Suggesters - Why The Standard Code Rant?

[Williwaw]

I realize I've said things could be "easily" implemented in some of my posts.

 

I'd like to clarify that (as a programmer myself) I mean "easily" in the sense that "this mechanic already exists in the game, so it can hopefully be adapted" (as opposed to reinventing the wheel for a new mechanic entirely).

 

For example, making a new proc that affects all your damage powers would be "easy" in the sense that Interface Incarnate and one of the VEAT ATE pieces already do that.  (It's clear that's relatively new tech, because Fiery Embrace does it the hard way)  Changing the aggro caps for just Tankers would not be "easy" because that's a hard-coded number, not AT-dependent.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Now, why Cryptic chose to use regular C in 2003/whenever, I have no idea

I suspect low-level optimization, same as the first Rollercoaster Tycoon (which came out in 1999 and relied on a mixture of C and Assembly for the same purpose). Remember that in the early 2000's we were still on single-core CPUs with core frequencies somewhere around 1 gHZ (see the original minimum specs)

[jack_nomind]

Now, why Cryptic chose to use regular C in 2003/whenever, I have no idea

I suspect low-level optimization, same as the first Rollercoaster Tycoon (which came out in 1999 and relied on a mixture of C and Assembly for the same purpose). Remember that in the early 2000's we were still on single-core CPUs with core frequencies somewhere around 1 gHZ (see the original minimum specs)

 

With no sources or verification I'm going to confidently state it's because it's 1) what they knew; 2) was cheaper (for a variety of reasons) than alternatives; and 3) because CoH is a MUD, but with pictures.

[Profit]

I heard from Leo that the code for CoH is a combination of spaghetti, prayers, superglue, a box of spare parts and duct tape. I am totally amazed at what has been done.

 

Hell, Positron admitted, back in one of the meet&greet events at the San Diego Comic-Con, several issues before shutdown, that the code was spaghetti and baling wire, and each beta pushed to the PTS was accompanied with "please, don't have too much break this time" prayers. Unless you've got Torquemada enforcing the coding design standards, this is going to happen to any big programming project as it goes through revisions and has coding staff move on to be replaced by new coding staff. And sometimes even that doesn't help. Programmers want to write code and see it up and running; documentation takes a seat way in the back of the bus, and even documenting everything that you do isn't going to help when the only way you found to do something without rewriting huge chunks of code was to hook into some obscure function in a module that did something completely different. Which then got updated in a patch unconnected to either your addition or the module's original function.

 

@srmalloy Torquemada actually passed away a few years ago from cancer.