Time to let the public fix Zenimax problems.

terryammon

It is clear to the public that the Zenimax is lacking the staff to fix ESO, 3 months after release and theres still hundreds of bugs that need to be fixed and its starting to bug us. All we here is, we have made a hotfix to fix this, theres a patch to fix that, but it just seems, your patching bugged scripts, with new scripts to cover the problem, thats making the server very unstable, for example Cyrodiil.

Each time there as been a patch to fix a problem with in Cyrodiil, the zone seems to suffer more with lag and now, lowering the players fps, where it's struggling to keep everyone uptodate with everything thats going on.

Easy to fix, Roll back the servers and restart, this time, don't cover bugged scripts, just fix the bugs, move on to the next bug, it make take longer to find the problem and to fix, but bypassing problems only slows things down.

Also, does anyone here know what language the server is coding in? and please dont say C++ lol.

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Is there any way, we can help???

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Im sure theres loads of people with in the eso community that would love to help fix problems, like myself, i used to program my own freeshard daoc server and also worked on the DOL server coding and datebase, only reason i left, was to play ESO and im sure theres many more people, like me out there.

So everyone that feels they could have some skills that could help, please list after me

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@TerryAmmon - (DOL - Deathwish) Skills: Basic C# Coding and MySQL Database.

sajackson

What's wrong with C++?

Sihnfahl

If you look at the open career list for programmers on Zenimax's hiring site, you'll see this little gem:

Requirements:
•Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience
•3+ years of professional programming experience using C++

Pluses:
•Experience writing client/server applications in C++
•Experience with scripting languages, such as Lua or Python

terryammon

sajackson wrote: »

What's wrong with C++?

C++ lets silly bugs happen, when stuff gets overwritten, like WarHammer Online, there was silly bugs where 1 byte of memory would get overwritten by 1 bad pointer and some instances would crash when soo many people was in them, with managed languages like C#, Java, thats impossible and when you need a server that has stability, you wouldn't go near C++

Saerydoth

Sihnfahl wrote: »

If you look at the open career list for programmers on Zenimax's hiring site, you'll see this little gem:

Requirements:
•Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience
•3+ years of professional programming experience using C++

Pluses:
•Experience writing client/server applications in C++
•Experience with scripting languages, such as Lua or Python

This here ^

The game engine itself is C++. A lot of the scripting for quests and NPC behavior and UI is in Lua. They probably have a smattering of Python as well. You do NOT use interpreted languages like Java for anything where performance is a concern. Server or client. Anything where performance is a concern is either C, C++, or assembly, nothing else will work. C tends to be mostly used for very low level things like OS kernels and non-graphical applications (think server stuff), while C++ tends to be used for anything with a GUI or that is graphically intensive. Pure assembly isn't done so much these days. Compilers have gotten much better in recent years, and pure assembly is pretty much impossible to port to other platforms (has to be written from scratch on each one). As for the game database on the server side, that is all SQL.

Languages like Java are designed for portability. They are useful when you want to run the same thing on a variety of systems without having to do extensive porting. For simple applications this can work pretty well. For game engines, no...just no.

All MMO's with a customizable UI use Lua extensively for said UI. They also use Lua almost exclusively for scripting...quests, NPC behaviors, etc. This is what Lua was designed to do (since it was a scripting language), and it's very good at it.

shiva7663

You say "just fix the bugs" as if that's supposed to be easy. sigh.

terryammon

Saerydoth wrote: »

The game engine itself is C++.

If it is C++, that explains why they cant fix the bugs so easy and when they do, its letting some of the old bugs pop up, as well as new bugs, hints the problems with Cyrodiil.

I guess its a problem they have now and its going to take a very long time to get things working correctly.

Saerydoth

shiva7663 wrote: »

You say "just fix the bugs" as if that's supposed to be easy. sigh.

Yeah, that's the type of thing an armchair programmer that has never looked at code would say. Tell them to go through a few million lines of code and find the } that was supposed to be a ). I've actually seen complex programs derailed by less.

terryammon

Saerydoth wrote: »

shiva7663 wrote: »

You say "just fix the bugs" as if that's supposed to be easy. sigh.

Yeah, that's the type of thing an armchair programmer that has never looked at code would say. Tell them to go through a few million lines of code and find the } that was supposed to be a ). I've actually seen complex programs derailed by less.

With C#, when building the core after a update, any errors like that stop the build and give you a error report, it will tell you, the error type, where the error is located, for example, Description of the error, file ScriptExample.cs Line 2301, Column 23.
Problem fixed next bug

Saerydoth

terryammon wrote: »

Saerydoth wrote: »

shiva7663 wrote: »

You say "just fix the bugs" as if that's supposed to be easy. sigh.

Yeah, that's the type of thing an armchair programmer that has never looked at code would say. Tell them to go through a few million lines of code and find the } that was supposed to be a ). I've actually seen complex programs derailed by less.

With C#, when building the core after a update, any errors like that stop the build and give you a error report, it will tell you, the error type, where the error is located, for example, Description of the error, file ScriptExample.cs Line 2301, Column 23.
Problem fixed next bug

LOL, noone uses C# for anything serious. All Microsoft did was take Java and change it just enough to not get sued. If your "programming" experience is limited to C# no wonder you don't get it.

DeLindsay

Before he retired, my Father used to be one of 8 people in America who could fix the TCAS units that all commercial US airplanes are fitted with. In short that's the box that tells air traffic controllers (and other planes) where every airplane is within it's range at any given second. The device was so hard to program and understand that he was literally the only person employed by BF Goodrich (back when they were into aerospace) that could even begin to trouble shoot what on paper looked like a simple problem.

Same analogy can be used here. An MMO has literally MILLIONS of lines of code and it could be something as simple as one single missing colon in line 345,849 that is causing 15 different problems. You fix that issue and it break 28 more things, etc. Even programmers who've done this as a career for decades get utterly stumped by some issues.

The fact that armchair experts think they know exactly why things don't get fixed and blame the company is laughable. If you are one of those people then by all means apply to work for ZoS, I'm sure they will be happy to know that you'll have the entire game bug free in a week, while also adding 10 million subs and launching the Theives + Dark Brotherhood Guilds and all other future content for the next year because you are so awesome

tigerblood

I keep asking myself why developers don't take on a more open source route to solving problems. If you have people wanting to help, why not take that help. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the public take Skyrim and make it something truly great? Whatever the reason not to have the public help it must be important enough to risk letting the game lose money and who will want to buy a Zenimax game again? Take some chances on some free labor that has proven to work in the past.

Ok now real programmers can tell me why that is not feasible and why sticking with the current system and crossing our fingers is better.

tinythinker

tigerblood wrote: »

I keep asking myself why developers don't take on a more open source route to solving problems. If you have people wanting to help, why not take that help. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the public take Skyrim and make it something truly great? Whatever the reason not to have the public help it must be important enough to risk letting the game lose money and who will want to buy a Zenimax game again?

A few reasons to consider:

1. People working on the game would need to be familiar with the big picture of how the game is designed in terms of code structure and vetted for the proper experience and reliability, which happens in the hiring process. They would need to have supervision and yet be reliable enough to meet deadlines and take the initiative in meeting goals even if they were busy or distressed. Could you rely on that from volunteers? Having to spend money on more staff to supervise and quality check all of the "free help" to make sure their work was on schedule and up to standard could easily take more time and money than simply hiring a few new programmers. Just hire the folks you would need as supervisors as coders instead and skip the extra time spent double-checking the volunteers.

2. Skyrim is single-player game with fans making mods, not the original product. The comparable fan creations for ESO are the add-ons. If ZOS sells something others helped create without a contract, that gets into issues of who owns the work done and who should be compensated to what degree, regardless of whether people claim they want to work for free. Even with a pro bono contract there is a chance people could try to sue ZOS for stealing their work/ideas.

3. Imagine telling your favorite restaurant that you want to work for free in the kitchen to help make the food a little better, and think of the reasons they would refuse. Again, they are making and selling a product and are responsible for it, which means they aren't going to let just anyone see their secrets or fiddle with their merchandise.

RinaldoGandolphi

I'm no C++ expert, but the game is probably coded in that to reduce overhead, and no need for specific runtimes as pretty much every OS already has all the c binaries needed to run it. Microsoft Visual C++ for windows, and GCC for linux/Bsd/apple.

languages such as .Net use brokers to allow access to C functions through and intermediary that processes the language and coverts it to C or API calls, however this has a good deal overhead to it that makes it less then ideal for some applications such as games.

besides the community couldn't hope to fix bugs unless zenimax either open sources their game engine or releases developer tools like Skyrim creation kit, and neither of those things are going to happen.

terryammon

shiva7663 wrote: »

LOL, noone uses C# for anything serious. All Microsoft did was take Java and change it just enough to not get sued. If your "programming" experience is limited to C# no wonder you don't get it.

All the new big pvp based MMO's coming out are writen in C#, because C++ doesn't support stability like C# has, Look at Camelot Unchainned, the biggest threat for ESO, they are building the game server in C# purely because they want the stability of the server.
They are coding the engine around pvp and not pve too, with the aim of 500+ players in a small area , with in combat, with minimal game lag, this just couldn't happen with C++ .

sajackson

If you want to know if an executable contains IL (what C# code compiles too) just try loading it in ILDASM (it isn't by the way).

Just need to clear up a few myths being peddled here.

1. It's not C++ that creates the bugs, it's the programmer.

2. C# is not an interpreted programming language. The compiler produces Intermediate Language (IL) which is converted to machine code by the .net framework loader when the assembly is loaded by the runtime.

3. The only real difference from the point of view of this discussion is that programs written in C# use garbage collected memory (as does Java) whereas the programmer must take responsibility for correctly allocating and de-allocating memory when coding in C++. It's tempting to think that using a memory garbage collector somehow solves all the problems but it's actually just as possible to write poor code that creates memory leaks and the like in a .net framework language. In most cases programmers will use C++ or an equivalent level programming language for things like games because it gives them greater control over the runtime environment and thus makes certain optimisations possible that you wouldn't easily be able to do in C#.

Saerydoth

terryammon wrote: »

shiva7663 wrote: »

LOL, noone uses C# for anything serious. All Microsoft did was take Java and change it just enough to not get sued. If your "programming" experience is limited to C# no wonder you don't get it.

All the new big pvp based MMO's coming out are writen in C#, because C++ doesn't support stability like C# has, Look at Camelot Unchainned, the biggest threat for ESO, they are building the game server in C# purely because they want the stability of the server.
They are coding the engine around pvp and not pve too, with the aim of 500+ players in a small area , with in combat, with minimal game lag, this just couldn't happen with C++ .

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You don't run MMO game servers on Windows, period. If they try to do that they will fail in an epic way. If that is true it will look like one of those Facebook browser games at best.

Anyway, the lag comments are 100% false. C++ can be optimized FAR FAR FAR better than C# can. It's not even in the same ballpark. So it's basically the opposite of what you're saying.

Also, I know people that work with C#, and it does NOT free up memory like they claim it does. All garbage collection has to be done manually, and it's incredibly tedious and slow. C# is orders of magnitude slower and less efficient than the real programming languages.

terryammon

shiva7663 wrote: »

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You don't run MMO game servers on Windows, period. If they try to do that they will fail in an epic way. If that is true it will look like one of those Facebook browser games at best.

Anyway, the lag comments are 100% false. C++ can be optimized FAR FAR FAR better than C# can. It's not even in the same ballpark. So it's basically the opposite of what you're saying.

Also, I know people that work with C#, and it does NOT free up memory like they claim it does. All garbage collection has to be done manually, and it's incredibly tedious and slow. C# is orders of magnitude slower and less efficient than the real programming languages.

Think you need to do some more research on matter, check out this video on youtube, Andrew Meggs Technical Director / Lead Programmer of City State Games, i believe he worked for Zenimax at some point, but he talks about the Engine FX and Tech about the upcoming Camelot Unchained, around 29:30 he starts talking about what language the server is written in and why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHiJSP6GuZ0

Saerydoth

terryammon wrote: »

shiva7663 wrote: »

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You don't run MMO game servers on Windows, period. If they try to do that they will fail in an epic way. If that is true it will look like one of those Facebook browser games at best.

Anyway, the lag comments are 100% false. C++ can be optimized FAR FAR FAR better than C# can. It's not even in the same ballpark. So it's basically the opposite of what you're saying.

Also, I know people that work with C#, and it does NOT free up memory like they claim it does. All garbage collection has to be done manually, and it's incredibly tedious and slow. C# is orders of magnitude slower and less efficient than the real programming languages.

Think you need to do some more research on matter, check out this video on youtube, Andrew Meggs Technical Director / Lead Programmer of City State Games, i believe he worked for Zenimax at some point, but he talks about the Engine FX and Tech about the upcoming Camelot Unchained, around 29:30 he starts talking about what language the server is written in and why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHiJSP6GuZ0

That is...beyond ridiculous. Well, that's one game to stay away from. That sounds like propoganda, he sounds like the armchair programmers I see on forums.

terryammon

Ok, i think so one doesn't have a clue, can you even program? if you can, i think you just describe yourself.

EliteZ

terryammon wrote: »

shiva7663 wrote: »

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You don't run MMO game servers on Windows, period. If they try to do that they will fail in an epic way. If that is true it will look like one of those Facebook browser games at best.

Anyway, the lag comments are 100% false. C++ can be optimized FAR FAR FAR better than C# can. It's not even in the same ballpark. So it's basically the opposite of what you're saying.

Also, I know people that work with C#, and it does NOT free up memory like they claim it does. All garbage collection has to be done manually, and it's incredibly tedious and slow. C# is orders of magnitude slower and less efficient than the real programming languages.

Think you need to do some more research on matter, check out this video on youtube, Andrew Meggs Technical Director / Lead Programmer of City State Games, i believe he worked for Zenimax at some point, but he talks about the Engine FX and Tech about the upcoming Camelot Unchained, around 29:30 he starts talking about what language the server is written in and why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHiJSP6GuZ0

You've basically watched that video and copied what he said word to word on these forums like everything he says on a single video is true. I'm not getting into this debate, but let me give you some mighty fine wisdom here: DO NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ/HEAR ON THE INTERNET.

terryammon

EliteZ wrote: »

You've basically watched that video and copied what he said word to word on these forums like everything he says on a single video is true. I'm not getting into this debate, but let me give you some mighty fine wisdom here: DO NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ/HEAR ON THE INTERNET.

I have spent years working C# Game servers and what he says is true, all C++ game servers have laggy pvp, its a byproduct of the coding language, Look at daoc, i believe that was C#, ESO has copied its complete PvP system, layout and design, even down to the point on what the towers look like, all the same, but on DAOC its called RvR, where Eso its AvA, Daoc 100-200 players in the same battle, minimal lag, Eso in C++ 100 people in a same battle, well dont think that has been achieved, server crashes... and dont forget, this was 10 years ago too, the host servers where slow compaired to the new cloud servers of today.

sajackson

Perhaps it would help if you could explain why C++ creates "laggy PvP".

I'm certainly curious to see your explanation.

Saerydoth

sajackson wrote: »

Perhaps it would help if you could explain why C++ creates "laggy PvP".

I'm certainly curious to see your explanation.

He doesn't know. He's spouting buzzwords and technobabble he heard some snake oil salesman say in a video. (Hint: marketers explaining in a video why their product is innovative and better than anything everyone else has ever done isn't true. If you believe everything these people in these videos say, I've got a few bridges and some fertile swampland to sell you.)

He might as well say he's going to reverse the polarity of the neutron flux to get rid of lag, and it would make just as much sense. Or maybe reverse the polarity of the jelly baby? That would be better, that sounds like something the Doctor would say. Or better yet, reverse the jelly baby of the neutron flow, which the Doctor did say. I only like technobabble when the Doctor says it, because Doctor Who is awesome.

shaw487b16_ESO

I am not a programmer, but I would like the game to work properly. As I am paying a monthly fee I do actually expect a decent product.

Everyone talks about bugs as if they are expected and we should just grin and bear it.

Well, as a non-technical customer I do not give a rats ass about excuses, either make your product work, or take it off the market.

squeemu_ESO

shaw487b16_ESO wrote: »

Well, as a non-technical customer I do not give a rats ass about excuses, either make your product work, or take it off the market.

As a programmer, I've got to tell you, you've never used a program that didn't have bugs in it. Expecting a program to not have bugs is basically an impossible goal. However, the number and severity of bugs can be reduced by quite a bit, and ESO seems to have way more than the average game/MMO.

As for C++ causing the problems to this game...almost every big name, legitimate game uses C++ to one degree or another. To believe otherwise is to display your ignorance when it comes to the industry and programming in general. C++ does not lead to buggy code, being a sloppy coder does. It doesn't hold your hand like other languages do, but if you take the time to do it right, the advantages are many. That's all I'll say on this issue as arguing about languages online never gets anybody anywhere.

shiva7663

By the way, I didn't write the "LOL, noone uses C# for anything serious." or " You don't run MMO game servers on Windows, period." quotes. That was Saerydoth.

Sihnfahl

tinythinker wrote: »

2. Skyrim is single-player game with fans making mods, not the original product.

And to fix a few bugs. Some of those add-ons for Skyrim corrected bugs that Bethesda's team of programmers overlooked...

shiva7663

Morrowind has unfixed bugs from twelve years ago. Tradition. sigh.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

Saerydoth wrote: »

terryammon wrote: »

Saerydoth wrote: »

shiva7663 wrote: »

You say "just fix the bugs" as if that's supposed to be easy. sigh.

Yeah, that's the type of thing an armchair programmer that has never looked at code would say. Tell them to go through a few million lines of code and find the } that was supposed to be a ). I've actually seen complex programs derailed by less.

With C#, when building the core after a update, any errors like that stop the build and give you a error report, it will tell you, the error type, where the error is located, for example, Description of the error, file ScriptExample.cs Line 2301, Column 23.
Problem fixed next bug

LOL, noone uses C# for anything serious. All Microsoft did was take Java and change it just enough to not get sued. If your "programming" experience is limited to C# no wonder you don't get it.

This is the correct answer.

The .Net languages are toys for bedroom developers to knock up 'web apps', they're not serious tools.

Con64

I believe they could use all the help they can get.
I'd like to remind some of you about all the bugs in Skyrim...the Mod community fixed a large part of all the bugs in that game.
I'm no programmer, I just reap the benefits of their genius and there are a lot of these guys in the Mod Communities that have saved the game play for us in many previous games.
Just a thought.