Rant - The ways in which the sims community is completely insane.

[neriana]

It's actually a lot easier than expected to learn how to code with WeiDu. If you can write and think in a logical manner at all, you can learn it, and it doesn't take too long. The main issue is the bug testing, wihch is a chore.

[Jelenedra]

Yeah, I dunno, maybe I'll learn a new hobby. =P I just thought it would be cute to make a lil sister for Yoshimo. That would insist on calling him Yoshi-chan and driving him insane and then become the party's thief after he 'leaves.'

[neriana]

Yeah, I dunno, maybe I'll learn a new hobby. =P I just thought it would be cute to make a lil sister for Yoshimo. That would insist on calling him Yoshi-chan and driving him insane and then become the party's thief after he 'leaves.'

I would so totally play that. It would be a good way to start getting into modding too, a normal non-romanceable NPC is waaaaay less work than a romanceable one.

Check out tutorials, and jump into chat at gibberlings3 and/or pocketplane. They're really nice about teaching stuff -- even the people I had the big blow-out with were nice about that.

[Jelenedra]

Heheh, I might, my first thought was to have her in the party after he leaves, but then I realized it'd be cuter if she was around more than that. =p

[J. M. Pescado]

It's actually a lot easier than expected to learn how to code with WeiDu. If you can write and think in a logical manner at all, you can learn it, and it doesn't take too long. The main issue is the bug testing, wihch is a chore.

You'd be surprised how many people CAN'T. Their attempts to learn a programming tend to center around wringing their hands over WHAT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE to learn, when, in fact, that's the wrong answer: Programming is not about learning programming languages. All programming languages are pretty much the same. Learning to program is a mindset. It's just like killing people is not about learning how to use guns or knives. Killing people is a mindset, guns and knives are merely tools. There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people.

[Jelenedra]

From what I saw, the dialogue bit of it seems easy. <CHARNAME> is for the PC and then there is a value for male/female pronouns and at the end of each dialogue response is a tag for the next dialogue tree. I'd just have to figure out the coding for banters and timing and such and flags for different gimmicks. Seemed fairly simply. I'd just need to write out the stuff before I worried about coding it.

[J. M. Pescado]

I am mildly disturbed by what the twisted and sick mind of weird Jelenedra-people could produce. You have this disturbing taste for "fanporn".

[Jelenedra]

Actually, no. Not at all. Wasn't aware I gave that impression. 

[neriana]

Jelenedra, do what I do: copy the code from other people, then modify it for your own use .

[Jelenedra]

That's how I did my webpage. And my sims clothing. And my sims hair. Alpha-editing is a wonderful thing.

[dizzy]

Okay, here's my take on this issue:

This insanity is the direct result of EA/Maxis's stupidity. Remember how SimAntics was the well-guarded IP that they would threaten to sue over? Well, they may have changed their attitude, but they attracted a lot of similarly minded people.

What was ironic was how utterly bug-prone their SimAntics code was and still is. I can hardly fault the programmers, though. Edith is what they're forced to work with, so of course their code is going to be bloated, inefficient and filled with logical errors. Edith is obviously complete crap from the design up.

That's not to say that Sims 2 is badly designed. The programmers who actually put together the code apparently built another design on top of Edith. Now, the high-level design is a pretty good one, albeit a bit complex for what it does. Where it suffers is from its dependence on SimAntics. A good example is the classic "jump bug" and the "fixes" they made. Iterative shared execution? Um, hello? Could we please start using cutting edge 1970s technology (preemptive execution)?

To make life even more insanity-inducing, EA cranks out Sims 2 EPs every six months. If the programmers had been spending the past couple years or so debugging, no problem, but it seems like they spend most of their time debugging the features they just added. Meanwhile, they post a "patch" on their web site which supposedly fixes the bug-filled features.

Now that they've had a couple years of this, you can add regressions to the bug list, which makes their work load even heavier. They're forced to ask their paying customers to help them solve all these problems. EA is clearly not being part of the solution here.

[twojeffs]

*twojeffs nods in agreement. 

[Paperbladder]

I thought they actually rebuilt the SimAntics code instead of reusing it from TS1.  No wonder why the AI seems so stupid, among other things.  What I don't get is how there are more fixes for TS2 stuff than there were in TS1, is this because the code is supposedly open now?

[twojeffs]

They didn't rebuild anything. They started right were the SimAntics code left off in Makin Magic and have just kept right on building their tower of crap ever higher and higher.

[ElfPuddle]

Suddenly, things are much more clear.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's not to say that Sims 2 is badly designed. The programmers who actually put together the code apparently built another design on top of Edith. Now, the high-level design is a pretty good one, albeit a bit complex for what it does. Where it suffers is from its dependence on SimAntics. A good example is the classic "jump bug" and the "fixes" they made. Iterative shared execution? Um, hello? Could we please start using cutting edge 1970s technology (preemptive execution)?

You can't be serious. Preemptive execution? That would be essentially creating a multithreading NIGHTMARE. If you think the CURRENT system is bad, picture how bad it will get when your code can suddenly be punted in mid-operation, resulting in some other object fiddling the memory-bits you were trying to work with! Code would become a massively bloated affair of locks, lock-checking, stalling, and thrashing. Multithreaded scripting in games is a Very Bad Idea.

They didn't rebuild anything. They started right were the SimAntics code left off in Makin Magic and have just kept right on building their tower of crap ever higher and higher.

This is apparently why there's been a quiet move from SimAntics to this "LUA" business. Firstly, it apparently is easier to use. Secondly, it's not accessible to *US* at present, so they get to retake control of their coding.

[dizzy]

Preemptive scheduling is the obvious way to go, unless you like the system of arbitrary Idle()s to avoid the dreaded Too Many Iterations errors.

I admit it would be a nightmare in SimAntics as is to simply hack preemptive scheduling into it, but that's only because they don't provide a smart way to handle data sharing between objects. And that's another issue I have with SimAntics... 

[J. M. Pescado]

Preemptive scheduling is the obvious way to go, unless you like the system of arbitrary Idle()s to avoid the dreaded Too Many Iterations errors.

The "arbitrary Idles" is essentially your "preemption point" right there. Besides, how would you map such a thing into codes that obviously must be run atomically? You can't have the game just suddenly deciding to stop running a piece of code in the middle of an operation which really needs to be run as a single step to make any sense. Believe me, I've dealt with this in game scripting before. It's a giant mess when steps of code cannot be relied upon to complete themselves before something arbitrarily interrupts it to do something else. Most expert game designers seem to agree that multithreaded processes are NOT the way to go in games.

[ElfPuddle]

And now things are blurry again.

[J. M. Pescado]

And now things are blurry again.

Quiet, foolish ElfPuddle. The real programmers are talking here.

[ElfPuddle]

*salutes, shuts up, and goes away*

[laeshanin]

Unless you plan on selling an object (or selling support for that object) there is no point in having copyright on it. That's why all my mods and such are public domain.

Wouldn't selling something like this be strictly illegal? Or, at least, extremely difficult, as you would be launching yourself into the domains of copyright and other nasty legal terms.

[Jelenedra]

*bleeds from the ears and eyes* Lord...

[Immy]

And now things are blurry again.

* Immy points and laughs.

Silly Elfie.

* Immy points and laughs some more.

[dizzy]

The "arbitrary Idles" is essentially your "preemption point" right there. Besides, how would you map such a thing into codes that obviously must be run atomically? You can't have the game just suddenly deciding to stop running a piece of code in the middle of an operation which really needs to be run as a single step to make any sense.

I take it that game experts are not exactly great programmers. Preemptive scheduling is a simple matter of organizing your tasks and paying proper homage to a finely tuned timer and refined port/signal systems rather than static variables.

But that is a minor detail, really. My main complaint here is that Maxis cannot handle the basic job of getting it right and making their code just work. If they existed, Pets would be a very bad idea. It would be even more prone to BFBVFS and cause even further breakage in my Uni dorm (which I'm currently playing without tables thanks to all the regressions and new bugs they've dumped onto Uni).