Fortsatt lite godord om ny Xbox patch.
Merket meg for øvrig dette svaret fra Joel om utviklingen fremover. Her forklarer han detaljert om hvordan de jobber:
In the recent video from gamasutra, you spoke about things that would and would not make it into the game by launch. Are mounts, sorcery, settlements and thrall management a guarantee by launch?
I cannot guarantee anything until the process is done but perhaps I can go into the process so people don’t get overly stressed.
All the features we had planned for the launch of Conan Exiles are designed, planned and estimated. We have a pretty good handle on how long we will spend on those features. But in addition to that there is bugfixing and polish time.
So time left on the project could be summarized as Feature time + bugfix time + polish time.
Except every additional feature adds a % of bugs to the overall total. And every additional feature adds polish time to the overall total.
The question being discussed and asked right now is “Given the planned features, bugs and polish time left, are we on track to meet the launch window in early 2018?”
If the answer to that question is no, then a larger discussion needs to occur around features. Do we cut an entire feature? Reduce the scope of a feature? Etc.
All of the feature designs that we have worked on are divided into distinct, functional iterations. Let’s look at a simple example, Sorcery (this is NOT the real design, but rather an example)
First iteration – Base sorcery system (cast simple spells) + 20 spells = 50 days
Second iteration – Base summoning system (summon demons) + 20 more spells = 50 days
Third iteration – Base necromancy system (summon undead) + 20 more spells = 50 days
Fourth iteration – Base divination system (special vision types etc.) + 20 spells = 50 days
Fifth iteration - Base curse system (direct debuffs etc.) + 20 spells = 50 days
We might look at our total workload through launch and find ourselves short of time. Perhaps we need to find 200 days of additional development time to polish all of our features.
Using the sorcery example, we might cut divination and curses for launch, to earn ourselves 100 extra days. It doesn’t mean sorcery won’t exist in the final game, nor does it mean the functionality of sorcery will be significantly impacted. It just means we lowered the scope on Sorcery, without cutting the feature entirely. We might be able to make up the other 100 days by scoping down parts of the other features.
Or it might be that an entire feature gets cut to make up the time. If that happens, it will be communicated clearly to the community.
The other alternative, of course, is for the dev team to ask for more money to complete the full scope of the project. And that depends entirely on factors out of the hands of the dev team.
This process happens on every software project ever unless the dev team have infinite time and/or infinite money.
