a pretty big move to express how many people you have to the public and what type of money you have coming in. Usually that leads to people saying "You have millions of dollars, FIX THINGS!" I agree that I think one of the things that I prefer most about the minecraft website specifically is the fact that we have information to how many people really like the game.
It lets us know how fast it is growing and that the project isn't going to be halted due to loss of people. Also.. a little bit on the side: I love being able to tell my friends that a Swedish man made a pixelated game in java that has made about 7 million dollars :wink.gif:. The jokes about how much money he made off this game are something that interests me. Definitely low-end 3D, but the fun factor FTW =)
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$15: 1 GB RAM, Windows 2008, SolusVM with VNC. 14 Months+ Customer. ThrustVPS! I've tried Burst and HazeNET in the past and it was no comparison...
One of the biggest issues I saw with Notch's Halloween update was that he pressured himself into a corner.
People were qq'ing all over the place when he stopped getting updates out due to other things going on (DDOS attacks, server overloads, etc). So, he promises this big update for everyone by a specific date.
Then, I don't know exactly what all he did with his time, he is only human, but: Things came up. More and more time slipped away dealing with other things (The attack again, moving to a new server, DDOS protection, working on the office, hiring people).
So, he ended up backing himself into this corner where he had to code fast to try and implement most of the features promised by the release date. This was partially his mistake, and partially the fault of the forums, who it appears 'drove' him into a set date.
In comparison, you have Blizzard, who will happily go "Not making that release date, try again next year". They do this until the game is decent, rather then a sacrifice to meet the deadline.
Also: I totally forgot where my rambling thoughts were going. /shutsup.
Here's my opinion, but first my background. I'm a professional developer, but I program games as my hobby. I'm working on a space 4x game, Beyond Beyaan (beyondbeyaan.blogspot.com)
One thing that I've noticed that when I add new features, it's motivating to see some of my design ideas being implemented. However, as I progress, the way I implemented some of those features blocked my ability to implement other features, so I'd have to refactor the structure of the game to allow the new features. Refactoring process is boring and often demotivational because I'm not adding anything new. So I take break from developing the game, and every time I think about going back and finish refactoring, I'm like "but I want to add new features! Meh, maybe later I'll finish refactoring." When I finally get enough motivation to finish refactoring, I'm on a roll again. I think I've refactored Beyond Beyaan's structure at least 3 or 4 times now, not counting the minor function refactors.
So for me, I'd rather be working on adding new features and ensuring that they work reasonably well, then when it's working well enough, I move on to next feature. I plan to do bug hunting when the game's mostly implemented. Then after the bug hunting is mostly done, I plan on polishing the game to make it look nice and professional.
I can see Notch doing the same thing. He adds a new feature, ensure that it works reasonably well, then move on to a new feature. When he decides it's beta, he'll focus on fixing bugs more, and less on new features. There's nothing demotivating (sp?) like hunting down an annoying bug that's not easy to replicate or cleaning up code so you can add new features. When the game's complete, the motivation changes from "I'm playing, but there's features I want to see in the game!" to "I'm happily playing, but this stupid bug keep showing up! I'll fix it so it's not annoying me anymore"
Edit: Stupid url not working :sad.gif:
Edit: Professional, not Professinal :tongue.gif:
Alternatively, for the first gate, simply use the generated portal as the origin, and base all relative positioning from that.
The first gate should always be direct, imo. After The Nether is generated, then the offset can make sense.
Or, hard code the link, so that even if the gate is shifted, they still connect. This would cause continuity issues with the fast travel aspect, of course, if used more then once.
@Emily you still did not answer my question?
I think Notch finding a few people to collaborate with would be a good thing. He's obviously the last say in how things work, but having people present alternatives he may not have thought of would probably do some good for the development process.
-Arthur C. Clark
"Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology"
-Larry Niven
Back onto topic though it does confuse me that Notch didn't test some of these things more thoroughly before releasing them. I know he's on a tight schedule but I have to say In my own Games Design experience I try everything out first then If I'm happy with the results it put to one side ready for release. If a problem comes up later on that I hadn't come across then it will be fixed. But with the portals it seems only a couple of testing results can create this outcome so maybe he was just lucky enough to not happen or he didn't test it enough.
it is in terms of gameplay that it doesn't. How often do you think Notch actually just sits down and plays Minecraft, I wonder?
This is the developers blindness I was speaking of. It takes a player to find gameplay errors, even if they are not actually errors. It's unavoidable, really.
No, seriously, this has been a great thread to read. I'm glad everyone is being civil and oddly enough I can more easily understand others' opinions without getting angry. Who would have known?!
While the technical talk has gone a tad over my head, I think I still have a firm enough grasp of game-making to understand the portal issue. If Notch changed it so the first portal created was made on flat ground in the Nether and then the rest of the Nether generated around it, it would make the first portal work correctly. But every other portal made after the first one would still be susceptible to the same multiple portal generation bug. What Notch needs to do is make it so a portal gets created in a certain amount of space, like 16 blocks by 16 blocks, where there is room for it and then link it back to the one portal in the minecraft world. Although, this would still lead to problems where building two portals in the minecraft world lead to the same portal in the Nether or if there are spots in the Nether where a 16 by 16 block area is completely filled, then there won't be a space for a portal.
Gah, it's making my head hurt trying to solve this. This is why I'm not a game developer. That and all the other reasons.
i'm a software developper and former game developper, former because the hour was driving me crazy, and this is one thing i was doing very often when i started, assuming things would work, and i learned that, while some time you have good developping phase due to some good feeling or something, other time you hit a wall and nothing work like expected..
Fixing the bugs should not be on his TODOODLE list thingy... not yet anyway. get the game to late alpha, see that everything works as it should. then fix the bugs... but the major bugs.. like teleportation.. not "my leaves arnt falling down!".
the developers blindness is very real... there's some times, when i code feature on a software, i find myself testing ,finding bug, noting them and later, i kind of automatically hop over them because i know how the software work and i know that i'm not suppose to do that.. that's why Q&A dep exist... i mean you cant find every problem by yourself.. and i think notch did pretty good by himself as of now..
It depends on the serious nature of the bug though. Some of the bugs mean that the game doesn't work as it should, often we work around them as players but it's up to Notch what is working correctly in his mind.
this is the statement that i was referencing. i think we can agree that this statement was inflammatory and rude.
like i said not a jab at the way they do things where your from. by using absolutes i was trying to get the point across more effectively. which worked he has not posted a rebuttal.
@Emily
what medium do you work in.
didnt i said "when I started"..? also when you ( not you specifically ) do code 8 hours a day, 5 days of the week, you start to understand part of the code you use more often and you stop testing them, assuming they work because you did write them many many time... that's what i meant..
you are right most of the web applications i wright now i only test at the very end because i have written things smiler to them so many times it hurts my brain. i hate this pissing contest that always happens in this forum.
I am a software developer and a craftsman. I don't write games that I release, but similarities between writing a game and a good application exist. You have a set of requirements, and your goal is to meet the requirements given some resources (time and money are the primary resources.) Many questions weigh in on quality:
[*:f7nppuvj]Was the project on schedule?
This is where games differ a bit. Applications are judged by their ease of use and stability. Games are generally judged by these criteria (ignoring the budget/schedule/rquirements criteria that are common.)[*:f7nppuvj]Was the project on budget?
[*:f7nppuvj]How many requirements are met?
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the result intuitive?
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the result stable?
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the game fun?
"Fun" is hard to define and is different for all people; we'll toss it out as subjective.[*:f7nppuvj]Does the game provide the experience it promises?
[*:f7nppuvj]Is the game playable?
For a game to provide the experience it promises, the developers have to be careful with how they describe the game. This is why it's typically difficult to find information about a game in development until it is very close to release. History is littered with games that promised exciting features that were diminished or cut to reach schedule or budget concerns. Duke Nukem Forever is the classic example of overpromising but underdelivering. (Yes, I know it will release. My opinion is it looks disappointing and the time for games like it lapsed at least 10 years ago.) Blizzard is good at delivering exactly what they promise; they do this by keeping their mouths shut and rarely mentioning a feature until it's in a gameplay demo.
For a game to be playable, there is some magic threshold of bugs that you must not exceed. Fallout 3 is a notoriously glitched game, but I was able to do 3 playthroughs with maybe 2 freezes and no quest-blocking glitches, so it was acceptable. When I played Knights of the Old Republic, my computer corrupted my saves roughly once every third save and if I didn't turn the graphics detail to very low on one particular level the game would lock up. This was unplayable.
It's a game developer's job to meet their budget and schedule, deliver on the promises made to users, and keep the game playable. The easiest way to accomplish this is to underpromise and overdeliver: only talk about features that are finished and let the users be surprised by the things that you weren't sure would make the cut. Blizzard does this. iD does this. They're the two highest-quality game development shops around. It's not because their programmers are very talented (though I believe they do get hiring preference), it's because they don't promise what they can't deliver.
How does Notch fare? I think this update shows not well at all. For the Halloween update, he promised several major features. That's a lot of work on a tight deadline. Then, he spent the bulk of the time between announcement and deadline finalizing his office. That's great; it was important work. If you look at his Twitter stream you can see he didn't sit down to bang out the bulk of the biome and portal code until only a week or so remained. He was working on stuff the day of release. This is a loud warning siren to any developer worth his chops: release day is when you're supposed to be drinking beer and celebrating, not wishing the compiler would move a little faster. Notch overpromised and underdelivered, and it puts him in the company of Ion Storm, 3D Realms, and a few other game developers whose names are basically mild swears.
The fact is, Notch rushed the development of these features. The only thing you get when you rush software development is a steaming pile of manure. The largest and most important features of the Halloween update do not work as intended. It is wrong to release code that is not only hastily written but untested if you are charging money for access to your product, with one exception I'll reserve for later.
Yes, the game is in "alpha". I think that's an excuse and an abuse of the term. Alpha releases of software are as-is; they're only tested on development machines and not guaranteed to work anywhere else. Alpha releases consist of incomplete features and most of you wouldn't recognize them as a "game". Take the leaked Doom 3 alpha from yesteryear; it consisted of about 10% of a level (more if you used noclip) and a few enemy encounters. You could use the console to spawn some monsters and weapons not initially present, but many console commands crashed the game. You don't release an alpha to paying customers because an alpha is not release-quality.
This game is more appropriately somewhere between alpha and beta. "Beta" is supposed to mean "all features are implemented and no known bugs exist but it hasn't been heavily tested; please find bugs." Google and other big players have changed public perception to mean "It's release-ready but we still want to add features; expect a few bumps and known issues." Minecraft is somewhere between; Notch hasn't finished enumerating features but he's charging money for access to the game as-is. I don't feel like it's ethical to charge for alpha products and I feel like minecraft is too unstable to be beta.
Single player survival was fine before the update. There were some minor bugs and inconvenient omissions, but the vibrant community makes it clear the game was playable and stable enough for people to accept it. After the update, there's been a large loss of playability. The monster spawning is bugged and relentless; all but the people who really love combat are in agreement that Peaceful is the only solution. Building portals can be risky and in the worst case destructive. Things that worked before the update don't work anymore (tree leaves.) The game is overall worse than it was before the update, with no promise of making it better any time soon.
The overpromise means it's going to be a long time before everything is fixed, too. Notch has got several fires to put out now. To fix the portals, he can't work on the monster spawning. To fix monster spawning, he can't work on tree decay. If he's working on any of that, he's not fixing SMP bugs. If you think about this long enough, you see the value of releasing one feature at a time and polishing it before moving to the next. Even in alpha/beta software, it makes sense.
Think about what happens if this pattern of "implement a lot of stuff fast then fix it later" continues. Every rushed new feature will introduce a few more bugs. Eventually, the game will consist of lots of features that would be fun, if they worked. Then Notch will have no choice but to fix them all. Will Minecraft be playable or fun when this stage is reached? Who knows. I'd much rather Notch take things one at a time.
I feel like the worst part of the whole thing is you have no option to regress to a more stable version. I've been a part of projects like this somewhere in limbo between alpha and beta before; I've always provided links to every version of the software. This is good for your customers because if you really hose things up in one release, they can avoid that release. In Minecraft I don't get that option; I was automatically upgraded to the buggy Halloween update and I have no way to go back. This is even more reason to not release something unless it's known to be good: players have no recourse if an update breaks the game in an unforseen manner.
For an example of this pattern done right, see the browser game Kingdom of Loathing. It is in perpetual beta, and is completely free. The developers release new minor features at a pretty good pace (1/month has been the pace for a while with major content every six months or so.) It's rare that content releases with a game-breaking bug that isn't fixed within hours. It hasn't always been this way; early in the game's history there were bugs so bad they had to revert to older backups of everyone's character (they used a world event as an excuse; very clever.) Over time, you can tell they've spent more and more time testing features to completion before mentioning them at all, let alone releasing them to players. I doubt their programmers are any more or less talented than Notch, but they create the illusion by never promising what they can't deliver.
I don't think Notch is an untalented programmer. His product is amazing and that he was able to get these features in at all in a month means the Minecraft codebase is fairly flexible. That's a credit to him. I think he's inexperienced: it takes a while for the pain of overpromise to burn enough that you remember it and keep your mouth shut about new features. I'm not going to quit playing Minecraft just yet, and I don't think Notch has any obligation to me whatsoever, but I do hope he takes this experience to heart and starts putting polish on features before releasing them. Not only does it satisfy customers more, it makes you look more talented.
So no, I argue that fixing bugs is a part of every phase of development. Released bugs are things you have to fix before you can proceed to new features; let enough of them slip and suddenly it's not so fun to work on the project anymore because you can't do what you want.
Anyway I think we can all agree that we want Minecraft to get bigger and better overtime!
Heh, saw this post and since I know I'm behind in podcast listening I guess I'd like to reply xD. I do enjoy seeing the counter on the front page. I know it's a pretty big move to express how many people you have to the public and what type of money you have coming in. Usually that leads to people saying "You have millions of dollars, FIX THINGS!" I agree that I think one of the things that I prefer most about the minecraft website specifically is the fact that we have information to how many people really like the game.
It lets us know how fast it is growing and that the project isn't going to be halted due to loss of people. Also.. a little bit on the side: I love being able to tell my friends that a Swedish man made a pixelated game in java that has made about 7 million dollars :wink.gif:. The jokes about how much money he made off this game are something that interests me. Definitely low-end 3D, but the fun factor FTW =)
ThrustVPS! I've tried Burst and HazeNET in the past and it was no comparison...
People were qq'ing all over the place when he stopped getting updates out due to other things going on (DDOS attacks, server overloads, etc). So, he promises this big update for everyone by a specific date.
Then, I don't know exactly what all he did with his time, he is only human, but: Things came up. More and more time slipped away dealing with other things (The attack again, moving to a new server, DDOS protection, working on the office, hiring people).
So, he ended up backing himself into this corner where he had to code fast to try and implement most of the features promised by the release date. This was partially his mistake, and partially the fault of the forums, who it appears 'drove' him into a set date.
In comparison, you have Blizzard, who will happily go "Not making that release date, try again next year". They do this until the game is decent, rather then a sacrifice to meet the deadline.
Also: I totally forgot where my rambling thoughts were going. /shutsup.
One thing that I've noticed that when I add new features, it's motivating to see some of my design ideas being implemented. However, as I progress, the way I implemented some of those features blocked my ability to implement other features, so I'd have to refactor the structure of the game to allow the new features. Refactoring process is boring and often demotivational because I'm not adding anything new. So I take break from developing the game, and every time I think about going back and finish refactoring, I'm like "but I want to add new features! Meh, maybe later I'll finish refactoring." When I finally get enough motivation to finish refactoring, I'm on a roll again. I think I've refactored Beyond Beyaan's structure at least 3 or 4 times now, not counting the minor function refactors.
So for me, I'd rather be working on adding new features and ensuring that they work reasonably well, then when it's working well enough, I move on to next feature. I plan to do bug hunting when the game's mostly implemented. Then after the bug hunting is mostly done, I plan on polishing the game to make it look nice and professional.
I can see Notch doing the same thing. He adds a new feature, ensure that it works reasonably well, then move on to a new feature. When he decides it's beta, he'll focus on fixing bugs more, and less on new features. There's nothing demotivating (sp?) like hunting down an annoying bug that's not easy to replicate or cleaning up code so you can add new features. When the game's complete, the motivation changes from "I'm playing, but there's features I want to see in the game!" to "I'm happily playing, but this stupid bug keep showing up! I'll fix it so it's not annoying me anymore"
Edit: Stupid url not working :sad.gif:
Edit: Professional, not Professinal :tongue.gif: