The joke of the day

[Toadi]

From http://www.frontsquare.net/

Front Square Software Ltd is a software development firm located in Dublin, Ireland. It was founded in 2008 by Sean Blanchfield and Brian McDonnell.

Front Square's primary aim is rapid development of compelling web applications.

We are currently working on renovation of an extensive outdated codebase that currently serves over 40 million page impressions per month.

Ahah.

[Avenger]

They're damn fast.

[flutterby]

(grins) Toadi can you code faster? :P

[VT2]

I can code faster, and I don't even know how to code.

[Safri]

I may be mistaken, but i think the 35 degrees heat in spain might be holding up seans programming a bit, that and a late plane

[Stella]

It took roisin like 2 months to build the new login menu with trading and sitting didn't it?
Brian & Sean picked the entire game apart and built it up... is the time used really that extreme for a project of this size? I sure don't think so. It's been 4 months since they were brought in and they are at alpha stage now. That's not over the top fast, but it's not slow either.
All though it was said to us that we would have the new site now, I don't think that was a time line actually set by the developers... it didn't sound realistic considering the workload the project would mean, so I can't see why anyone would believe it would be done at what time was said from the beginning.

[Toadi]

The time used seems very extreme to me Stella. The Utopia Simulator reproduces Utopia features for self spells, daily papers, construction, training, hour changes, building bonuses, personalities and racial bonuses, probably a few more that I am missing, and it took me 4 days to design and fully test it, during my free time. I used to run a persistent browser based game that I developed from scratch and peeked at 3K players (now offline since I am working on a new project), I went through the entire development process - paper work, game specification, game conception, coding, unitary testing, integration testing, alpha testing - in 2 monthes, still working during my free time only.

Regardless, main problem there is not the duration of the porting and testing. It would not be a problem if Sean and Brian had properly evaluated the task to perform and set up correct deadlines. They announced dates for the beta release, which has been delayed multiple times already, and now people are stuck into never ending ages on WOL and Genesis, ages that should have been short and fast. If they had simply said something like "We are currently porting code, it will be released the day it will be released, and until that we will run a couple of short WOL ages", and then reset WOL like every 6 weeks, nobody would complain. I mean, Blizzard is known for their massive delays, and yet they own what are probably the most successful games ever created (the Xxxcraft franchises).

[Saveid]

Have you ever thought, that you are exceptional and they are not, Toadi?

[Stella]

Have you ever thought, that you are exceptional and they are not, Toadi?

Well, they are educated within the field, so lets hope they are good at what they do ;)

The time used seems very extreme to me Stella. The Utopia Simulator reproduces Utopia features for self spells, daily papers, construction, training, hour changes, building bonuses, personalities and racial bonuses, probably a few more that I am missing, and it took me 4 days to design and fully test it, during my free time. I used to run a persistent browser based game that I developed from scratch and peeked at 3K players (now offline since I am working on a new project), I went through the entire development process - paper work, game specification, game conception, coding, unitary testing, integration testing, alpha testing - in 2 monthes, still working during my free time only.

And still, despite the great job you did on the utopia simulator it does not compare to the game, as it's more to to it. As for your own developed game I can't compare if it's as complex as utopia so messuring time is quite pointless. I do know some friends developing thier own game with the same complex setup as utopia and they've been doing it for 8 months and are far from done. Saying how long or short it takes to do diffrent sites are in the end quite pointless. In the end they aren't just building the game from scratch out of their own minds, they are picking a part a old game (written in monkey code that makes tele text look like a new invention) and building it up again.

Regardless, main problem there is not the duration of the porting and testing. It would not be a problem if Sean and Brian had properly evaluated the task to perform and set up correct deadlines. They announced dates for the beta release, which has been delayed multiple times already, and now people are stuck into never ending ages on WOL and Genesis, ages that should have been short and fast. If they had simply said something like "We are currently porting code, it will be released the day it will be released, and until that we will run a couple of short WOL ages", and then reset WOL like every 6 weeks, nobody would complain. I mean, Blizzard is known for their massive delays, and yet they own what are probably the most successful games ever created (the Xxxcraft franchises).

I fully agree with you there, I think it's extremely poorly handled, the communication from jolt is still way off what it should be and I think we all agree on wanting a change there.
But poor communication is not the same as the developers being slow rebuilding.
Still goes back to my original comment, who in their right mind did actually believe it would take them only one month to complete it?
When I read the statement that said it was gonna be done in a month my first thought was "here is a deadline set by someone sniffing glue in fantasy land" and not actually by the people that's gonna do the work.