Official SE5 release date announced - September 12

[Tim Brooks]

I would also keep in mind (based on his history with SE4) that Aaron is always committed to fixing bugs and adding player-suggested improvements well after the usual two month patch window of most other games. By releasing in September, instead of trying to aim for a December release of the holy grail (e.g. a bugless game), the fans benefit from being able to suggest improvements and provide feedback.

I hope you are correct. But, there are two things that could possibly work against this:

1. It takes two for patches. Both the developer and the publisher must support the game. Aaron wanting to update the product doesn't work if SF won't allow it. And SF has a record of not supporting releases for long. Look at JA and many of their other titles. They are still selling half completed games from 3-4 years ago.

2. Aaron is no longer an independent contractor and now, more than ever, not in control of his game. Malfador is now SF.

[Xrati]

Face up to the times! MONEY / GREED drives just about every business decision these days. Even if Arron is not ready to release SEV there will be pressures by SF to get it out. All business's have their "profit schedule" for the end of the year business projections. You as a consumer, will never know "what goes on behind closed doors" when it comes to product releases. I've seen companies put garabage out, knowing that they'd have to rework the product, just to meet their promised delivery date.

Be careful of what you ask for, you may just get it!!!

[DarkHorse]

You can wait until the year 2047 and there will still be bugs; every game ships with bugs. There are millions of possible computer configurations out there, and it's impossible to thoroughly test them all. If you want homogenized hardware, buy a Mac and enjoy the two or three games that are available for it.

Personally, I'm drooling over fully scriptable AI. I can't wait to start tinkering...

[Ragnarok-X]

DarkHorse said:
You can wait until the year 2047 and there will still be bugs; every game ships with bugs. There are millions of possible computer configurations out there, and it's impossible to thoroughly test them all. If you want homogenized hardware, buy a Mac and enjoy the two or three games that are available for it.

Personally, I'm drooling over fully scriptable AI. I can't wait to start tinkering...

I seriously hope you dont want to argue over bugs. If you compare todays games with the ones from 10 years ago, you will see a rise in bug/problems within the hundreds %. And most of the bugs we are talking about are NOT, i repeat NOT, referring to system/setup, but rather a failure in the GAME itself.

[Fyron]

Of course, the games of 10 years ago were much less complex beasts... But even 10 years ago there were tons of games knowingly shipped with bugs. There was never this utopian ideal of bug-free game shipping at any point in history.

[Ragnarok-X]

Imperator Fyron said:
Of course, the games of 10 years ago were much less complex beasts... But even 10 years ago there were tons of games knowingly shipped with bugs. There was never this utopian ideal of bug-free game shipping at any point in history.

Examples ? I cant imagine a single decent game from 10 years ago which, in relation, was as bugged as todays games.
And even though games get more complex (I dont think todays game are more complex, only from a graphical point of view), today a game has much more development time (3-4 years today, 1-2 years 10 years ago?) AND ***much*** more development game and progressivly more developers.

Face it, the industry is milking us/their customers. Every recent game had patches coming out not even a WEEK after the game was available in retail.
10 years ago, i can barely imagine patches at all (compared to today), and even if there were patched, there were definitly no game-breaking bugs/problems. Today every major game is rushed and released bug, there is no doubt about it.

[Phoenix-D]

Well, lets see..aside from the DOS configuration nightmares, which meant some games never really would work, you had:

1998: Extreme PaintBrawl!: shiped with NO AI. Players often got caught on geometry. Was given *two weeks* coding time, start to finish.

1997: Streets of Simcity: So badly coded the framerate dropped to single-digits when more than one car was on-screen

1995: Mechwarrior 2. Some verions released without a functioning mechlab (equivilent: if SE4's ship-design screen didn't work). Many problems with joysticks, crashes under Windows 95, hanging on exit, etc.

And that's just from a 5 minute search.

EDIT: a search of Google Groups gives people *****ing about "patch a day" syndrome back in 1997, as well..oh, and the infamous tendancy of patches to make your saved games not work.

Fallout is getting to that age as well, and it has quite the slew of bugs.

[ToddT]

I guess known of these will count as decent games, but i can name a few and interestingly the first 3 all tied to windows. Serria's SpaceBucks only need one patch but with out that patch game could not be finished, sierra's outpost (the first one) Shipped incomplete had patches that followed, certain aspects of game where still broken.
Battlecrusier3000......... any way i currently have over 100 games in my closet going as for back as 15 years.
every that went by problems became more common. they increases with Windows. the more lines of code you have in a program more potential for problems, games having been getting larger, now run primary run in windows (itself a source of game issues) window pacthes have broken games. graphics is a source of problems because they are now render objects, their not static images.
Some bugs that may cause serious issues may only show up in limited situations, may be known about but have yet to be isolated (while windows itself not game' its MS practice to ship a buggy product get jump on possible competition.The First release of windows 95, it had a known memory leak, patch made it 95a, patch was even ready at time 95 hit the shelves)
showed a game ship with major bugs no, but i would truly be surprised if there where none, and i personally know of case where testers tried to conceal a bug from the game creators, in order to exploit it later.(that attempt failed in part because they couldn't keep their mouths shut)
Some bugs literally nothing more then a single value being entered wrong, but causing an issue some where else, that has no direct connection to it.
I remember a an assembly program i had to create in electronics class it was short had only a sinlge error, but more time to find it then create the program in the first place, reason program essentially erased everything from just above the error to the end of program. the problem was in how it was entered, but since that was gone.....
minor bugs i would complain about biggies yeah those should be fixed be fore release, and probably will.
most of the bugs in SEIV that i'm aware of have not caused me to much grief

[Will]

Ragnarok-X said:
Every recent game had patches coming out not even a WEEK after the game was available in retail.
10 years ago, i can barely imagine patches at all (compared to today), and even if there were patched, there were definitly no game-breaking bugs/problems. Today every major game is rushed and released bug, there is no doubt about it.

To be fair here, one week after retail release does not equal one week developer time. To go Gold, the situation would generally go something like so (completely making up amount of time here, but 4 weeks sounds very reasonable to me): 28 days before release, software is frozen; 26 days before, everything is packaged together for easy installation; 25 days before, you start pressing discs and stuffing boxes; 7-10 days before, you load up trucks and ship to distribution centers/stores; then the game is released in retail everywhere at the same time. That leaves developers with about 3 weeks of time to continue testing, bug squashing, and planning new features to either make it into patches, or expansion packs. So patches coming a week after retail release could very well represent another month of developer testing.

As for patches, I see SF as taking advantage of the precedent set in SEIV. If they want to keep Aaron on as one of their developers (since the SE series is a labor of love; why else work on it for over a decade, largely by himself?), they will likely support patches through Spring '07 (May?), but then they will probably want a Classic/Gold split or "Expansion Pack". That could come around Summer '07 (August?), and then we have another period of patches working up through Winter '08 (March?). I could also see SF hiring some developers to create "official" mods for the game. User mods will still be big in the core fan community, but it would be hard for hobbyist modders to top an experienced design team working full time on a mod (and one that is officially pushed by the publisher, at that). I fully expect that SF will eventually hire a game designer, a writer, and a few modelers, and make a mod that is to SEV as Counter-Strike is to Halflife. New races with new descriptions and backstories, new technology trees, possibly unique to each race, and a slew of pre-made scenarios.

[Ragnarok-X]

People, it wont help you naming one bugged game for all 3 years. I was explicitly asking for TOP games.
Top as in 2005/2006 = Civ, Homm, TQ, Sacred, Vampire Bloodlines etc ++.
EVERY game (with a *FEW* exceptions, usually shooters) these days is bugged.

Will said:
To be fair here, one week after retail release does not equal one week developer time. To go Gold, the situation would generally go something like so (completely making up amount of time here, but 4 weeks sounds very reasonable to me): 28 days before release, software is frozen; 26 days before, everything is packaged together for easy installation; 25 days before, you start pressing discs and stuffing boxes; 7-10 days before, you load up trucks and ship to distribution centers/stores; then the game is released in retail everywhere at the same time. That leaves developers with about 3 weeks of time to continue testing, bug squashing, and planning new features to either make it into patches, or expansion packs. So patches coming a week after retail release could very well represent another month of developer testing.

No offense, but what exactly is your point here ? Games shouldnt be pressed if they are bugged. Thats an easy point imho. Developers/Sellers are playing with your money, easy as it is.
Would you buy a car whichs brakes arent working, in mind "oh well they will work in 2 weeks.".
Or maybe "oh well they MAY work in 2 weeks" ?

There is no way to argue about that.