Developers, what are some of the craziest things you seen or heard about?

[Brimstone]

I was wondering what are some of the most extremely bizzare, insane, and/or funny things you've experienced while making a game.

Things like

an artist totally screwing up and having to re-do his work

progammers failing to communicate with each other and doing the wrong stuff

stuff in general going haywire

a producing demanding something and everyone misunderstands what he meant


Also I'm curious what Democoders most extreme experience or story heard related to coding/product screw up.

 

[_phil_]

completly (98%) dynamic gamedesign.

 

[Colourless]

Something I've encountered more than once was Debugging symbols/information compiled into released executables/game scripts.

 

[ector]

Something I've encountered more than once was Debugging symbols/information compiled into released executables/game scripts.

Nintendo likes to do this in their Gamecube games, such as Zelda, Mario, Pikmin... full debugging symbols on disc

 

[MrWibble]

I'd probably get fired for talking about most of the antics I've seen... I'll stick to relatively safe ones:

Back when 3D hardware for PC was a relative novelty and games still targetted software, I was working on a title where the management were being a bit over ambitious. Ignoring for a moment the requirement to create a game world with hundreds of detailed characters, it also needed to have fully destructable environments. That's not the craziest thing though - the craziest thing was being handed a level design containing a hall of mirrors...

I've had to throw someone out of the office when they've worked 4 days straight, only to have them return about 10 hours later and work another 4 days straight. At least they actually showered when they went home... I'm sure plenty other devs have witnessed that kind of thing though (er, meaning week-long shifts, not watching people shower...)

Oh, and one office I worked in was loaned out to the Police for a week while they staked out the drug dealer that lived across the road.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Many of my extremely weird and appalling stories involve a company I worked at which no longer exists, and never made us sign any NDAs of any kind. And I've actually kept a record of over 350000 stories and amazing moments of stupidity which have circulated a number of places, and I've frequently been asked to start a webcomic about.

But not-quite-so-messed-up-beyond-hell examples I've seen include toolsets that inserted a "default" texture when a material wasn't assigned to some object, and that default turned out to be so inconspicuous that some leveldata was compiled with unassigned materials in place. Then when the "default" texture got changed, we were suddenly left wondering why all these canyons had walls of rock with the face of George W. Bush on them.

Some of the more innocuous things include artists who, as the result of an engine switch, got so excited at the prospect of finally being able to use high resolution textures that they started blasting through making 1024x1024 textures for everything... except for particles, thankfully. It culminated when I finally got through importing a character who had diffuse/bump/specular level/specular exponent all over... but he was also broken up into enough parts that the guy had a grand total of 24 textures -- all 1024 with no extra miplevels. 3 were alloted solely for the guy's hat.

 

[SubD]

From the companies I've worked at:

* Marketing putting the features of an entirely different game on the actual shipping box packaging for a game

* A pc game was shipped that was known not to work on some %20-30 of pcs - "We'll patch it later"

* Game controls/settings that actually were broken/non-functional in the shipping product and no one noticed

* A producer having a nervous breakdown at 1am the night before a 10am milestone with weeks of work left to do on the project and the entire company's budget depending on meeting the milestone

* Someone from management trying to force the development team to implement a level with a 100 or so bone animated creatures when the machine could handle 2-3 max and the team getting poor reviews for failing to live up to the task

* Funding current late and over budget projects by signing up new projects that the company has no possible way of working on

* A very senior, very long time employee getting into what he thought was an hour long light-hearted debate with the president of the company over the project schedule and state in front of the entire team and realizing it wasn't so light-hearted the next day when he was fired

* Too many 'guy freaks out, breaks stuff, and storms out never to be seen again' episodes to remember

* An artist who without permission had every computer in the company running as his personal renderfarm each night for his reel.

And the really good stories are too specific to be told.

 

[Nesh]

I'd probably get fired for talking about most of the antics I've seen... I'll stick to relatively safe ones:

Back when 3D hardware for PC was a relative novelty and games still targetted software, I was working on a title where the management were being a bit over ambitious. Ignoring for a moment the requirement to create a game world with hundreds of detailed characters, it also needed to have fully destructable environments. That's not the craziest thing though - the craziest thing was being handed a level design containing a hall of mirrors...

I've had to throw someone out of the office when they've worked 4 days straight, only to have them return about 10 hours later and work another 4 days straight. At least they actually showered when they went home... I'm sure plenty other devs have witnessed that kind of thing though (er, meaning week-long shifts, not watching people shower...)

Oh, and one office I worked in was loaned out to the Police for a week while they staked out the drug dealer that lived across the road.

Atleast did you finish that game? Was it any good?

 

[senas8]

" Someone from management trying to force the development team to implement a level with a 100 or so bone animated creatures when the machine could handle 2-3 max and the team getting poor reviews for failing to live up to the task"

Muahahahahaha...its been ten minutes can't stop laughing. Great stories....keep it up guys..im having my fix.

 

[Tap In]

great thread guys

thanks for sharing :smile:

 

[MrWibble]

Atleast did you finish that game? Was it any good?

No, it was so badly broken that it was canned. It would have been pretty awful, I'm sure.

Another thing I remember was that on a title I wasn't actually working on, but for which I was helping debug/optimise, an artist had drawn a 1024x1024 *animated* texture for the main character's eyeball. It's not like you'd even see it with the camera being more or less permanently behind the characters head...

 

[kabacha]

craziest thing: with the first UE3 based game yet to be out and UE3 looking to dominate the industry, Epic started work on UE4 last year *based on D3D10, Geom Shading, less overhead = higher physics processing from GPUs and something similiar to megatextures*

 

[StefanS]

Another thing I remember was that on a title I wasn't actually working on, but for which I was helping debug/optimise, an artist had drawn a 1024x1024 *animated* texture for the main character's eyeball. It's not like you'd even see it with the camera being more or less permanently behind the characters head...

Now that's crazy. Anyway, seems like the programmers are at war with the artists, the PR guys, the managment, the game designers... Maybe it's just me but I see a pattern

 

[Nesh]

Makes you wonder if they like their jobs under such an enviroment
Its crazy when others dont know the limitations you face and just throw ideas and things here and there and expect them to work.

 

[NANOTEC]

craziest thing: with the first UE3 based game yet to be out and UE3 looking to dominate the industry, Epic started work on UE4 last year *based on D3D10, Geom Shading, less overhead = higher physics processing from GPUs and something similiar to megatextures*

First thing I noticed about UE3 when they first showed it was the repeating ground
extures for open environments.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Now that's crazy. Anyway, seems like the programmers are at war with the artists, the PR guys, the managment, the game designers... Maybe it's just me but I see a pattern

At the company I mentioned for which I have so many hundreds of stories, 99% of the wars were between the entire team (programmers and artists alike) and the employer.

Bear in mind that this is a guy whose idea of the ultimate game involved a "neural network hive mind" that wanted to learn how to laugh, so it taught Hitler how to tame T-Rexes and offered him alien technology which doesn't hide the fact that the name of every weapon came from Star Trek. And no, I'm not joking.

Genuine quote --
"You know, there's almost no difference at all between programming and the genetic therapy. You know, just like you have the two codes with the 1 and the 0. Yeah, and in the DNA, you have 5 codes. There's nothing too big about that. I really think that's where the gaming will head way out in the future."

Yeah... this was a daily sort of thing back then. And there are some that are just plain laughable and some that are flat-out appalling.

 

[Qroach]

From companies I worked for:

* The network gurus sending back a broken PS2 development kit to SCEA, after they clearly tampered with the sealed stickers in an attempt to possibly find what was wrong. Even worse was that they threw out the original box the PS2 dev kit came in, and decided it was ok, to send it back to SCEA in a... get this... Xbox development kit carton. suffice to say sony sent us pictures of this to our upper managment in amazement.

* Being told I had to ship a game in 4 months (from scratch) on console without the dev team having a dev kit or any expeience developing a console game.

* Getting laid off and re-hired three times in one year, each time with an increase in pay by the same company. Internal power struggle over who should run the company and one hand not knowing what the other was doing. They would lay me off, only to call back later that day offering me a new contract. oh and did i say I got laid off the first time on my birthday?

* Working with a development team in another country that barely spoke english. After four months of work they decided to ask " What does this word "fun" mean? " ...


I'll see if I can remember anymore, to be honest there's lost of odd stories. At least two stories where someone in the office went crazy from overtime. One of them bought a grand piano (without knowing how to play) and another took all the toys in the office early one morning, went into the stairwell, and proceeded to light them on fire. yeah, he thought they were evil.

 

[Nesh]

I'll see if I can remember anymore, to be honest there's lost of odd stories. At least two stories where someone in the office went crazy from overtime. One of them bought a grand piano (without knowing how to play) and another took all the toys in the office early one morning, went into the stairwell, and proceeded to light them on fire. yeah, he thought they were evil.

Holy shit!

I dont know if I have to laugh or be shocked. You guys seem to pass through a lot of working torture and pull off a lot of hair until you finish a game for which at the end.....we gamers may complain

HAHAHAHA I FEEL SO EVIL SUDDENLY!

In the consumer's eyes:A fun little game copied on a round thingie.......In reality: produced by ovetime working slaves secretely locked in a basement

Speaking of which
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20060501.jpg

Are the penny arcade guys visiting this place? Spot on!

 

[digitalwanderer]

At the company I mentioned for which I have so many hundreds of stories, 99% of the wars were between the entire team (programmers and artists alike) and the employer.

Bear in mind that this is a guy whose idea of the ultimate game involved a "neural network hive mind" that wanted to learn how to laugh, so it taught Hitler how to tame T-Rexes and offered him alien technology which doesn't hide the fact that the name of every weapon came from Star Trek. And no, I'm not joking.

Genuine quote --
"You know, there's almost no difference at all between programming and the genetic therapy. You know, just like you have the two codes with the 1 and the 0. Yeah, and in the DNA, you have 5 codes. There's nothing too big about that. I really think that's where the gaming will head way out in the future."

Yeah... this was a daily sort of thing back then. And there are some that are just plain laughable and some that are flat-out appalling.

Oh man, any more on the guy with the truly bizarre notions of the ultimate game?!?

 

[Guden Oden]

At least two stories where someone in the office went crazy from overtime.

When I first read that sentence, I thought you meant like the guy flew off the handle in a fit of rage at someone and chewed him out, or something like that, not that he actually went stark raving loonie mad.

Christ, eeww!