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Thief 3 Deadly Shadows Bug Neuters In-Game AI
Channard writes "You can add another footnote to the strange fortunes of Ion Storm. It's been revealed that Thief: Deadly Shadows has a bug that affects the intelligence of the guards and other characters in the game, both in the PC and Xbox versions. Ion Storm Austin, the creators of the game, really went to work on the character AI in Deadly Shadows - on Expert level, the guards notice things like open doors, missing objects and the like. The catch, as reported on the official Ion Storm forums, is that a bug in the game resets the difficulty level to Normal level if you save and load your position in-game. The word from one of the Thief developers is that: 'We're looking into it.Can't say anything more for now, and there aren't any guarantees... but the find isn't being ignored.' The PC version should be relatively easy to patch, but fixing the Xbox version would be trickier, perhaps requiring a full recall (Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play.)"
When most people were ga-ga'ing over halflife, i was cuddled in the corner of a very dark room filling my pockets in Thief 1. It really changed the way i looked at pc games, and had the most immersive gameplay i had ever seen...
Flash forward to today, and you see Thief 3 (albeit a fine, fine title) obviously rushed out the door, and most of the dev team laid off. What is it with this industries self destructive tendancies? I mean, really. Isnt the goal to make money? And isnt that a product of producing a good game?
I just want to scream at my monitor when i see things like this happen. Just remember, the fault probably doesnt lay on the dev team when something like this happens, something tells me a phb thought he could shave a buck or 2 and went for it.
The xbox has limited HD space. If they allowed developers to release patches, it would more rapidly fill users drives and it would open the floodgates on bug acceptibility at launch. i.e. "It's okay to release in this state because we can patch it later..."
I think a better solution would be to send replacement discs with fixes to those that have already purchased the game, and begin putting pre-patched versions on the shelves.
As I said, the last thing we (users) want is for buggy games to be acceptable. It is important that Microsoft exert the same level of quality control required for the other two consoles.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
I believe this was because MS didn't want to be in a position where developers saw Live as a way to get into the same release and patch rut as PC games have got into. MS probably didn't want that stigma attaced Buggy console games are actually far less common that buggy PC games simply because there's no easy patch mechanism in place. The only bugged console games that spring to mind, apart from this one, are WWF No Mercy on the N64, and Morrowind on the X-Box, though Slashdotters could probably think of more.
Um, the game PLAYS FINE. You people need to quit thinking you can sue over every mistake that is made. If you are a developer, I ALREADY KNOW you have gotten a product to a client that has had a bug or two. The nature of this one is pretty obscure. Im sure it wasnt "lack of professionalism" that missed it.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Yes, you could sue. And for winning you would get... a patched copy of the game, which you would have gotten out of a recall with MUCH less effort.
Try suing for damages, and you'd be laughed out of court and forced to pay for the defendant's legal costs.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
The PC version should be relatively easy to patch, but fixing the Xbox version would be trickier, perhaps requiring a full recall
Remember when console games that had serious bugs just didn't get licensed? Boy, those were the days.
Rob
"Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play."
Good thing too, or we'd have a bunch of half-finished games with a "We'll patch it later" attitude.
I'm tired of being a beta tester.
Why is there such an outcry over this? This frankly huge letter on the ionstorm forum is just over reacting. The developers now know about the bug and they've said they'll try to fix it. Suddenly going on about class action and sueing the crap out of them is not going to speed it up.
Fair enough, if the developers next week announce that they've checked and they can't be bothered to fix the bug and basically screw you then yeah, start thinking about campaigning to get this fixed.
If I was a developer this entire incident would give me a bad view of the gaming community. It portrays everybody as being obnoxious impatient asses. The developers didn't intend to release it with a bug. There is only so much testing you can do and people make MISTAKES. It's a fact of life.
Wait and see what they do basically.
Ah WWF No Mercy. About 50% of the cartrdiges had bad batteries causing the games to lose all their save data. It really sucks when a year and a half of stats and create-a-wrestlers disapear.
:) Every season mode match at exactly the 3:00 mark, every single enemy of yours in the league will run in to interfere in your match.. except.. THEY ATTACK YOUR OPPONENT! The poor AI and bad programming make playing anything but a normal match pointless. But oh well.. that's my only choice so I have to enjoy it for what it is, and be thankful that the dev team was fired.
:)
Morrowind was more tolerable. At least nothing was ever lost. Well.. except maybe all the loading time from reseting after crashes.
WWE RAW2 - Game is so buggy at times it's barely playable. At times you literally lose control of your character. How nice. The PC will often try to pin the player in excess of 20 times in a row. The player is unable to get up in between these pinnings. Basically it's 5 minutes of button mashing and cursing.
Buffy 2: Chaos Bleeds - Check out the official message boards. You will see the same repated messages over and over. In on mode you can't play more than 5 minutes most of the time without a crash. In the story mode / single player game most copies would lock up the console at the same specific points for all users. Nothing was ever done about it. It really sucks constantly replaying through 2 hour levels and having it crash right before the end.
The only way I could see all of the game was to get a game save from the xbox mag that had all levels opened. The first game was great, but this sequel was handed off to another team who complettly killed it off.
I know of a few more. But I don't own them, so I can't do the bugs justice.
I wish this would happen more often. Then maybe people would realize that the PC development process is inferior, because the release-and-patch system coupled with overly aggressive marketing pressure and non-standard/evolving hardware has sent PC games straight into the toilet. The Xbox version is an innocent victim here, but will get screwed the hardest. Time to review the policy on accepting ports of PC games again.
I noticed early on that the difficulty settings specified in DEFAULTS.INI can be changed to make each difficulty level easier or harder (yeah, I'm nosy and like looking for things to tweak in games); that would be a useful intermediate "fix" to this issue, since you could specify NORMAL difficulty to be the same as EXPERT. The problem is, the difficulty isn't reset to the NORMAL specified in the .ini, but apparantly to some default setting specified in the game executable.
I spotted this a few hours after installing the game; wtf are they hiring to do their testing!?
Someone already thought of that - certainly owners of modded X-Boxes could also try that - but it apparently doesn't work, according to the intial post in this thread at the Ion Storm boards. Shame.
ah! the double edged blade that is coward- logic:
possibility 1- MS allows dev's to patch game via LIVE.
constant - everyone is disgusted because MS is the badguy for allowing sloppy and shoddy game development.
possibility 2- MS does not allowing dev's to patch bugs in xbox games via LIVE... constant - everyone is disgusted because MS is essentially 'crippling their own consol(sic) by not allowing buggy games to be fixed'
Get Virtual.
I believe that his argument is that, regardless of what platform they are made for, modern games are routinely released with bugs. The PC platform is relatively easy to patch for. Consoles are not. Are you going to argue that console systems are better because they will somehow force developers to adopt better QA practices and eliminate bugs. Very utopian... and unrealistic.
That developers release programs with bugs in them is not a direct result of the ability of the developer to release later patches. It is a factor, but a more important factor is that the consumers whine, stomp their feet, type IN ALL CAPS, and otherwise make a idiot of themselves if the game does not come out quickly. Couple that with the growing complexity of modern games (perhaps the most important factor) and you are destined to have bugs slip through whatever QA system the developer's have.
jr
Undoubtably, bugs will happen. There isn't much anyone can do about this. But there's a deeper problem at issue here. Namely, games are being rushed out the door before they're ready. Now, this is most likely the fault of the publishers rather than the developers, but there isn't much we can do to distinguish when it comes to our purchases.
It's not like this is Ion Storm's first problem with this sort of thing. Did you try the abysmal Deus Ex II ? There were billions of issues there that should have been caught by simple playtesting. Likewise here...did no one test the difficulty settings for more than 5 minutes ?
The gaming industry really needs to learn that they can't blitz a product to market at less-than-optimal quality, and expuct the publc to shell out $50+ without complaint. Gamers are used to (virtually) blowing crap up, not grabbing their ankles and taking it from behind. PC games are complex constructions, no question about it. If you want your game to be a quality release (and thus keep customers) you have to expend a good deal of effort in QA/testing. Hell, resort to a semi-public beta if you don't have the inhouse staff to do it.
--LordPixie
...and this is why, when people start talking about how consoles are going to kill the PC gaming market, I don't get all that worried.
One of the big advantages PC gaming has now is the ability to fix bugs after the game has shipped. Even if that does lead to some greedy and short-sighted business decisions. "Ship now, patch later" is a lousy way to run a game company, but at least, with a PC game, you can patch later. With consoles, you're generally going to get the shaft.
But as consoles get more sophisticated and come with internet connectivity as a requisite, this problem is only going to get worse. So the big advantage of consoles, "just stick a disc / cartridge in and play" is going to become "just stick a disk / cartridge in and wait an hour for the latest patch to download." Because the bottom line is, game companies won't ship a finished, polished game if they don't have to.
Ion Storm? You can't exit the level without Superfly Johnson!
My experience with the Thief series is that it is not possible to go through a level once without having to resort to saved games - while it's possible to ironman levels, they either take too long to do in one standard unit of time (i.e. 1 hour, as most popular games gear themselves to), or require lots of practice to breeze through it.
Being a "slow" game, you will need to reload, and therefore encounter the dumbed down guards. It is considered slow, since you have to generally sneak around occupied areas instead of running quickly to get to your destination.
Saved games are required - there are instances in Thief 1 and 2 where you need to do specific jump. The jumping occassionally failed because you were just beyond the tolerance range for making the jump (and therefore either fell to your death or made a loud noise attracting whatever guard is available.) Also, there were a few instant-killing traps that were not visible unless you had a really good eye - something that requires either prior knowledge or save-scumming to pass through.
Yes, I will argue that. Because they do. Is there a groundswell opinion that "console games are usually buggy, so buyer beware"? No, there isn't. 99% of the time, they work and they work perfectly. The good console game devs know that they do not get a second chance to fix their game, so they have to get it right the first time or risk falling on their face in the marketplace.
The PC game world on the other hand, it's common thought that if you buy a game, you better start haunting websites and newsgroups for the inevitable mention of an upcoming patch. I'm not saying that patches shouldn't exist, just that the ability is completely abused and should not be seen as an amazing benefit of PC games.
I'll go Redundant here and point out that the hardware environment is responsible for a lot of this. But this Thief problem was not... it could have been found and should have been found... it was rushed, it was unchecked, it is typical.
And I don't accept a 'complexity' excuse for one second. Games will always push that envelope. That's no excuse for releasing something buggy.
Does anyone know if Ion Storm was utilizing an in-house bug team, or if they were relying upon Eidos' "crack" Quality Assurance team?
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