[TRENCHES] Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - Suppurating
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Suppurating
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/suppurating
Too Funny to Fix
AnonymousI was working at a third-party testing house and we were working on a game that accurately replicated the city of Manhattan. By the end of development the bugs numbered in the thousands. I ran into some pretty impressive/funny bugs during my tenure on the game, most of which got fixed.
Some of my favorites:
1. Early in development there was a slightly disturbing feature. Pedestrians, hit with explosive weapons, left limbs behind that were usable as weapons. The bug I found was that they never went away. The bodies vanished, but the limbs remained. After a particularly impressive rampage, I took a screenshot of Wall Street littered with limbs and sent to devs.
2. The crowd AI responded with mayhem if you shot someone in broad daylight. Testing this feature with a Sniper Rifle had some great results. At a certain range, no one would notice when an NPC’s head was shot. They would continue their casual walk while their friends’ head exploded.
At an even further distance, the NPC didn’t get register being shot. Instead they spawned sunglasses (a la Matrix agents) and went about their business while everyone near them ran around in a panic.
3. My favorite bug of all time. The game had certain buildings you could walk into. Grocery stores, med clinics, banks and, of course, strip clubs. When walking into a building, the game dynamically loaded the models of the characters. Very rarely, the game would accidentally load every character in the building as the same model, but give them all the correct animations. After repeatedly being told I was just plain wrong; that it was IMPOSSIBLE that this bug could exist, I had my day in the sun.
Hours spent finally reproducing this bug, I caught video of my character walking into a strip club and every single NPC model was a cop. Cop on the stripper pole. Cop as a cocktail waitress. Cop getting a lapdance from another cop. Cop. Cop. Cop.
Beaming with pride at reproducing the bug and catching it on video, I walk into work the next morning with a note from the developer:
Will Not Fix: Too Funny.
Posts
Because that does sound like a funny bug.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I wonder what EEEUGH.gif looks like?
Also, I am now hopelessly lost on what Cora hopes to achieve.
But what does she want? She said way back at the start there would be a rollback, but now she's against this?
Good times... or not.
The difference here is the Mass effect three "movement" wasn't forcing them to do anything. They just wanted an ending that wasn't stupid and it was entirely something players did.
Cora is abusing her position for some sort of power fantasy. I expect it will blow up in her face when a surge of new customers come in to see what the deal is and don't give a shit about a rollback
"Some seriously passive aggressive bullshit"
God only knows. The idea that an entire playerbase would actually "strike" like this is straining my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, though. To say nothing of Q knowing Cora is responsible and choosing to react by posting a GIF instead of firing her ass. Fire the whole damn company.
tata
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I have Sega, Nintendo and Xbox games and systems for sale. Please help me buy diapers.
I of course, shot one and it was hilarious how dozens of cops and cop cars converged all at once on me. After I got arrested everything went back to normal.
Regarding the comic, I also suscribe to the idea that it might not be Corra.
OK, wild theory just born of trying to think of who else could be behind this:
Gwen. Remember how the comic introduced Gwen over the course of a few installments and then sort of abruptly shifted away from her? We saw from her interview with Cora that Gwen is a bit of a power-hungry type, perhaps not-so-subtly angling for Cora's job. Gwen has somehow orchestrated this knowing that Cora will be the obvious person who will be blamed.
Of course, this assumes that Gwen could pick up on the dynamic of the office and Cora's white knight tendencies very fast, even aside from having to assume the implausible idea that Gwen or anybody could actually convince the playerbase to walk out en masse. But I am just spitballing here.
Also, yay happy story!
I too, did QA on this game, and remember these bugs. It was my first project, and I was there from the first day it hit the test floor, and now I'm positive that I must know the person who submitted this story.
Another bug I really loved from that game was trying to drift in a bus using the "auto drift" feature, and flying miles into the air over the buildings of Manhattan. I also really loved the bug that caused a second main character to spawn, and you'd end up controlling them both at the same time. Nothing is better than getting into a car chase with yourself.
Another intriguing theory, though I kind of doubt Marley/Rarley/Xarley/Xarles/Xarles Barkley could conceive of and pull off of something like this when it's already been demonstrated he's so fucking high all the damn time.
But maybe his unjust(?) termination of employment motivated him to get off the ganja and focus on revenge???
Lol. :P
I think it's because the developers are kind of fucking with the player base. Like doing a rollback without telling anyone. Her earlier leaks were her trying to tell the base so they'd be able to able to prepare for it.
Ah, the "Deal With It" bug.
Or his high persona is more focused and competent than he is normally, a la Tyler Durden.
"Who is empowering these Morlocks?"
Except it should probably be "Who is empowering the Eloi?"
Just so. Techies are more likely to identify with the pale troglodytes that keep everything running, to whom the beautiful people in the sunlit garden are merely prey, and to be proud of that.