Maniaplanet 2 Update

[rickostidich]

It is time to say my words:
first of all, the 20 euros spent for <TrackMania2 Canyon> are amongst the BEST money I've spent in all of my life.
So far I've got more than 500 hours of pure FUN with it, and it's more than enough worth 100 times the price.

Once this has been told, please listen carefully to what I tell you: it is **NOT** normal that programs have bugs.
== DON'T LET WE FOOLED BY 'PROGRAMMERS' THAT IT SHOULD BE NORMAL THAT PROGRAMS HAVE BUGS. ==
I know what I'm saying, I am a computer programmer since 1977, and in 35 years of professional programming, so far NO ONE of my programs **ever** had ONE single bug, or 'unexpected behaviour'.
It is not that I'm a God (or probably yes?! ;]), it's a matter of programming style.

I know that nowadays my programming style is rather unique: I do *everything* by myself, directly in machine language, from scratch, without using *any* imported library or anything, and limiting the calls to the operating system just for mandatory reasons. (Of course I use this style also for the business programs I do as my job. And, believe me, this style is not slower than any other, while it provides the best performance, and *reliability*.)
Instead, nowadays, the computer programs rely too much on compilers, linkers, st**pid frameworks, thousands of useless boring layers, and at the end the most st**pid operating system's functions and it's 'drivers'.

Moreover, nowadays there are thousands of wonnabes that pretend to be a 'computer genius', just because they're not able (or willing) to do anything else then pushing buttons on a keyboard.
And I know how they're working: when they have a problem, instead of studying technical documentations, they just do a quick search on google, and then cut-and-paste pieces of code from other unreliable 'programmers' found on the web.
Those pieces of crap go into the 'software' of our computers, cellphones, cars and airplanes, medical and army equipment, ..., everywhere.

The result of this informatics 'fashion', is that nowadays the computer programming quality is bad.
And this, unfortunately, includes my dear, favourite, game TrackMania.

Today I downloaded and tested the latest 'flight simulator' from microsuck, "Flight".
They changed it a lot, building a quite 'cute' arcade game, and at the same time the most STUPID simulator I ever tried in all my life.
I am also a real-life airplane pilot, and let me say that an airplane that looses speed while descending, it's a PITY that screams vengeance to God. (I don't know how to say it in english, this is literal translation from italian - but I hope you get what I mean!)

The good news is that 'microsuck flight' is FREE for download and play (you just pay for additional airplanes and scenaries), while the bad news is that I'm really TIRED of free crap. I would prefer to pay my 20 euros and get a program that is at least worth the price.

To summarize: Please, my friends, and my dear Nadeo programmers, just help me change this stupid fashion that is ruining day by day the world of computer science.

Bye my friends, see you on TM servers racing the hell out of our cars!!
Rick

[eyebo]

An interesting post Rick.
You bring up some points I never thought about.
Do you know Steve Gibson by any chance? He sounds like a kindred spirit of yours.

[rickostidich]

Thank you Eyebo!!
My goal was exactly to 'bring up some points that probably somebody never thought about'.

I forgot to say that there are many good-quality programmers out there, but that with this informatics trend, they have little chance to show off theirs guts, since they're mixed with the wonnabes mentioned above, and they often fall in using the same ineffective programming style, due to bureaucracy pressure.

I probably already heard about mr. Steve Gibson, but I've never seen his site, so thank you for pointing it out, I'll take a deep look at it!

[justanother1]

Don't know if this is new, or a "bug", but if you load a texture Mod into the map editor and let it calculate shadows, the Mod will then be on the Load screen when you exit the map editor .. kinda cool!! I never noticed this before ....

[arc_]

This was already the case in MP1.0

[justanother1]

whoa there's more .. if you go to Multiplayer after ... the mod will load as Default texture !!
Here's some of Ganja's stuff with Red Planet mod from Maniapark .... notice that's online !!

[TGYoshi]

...

As casual coder (it's not my job, so no need to whine me down); it's exactly what makes coding fun. High-level programming languages aren't such a harass to work with and allow bigger applications without too much mess. Besides that, teamwork is also easier to apply if you don't write in 0's and 1's (something close to that at least =P).
The difference between you, coding in machine language and me, coding in some upper layer language, is that often don't take in account what actually happens at the conversion and what the libraries itself actually do. This often causes bugs, just like bad communication in the organisation itself does.
If I code something myself (even though I do use libraries etc), the application does work a lot better since I know exactly what happens.

Though I won't disagree with the fact that it's not normal for programs to have bugs, but it actually is normal that they have bugs. Nowadays pretty much any games, or other applications got several bugs. Some more then another, and some more severe bugs then another.

Yet I still think confusion is the biggest thing that messes everything up, as I've stated in my previous post.

[Hylis]

Thanks rickostidich for your comments

About bugs, it starts to appears more when the compexity and interactions between parts of the software are higher. When we change something, we can not think of all the consequence when there are thousands that many depend of other people. Maniaplanet 2 is probably around 2 million C++ lines of code and an unexpected behavior can easily slip into the everyday of coding. I know there are still many improvements to do and things to fix. But at least you played a lot so far! Hope it continues.

[justanother1]

One more little request ..... Since Arc_ was so nice to update his "Unlimiter" and we can build custom blocks per his importer, would it be possible for you to Post some basic info for some of the standard blocks (road height, angles, center concrete dimensions, as so we can match ours somewhat decent. I'm gonna play with his kit a little, and see if I can come up with a tutorial, maybe.

[rickostidich]

Thanks TGYoshi and Hylis for your answers!!
Believe me, the programs that I write are not short or simple by any means, and it's not a matter of how many lines of code they are. It's a matter of programming style, and the same applies to team-working. If your part of code doesn't work correctly together with someone else's part, the possible cases are 2: -he wrote a bad documentation, -or you didn't read it.

Last thing: C++ and other "high-level languages" SUCK. The CPU only speaks ONE language: the "machine language". Or it is that you learn it, or you have to somehow translate what you write. But don't expect anything better than how "Google Translate" translates english to chinese.

However: this whole argument about the MP 2.0 buggy update was not a tragedy in my case, the game still works (and I still use it a lot!!), though I mainly have 2 problems:
-I can't hear the sound of my engine
-in the replays that I saved, the car liveries and horn are all reset to grey, default horn.

I have some other little troubles, but I can live with them.
I hope (and expect) that these issues be fixed in a month or something, but no problem I have patience.

I took part in this conversation just because for me it's instead a tragedy when I see people assuming or accepting the fact that it's 'normal' or 'ordinary' that published programs have bugs. For God's sake, IT IS NOT.

If I was Mr. Nadeo, I would have written: "Friends users, we are really in a hurry to release the ShootMania, and although you probably don't give a damn about it, it'll be useful for you too because we'll become a bigger company and the entire World will be full of high-quality games like TrackMania. So please be patient and give us a help in testing the new system!".

Bye!! ;]