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Trenches comic: Thursday February 23, 2012 - Justice

BogeyBogey I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
edited February 2012 in The Penny Arcade Hub
i-jTVks4R.jpg
Drive Fast and Crash a Lot

02/23/2012 - Anonymous

My first testing job was for a game where you drive really fast and crash your car a lot by that publisher people hated for a long time but don’t anymore. They make a lot of sport games.

Anyway, I sat down at my Xbox to do gameplay testing on the title - it was set to be released in a couple of weeks and was supposedly finished after having been tested to death already. In, no joke, TEN MINUTES I found a 100% reproducible crash that affected roughly a third of all the levels. I reported it and almost immediately a crowd of seniors, skeptical at the abilites of the new boy, gathered. I was able to repro the bug on multiple discs across multiple consoles, making it an immediate show-stopper. A lot of the testers who tested it previously got ripped a new one for missing such a huge bug, and I got a pat on the back and all the best projects from that day forward.

But that’s not actually the story. The best part is how they handled it. Instead of fixing the bug, they ended up removing all the affected levels. Yes. That’s a third of the entire game.

I’m sorry everyone.

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XBox LIVE: Bogestrom | Destiny
PSN: Bogestrom
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Posts

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    RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    EXTREME CLOSE UP

    And I've kinda been in a similar situation in the story about catching a job-ending bug.

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    GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    I still want a model rocket robot horse. :(

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    Munkus BeaverMunkus Beaver You don't have to attend every argument you are invited to. Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    best story yet

    Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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    KarlKarl Registered User regular
    That story is fucking amazing.

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    Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    How did I never notice Justice looks like Serenity?

    And maybe they became DLC. ;D

    Oh brilliant
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    HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Munkus Beaver wrote:
    best story yet

    This. :^:

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    AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    That story is awesome. I wonder if the game he is talking about is Burnout? I also wonder what the specific crash is. So many intriging questions, so little answers.

    Aegeri on
    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
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    MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    Aegeri wrote:
    That story is awesome. I wonder if the game he is talking about is Burnout?

    Yeah, that's likely it.
    Aegeri wrote:
    I also wonder what the specific crash is. So many intriging questions, so little answers.

    If it happened in a lot of levels, probably a light-post or another car.

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    MutakMutak Registered User regular
    by that publisher people hated for a long time but don’t anymore

    I don't know about anyone else, but i still pretty much despise EA.

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    MilknutMilknut Registered User regular
    Yeah, I never stopped voodoo-dolling EA.

    Twenty million kids are eaten by bats every second.
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    Zazu YenZazu Yen Senior Developer San FranciscoRegistered User regular
    And then they release the fixed levels as downloadable content for an extra fee, which will probably cover the cost of the extra work and then some.

    ExistentialExistenceException: Your thread encountered a NULL pointer and entered a state of non-being.
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    FramlingFramling FaceHead Geebs has bad ideas.Registered User regular
    Yeah, welcome to the wonderful world of code churn. You can have a dev work out a fix for that bug, but there's no way of knowing what other problems will be introduced.

    When time is short, amputate.

    you're = you are
    your = belonging to you

    their = belonging to them
    there = not here
    they're = they are
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    NeuroskepticNeuroskeptic Registered User regular
    Ahem, forgetting something aren't we? 12 posts in this thread and no-one's mentioned the noses.

    Seriously though, great story. I guess the dev's could then fix the bug and release the levels as a DLC...

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    endofaneraendofanera Registered User new member
    Perhaps I'm alone, but I don't get it. What's up with this comic? I mean, I get how it ties into the story, but what are we looking at, exactly? Is there a funny I'm not getting?

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    Roger WilcoRoger Wilco Registered User regular
    Mutak wrote:
    by that publisher people hated for a long time but don’t anymore

    I don't know about anyone else, but i still pretty much despise EA.

    EA is still a big corporation who only desires money, but they've fixed enough of their issues that most people moved on to hating on Activision.

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    marsiliesmarsilies Registered User regular
    endofanera wrote:
    Perhaps I'm alone, but I don't get it. What's up with this comic? I mean, I get how it ties into the story, but what are we looking at, exactly? Is there a funny I'm not getting?
    It's an enlargement of a frame from the Season 1 comic "History":
    http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/history

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    admanbadmanb unionize your workplace Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    marsilies wrote: »
    endofanera wrote:
    Perhaps I'm alone, but I don't get it. What's up with this comic? I mean, I get how it ties into the story, but what are we looking at, exactly? Is there a funny I'm not getting?
    It's an enlargement of a frame from the Season 1 comic "History":
    http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/history

    More specifically it's the original size of that frame. :P

    twitter, github
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    endofaneraendofanera Registered User new member
    Excellent, thank you both.

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