Developers, what are some of the craziest things you seen or heard about?
- Thread starter Brimstone
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ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Sorry about the momentary absence... I changed my email in my profile and confirmation email never showed up, so I lost the ability to post for a while. (for now, I'm forced to use my father's email, since clearly, messages from the forum won't make it to my work inbox)
Repeatedly throughout the conversation, I expressed some disbelief at the idea of including a level where you literally walked on the surface of a star, and the creature held up its hands every time and just yelled "shieelds... shieeeeeeeeelds." Asking why the shields wouldn't hold up to re-entry, it would respond "shields... shieeeeeeelds, not shuttles, okay?"
I was aware of that. I posted it in the sense that I'd try and pose an alternative challenge. And I've already sort of jacked the thread, and turned into a "creature" thread.
These stories have gone around. There was a similar thread on Flipcode a few years back (the so-called company still existed at the time). And more of us who experienced these stories were there to participate. One of them actually went by the handle "EmbarassedToHaveWorkedThere". And they're apparently read enough that various people still email me about it. A few folks at Ritual have emailed me that they sprained their wrists falling out of their chairs.
Smaller than a planet, sure... smaller than a ship? For that matter, a ship that's larger than a planet is in itself... a problem. And if it's collapsing down to a black hole (or say, if it was a neutron star rather than a dwarf), are you really going to be walking around on the surface of it? I'd actually commented at the time that the ship was enormous and the star was tiny... It simply responded 'dwarf' as if to shut me up about the scale.
Repeatedly throughout the conversation, I expressed some disbelief at the idea of including a level where you literally walked on the surface of a star, and the creature held up its hands every time and just yelled "shieelds... shieeeeeeeeelds." Asking why the shields wouldn't hold up to re-entry, it would respond "shields... shieeeeeeelds, not shuttles, okay?"
Hoh, found the DG documentary on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exWHFj_T9Qw
It's hard to tell if the guy's stark raving mad or high on crack. The singing bit after a few mins really blew me away
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exWHFj_T9Qw
It's hard to tell if the guy's stark raving mad or high on crack. The singing bit after a few mins really blew me away
OMG, I believe we have a sighting of ShootMyMonkey's "It" boss right here in panel one...
dubyateeeff
Newcomer
ShootMyMonkey
Wow, thanks for sharing. Awesome stories. Werent you terrified that he could fire you at any moment when you corrected him?
How do you explain the time spent there in your CV?
We should feel sorry for it, it needs professional help...
Wow, thanks for sharing. Awesome stories. Werent you terrified that he could fire you at any moment when you corrected him?
How do you explain the time spent there in your CV?
We should feel sorry for it, it needs professional help...
One thing that happened to me relates to a contract I had.
I was originally promised around $10k for a 3 month project.
Eventually, I got the contract for the project. About 3 months after the end of the project.
I was told I would be getting 3 installments of around $3k. After signing (under duress), I eventually got the first payment.
Only $1500.. huh...?
So I went in to ask about it. This is when it happened.
I was taken aside.
Following the financial officer, she eventually led me into a storage closet.
Shutting the door behind her, she whispered to me:
'Unfortunately, there was a problem with your pay. We overpaid you. You were only supposed to get $1000 (before tax). But don't worry, we won't be asking you for the money back.'
Er.. OK...
'To cover it, we are going to take the money from [my project manager's] pay. He was getting paid the same amount for the project, but we made the same error.'
Needless to say I never had any other installments. And my PM never got paid. He eventually had to take them to the employment court to get money for various projects over the previous 2 years.
I was originally promised around $10k for a 3 month project.
Eventually, I got the contract for the project. About 3 months after the end of the project.
I was told I would be getting 3 installments of around $3k. After signing (under duress), I eventually got the first payment.
Only $1500.. huh...?
So I went in to ask about it. This is when it happened.
I was taken aside.
Following the financial officer, she eventually led me into a storage closet.
Shutting the door behind her, she whispered to me:
'Unfortunately, there was a problem with your pay. We overpaid you. You were only supposed to get $1000 (before tax). But don't worry, we won't be asking you for the money back.'
Er.. OK...
'To cover it, we are going to take the money from [my project manager's] pay. He was getting paid the same amount for the project, but we made the same error.'
Needless to say I never had any other installments. And my PM never got paid. He eventually had to take them to the employment court to get money for various projects over the previous 2 years.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Not on that basis, no. Mainly because one thing I learned was that the creature had less short term memory than goldfish are believed to have. Case in point --
An actual phone call early on a Saturday morning (leaving names out)...
It -- "Hello, [My initials]?"
Me -- "Yeah..."
It -- "So umm... how do you say [Game title at the time] in Japanese?"
Me -- "What? W-Why is this a concern?"
It -- "Well, y'know... just in case, y'know"
Me -- "Guuuhhh... well, [translated title], I guess."
It -- "[mispronounced translation]..."
Me -- "[corrected pronunciation of the first word]. That means [well, you know], or similar things to that effect; depending on context."
It -- "Oh, I don't like that. Can't you think of something else?"
Me -- "What? You asked me for a translation and I gave you a translation! You want it in a different language or something?"
It -- "Ooohhh...."
*long pause~~~*
It -- "Uh, Hello? Hello?"
Me -- "I'm still here."
It -- "Now who is this?"
Me -- "Huh?"
It -- "Oh, I'm sorry, I have the wrong number." *hangs up*
What I was worried about was just wondering how long the whole farce would last. While the creature repeatedly made claims that the interest on one particular account could cover all our operating costs, and that funding wasn't an issue, we were pretty well aware that it wasn't a being too strongly consigned to honesty. And the way the company finally did end -- creature flees the country and calls from Lebanon saying "By the way, don't come into work tomorrow... I mean... again. The uhhh.. investors fell through." And while we announced it to everybody, there were subpeonas being faxed into the creature's office, one after another, plus loads of BSA warning letters.
Mainly, I concentrate on what I got out of it as a developer. Namely, working with some commercial engines, rewriting some render backends from the ground up, implementing pretty much the entire effects system, implementing a fairly huge chunk of gameplay code on top of it, loads of shader work, etc. In spite of everything, we still got some real work done, and I'm all the better for it, so it wasn't a completely bad experience. Just dealing with the creature was all bad.
Even when I had to put up job postings, I was semi-apologetic about it. I brought up the good side of it, but I did say that those were factors that made the job pretty much suitable for those new to the industry.
It's actually quite funny how all our middleware providers had kept tabs on the creature. There was a time when it had called up the Lithtech rep and requested that they create all sorts of things especially for us, and tear the engine apart for us, and overall acting like itself by talking down to them and using the "I'm a millionaire" to qualify everything it said. I sent them a formal apology email for the creature's behavior, and they responded back that they saw it coming and that they'd prefer in the future to keep the creature out of discussions and stick to conversing with the team.
I wouldn't say that. Yes, there was the immeasurably stupid side, but there was more to it than that. There was a maligning, racist, exploitative, criminal side to it as well, and I've avoided much of that in these stories. The whole wealth=inherent superiority attitude gets under your skin, but that was the least of it.
Kanyamagufa
Regular
Well thank you for sharing what you have! I don't think anyone would argue that you don't have a fantastic sense of humor. :smile:
One of the "game designers" I've worked with had constant discussions with our artists about the colours (of the texturemaps of objects) not being "expressive" enough and them having to alter them endlessly, with end-result usually being rather more colourful and / or odd than realistic (for a medival strategy / rts / rpg crossover).
A year later we found out that said "game designer" had a strong red-green color weakness...
He's a decent guy, though; very good at ""selling" a product to publishers and getting it financed. On the other hand, very prone to feature creep ("game X just came out and has feature Z, we need Z, too!", completely ignoring that Z doesn't bloody make sense for our game).
On another note, what are sure signs your game has been in development too long?
- You still have a software renderer in your engine
- You have seen 2 generations of artists come and go
- The major DirectX version has changed 4 times, each requiring more or less extensive changes to what originally was a pure software engine
- It is one of the few games on the market that uses the stippled transparency of the Matrox Mystique cards correctly...
A year later we found out that said "game designer" had a strong red-green color weakness...
He's a decent guy, though; very good at ""selling" a product to publishers and getting it financed. On the other hand, very prone to feature creep ("game X just came out and has feature Z, we need Z, too!", completely ignoring that Z doesn't bloody make sense for our game).
On another note, what are sure signs your game has been in development too long?
- You still have a software renderer in your engine
- You have seen 2 generations of artists come and go
- The major DirectX version has changed 4 times, each requiring more or less extensive changes to what originally was a pure software engine
- It is one of the few games on the market that uses the stippled transparency of the Matrox Mystique cards correctly...
[maven] said:
- It still has a compile target of "Amiga"
- "3D graphics" is one of it's USPs
- The TV show it was licensed from has been cancelled and the only copy you have is on betamax tape
- You could secure development funding by selling the original design document to a museum
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Were there any really "good" stories? I mean, sure, mine gave everybody a good laugh, but at the same time, they were all signs of a totally dysfunctional employer being the proverbial gremlin which sabotages the machinery that is a team. Hardly "good" for those of us who were there. For that matter, I even mentioned a story where the creature prints out some of maven's code and claims it as its own as if to try and convince us it's actually competent. Not that I'd expect maven would care seeing as how the creature just did it to try and fool us as opposed to loads of people... but I wouldn't put that scenario past the creature. Its general attitude to crime was simply that the ability to get away with it is a reason to do it (and yes, the creature has said as much)
Jon Brittan
Newcomer
[maven] said:
You're not working on Duke Nukem Forever, are you?
DudeMiester
Regular
^^ Evidently, the do them right in their cubicles.zsouthboy said:
DudeMiester said:^^ Evidently, the do them right in their cubicles.
I HAVE THE PRIVACY SCREEN UP FOR A REASON. EITHER LEAVE ME IN PEACE OR LEAVE ME A PIECE.
/not a programmer, but I do work in a cube
//... that's the same thing, right? here, I'll prove it, lemme just print out some open-source code I found and claim it as my own...
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
It doesn't really work out too smoothly because of the relative proportions of the population. Most programmers aren't exactly social folks so their ability to comport themselves in a rational fashion in the presence of attractive members of the fairer sex is quite limited (to say nothing of their ability to actually rouse a feminine libido), and I've yet to meet a single gay programmer (at least among those who remained programmers for the better part of their lives).
Going the other way... well, depending on the region of the world, female programmers are usually too few in number to make any significant dent in the statistics. Whatever occurs as a result of their existence can probably be chalked up to experimental error. Now if only some of us could actually have the privilege of taking part in the experiment
.