Mac Version of Multiwinia

[MTW]

I am just saying that I am quite pissed off about the Defcon problem.

Do you have any idea how large of a problem the Defcon problem was to solve? Do you have any idea at all? Please, humour me with an answer.

NeoThermic

I don't care. This could have been solved by porting it in house, while the windows version was still in development, thus avoiding shipping a version of Defcon for Windows that was broken.

[MTW]

I would have suggested the Mac port of Wine. But, alas, I bet he's too idiotic to update X11 to a working version.

hah. no. i don't want to fuck around with wine to get it to work. Defcon barely worked in wine, so I don't think multiwinia will.

[xander]

I don't care. This could have been solved by porting it in house, while the windows version was still in development, thus avoiding shipping a version of Defcon for Windows that was broken.

So, let me get this straight, Mega Troll Wanker. You think that IV should have split its time between the Mac and Windows versions equally. What about the Linux version? What about the fact that IV would then have had to delay the Windows version? My thought is that you really want IV to go bankrupt, because that is very probably what would have happened. IV discovered a problem in the port that took them 9 months to correct. When Defcon was released, IV were struggling to make ends meet. Further delays probably would have ended the company. So, you would rather have nothing than a delay. Got it. You really are a selfish twat, aren't you?

xander

[MTW]

I don't care. This could have been solved by porting it in house, while the windows version was still in development, thus avoiding shipping a version of Defcon for Windows that was broken.

So, let me get this straight, Mega Troll Wanker. You think that IV should have split its time between the Mac and Windows versions equally. What about the Linux version? What about the fact that IV would then have had to delay the Windows version? My thought is that you really want IV to go bankrupt, because that is very probably what would have happened. IV discovered a problem in the port that took them 9 months to correct. When Defcon was released, IV were struggling to make ends meet. Further delays probably would have ended the company. So, you would rather have nothing than a delay. Got it. You really are a selfish twat, aren't you?

xander

I am saying they should have. However, since its a bit late for that, they can start right now. Start doing ports in house, on the same day.

IV was not quite in as bad a state as you seem to believe, however. Darwinia hit steam, sold a shitload, and from all I've read, things were ok.

[vanarbulax]

By 15th September, the day DEFCON pre-orders were launched, I wrote a cheque for our last £1,500.

If by okay you meant bankruptcy if DEFCON didn't release and/or sell well.

[Rkiver]

I don't care. This could have been solved by porting it in house, while the windows version was still in development, thus avoiding shipping a version of Defcon for Windows that was broken.

So, let me get this straight, Mega Troll Wanker. You think that IV should have split its time between the Mac and Windows versions equally. What about the Linux version? What about the fact that IV would then have had to delay the Windows version? My thought is that you really want IV to go bankrupt, because that is very probably what would have happened. IV discovered a problem in the port that took them 9 months to correct. When Defcon was released, IV were struggling to make ends meet. Further delays probably would have ended the company. So, you would rather have nothing than a delay. Got it. You really are a selfish twat, aren't you?

xander

I am saying they should have. However, since its a bit late for that, they can start right now. Start doing ports in house, on the same day.

IV was not quite in as bad a state as you seem to believe, however. Darwinia hit steam, sold a shitload, and from all I've read, things were ok.

So they should put equal resources into something that provides less then 10% of their possible (not actual) userbase? There is simply no justification for that at all. All you have managed to do is once again bring down your fellow mac users as you are simply someone who refuses to look beyond their white box to the world of computers in general. You are a minority. Minorities in computing do not get treated equally as they do not offer the same revenue return on investment of time/money.

In short you really need to see that you are being very unreasonable.

[Mas Tnega]

I am saying they should have. However, since its a bit late for that, they can start right now. Start doing ports in house, on the same day.

I'm not sure I see how that could even work.

[NeoThermic]

I am just saying that I am quite pissed off about the Defcon problem.

Do you have any idea how large of a problem the Defcon problem was to solve? Do you have any idea at all? Please, humour me with an answer.

NeoThermic

I don't care. This could have been solved by porting it in house, while the windows version was still in development, thus avoiding shipping a version of Defcon for Windows that was broken.

Well, no it couldn't be solved while porting in-house. It couldn't be solved while the windows version was still in development. So not only are you being ignorant of the issue, you're refusing to correct that.

Lets backtrack to the beta, since the NDA has expired, I can tell you this (Although having been quite a while since this all happened, this is generally from memory),

First, The early betas of Defcon had major sync errors. These sync errors were all between windows versions, and a lot of time was spent correcting them. Once they were corrected, gameplay issues were solved, and things progressed nicely. The first indication any of us had that the Mac version might be an issue was one night when John asked us to join a game which desynced on the spot. The desyncing clients were always the Mac ones. The previous experience that IV had of porting was the very-fast Darwinia port, so the testing of Mac clients was done close enough to Defcon's release that had it been without issue, you would have seen same day release of Mac and Windows versions.

However, the issue was deeper than this. Defcon's net protocol was passing around floats. Floats are an.. intresting datatype in which you often come across floating-point errors. For example, 2.0f might actually be 1.9999999998 to the computer. That's a floating point error. Thing is, each compiler on each platform has slightly different floating point errors. This means that while 2.0f to a windows build might be 1.9999999998, to a Mac build it might be 1.9999999997 (for example). These errors meant that the game would slowly fall out of sync until it was enough to trigger a sync error. To this end, the solution was to write a fixed-point math lib. All math functions that Defcon used had to be rewritten to take into account this new fixed-point math lib. Floats had to be changed to fixed-point data types, functions like sin() and cos() had to be overloaded, and everything had to be tested. Considering the amount of work that went into writing this lib and testing it (not forgetting that it also had to be applied to the Windows and Linux clients), for it to take 7 months and 20 days is quite good.

So, can you really sit there and complain about this? Can you honestly say that porting in-house would have magically avoided this problem? If you answer yes to either of these questions then xander's label applies very well.

NeoThermic

[xander]

--==<snip>==--

Thank you, NeoThermic, for that write up. I knew the outline of the issue, but it is interesting to know more exactly what was going on. Of course, you realize that Mega Troll Wanker is a religious fundie, who has accepted Steve Jobs as his personal lord and saviour, and that no logical argument is going to sway him, right?

xander

[MTW]

I am just saying that I am quite pissed off about the Defcon problem.

So, can you really sit there and complain about this? Can you honestly say that porting in-house would have magically avoided this problem? If you answer yes to either of these questions then xander's label applies very well.

NeoThermic

Alright, at least there is a good reason why it was a year late.

None the less, I still see no reason to be forced to wait 4 weeks for Multiwinia. I'd think IV has an internal build of Multiwinia mac at this point.....how late do you expect multiwinia mac to be released.

[Xarlaxas]

It's probably too hard for him to do, I doubt he could bring himself to admit his error.

[Phelanpt]

I am just saying that I am quite pissed off about the Defcon problem.

So, can you really sit there and complain about this? Can you honestly say that porting in-house would have magically avoided this problem? If you answer yes to either of these questions then xander's label applies very well.

NeoThermic

Alright, at least there is a good reason why it was a year late.

None the less, I still see no reason to be forced to wait 4 weeks for Multiwinia. I'd think IV has an internal build of Multiwinia mac at this point.....how late do you expect multiwinia mac to be released.

Here, have a t-shirt:
http://www.cafepress.com/_reject_reality.93502780

[RabidZombie]

I am just saying that I am quite pissed off about the Defcon problem.

So, can you really sit there and complain about this? Can you honestly say that porting in-house would have magically avoided this problem? If you answer yes to either of these questions then xander's label applies very well.

NeoThermic

Alright, at least there is a good reason why it was a year late.

None the less, I still see no reason to be forced to wait 4 weeks for Multiwinia. I'd think IV has an internal build of Multiwinia mac at this point.....how late do you expect multiwinia mac to be released.

It wasn't a year. It wasn't near being a year. You've added on about 40% to the time period.

[Captain Carrot]

Now, granted that MTW is obviously retarded and ignorant, and granted I'd much (Much!) prefer to have a publisher give me late (QUALITY!) games for my mac than none at all. However, I have not seen a single mention of what the story is with the Mac port anywhere, on either Ambrosia or IV (nor wikilazy...).

A note, or scroll text or anything would have been cool for those customers who showed up, eager to some blood on their 'winians, and I really expected it from an ambitious but small company who should be making it as easy for customers to figure out whats going on as possible. Did i miss something, or did IV?



slightly repentant edit: Crap, it's there under Mac release date on wiki ("unknown" oh well!). Nonetheless! I shouldn't have to go elsewhere to find out when their new flagship is out. Also, just started up the demo on someone else's PC:

[Svip]

I personally have no objection to the "late" releases, because I understand the reason for picking Windows first. However, someone of you must remember that most of these Windows users are not potential customers of IV's software. Indeed, I would estimate that there are larger percentage of the Mac users and Linux users that are willing to buy IV's software than Windows users.

Therefore, the potential customers spread about on OS for IV are much different than the actual mapping of desktop users. Just don't forget, please. I am just waiting for news of a Linux version, mainly because I am too busy with real life for another game right now, so I am actually glad there is no Linux version right now, if you catch my drift. O_O