WOW EA admits to a cock up

[Celestra]

Just seen on the official site under Freetime that EA have admitted to a cock up

If your sim has sewn the gold badge custom clothes it changes the skins file in game and the patch cannot install because of that and henceforth the message to uninstall and reinstall freetime when patching

Obviously they didnt test the patch installation but is this a first by them to admit fricking it up

[rhodaloo]

My patch loaded just fine.  I suppose it was a good thing my only sim who had a gold sewing badge died before the patch came out. 

[Alex]

Oh noes can this be!? Yep, it's true.

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=af0e6c010e9a5076852043768446ffc2&directoryID=217&startRow=1&openItemID=item.217,root.1,item.43,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

How funny is that? They only bother testing when there is a problem. Or rather, the QA team didn't do jack shizzle and left it up to the programmers to track it down.

[Inge]

In my experience very few so-called testers actually test let alone give feedback.  I have a handful or less of communicative reliable people to test my hacks, and the rest just want to download the stuff and go off and whinge on other sites if it doesn't work.

I wonder what would happen if we made skins.package readonly and our sim got a gold badge?  Would the game crash?

[eevilcat]

In my experience very few so-called testers actually test let alone give feedback.  I have a handful or less of communicative reliable people to test my hacks, and the rest just want to download the stuff and go off and whinge on other sites if it doesn't work.

I wonder what would happen if we made skins.package readonly and our sim got a gold badge?  Would the game crash?

I have experienced both good and bad testing. When you have a proper dedicated test department with experienced testers it makes bugs much easier to track down. Of course that also assumes the team producing the code/content have provided detailed specs of expected behaviour for the QA team to test against. By this stage in the game EA will be far more interested in getting the product out the door than delivering something that is perfect; as time goes on the quality bar is lowered.

[seraphim]

Then again, you don't pay your testers.  EA does.

Why the hell should that matter? If you sign up to be a tester for something, you should fucking test it!

[Gus Smedstad]

A number of things can interfere with proper testing.

I've worked with QA departments who saw themselves as adversaries to the development team.  Weird, I know, but it happens, and it makes proper testing nearly impossible.

I've worked with individual testers who were awful.  It's a low paid job, often on a contract rather than permanent basis, and as a result the people in QA often aren't very good.  Some are, of course.

I've worked with prima donna programmers who refuse to acknowledge bugs until you beat them around the head and shoulders.  As a programmer, this annoyed me no end.

Worst of all, sometimes management decides to force release before either QA or development thinks the game is ready.  There's just no defense against that.

 - Gus

[ShortyBoo]

I couldn't figure out why the patch kept getting an error at skins.package, but it makes sense now since I have made lots of clothes on the sewing machine. Either way, I'm not deleting my skins.package since I'd lose all those clothes. It seems like they should have caught this error in the first place since they programed the game. I mean, they made it so clothes made on the sewing machine saved to the Skins.package and they knew the patch won't work if the file size of any of the files it needs to update is different than after a fresh install. So how'd they not know this would happen?

[Ryslin]

See someone said ..oh we can make this work faster by saving these new skins to the skins.package. Then didn't tell QA.
QA probably only ever tested originally to see if "yes" the new clothes appeared on a gold badge. Probably by just giving a gold badge and trying to sew.
My hunch is that the QA at EA is outsourced. They probably get a list of "this is what we changed" with no additional information about what those changes may or may not hook into. Why would the testers need to know that?!? If they knew the "details" they would be developers right?

The "darn" testers only need to know what to test and test it. The direct result of this thinking is exactly what we see here. I would bet they never tested the patch on a game that had been running in process to have multiple long term families. Who wants to lay bets that they often use a testing environment. Possibly half the game, one lot. They can only test whatever is to be tested at that moment in time. I can also guess that if they spend time messing around doing things other than what they are to test they get in trouble.

Gold badging a sim, making clothes then testing the patch is not obvious. The number crunchers may never have thought about testing it.

[Jelenedra]

Am I wrong, but I thought that making custom clothes was silver badge thing. Am I not remembering right?

[jsalemi]

Not to mention that no one ever bothered to tell the new programmers that it's usually not a good idea to modify system files -- that's what the 'My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2' directory is for.

[Ryslin]

Soo true Jsalemi..

and Jelenedra--
to be honest no idea, if it is silver or gold. I haven't gotten a sim that high in sewing yet. I was using the given examples in the thread of gold badge level.

[Jelenedra]

I can't remember, I don't THINK my sim got the gold badge, but my memory is a bit shady sometimes. I do know I've been using him as a clothing tool. All the toddlers in the house grew up into nice clothes thanks to him.

[ShortyBoo]

I'm pretty sure you need the gold badge to make custom clothes (where you pick the colors or patterns for each part) and with only a silver badge you can only make the clothes (Maxis or downloaded) that you find in CAS and can buy for your sims. So instead of them buying clothes to add to the wardrobe, sims can just sew those same clothes for less money.

[Ellatrue]

And this is why I haven't even ARRRed FT.

[Jelenedra]

I'm pretty sure you need the gold badge to make custom clothes (where you pick the colors or patterns for each part) and with only a silver badge you can only make the clothes (Maxis or downloaded) that you find in CAS and can buy for your sims. So instead of them buying clothes to add to the wardrobe, sims can just sew those same clothes for less money.

So, if that is all I have done, I should be okay without reinstalling?

[Ellatrue]

At this rate, I fully expect TS3 will cause our computers to catch fire and explode.

[Forrest_Roberts]

Stop arguing and let's discuss what really matters. When will they get a new patch up and running?

[Solowren]

Stop arguing and let's discuss what really matters. When will they get a new patch up and running?

Looks like someone ate his Wheaties this morning. 

I'm so glad I didn't install the patch the other day after I downloaded it. I don't need any more EA borkination.

[Sigmund]

Stop arguing and let's discuss what really matters. When will they get a new patch up and running?

Er, why are you asking this here? The modders here just fix whatever is borked by the patch, they don't make the patch itself.

[ScoobyDoo]

Not to mention that no one ever bothered to tell the new programmers that it's usually not a good idea to modify system files -- that's what the 'My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2' directory is for.

Not only that, but I bet it breaks multi-user support.

[Inge]

Well speaking of updating files erroneously - what about all the data files?  When you play one hood, *every* hood file is touched.  I bet they're all read and saved back, which is probably why the game takes so long to unload after you've finished playing.

[Alex]

Yeah, I've never understood why the game needs to do that. It's just a waste right? Going back to The Sims 1 (yes I have a slight obsession with it at the moment, but for the right reasons), it only ever opened up the neighborhood you were using. You could go ahead with external editing programs (like IFF Pencil) in say Neighborhood 1 for example while the game was in Nhood 2. It's fantastic, trust me.

[Stitches]

Well speaking of updating files erroneously - what about all the data files?  When you play one hood, *every* hood file is touched.  I bet they're all read and saved back, which is probably why the game takes so long to unload after you've finished playing.

Idk. That's why I only put one Neighborhood folder in at a time. The rest just hibernate in MyDocs.

[ScoobyDoo]

Well speaking of updating files erroneously - what about all the data files?  When you play one hood, *every* hood file is touched.  I bet they're all read and saved back, which is probably why the game takes so long to unload after you've finished playing.

Good, at least it's not just me that's having that problem. The shutdown time with Vista isn't too bad, but for 2003 it was absolutely horrible. Took longer to close up and clean up than to actually start the game.