I wonder what all is involved (on the server side) in releas

[happy_cricket]

People talk a lot about "unlockable content" versus a "real update" and I got to wondering what the tech guys on ST's side have to do to release content. It's sounds as if they are even struggling on the JPN side of things, so maybe it's not so much of a flip of the switch after all.

I also have to wonder how much more loopy their sales strategy could get - release with a boom, let 60 percent or more of the population lose interest and leave, and THEN release the content?

I am starting to get this picture in my head of Sonic Team, which sounds very exciting but is really four or five overworked tech guys sitting in cubicles in some office building half a world away.....

[Ryna]

If Sonic Team follows standard software development practices, the process would go something like this:

1. Someone comes up with a content idea.
2. Write up a formal document describing the idea.
3. The item/quest is developed.
4. It goes through a preliminary quality assurance process.
5. Item/quest is refined and goes back to QA.
6. After enough refinement, someone signs off on it and it is incorporated the game. There maybe some more QA before it is publically released though to see if it interacts well with the rest of the new content.
7. Content is released on the JP servers.
8. Content is localized.
9. The translated content goes through quality-assurance.
10. The content is released on the NA/EU servers.

I imagine most of the work for the game's online quests were completed while the game was being built.

[Cry0]

I think he means the fact of actually working on it, and putting it online. Trust me, i had a little experience from pso (signature), it's not all that much work. definately not if you do it for a living and work on it all day.

new content design though, like weapons or engine changes do take up a bit of time.

[AngelLight]

Well I've done alot of development (mostly of the non game variety). Typically, in a good business process, there are several levels of production that has to occur. Its not just coding and test it and throw it out the door like some people seem to think. It can be a long and painful process to make it to final.....especially if the company actually cares about quality (trust me, ALOT of companies do not). Sometimes, updates can take many months to finish their overview process and thats just an update to a pre-existing thing and not a brand new 'out of vaporware' project.

However, this is not the case with this game. Basically, we are going to be getting everything that is already on the disk. The logic behind it is that they can save development and management costs on the labor front and on a resource front. Now eventually, I can see them having to actually create something new, from scratch aka a true update, but that will not happen at all till either PS2 is officially deemed an unsupported system (which is thus meaning that the PC would be unsupported as well, barring server migrations....all in all an expensive process I doubt will happen) or they decide to do an expansion disk (kind of like PSO Ep.1 & 2 Plus) which is very possible. But we're talking a year or more before that will ever be considered. For now, all they need for an 'update' is a few translators, a game balance tester or two (and that's even questionable), and a management deployment team. In SoA's case however, they've even dumped the deployment team mostly since ST has basically came out and said that it's not directly up to the individual regional arms of the company but will in fact follow suit to the schedulings of SoJ. So, from a profit standpoint, they had far lower operational costs then a comparable game. What I dont think they expected was the negative response they got for attempting to do this sort of strategy. However, by this point they're committed to doing this plan now, cause if they all of the sudden up and changed it they would lose more money (and it would be more dramatic of a loss) with a full release then with keeping with the corporate plan and only start middling thru quarters for as long as possible.

It's very sad I'm afraid, but it is what it is and I will be trying to get the most enjoyment out of the game for as long as it will last. Thankfully, it is a good game, but just a game with alot of potential and not alot of focus.

[Ryna]

On 2006-11-29 10:17, Cry0 wrote:
I think he means the fact of actually working on it, and putting it online. Trust me, i had a little experience from pso (signature), it's not all that much work. definately not if you do it for a living and work on it all day.


For a typical company, the list I wrote up represents the work that would have to be done to get a content update online. Building the new content probably wouldn't take that long. Doing the initial design work and testing it is what takes so long.

[Cry0]

On 2006-11-29 10:21, Ryna wrote:
and testing


A-fucking-men.

[MORB]

On 2006-11-29 10:02, happy_cricket wrote:
People talk a lot about "unlockable content" versus a "real update" and I got to wondering what the tech guys on ST's side have to do to release content. It's sounds as if they are even struggling on the JPN side of things, so maybe it's not so much of a flip of the switch after all.

The whole idea of putting "all" of the contents on the disc is to deal with a simple problem: the target platform that has the largest market share (the ps2) is rarely equipped with a hard disk.

So, they have nowhere to store any large amount of update data.

It basically means that they are stuck with whatever meshes, textures, animations and sound that they included on the disc.

It also means that they can't really update the client code except for some very tiny patches (which should probably be enough to fix most of the client side bugs, but not enough to add new functionality requiring new client-side code).

That said, despite these huge technical constraints, it is actually beneficial for them to have as much flexibility to update the game as possible (because if the game turns out to work well, being able to add new contents can allow them to extend its life duration and keep people playing)

Basically, my theory is that they have a bunch of building blocks on the DVD. Meshes, sceneries, rooms, etc.

however, the list of available missions at a certain location, as well as the mission data (including: layout of the mission areas, enemies spawn points with their positions and parameters position, interactive objects position and behavior, scripts handling the mission progression and more or less complex goals, and probably some graphical tweaking parameters like ambient light and fog to be able to create more varied environments), however, are most likely sent to the client when you start the mission.

It was definitely the case on dreamcast PSO (there were binary files containing mission data for the offline missions, but the online one were nowhere to be found on the gd rom)

What it means is that all of the data is probably not on the disc and as such it might require additional translation and QA work.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MORB on 2006-11-29 10:43 ]</font>