Removed

K.Rokossovski wrote:

Heh, that's exactly what the programmers in my day job are also telling me (my job as functional designer is about steering them from the business/user point of view). Yet I think it is so strange. You're basically telling me that there's a practical and easy solution, but you can't implement it because it doesn't comply to your current code standards; and if you do it by those sophisticated standards you have now, it will take ages and you won't bother doing it at all. Isn't that the wrong way around; your job as a developer is to build products and features your users/customers/bosses want, and not to maintain some big vault with perfect code. Sure I appreciate how code can get messy over time, and I also realize that this can become really ugly over time. Still in my book, a good programmer knows his way in that jungle, even if it is a little bit harder now to navigate when imperfect code ages. We, as users/customers/bosses, have to pay the price for your vault though... that all the new stuff we want is hard/expensive and we have to be VERY careful about formulating our wishes. Don't you think the "old" coding, where things could be solved more pragmatic and goal-oriented rather than lifetime-oriented, deserves more merit than just being "old school" and messing up your perfect vault of code?

K.Rokossovski wrote:

So if these new coding standards are so superior, why don't we get an enormous influx of new mechanisms, ideas, rivers, supply systems, command centers? Why is the game standing still? Could it be because modern coding is SO far superior that it doesn't get anything done anymore?

freezy wrote:

K.Rokossovski wrote:

Heh, that's exactly what the programmers in my day job are also telling me (my job as functional designer is about steering them from the business/user point of view). Yet I think it is so strange. You're basically telling me that there's a practical and easy solution, but you can't implement it because it doesn't comply to your current code standards; and if you do it by those sophisticated standards you have now, it will take ages and you won't bother doing it at all. Isn't that the wrong way around; your job as a developer is to build products and features your users/customers/bosses want, and not to maintain some big vault with perfect code. Sure I appreciate how code can get messy over time, and I also realize that this can become really ugly over time. Still in my book, a good programmer knows his way in that jungle, even if it is a little bit harder now to navigate when imperfect code ages. We, as users/customers/bosses, have to pay the price for your vault though... that all the new stuff we want is hard/expensive and we have to be VERY careful about formulating our wishes. Don't you think the "old" coding, where things could be solved more pragmatic and goal-oriented rather than lifetime-oriented, deserves more merit than just being "old school" and messing up your perfect vault of code?

Yes there are certainly pros and cons to both approaches. Best would probably be to strike a nice balance between the 2. I know that there have been recent strides to increase development speed again while still maintaining code quality. So hopefully it will get better and features come out faster again.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

So if these new coding standards are so superior, why don't we get an enormous influx of new mechanisms, ideas, rivers, supply systems, command centers? Why is the game standing still? Could it be because modern coding is SO far superior that it doesn't get anything done anymore?

Well users also complain about bugs all the time and the reason why these bugs happen and why the QA cycle is super long is due to that old spaghetti code which makes it tough to change one part of the game without affecting 5 other parts of the game, sometimes in areas which you'd have never imagined would be affected. Wanna scare one of our Devs? Ask them to change anything in the combat logic! Because that code is so bonkers that changing one thing has a gazillion side effects. So even here taking the more careful approach has pros and cons. Con is that it takes longer and therefore also delays other features/fixes, pro is that it introduces less new problems which would take more time to fix down the road.
I agree though that the engine is amazing overall in what it accomplishes, even with the older code, and more so with all newer additions. So lets also focus on the good things and celebrate this nice game we have, which will hopefully get even better over time.