The Sweater Effect

[trufun202]

/sigh

Perhaps some of you experienced coders have heard or used the metaphor, "The Sweater Effect." Imagine that your application is a beautiful sweater, tailored to perfection. Then, one day, you notice a snag... And, in the process of fixing this "snag" you manage to unravel the entire sweater.

The beautiful sweater that was once my application is now a tangled ball of yarn... This is the not-so-glamorous side of software engineering.

Ugh, this is not the zone of fun at 4:30 on a Friday - I need a beer.

[aamesxdavid]

I end up with the opposite problem - if I finish a song after 5 on Friday, I have no idea what to do. Start a new song and not even get the expert track done? Keep looking over the same song and maybe change one or two things? Check the ES forums?

..it's obvious now which one I chose.

[trufun202]

I end up with the opposite problem - if I finish a song after 5 on Friday, I have no idea what to do. Start a new song and not even get the expert track done? Keep looking over the same song and maybe change one or two things? Check the ES forums?

..it's obvious now which one I chose.

So, when you "finish a song" are you able to test it within the game, or does your work get passed onto the engineers for integration? Just curious how that process works.

[aamesxdavid]

So, when you "finish a song" are you able to test it within the game, or does your work get passed onto the engineers for integration? Just curious how that process works.

We always launch them in-game first. There's basically a script file with all of the songs, so you just have to add it there once it's mixed, and the in-house tools read from that file so you can launch them at any time. We usually do it with no venue (so it's just a black screen with the scrolling track), and have handy little cheats like turning the crowd meter off and autoplay. We even have a separate program to test all of the character animations, to make sure they're as accurate as possible so that everyone can ignore them.

[Falco Girgis]

Welcome to the reason I decided to rewrite the ES Engine, Trufun.

I know exactly what you're talking about. It sucks, and it's extremely demoralizing. But enduring it, and diving deep into the framework to resolve whatever sort of issue plagued it to begin with is extremely rewarding.

You come out feeling like the guy who won a bike marathon with testicular cancer.

[avansc]

well, testicular, stomach, lung, and brain cancer.
then won what some might call a bike race, i like to call it 2200miles of death.... 7 times..

anyways. i hate the sweater effect. in real life i mean, i always pull that bitch.