New German Interview @ Krawall

German Krawall has posted a new interview ( http://www.krawall.de/artikel.php?s=c&artikel_id=22340 ) with JoWood Producer Michael Paeck. The highlights are…

- The next patch will be released in under 5 - 6 weeks.
- He stumbled into one of Krawall's "traps" and revealed in reply to a question about what they would like to improve in any future versions of Gothic that there will be an add-on. When asked to confirm that the add-on is indeed in development, he realized his mistake and went back to the official line of "we're evaluatig a bunch of options" but he more or less confirmed it by accident.
- He commented on the poor performance of the game engine. He said that there is a bunch of leftover stuff in there from all the extensive testing that they did when they were evaluating technologies to squeeze the entire game world into memory.
- The game has sold very well so far. A second production run is currently en route so any places where the game has sold out should be able to restock soon.
- The rest of the interview is pretty much just PR blah-blah as he tries to talk himself, PB and JoWood out of any responsibility for the rather poor state of the game.
The project's complexity is solely to blame, he says . An example he gave is that after any substantial bug fixing, they need to recompile the entire world which is a process that supposedly takes a full 11 hours.
Ummm… I am admittedly not exactly a pro coder but come on… that's gotta be bullshit, no? If it isn't bullshit, then it sure sounds incredibly inefficient. There should be a way for them to test changes in a more incremental way. Very strange…

Thanks for that Mo, I've posted it on the front page.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
An example he gave is that after any substantial bug fixing, they need to recompile the entire world which is a process that supposedly takes a full 11 hours.
Ummm… I am admittedly not exactly a pro coder but come on… that's gotta be bullshit, no? If it isn't bullshit, then it sure sounds incredibly inefficient. There should be a way for them to test changes in a more incremental way. Very strange…

They may need a full rebuild to truly test bug-fixes across multiple linked files - but they should be able to do those iteratively, and with proper project management they could group them rationally.

Yes, Moriendor your efforts are much appreciated, you Rock!

Thanks for the translation/summary Moriendor.

Alot of extra stuff in there? Well I suppose that is good news - meaning we can expect improvements in performance. Unlike Oblivion where people were holding out hope for perf gains that will never happen.

5-6 six weeks, just enough time to destroy this game in one run, kill dark messiah, and then return to this to play with different skills/factions.

I hope they remove all that "extra stuff" lol, extra stuff, exceptional pr

that extra stuff refers to garbage that is not used and didnt take the time to remove.. therefore contributing to a obscenely bloated and incredibly inept code base - its not a good thing

frankly G3 is one of the biggest dissapointments of a game ive ever played - probably because i expected something halfway decent

but this thing is horrid - that patch better work miracles or the US reviewers are gonna tear this game a new asshole

Whoa, the game has some issues, but 'horrid'? PoR2 was horrid, DL was horrid in its way, but G3 is FAR superior to either of those. Daggerfall out of the Box, was unplayable, but patched over several weeks/months it became a classic. G3 is very playable, it's just not well balanced in some areas.

Yeah, I agree with Corwin. Althpough the games performance is less than optimal, and the savegame bugs are horrid when they do strike (played 12 hours straight saving only on quicksave, too late did I understand my mistake when the game died while saving a last time. My own stupidity, but no less aggrevating), the game in itself is very good.

Well, did he mention that the new patch will actually remove all the "extra garbage" (presumably debugging information) and improve performance? I guess that's the most important thing.

As for it taking up 11 hours: I suppose it's possible, with a lot of pre-processing of graphics, maps and scripts, but I'm sure there would be ways around that to speed up the process, at least to make testing more responsive. To be sure, a true test would require the whole thing to be rebuild and retested, of course.

11 hours is actually realistic, but you don't start compiling such a massive code at random - you do it at night as you go home, and come back next morning, after it's completed. All huge batch processes work like this - banks and such, massive systems, do all such tasks at night when hardly anyone is using the system.

In 6 weeks I'm probably done with Gothic 3, at least for now. I'll get back to it later, of course. I feel the game is excellent as it is, but it needs fixing in several areas before it's released in the US, or they won't be able to conquer that market this time either.

Thats true if it comes out like this is the US it flop around like a fish on land.
Aspyr has been doing a good job too, well until the reviews of bugs started surfacing then they quietly steped back.
I am sure they could do it justice but that flashing white light when you turn off that terrible bloom, the armor and beast should take prioity and be release whenin the next week, there is no excuse for making people wait 5 or 6 weeks for the major couple of problems could be quick fixed.

Originally Posted by Maylander
11 hours is actually realistic, but you don't start compiling such a massive code at random - you do it at night as you go home, and come back next morning, after it's completed. All huge batch processes work like this - banks and such, massive systems, do all such tasks at night when hardly anyone is using the system.

It can already take about an hour to make a postscript from a big InDesign file, so I think 11 hours isn't strange. But indeed why should it interfere with the bugfixing etc.

My guess would be that they are going for fixing as many technical issues
as they can before the NA release (bugs,crashes Gfx glitches). As many
have said here, this is their big bet. They definetely need not to mess it.

So Diverting resources in releasing a hotfix is perhaps not an option atm ?
After all we have already paid up… we are not going anywhere

yeh ok Dung Lords was worse than this - but is that really a compliment?? I would definately say that game was beyond horrid

i guess it comes down to your personal definition of "playable"… for me gothic 3 has monster issues with the streaming technology, and an insane amount of bugs and CTDs that just kill any desire for me to lumber thru it… i certainly dont consider it "playable" except for the most clinical, non-enjoyable QA type of way

maybe my standards are just too high, but i dont know… i think there are a few people that agree with me if you check the Jowood forums

I consider it playable, but it's not much fun as it is now. I'll certainly wait for the patch and see if this helps in that respect. If not, I will most probably not finish G3 anytime soon.

jees, 5-6 weeks to make close combat vs animals playable. They should have pushed the release date back a bit i think. Well all i can think of is playing a caster character until the AI patch is out…

Bah I'm off to play Arx Fatalis and Quake 4. That will take 5 or 6 weeks. I'm not touching this thing till its prim and proper!

Gothic has never been received well in the US. Something is lost in translation I'm guessing. I've never enjoyed the Gothic series, though I keep buying them To me, it seems you have to be very patient before the story and character build-up gets going. Most Americans are all about instant gratification. If the game isn't roaring out of the box, it gets shelved quickly. If the game is buggy as well, you can just forget about it.