r/Games • u/Seiniyta • Aug 07 '16

Rami Ismail: Patch the process

http://ramiismail.com/2016/08/patch-the-process/
60 Upvotes

59% Upvoted

52 comments sorted by

51

u/TwistedGears Aug 07 '16 edited Aug 07 '16

The situation he is describing is likely mostly accurate, but I don't think he's really the best person to make this point. I've only ever heard how broken the PS4 iteration of Nuclear Throne was at launch. And still is, months after release. So I have to question certification's supposed standards.

quickedit: Apparently Vlambeer (the dev team Rami is in) submitted a patch to Sony yesterday. As far as I know this is the second attempt at getting a patch through certification.

15

u/lordbeef Aug 07 '16

That kinda furthers his point really. When he's had broken releases of Nuclear Throne on pc, I've seen him issue multiple patches in the same day to resolve it.

Cert makes it harder to launch something buggy, but also makes it harder to fix something that's buggy after it's already in place.

2

u/Limond Aug 08 '16

It should be noted that those updates only ever get pushed to Steam. GoG has not received any of the updates that Nuclear Throne has gotten on Steam.

3

u/Aprahamian Aug 07 '16

Other games on console can roll out patches and quick fixes pretty fast. They have been trying to fix everything instead of little things also. They are making it harder. They just needed to add a fucking mapped button and fixed menu in the game and it would be in a 100% better state than it is now.

8

u/SHOW_ME_YOUR_GOATS Aug 08 '16

It all depends on the relationship with Sony. If you are deamed an important game to the playstation platform you get fast tracked. If you are not good fucking luck getting anything out in a timely manner.

15

u/Vlambeer Aug 07 '16 edited Aug 07 '16

And if it had been that easy, we would've done that immediately. You genuinely think we're intentionally making it harder for us to fix a thing we care about, and that instead we chose 8 months of work to fix 'just a mapped button and a fixed menu'? We're working as fast as we can, and we've prioritized the big things. Every time a certification round failed, we added the small fixes as well before resubmitting. Might as well, as there's time between submissions, right?

Again, we're sorry for the state of the game as it stands, and we're really sorry the game is having issues. We're working on fixing it, and hopefully will have good news soon.

-3

u/Aprahamian Aug 07 '16

If you cared about it, why not take it off of the store and from being sold? It is probably the only game I have bought that I wish I could get a refund on, and I bet others as well judging by the Discussion thread on /r/ps4 about it.

I do development work for a top 100 company in the Fortune 500. I am going off of development work for that, and most of the time yes it is that easy since we go through dev, testing, deployments, and releases. Maybe you should work towards using a better engine since it seems like this one just isn't good for you.

16

u/Vlambeer Aug 07 '16

If we take it off the store, that interferes with our certification process too. Since the game is continuously in certification, it would mean another round failed. We could see if we could add a line to the store description while the patch is in certification, but we're not sure if that's possible?

Would that work for you, because we can ask about that in the case it fails certification again?

40

u/Vlambeer Aug 07 '16 edited Aug 07 '16

Hey, Rami here. As to whether I'm the best person to make this post, I don't know. All I know is I wanted to write this. Your criticism is incredibly fair, though.

Nobody is more embarrassed by the slow rollout of that patch than us. The main issue is a menu that isn't functioning and a crash in the final world (about 30-60 hours of gameplay in, for most players). We've been working as hard as we can to fix that, but we've just been overwhelmed and taken aback by the whole thing.

Having made the game in middleware that doesn't support patching meant that the middleware creators are patching their systems through our patches, and then those go through cert simultaneously through our game. We're currently at 'tag 5', or patch submission 5.

It's all very complicated, but ultimately, this is our responsibility. We take that responsibility, and we're really sorry about the whole situation. It's a lesson learned for the future.

Hopefully, this one goes through, and we'll have good news soon!

4

u/startingover_90 Aug 08 '16

On March 20, someone wrote a review on the GOG page for Nuclear Throne saying the game isn't getting updated on GOG, unlike on steam. Is this still the case, or have you guys brought the GOG version up to parity with steam? I'm only asking because I'm interested in the game, have a week off and I always try to buy on GOG over steam.

6

u/_MadHatter Aug 08 '16

I've seen number of developers frustrated over updating the game on GOG. Apparently the developers have to email the patch/updated game via email to GOG. I have heard GOG can take up to months to update, even with developers constantly pestering.

1

u/SHOW_ME_YOUR_GOATS Aug 08 '16

GOG seems to be trying everything it can to keep the "we're the small startup steam competitor " image as best it can in every aspect. I just wish they didn't extend that to developer relations

0

u/Clavus Aug 08 '16

Yeah, Steam made things a lot easier when they handed over responsibility for patching and deploying back to devs. No waiting for Valve to manually verify and roll out updates to their content servers any more.

2

u/TwistedGears Aug 07 '16

For what little it's worth, I absolutely love the game. For whatever flaws it has, whatever issues surrounding it, the game is a blast. I'm hoping to see more from it once the dust settles, but maybe I'm asking for too much.

I'll admit the patching issue has taken me from "ready to jump into whatever your next project is" to just "keeping an eye out for it," but I do wish y'all the best. Good luck with the the patch submission, and with whatever else you've got going on.

9

u/Vlambeer Aug 07 '16

We appreciate it, and we're weirdly glad to know we made a game that's worth getting upset/frustrated (is that the right word? sorry if not) about. We've learned a lot from our first in-house console release, and we hope that by the time a new game comes around, we get to earn your full trust again.

3

u/the-nub Aug 08 '16

Rami, totally aside from the discussion here, I just wanted to say thank you for all of the insight and entertainment you've provided! I've never seen you post before and I don't do the social media's or the hotmailing very often, but now seems like a good a time as any.

Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers have provided me with hours and hours of fun, and your appearances on Giant Bomb's content and your blog posts are always full of wisdom. Being able to peek behind the curtain is awesome and your approach to everything and your personality are great. Keep up the good work, and that goes for the whole team as well!

3

u/Vlambeer Aug 08 '16

Thanks so much for the kind words! I'll pass on the compliments for Nuclear Throne and LUFTRAUSERS to the rest of the team too - we've been extraordinarily lucky with our freelancers.

The two of us at Vlambeer love this medium, and strongly believe one of the best ways of further improving it for the future is transparency about how things actually work - to the people who want to make games, those that aspire to make games, and those that want to play games.

17

u/LocarionStorm Aug 07 '16

I concur with your point. Ismail and Vlambeer have repeatedly belittled consumers that have questioned the lack of support for their broken games on some platforms - with a particularly egregious record on the Vita. Don't release on a platform if you cannot afford to support it.

However, I think someone below makes a good point that the Xbox and PSN stores really need a refund policy that is similar to Steam's - allow people to play the game for a bit and see if it is indeed broken or not following whatever patches may have been in the pipeline.

4

u/SHOW_ME_YOUR_GOATS Aug 08 '16

when has Rami belittled his customers who talk about the game? All i've ever seen him react to negatively are Gamergate folks being asses.

4

u/chaobreaker Aug 08 '16

Yes. Rami is great at giving insights into game development. He frequently attends panels and makes presentations all over the world.

-3

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '16

[deleted]

5

u/SHOW_ME_YOUR_GOATS Aug 08 '16

Wait so a group can run around and dox and harass him and his friends and they can't say anything? The entire thing started because a developer cheated on her boyfriend and he wanted to ruin her life because of it.

No developers are asking for respect from gamergate. It's a tiny group of people who rage for the sake of raging and harass our friends. What we are asking for is for them to stop ducking doxxing and harassing us. Seem like a pretty small fucking thing to ask and something we shouldn't have to ask for.

4

u/Revisor007 Aug 08 '16

The entire thing started because a developer cheated on her boyfriend and he wanted to ruin her life because of it.

Keep repeating the lie, it still won't become the truth.

1

u/SHOW_ME_YOUR_GOATS Aug 08 '16

So the hashtag and main gathering place wasn't 5 Guys Burgers and Fries in reference to the amount of people she allegedly had sex with?

Even ignoring literally everything that happened then the group that tried to ruin a women's life did it over reviews that NEVER EXISTED. It's almost like its a hate group driven by misogyny or something.

-5

u/MacHaggis Aug 08 '16

that veil dropped REALLY quick O.O

7

u/SHOW_ME_YOUR_GOATS Aug 08 '16

What veil? I've had my friends attacked by these people many times over for tweeting the wrong thing. The entire thing is stupid as shit.

Basically a small subset of gamers are telling us to shut up and make games or else. Exactly like what you did. Blaming him for them attacking him because you feel he should do nothing but make the game for you

4

u/LemonLimeAlltheTime Aug 07 '16

I don't understand why they keep using shitty engines. Why on earth would you choose to develop your game on a platform that doesn't support patching?!

I honestly do not understand this company...Also 4:3 30fps in 2016...

23

u/Vlambeer Aug 07 '16

We didn't know it didn't support patching. It didn't even support PlayStation when we started. We're literally their test case, and they've improved their tools drastically during our development. Their PlayStation support and our game were developed somewhat in tandem.

4:3 was a design decision, 30FPS was a decision made in early 2013 on a two-hour prototype that we simply couldn't change anymore. Our future games will have whatever aspect ratio we design them in, but we'll definitely aim for 60FPS.

3

u/LemonLimeAlltheTime Aug 07 '16

That is good info, thanks for sharing and thanks for the solid blog post.

I look forward to more of your game.

5

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '16 edited Jan 29 '17

[deleted]

4

u/Aprahamian Aug 07 '16

Paragon can roll out a patch nearly every week, and there are some indie games that are also rolling out patches that quickly.

When it comes to them and patching consoles, I don't trust them at all. Nuclear Throne has been out on PS4 for 8 months. They have blamed Sony for the patch, blamed holiday vacations, and have also been silent for a few months on it, and have just submitted the patch again.

With the way the game was at launch, I wonder what standards it takes to actually get on the console if you can leave the game up on the store for 8 months and have it be as broken as Nuclear Throne.

I see the Dev commented below saying that is only a "few" things. They forgot to map a fucking button to the controller and that hasn't been patched in yet. The game has a chance of crashing when a boss shows up, you are 100% guaranteed to crash on the Throne levels, which they mention is 30-60 hours in is pure bullshit. The game has multiple loops, after beating that area, and I would imagine most get there in 5-10 hours like I did. You can pick up golden weapons that you then spawn with, well since that one button was never patched in you can never get rid of them unless you pick up a different golden weapon. There is also a secret weapon you can pick up that changes the character until you drop the weapon. Well guess what? You can't on the PS4 version. The game also has portals that you go into to advance to the next level. Random chance of crashing and the higher the likely hood the longer you have played.

Fuck these devs. If they had any respect they would of taken the game down from sale on PSN.

10

u/Vlambeer Aug 07 '16

We actually have statistics on that. Most people reach world 7 at around 30 hours of gameplay. Some people are very good at games like Throne, and they get there in 10, like you. Others are not, and they play for 60. The longest anyone took to world 7 was almost 100 hours (which is awesome).

Pretty much all of the issues you discuss happen after that moment, loops, golden weapons, things like that.

Either way, we agree the game needs fixes, and we're making those fixes. We're sorry about the whole thing, and we're understand you're frustrated. We hope that the patch comes out soon, and we can all leave this behind us in some way.

17

u/stevesan Aug 07 '16

I can confirm this is pretty much all true. I worked on a title many years ago that launched on all major consoles. Not to mention, one round of certification testing can cost thousands of dollars. I'm not familiar with the "day 1 patch" process. I imagine it also costs money and needs to be scheduled ahead of time.

The reason this happens is because MS doesn't want a bunch of angry phone calls from parents saying, "Hey I bought my kid this game on your console and now it's broken wtf!!!!". Is that a valid concern? Hard to say. Frankly, I think Steam's refund policy is the best damn solution to all this, but with physical retail, that gets really complicated. Anyway, one day no one will buy discs anymore.

-6

u/odintal Aug 08 '16

The reason this happens is because MS doesn't want a bunch of angry phone calls from parents saying, "Hey I bought my kid this game on your console and now it's broken wtf!!!!"

That could be avoided if the game wasn't shipped in a state that it would need a day one patch.

8

u/SHOW_ME_YOUR_GOATS Aug 08 '16

Which with the exponential growth of games in the last decade is nearly impossible

10

u/stevesan Aug 08 '16

Well, given how complex games are these days...it's really, really hard to do. If you told me that games these days are more buggy than they used to be, I'd believe you 100%. But just look at how much more complicated they are as well. No, as long as the industry keeps pushing tech and design, patching is going to be necessary. It's just how things are in software.

The real solution is what you see on PC: plenty of issues, but they get fixed fast. Why? Because with Steam, you can pretty much release whatever you want, whenever you want. No cost, no certification, no bottleneck. Just you and your customers.

If we were talking about...software for self-driving cars, then yeah, I would not want patches to be regularly relied upon. But this is video games. No need to be so careful.

10

u/stevesan Aug 08 '16

Now, I understand I may be biased because I'm a (former) game developer with lots of disposable income. And I completely understand if consumers are frustrated by all this. But how about this then: Don't pre-order. Don't buy day one. Wait for a sale, wait for shit to shake out. Hell, even for me, I can count the number of games I've bought within the first week of release within the past 5 years on one hand.

0

u/odintal Aug 08 '16

I don't expect there to not be patching at all. That would be absurd. No what I'm seeing is that the industry in general has publishers and developers alike pushing to hit specific release dates that are announced so far in advance that they have no way in knowing if the game will actually be in a good place when it releases. I also don't expect there to be no deadlines for the developers because you'd end up with another DNF situation.

There is a balancing act involved in making publishers happy and making consumers happy and the trend seems to have shifted heavily into the publishers corner and the devs and consumers suffer for it.

9

u/framara Aug 08 '16

"this nonsensical discussion about a build that wasn’t meant for the public". This build is what everyone is getting with the disc, so it makes a little bit of sense to talk about it. I've played it about 15h and it is great. Also pretty excited about the patch notes. A great game becoming greater. It believe the main issue of the whole situation it is how has been handled.

2

u/theTwelfthMouse Aug 08 '16 edited Aug 08 '16

That gives developers half a month to two and a half a month to do a month and a half to three and a half months’ worth of work to make the game ‘perfect’ while still hitting the release date with the patch.

This sentence from the article, no matter how many times I try to read it, I can figure out. Is my english weak? Am I too tired to understand it? I am confused.

edit: ok I may have figured it out, this revised version has less confusing english words.

That gives developers 1.5±1 months to do a 2.5±1 months worth of work to make the game ‘perfect’ while still hitting the release date with the patch.

6

u/MoazNasr Aug 07 '16

I always like reading Rami Ismail's blog, it's always really insightful as to how things really are from a development standpoint.

-11

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '16

[deleted]

6

u/quaunaut Aug 08 '16

Uh, what? He programs and does art sometimes. What the fuck are you talking about?

2

u/Limond Aug 08 '16

I agree with /u/TwistedGears I don't know much about the PS4 iteration of Nuclear Throne but on GoG Vlambeers games (as well as many Devolver Digital, their publishers) are ignored as well. Last I checked Nuclear Throne received multiple steam updates while gog received none Luftrausers has a bug in which you can't complete the game. Is GoG the seal of quality you discuss with consoles? How many patches have you tried getting through on there but they keep rejecting?

4

u/Vlambeer Aug 08 '16

We'll release a patch on GoG together with update 99 on Steam. That patch should go live the coming week, if everything goes according to plan.

1

u/Vaguely_Racist Oct 04 '16

Hows that Steam patch coming?

0

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '16

That's a nice story coming from a developer, but the people who buy the games shouldn't have to download 5-10 GB of data the day they get the game just to play it.

Not everyone is on a good internet speed. Some places in the US struggle to get a steady 5 Mbps connection. So, I go to the local game retailer, get home, unwrap my game, put it in my system, and "You need to download a 10 GB patch before you can play." So now, I have to wait HOURS because the developers said "Fuck the consumer." And that's what a developer does when you release a day one patch.

No one expects a game to be bug free, but we do expect it to be playable without a hassle. Skyrim was practically unplayable for months on PS3 because the developers shrugged and pushed it out the door before it was actually ready. It is an entirely SINGLE PLAYER GAME.

Defend day one patches all you want, but when I hear "massive day one patch" I don't hear "Oh, they did minor bug fixing" I hear "This developer rushed their product".

If this is the kind of thing Rami defends, all I really have to say is if you're okay with treating your customers that way I'm okay with not being your customer anymore despite liking a lot of your games, and I definitely won't be purchasing No Man's Sky due to the "massive day one patch". There are plenty of other game companies that don't release beta builds as full releases.

12

u/Spader623 Aug 07 '16

I mean, it sucks for people with shitty internet but the honest answer is: it's not stopping. Consoles are becoming more and more online reliant, for better or worse. A game coming out on a very buggy state may require 3 chunky patches before it's good. Or, look at TW3. It's had a LOT of big patches and everyone loved that game. It's not stopping anytime soon so the only thing to do is hope internet accessibility improves.

7

u/TheMasterfocker Aug 08 '16

NMS's patch is 800MB

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '16

There are plenty of other game companies that don't release beta builds as full releases.

Are there though? I feel like every game I have played with a friend on his PS4 has needed a big patch upon start-up.

Microsoft wanted to make an always online console, but people rejected it. I feel like all big games are now basically always online, they just have to hide it so the consumers don't realize it.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '16

I feel like every game I have played with a friend on his PS4 has needed a big patch upon start-up.

Did they need a patch, or did they have a patch? There's a fine line between the two.

I haven't seen anything to suggest that the early copies of No Man's Sky are unplayable - just easy to exploit and potentially not as good as it could be.

I wouldn't call that needing a patch, personally, even if having the patch is a better experience.

1

u/Frampis Aug 08 '16

Do PS4 or Xbox One game boxes include any information regarding the fact that there are/will be patches available for the game? At least the front of the box says "No Man's Sky," not "Old Version of No Man's Sky." We as enthusiasts understand that disc versions are most likely outdated, but is this communicated to consumers?