#feature creep

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Letting the Features Creep

It actually takes quite a long time before a game gets to a point of being less accessible for new players due to feature creep.

The regular problem with feature creep/scope creep is Not Getting Launched. Imagine you're an indie dev making a JRPG and then you're like, "but FFVIII had that thing where one dude had a quicktime event to go nuts with the trigger button, and the other had a fighting game combo and another had timed swings for auto-crits. We could have little quicktime events to keep combat interesting!"

What you've got to understand is

a) There is no limit to the number of features like this you can include in your game. I learned this when I saw the feature in Bravely Default where they had a social element and you could bring in copies of other players' heroes if you'd passed them on the train, and also they could speed up your town reconstruction, like, wtf.

b) Quicktime events are coroutines. Coroutines are literally a whole region of programming you won't need in order to make a JRPG unless you decide you want quicktime events. Like, they're a skill! Your programmer might not have that in their repertoire already, and if they don't you're looking at having them learn a new coding discipline so you can have triggered attacks.

BUT.

On the OTHER hand.

I really don't have a problem with feature creep (ha, misspelled it "feature crepe" and I'm imagining that meaning you keep on adding delicious ingredients. Peanut butter? Sure! Strawberries and syrup and whipped cream? Chocolate chips! Is there even a crepe under there anymore?) in live-service games. Warframe has one of the wildest cases of feature creep and honestly wouldn't have survived as a game without it. It's a better game for it - multiple of the currently-understood "core features" of the game did not exist at launch and features, ya know, crept in and then they were great, and became core features that stuck around. Similar deal with Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms. Some players have a problem with new features like Seasons (in spite of them literally just being an overlay that hands you more free stuff for doing what you were doing already), but I very much do not. I think the game has some pretty clever gating to keep players from encountering material before they're ready, so that they don't get overwhelmed (I think doing something similar would help Warframe a ton). A lot of levels only appear after you've gotten close to the power level necessary to actually do them. Good stuff.

The point is that both games do varying levels of work on keeping the original problem I mentioned - the game getting confusing for new players - under control. Considering achievement stats suggest something like 95% of potential players drop off without unlocking a second planet I feel like Warframe could profit from working harder at this, but they didn't ask me. But what they don't do, and I'd argue they don't really need to do, is avoid feature creep due to the problem of never releasing. Because, like, they're released.

The Adventure Quest Model has proven successful for loads of games: You make a game, you release it, and then you patch it almost every day with new stuff for people to look at. Sometimes this will eventually result in a jumbled mess of a product but a) sometimes it won't and b) in the meantime you've gotten something onto the shelf to buy so who cares?

[alianoralacanta]

This does not decrease certain types of bloatware. This is because the classic method of solving the compatibility issue is to allow both preferences to have what they want in the same package. For example, providing the option to either use or not use ray tracing in the options menu, or have the program scan the computer at runtime for appropriate ray tracing drivers and gracefully fall back onto not ray tracing if the absence of such drivers is detected. (In the latter case, there's usually a switch anyway, in case the user finds ray tracing too slow or just plain dislikes it). Since it costs more hard drive space to have ray tracing + no ray tracing than to opt for either, this leads to bigger programs. (Not including the ray tracing gets a lot of complaints from the people who spend the most money on the sort of program where ray tracing gets considered in the first place). That said, I do have my trusty airgapped (no network or internet) Windows 7 Starter PC to reality-check my visual novels. 2 GB RAM, exactly as requested by OP, integrated chip, just about manages to have 2 cores in its processor. The one luxury is it does have a fast hard drive in it. A visual novel should not absolutely require an i5 and 8 GB of memory to run at low detail levels. The only DRM it should require is whatever is forced by the delivery mechanism (good luck trying to get Steam to not include its own DRM in the game!)

My solution for bloatware is this: by law you should hire in every programming team someone who is Like, A Guy who has a crappy laptop with 4GB and an integrated graphics card, no scratch that, 2 GB of RAM, and a rural internet connection. And every time someone in your team proposes to add shit like NPCs with visible pores or ray tracing or all the bloatware that Windows, Adobe, etc. are doing now, they have to come back and try your project in the Guy's laptop and answer to him. He is allowed to insult you and humilliate you if it doesn't work in his laptop, and you should by law apologize and optimize it for him. If you try to put any kind of DRM or permanent internet connection, he is legally allowed to shoot you.

With about 5 or 10 years of that, we will fix the world.

[yujofficial]

The Feature Trap: Less is More

Feature creep can turn a great product into a confusing mess. As a top UX design studio we delve into how an overload of features detracts from usability and offer actionable strategies to keep your product streamlined and user-friendly. Read our latest blog to ensure your product remains focused and effective.

Read the blog here:

[eishtmo]

The Story of a Cat Door

This is my cat:

We've had her for almost 7 years now. This is her last Christmas, under the tree. She had been caught as a stray and we adopted her sometime after. She's fixed. She likes to go outside, and given her past, she can take care of herself. If it were up to her, we'd leave the back door open and she could go in and out at will.

The issue is we live in Texas, and if you didn't know, it gets stupidly hot here over the summer. And it's been getting hotter, but that has NOTHING to do with global climate change caused by human action.

Our back yard also opens to a wide ditch that is the home of a variety of animals including other cats, possums and skunks. So we generally don't want to leave the back door open, and installing a cat door is impossible as it is a sliding glass door.

But we have an alternative: The garage. It's not "outside" but it's close enough that the cat is fine with it. But the garage is on the otherside of the house where we spend most of the day. If it were my choice, I wouldn't let the cat into the garage at all, but I have been vetoed by the rest of the family. So they open the door so the cat can go in and out of the garage at will.

Except it's a garage, in Texas. It's not that it isn't insulated, there is some, except for the giant metal door at one end. Yeah, it gets warm in there, but not as much as outside. Regardless, it let's heat into the house, and given the last couple of years of record heat NOT CAUSED BY GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE STOP SUGGESTING IT IS, it's been straining the AC.

Okay, so a month or so ago, they open a new farm supply store, Murdoc's, in the north of the city. It's a large Tractor Supply, basically, with all the same kinds of things, but they had a deal where you got a percent off of anything you fit into a bucket. And you get a bucket! Anyway, in the pet area there was a cat door for something like 17 bucks, and with the discount it was like 15, and I have tool, I can install a cat door in the door into the garage.

So we get it home, I read the instructions, and yeah, it's not that hard. Just have to measure the cat and line it up.

I'm just about ready to go when I start looking at the door and realize there's a problem. The garage floor is about 3 inches lower than the house floor. Getting out, no problem for the cat, getting back in might be a bit harder. Oh, she probably could do it, but she's going to get older.

Okay, that's not good. But it's also an opportunity. My mother mostly uses a wheelchair. She can stand for short periods of time and walk with a walk for short distances, but mostly she's wheelchair bound. If she wants to get into the garage, she has to get out of the chair, step down into the garage, then pull the chair through or grab a spare walker we keep near the door. Putting in a ramp is probably the a good idea for her anyway.

Yeah, I could build a ramp. I just got some concrete bits for my drill, and a trip to the hardware store I can get all the parts to build a ramp. But I can't make it permanent as right where the ramp is sits the dryer, which will have to be moved at some point, right into the path of the ramp. Okay, I can work around that.

Wait, the water heater. It's right across from the dryer, in small closet with a standard door. So I have to remove that door or cut or. . .

Luckily the door isn't in a proper frame, so I take that out and get a cheap according door. But the screws it comes with are too damn short, wouldn't even get into the wood above the drywall of the door frame. Go out, get longer screws. Install the according door.

Then build the ramp. I stack a 2x2 on top of a 1x2, screw them together then anchor them to the foundation step. Then build the ramp with a couple pieces of plywood (36" long, btw for every 1 inch of drop, you go out 12" for a proper wheelchair ramp). Put in a few spars to support the middle of the ramps, then cover it with carpet tiles and screw the thing into the support step, and that's all that holds it. I then need to put bricks on the ramp because the plywood is warped just enough.

Okay, now to install the cat door. The only hitch is that the door is VERY heavy. It's a proper exterior door going between the house and garage, as it should be! But it's heavy as hell. Still, with my sister's help, we get it down, cut the hole install the cat door, and put the whole thing back. And we're done!

So this is the point in the story where I tell you the cat refuses to use the cat door, but not so much. She hasn't opened the flap on her own, no, but she has used it to get in and out of the garage, so I'm calling this a damn win.

That's the end of my story. All so the cat can go into the garage anytime she wants without destroying our electric bill. Just in time for the 100F days to stop.

[ewanspence]

Google’s YouTube Is Testing an Online-Games Offering - WSJ

...because obviously I would go to a video player for a little but of gaming.

[i3asil]

Writing Tips : Feature Creep!

Hey there! As I mentioned last time, I wanted to write about this in the future... and now is the future! Behold! Anyway, before we can get to the topic, we need to first establish what Feature Creep even is. Have you ever cooked something and found that you needed more pepper? And then Salt? And maybe a few cloves of garlic? And then this that and more and end up with a mess? Well its similar to this. Feature Creep is at its core, the underlying feeling of 'missing something' and 'wanting to spice things up' and 'adding more things' with the belief that it will make the end result better, while actually not only turning the project into a seemingly endless time sink, but also overcomplicating it and overall dragging it down and ruining it. Don't take this wrongly though, just like with anything in life, there is a balance of how many 'features' we can add before it becomes 'creep'.  Just like how much water you can drink before you die from drowning. As discussed in the previous chapter, we talked about how to pick a genre and stick with it and focus on it. Well, even Genres and Storylines have sub genres and sub-sub genres, and tropes galore to pick from. This is what makes writing so fun. The options are endless! However that is exactly why its important to reign it in and look at the red thread you intend to follow along and to watch out not to let side strands overtake it. Things you can do to control your feature creep is like I said last time, to plan out in advance. Think before hand of ideas and story lines you intend to include and try to stick to those ideas. Once you have this rough framework, you can start to add the 'bricks', the chapters, the scenes. These are what form the pillars holding up your building. You can be crazy with it, you can totally branch out a lot too! But it is important to be consistent! If you start slowing down the pace of the main story progression to tell several novels worth of side content, especially when it starts to embark on entirely new stories, you need to ask yourself "Shouldn't this just be a different story?" That is a VERY important question to ask yourself, truely. A story can have a lot of content in it, but it needs to be paced correctly and in a way to create worthwhile payoffs for the readers. If you take a lot of time on side content, make sure that when you get back to the main story, that you make it either longer than the side content or far better quality. Then there is also the talk of characters. How many characters do you need to tell your story? How deep do you need to go with them? Depending on the size of your novel, you can go wide easily. And it works quite often. ( Hey there GRR. Martin ) but if this is a very early project it might be smart to tone it down. To rather focus on a smaller cast and to carefully allow your readers to learn about each character with much needed time. I remember when starting to read A Song of Ice and Fire and after the first few chapters I already had to keep track of dozens of names and their importance. This is amazing for many, but also difficult to approach for others. Slowly adding more characters in a natural way is much simpler for people to follow. On top of that, there is the talk about detail. I remember during Literacy class in my school days, there were some novels where every page felt like a sack of bricks. A single fleeting moment described to such a detail that  despite the intent being that one can picture it perfectly, most didn't have the mental capacity to actually keep track of it all. The first few pages of one such stories described a man entering a living room, and going in depth down to the very fibre of a wallpaper. Now this WOULD be great if it was relevant at all, ever. But it wasn't. Try to use detail strategically. Your characters should be detailed, but even that can be sprinkled in over time. Go broad at first and add detail as you go on. And if you're writing a crime story? Detail the scene, what is important for this crime? Detail is a writer's weapon. Constant detail is like a data overload for readers, and it cannot possibly be kept in memory. But varying detail, going light and then eventually heavier on the more important parts, is important to give people a breather and also to essentially give them a sign that something is about to get important. That said, you can and should add detail in some random seeming spots simply to make the reader pay attention more often. Akin to a teacher selecting a random kid in the class to answer a question out of nowhere. Prompting attention is important to make sure a reader stays active. All too often rather calm moments can cause someone to "skimming" mode. So adding occasionally higher detail will limit this and also make it so that the important parts aren't spoiled by their detail alone. What’s most important here however is that this is all a VERY fine recipe and nearly impossible to balance. Even the best of writers struggle with the right way to control feature creep. Its fun to add new things. Adding new stories, scenes, chapters, playful things. Though it is something that everyone slowly learns how to do better and truely, the most important question to ask yourself is "When do I just write a new story with all this extra material?" Many stories from some of my Novels have already become their own Novel ideas, that is how much I can feature creep my writing. There is still much I could talk about and go even deeper into this topic, but this is some of the more easy to grasp gist I can try to explain to you. Thank you as always for your time! -Basil

[champion-of-love]

i can't remember what interactions they had in the show or books but in my head maddie and dexter are the best of friends. maddie's the one who decides this (and dexter just goes along with it) and it starts because she sees dexter crushing hard on raven and decides that he has good taste and this automatically made him her friend. and whenever dexter sees maddie coming his way he thinks "ah what new sisyphean hell am i gonna go through today"

[heroofthreefaces]

“It’s a machine that goes ding. Made it myself. Lights up in the presence of shape-shifter DNA. Ooo. Also it can microwave frozen dinners from up to twenty feet and download comics from the future. I never know when to stop.”

GSM F88 Phone Watch (2008)

[n4rval]

the stalker

[b0tster]

god fucking dammit i gotta do a snake ball bowling bonus stage dont i

[theminecraftbee]

i love how tango spent most of that video doing a pretty much unnecessary overhaul of the front door of decked out and then was like. don't worry the light's at the end of the tunnel we're about ready to start level four. like. king. do you know how the light at the end of the tunnel might get here faster,

[pumafysketch]

I had the honor of appearing on CreepCast’s CreepTV a few episodes ago, it makes be giddy with excitement to share this with everyone

This was the second Marble Hornets video :D

[blue-skelly]

Reading Dracula Daily for the first time and listening to @re-dracula. It is chillingly good.

[whmp]

Whumpdev=alive?????????

Just askin :3

yes!

chained in my basement, malnourished and mistreated, but not forgotten, and still very much alive.

unfortunately, college has been kicking my ass lately, and will continue to do so until i finish my master's thesis. the good news is that this will continue for only about a month before i have more time to work on the project! the bad news is that i have only about a month to finish the entire paper. :' )

here's a little screenshot from a story sequence to prove that the project has not been completely neglected and forgotten!

[pepsicoughdrops]

shakily smokes my cigarette as i hand this to you

(click for better quality)

[rlyehtaxidermist]

hey who added this feature. who got developers to sign off on adding this feature. did you talk to a single cryptographer or was this just assembled by a group of MBAs complaining about 2FA without any thought to what the technology is meant to do. asking for an enemy