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0 pointsdatadrivenangel1y ago0 comments

The assertions are more around code quality. Game design is wonderful.

Apparently there are places where the code is like a thousand lines of if card_name then effect.

0 comments

For a project with lots of variation being maintained by a single person that’s totally fine.

Yep, there are days I yearn for just having a super long set of if statements, vs the over-engineered messes that I deal with on a daily basis.

So many codebases end up impenetrable in the pursuit of fancy design patterns...

npteljes1y ago

I think that too fancy code is just as bad as the original if-else spaghetti, but then even worse, because the patterns are abstract now as well.

npteljes1y ago

Bad code can have a really high cognitive load to maintain. Just to illustrate what bad means, take a look at this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programminghorror/comments/1cb6rca/...

I can see that having even bits of modification impacts lots of lines, where if written just a bit more saner, it could impact just a few.

Of course everyone is absolutely free to do the things however they want on their project. It's just that bad code, and bad choices bite back sometimes really badly. Project Zomboid is built in LUA for example, and it shows, it's a horrorshow not just to play, but to develop it as well. Their programmers spend a lot of time with just refactoring things. Besides functionality, maintainability should be a huge focus in my experience, so that the devs don't hate life if they have to touch the code again.

meheleventyone1y ago

The example you post is out of context and maybe a bit overly verbose but again it’s one guy maintaining it and is perfectly readable. Does anyone really struggle to understand that?

I’m back working on a twenty plus year old codebase (and game) that’s ~3 millions loc and would kill for something simple like that rather than some of the overabstracted crimes lurking within.

2 more replies

bongothrowaway1y ago

Undertale's code base is apparently no better. For games I don't think code quality is nearly as paramount; there's not a whole lot of maintenance going on there, though this doesn't apply to live service games.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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meheleventyone1y ago

For a project with lots of variation being maintained by a single person that’s totally fine.

Trasmatta1y ago

Yep, there are days I yearn for just having a super long set of if statements, vs the over-engineered messes that I deal with on a daily basis.

So many codebases end up impenetrable in the pursuit of fancy design patterns...

npteljes1y ago

I think that too fancy code is just as bad as the original if-else spaghetti, but then even worse, because the patterns are abstract now as well.

npteljes1y ago

Bad code can have a really high cognitive load to maintain. Just to illustrate what bad means, take a look at this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programminghorror/comments/1cb6rca/...

I can see that having even bits of modification impacts lots of lines, where if written just a bit more saner, it could impact just a few.

meheleventyone1y ago

The example you post is out of context and maybe a bit overly verbose but again it’s one guy maintaining it and is perfectly readable. Does anyone really struggle to understand that?

I’m back working on a twenty plus year old codebase (and game) that’s ~3 millions loc and would kill for something simple like that rather than some of the overabstracted crimes lurking within.

2 more replies

bongothrowaway1y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse