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Fm 11

the scud

By the scud,
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stevegrant

stevegrant

Posted
Posted
Name a game that doesn't have bugs?

Of course most games have bugs, but most games also have a full QC testing cycle rather than relying on its customer base to provide bug reports after the product has already been released.

 

Name some bugs that made FM10 unplayable without a patch?

Memory leak using the 3D match engine on OS X. 3 games in, the game crashes.

 

And don't say "don't use the 3D match engine then", as that's one of the main features of the game :facepalm:

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

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Posted
Of course most games have bugs, but most games also have a full QC testing cycle rather than relying on its customer base to provide bug reports after the product has already been released.

 

Name some games that have a development cycle of one game release every 12 months?

 

Most games are in production for a lot longer than 12 months, so to fit development and QA in 12 months the way they do is impressive I think.

 

SI employ a large number of internal and external testers for a relatively small development studio. SEGA also have their own QA team for the game.

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stevegrant

stevegrant

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Ignoring the bug that made FM10 unplayable then, I take it? :rolleyes:

 

Knowing how software is developed, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of code for FM is re-used (or tweaked at the most) year after year. They are not rewriting an entire game from scratch every year.

 

As a result, the actual development time should be fairly minimal - or at least it would be if the legacy code actually worked in the first place, hence they probably spend a large amount of time each year fixing the bugs that went into the last release, and then don't have time to write the new stuff, test those bits individually and then test everything together.

 

As for SI employing a large number of internal and external testers, that doesn't mean a great deal unless those testers know what they're looking for. How many people do you reckon apply to beta test FM solely on the basis that they'll get to play it before anyone else does? The answer = ****ing loads. That's why they have to employ so many, because it's impossible to tell which ones know how to test a game properly.

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stevegrant

stevegrant

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What do you think they actually do over the course of the development cycle and what do you think they should do instead?

Well they should concentrate on releasing a product that is as bug-free as is practical on the day of launch, like every other software house, first and foremost. While I appreciate the relatively time-sensitive nature of this particular game, any other product's release would be held back until it was actually ready. The next one's called Football Manager 2011, so what's the big deal with actually releasing it in 2011 if it enables the developers enough time to iron out all the problems?

 

And then, even if it's essentially last year's game with updated data, but near-enough bug-free, they'll still shift enough copies just on the strength of the brand name alone. They don't tend to implement a "big" new feature every year anyway, the 3D match engine probably took at least 3 or 4 years of development in a separate project before it was even put forward as a new feature for FM09, so they don't need to concentrate on a "headline" new feature, just get the game working out of the box.

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

Posted
Posted

I honestly didn't see FM10 as particularly buggy.

 

I know you don't like this but...more bugs are noticed and fixed quicker once a game is released compared to in house testing.

 

If your idea was used and FM10 was kept in development until Feb 2010, it would be less playable than patch 10.3 also released in Feb 2010.

 

Do you not agree?

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Bentley

Bentley

Posted
Posted
I honestly didn't see FM10 as particularly buggy.

 

 

Absolute joke of a statement.

 

Teams still play in the same colours sometimes for me. Saints vs Sunderland is a nightmare.

 

3 patches in, and still half of my England team disappear before I play a match. So, even though I picked John Terry and Rooney etc, their names have vanished from the squad selection screen and I have to play Woodgate and Defoe etc, I have about 15 players available of a 23 man squad.

 

FM2010 :facepalm:

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

Posted
Posted (edited)

The first one is a bug which I have been trying to get them to fix and have reported it. I'm not sure what you mean by the second one, I've never seen anything like that.

 

But that doesn't constitute a "buggy" game.

 

This is a buggy game...

 

 

or this

 

Edited by Matthew Le God
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FMPR

FMPR

Posted
Posted

Personally agree with Steve and co that SI should take a year out from the game (maybe just provide a data update for a nominal charge) to concentrate on getting the game right. Personally I havent experienced too many bugs but obviously people do and its frustrating.

 

They are always playing catch up imo, demo usually released end of Sep/start of Oct. Cue bugs being found so next 3-4 weeks is fixing any major problems that are found. Then straight after that its the medium level bugs which eat up 4-8 weeks of dev time then its the January transfer window and any balancing that needs to happen.

 

Then you have a bit of time off and its 6-8 months and cue a repeat of above. WHen you see Starcraft being in dev for what 7 years? 6-8 months to get something right is too intensive time wise

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

Posted
Posted
Anyone know when FM 11 is due or is it a long way off until realeased?

 

SI and SEGA

 

FM11 - ???

FM10 - 30th October

FM09 - 14th November

FM08 - 18th October

FM07 - 18th October

FM06 - 21st October

FM05 - 4th November

 

SI and Eidos

 

CM03/04 - 21st November

CM4 - 28th March

CM01/02 - 12th October

CM00/01 - 27th October

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

Posted
Posted

SWOS version 1.1 given free to all people that brought the original (if you sent the original floppy disc back to them) shows your claim of a bug free SWOS was wrong. Maybe in the 16 or so years since you played SWOS you have a romanticized version in your head of what it was like. Every game has bugs and the more complicated a game is, with more variables, the more likely it is that they will get through the testing process.

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

Posted
Posted (edited)
FM11 doesnt look too much different to FM10

 

What exactly would they need to do for you not to think that? The list of new features announced today is only a tiny number of the changes in FM11.

 

- Player and board conversations

- Dynamic league reputations

- Improved training

- Real time contract negotiations

- Football agents

- Improvements to the 3D graphics and improvements to the underlying match engine

 

Are all big changes.

 

There are many other features yet to be announced.

Edited by Matthew Le God
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JackFrost

JackFrost

Posted
Posted
What exactly would they need to do for you not to think that? The list of new features announced today is only a tiny number of the changes in FM11.

 

Player and board conversations, dynamic league reputations, improved training, real time contract negotiations, football agents, improvements to the 3D graphics and improvements to the underlying match engine, are all big changes. There are many other features yet to be announced.

 

any idea if the data editor is going to be the same?

 

I never got the hang of the FM10 one, any change I made it saved in the editor file but wouldn't change in the game even when I told it to start a game with the latest editor change

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FMPR

FMPR

Posted
Posted
What exactly would they need to do for you not to think that? The list of new features announced today is only a tiny number of the changes in FM11.

 

- Player and board conversations

- Dynamic league reputations

- Improved training

- Real time contract negotiations

- Football agents

- Improvements to the 3D graphics and improvements to the underlying match engine

 

Are all big changes.

 

There are many other features yet to be announced.

 

Dynamic league reps is the biggie there.

 

Means you could take a team like Glentoran to glory as the more success you have the bigger the reputation of the league grows hence better players coming into it and growing even more.

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

Posted
Posted (edited)
I ended up throwing my last copy of FM in the bin

 

It wouldn't let me activate the bloody thing - I kept getting 'can't connect to the internet' message, which was absolute balls due to me being online at the time

 

Not sure I'd ever buy it again

 

Did you not try getting support from somewhere like here?

 

http://help.sega.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=view&parentcategoryid=333&pcid=6&nav=0,6

 

I certainly wouldn't throw a game in the bin that I just spent money on, when the game comes with support from the publishers.

Edited by Matthew Le God
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The Worm

The Worm

Posted
Posted
Dynamic league reps is the biggie there.

 

Means you could take a team like Glentoran to glory as the more success you have the bigger the reputation of the league grows hence better players coming into it and growing even more.

 

useless unless the prize money also is scaled up with the rep, which SI have not said anything about yet

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St Marco

St Marco

Posted
Posted

I loved the last one.

 

I just hope they change the media press conferences as they were a bit crap.

 

It would also be cool if you could do what they used to do in other manager games where once you have done really well and made loads of cash yourself you could buy into a club and become a manager/chairman or hire your own managers as just a chairman. I think that would be a cool extra to the game if you get bored of just managing. When i go to a club first thing i seem to do is try and sort the finances out i.e bring wages down. Try and get it making money. Would be cool if you could have more control over the money making side of the club like some managers do like Benitez/Fergie etc. When your at a big club it doesn't really matter but when your at the non league clubs every penny helps and sometimes the cpu spends it in silly ways. Obviously those things detract from the managing football aspect of the game but it would be a nice addition i think.

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The Worm

The Worm

Posted
Posted
useless unless the prize money also is scaled up with the rep, which SI have not said anything about yet

 

from Miles himself...

OK - have just had some, although it's less than conclusive! In some leagues, it will go up (or down). In others, legal reasons mean it has to be fixed, so those won't move. Bloody lawyers.... Can't even say which leagues it applies to either for the same lawyery reason.

 

i hope its similar to the German national team thing where we can just delete a file to get at it

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JackFrost

JackFrost

Posted
Posted (edited)
Name a game that doesn't have bugs?

 

Name some bugs that made FM10 unplayable without a patch?

 

problem is the recent FMs have had more bugs than I'm a celebrity get me out of here.

 

They haven't had major bugs just loads of small, irritating blindingly obvious ones that surely anyone testing would immediately notice. As Steve pointed out a new game may well come out every 12 months, but the same interface will be used for each game (just with a few tweaks to make it look new) so it's been pretty poor in that respect. I seem to remember in FM09 tthis bbeing oone wwhen yyou ssearched ffor aa pplayer.

 

TBF though from what I've experienced FM10 wasn't as bad as FM09

 

As someone who works for a relatively small IT company I completely agree with steve though

 

Well they should concentrate on releasing a product that is as bug-free as is practical on the day of launch, like every other software house, first and foremost. While I appreciate the relatively time-sensitive nature of this particular game, any other product's release would be held back until it was actually ready. The next one's called Football Manager 2011, so what's the big deal with actually releasing it in 2011 if it enables the developers enough time to iron out all the problems?

 

And then, even if it's essentially last year's game with updated data, but near-enough bug-free, they'll still shift enough copies just on the strength of the brand name alone. They don't tend to implement a "big" new feature every year anyway, the 3D match engine probably took at least 3 or 4 years of development in a separate project before it was even put forward as a new feature for FM09, so they don't need to concentrate on a "headline" new feature, just get the game working out of the box.

Edited by JackFrost
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Barry the Badger

Barry the Badger

Posted
Posted

For FM09, I played my first season, which took ages.... I don't have much time to play and like to play in depth so it takes a long time to get through a season.

 

At the end of the season it crashed. I went onto their official forums and asked for help.

 

Si: "Do you have the Italian Serie C enabled?"

Me: "Yes"

SI: "Yeah, the game crashes at the end of the first season if you have Serie C playable, you will have to start a new game".

 

So I had basically wasted all that time on a game I couldn't continue.

 

Now I love FM, but for me it's bugs like that which are totally inexcusable. Now I just look at the release date, add a month on, and don't even think about buying it before that.

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