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Trenches comic: Tuesday Nov. 22, 2011 - Mystery
Bogey
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator Mod Emeritus
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator Mod Emeritus
The Rose Bed
11/22/2011 - Anonymous
I worked for a well known developer in the UK doing Playstation games as a coder. They had a great team but, like a lot of developers, not a lot of management. For instanece, we had no version control on our software.
I was responsible for writing a particularly tricky bit of code to store and replay games. Because memory was so tight I could store only the player inputs and all the rest of the game state had to be determinist. This meant that if anything, anywhere, in the level wasn’t completely deterministic the replay went out of sync.
It was a nightmare to do but it absolutely had to be ready for E3, so I was working 80+ hour weeks on this one problem. I finally cracked one major bug to this problem and proceeded to merge my code into the code base. I downloaded the code base and in an instant completely overwrote all the changes and work I’d done that week.
I sat staring at the screen for about ten minutes and didn’t know what to do. So I got up, went downstairs and sat in a rose bed behind the studio and cried softly. Eventually some other devs came down and I thought they where coming to see how I was, but they walked past me and went to get pizza.
I sat there for about thirty minutes then went back to work. Nobody said anything to me. I managed to get the replay working in time for E3. Happy days.
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Of course, I really have the same feeling about a lot of the stories in the Tales from the Trenches. Workers in these tales seem to get so emotionally invested in hitting those deadlines and helping the company get the game out on time. Is there every going to be a tale from the Trenches where someone says, "Yeah, we totally blew our deadline and failed to get the game out on time. I'm pretty sure I'm the direct cause, because I didn't kill myself trying to get the work done. I didn't care then, and I don't care now."
Also, it's a loss for the company, because Q wasted Isaac's time.
His anger seems more reasonable if this is a big prank by Q to make him test the most boring of tests on a game everyone else except the new guy knows is cancelled.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
If the Portallis thing got cut before Isaac started working on it, then it was extremely dickish on Q's part and totally deserves a boss alert.
People seemed confused as to whether Portallis was part of the game or the entire game, so I was simply clarifying that Portallis is not the entire game.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
They really are trying to make Isaac unlikeable, aren't they? The whole "Isaac Cox" name thing aside.
If the novelty idea was to render a "The Office" esque comedy/drama under a QA Tester theme comic then seemingly we're drifting away.
He's upset becuase he works in America and is thus assumed to be receiving no overtime pay for his insane hours. Thus if he isn't even being useful then he really did suffer for absolutely nothing.
Also once you've seen the magic disappearing boobs you can't unsee them.
Trenches is set in an alternate reality in which all humans are descended from W.C. Fields.
Your avatar really drives your message home, I can picture her voice deriding the reader and authors for being drama queens.
Dammit, that Townsend Television episode with the planet of the brown noses isn't on youtube.
Agreed. How can that even happen? Why would the developers not step in and just tell management they need it?
Ha haaa! Didn't even notice that!
I've seen huge companies, multi-million dollar departments, use post-it notes for defect tracking.
Not unusual at all. Especially in years past.
First question: How much does it cost?
Second question: Have you been managing without it?
Conclusion: Don't need to spend money
Um what?
A few things -
He was promised a job. The boss did not have to honor the promise or force Isaac to choose the person. Isaac was desperate for work and he took an opportunity. I assume people living in their cars would do the same.
Who could logically guess their boss is a rabid 80s cartoon fan with a rocket horse fetish ?
And how is going through proper channels to say your supervisor wasted time and manpower on a revenge prank whining? He's acting like an adult not a 14 year old.
It's also worth pointing out that Isaac didn't want anybody fired and did what he could to stop the boss from firing people who desperately needed to keep their jobs.
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2. You can manage, but it's definitely helpful
3. Yep you don't need to spend money on version control when there is tortoise svn.
Huh. That's certainly someth-
And he sleeps in his car and stalks his coworkers, don't forget that.
How does that make him a bad person?
No he doesn't.
I just come to these threads to read it.
Maybe you could have sent a PM to a moderator as requested at the top of the forum instead of being a snarky shitbag.