A post mortem about one of the highly anticipated but "launch failed" pojects I did. This is THE talk I was sued about by the publisher as I was too honest.
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2004: Söldner - a Post Mortem
1. Söl dner - Secr et War s
A Post Mortem
Teut Weidemann
Managing Director, Wings
Direcor of Design, Jowood
2. Overview
• History
• Examining Issues
– Design
– Experience
– Code
– QA
– Marketing
• What we learned
• Q&A
– Wings Resource count
– Söldner Sales
3. History: 2000-2004
Gamestar Test Quote: “When you die you loose
all your hard earned money”
Wrong: You always get a minimum of 3500
when you die, if you had more you even keep it.
4. History: Year 2000
• Acquisition of Wings in Mai
• Plans: Base Tech - Söldner - MMO
• Pre Production, Planning, Staffing
• Meanwhile:
– Counseling: acquisition of Massive
– Counseling: acquisition of Products (Spellforce)
– Online Presence, Websites
– Web/Ftp Server setup & management
– Teamgrowth: +4 Artists (team 7 total)
5. History: 2001
• Team Growth:
– Programmers: +4
– Artists: +1
– Admin: +3, team total: 15
• Preproduction Base, Design
• Interim:
– Panzer Elite Spec. Edition
– Community Management: Jowood forums
– Managing Online Games (WW3, Cultures2 etc.)
– Being Development Director of Jowood
6. History: 2002
• Jowood Crises:
– Cash flow limits to Salaries only, if at all
– 25% of employees have to go, incl. Co-founder
• Team Change:
– Programmers: -3
– Admin: -2
• Living with the crisis: month to month worries
– Too many tasks on some resources
– Planning failsafe: looking for alternatives
– Effectivity drops by 30%
7. History: 2003
• JoWooD: surviving! Replanning, Cash still tight
• Second growth: ordering process, planned 12/2003 release
• Oops #1: QA? -> Build your own
• Oops #2: no Marketing (Spellforce took it all)
– We had to do Online Marketing
– We had to do Offline Marketing
– Cover and Packaging
• Oops #3: We had to do Worldwide Serverdeals
– Not task of Partners (BigBen or Encore)
• Oops #4: Release of public beta bombed
• 16. December 2004: delivery of beta candidate
8. History: 2004
• QA starts slow
• Soon being discovered: we need more time
– > rescheduled March 2004
• Delivering Master Candidate each month
• BigBen insists on 2 more polishing months
– > Rescheduled May 2004
• Release end of May/04 (EU)
• Release end of June/04 (US)
• Since then monthly updates as planned
9. Launch
• We were caught unaware how big the hype was
• Bad reviews
• Bugs
• Problems we never seen before in testing
• Angry customers
• Sales ok in GAS, bad in EU/US
• But WHY?
10. Examining Design
Gamestar quote: It takes forever until you have
enough money to afford a vehicle for the huge
maps
Wrong: with $3500 startmoney you can always
afford a Lada ($800) and equipment
11. Design
• Dropping weapons: it’s so much easier not to
• ADS, changing environments
– Lightning the scene is hard, no precalculated lightmaps
– No static mesh in 3d cards (speed issues)
• One world design
– no level load/reset means errors add up on time (and
servers run days/weeks)
– all real time, no pause (even in menu’s)
– Remember: this tech was designed to be MMO
• No experience in Avatar games means cyclic
approach to design
12. Design: good
• Overall design worked: people believed in
the product, expectations high
• Generating content: settlement, landscape
and foilage generation works
• Combined Arms works
• ADS, UCS, unique player names, no
preselected classes: work together well
13. Design: Bad
• Designer overloaded since 2002: Producer,
Designer, Managing Director, Marketing
Support, Mastering
• Design not complete at stages due to this
• Cyclic design and re-evaluation took too
long: too many cycles
• This led to unnecessary code rewrites
• Wanting too much: (see next slide)
14. Single Player Components
Multiplayer Soldiers UCS Portal
Client: Wheeled SWS: 70 Unique Name
3d Renderer
Physics
AI Tanks AFV: 60 Serverlists
Netcode
Particle/FX
Scriptsystem Helicopters TCM Chat
Overlay/GUI
Terrain
Landscape Generators
Scenatio Generator
Jets AGS: 200 Patcher
Debug tools, etc.
Server CCP CD Keys
Linux Server CMM Messenger
15. Experience & Complexity
GameStar: “... In game xyz you had intuitive
controls like “wasd” etc. but in Söldner ...”
Comment: Söldner has the identical interface, it has
been adapted to “the” standard
16. Experience: Avatars
• Animation & Avatars: we rewrote soldier code 5 times. Still
not right.
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benötigt. benötigt. benötigt. benötigt.
17. Experience: Multiplayer
• Multiplayer: no experience meant suboptimal netcode and
side effects
– Designing async game flows is a pain
– Synced databases are the future, but why did we do our own?
• MP and changing environments: some things no longer
work like “Bomb-Run”
• Server as master meant sacrificing speed and efficiency:
server runs 32 clients (theoretically)
• Always developing 2 games: SP and MP
– Coders always need 2 comps (server - client)
– Many things need to be load tested (16 players min)
18. Experience: Physics
• Physics: meant adjusting whole project to it
• Taiming physic engines is an artform by itself
• Collision code was finally working when we
enslaved it by the physic system
• We used ODE (open source physics engine) which
helped a lot
19. Experience: Portal
• Portal: no GameSpy, meant an additional whole project:
– Login/Logout
– Unique Name handling
– Server Lists
– Load Balancing
– Messenger
– Auto Patch System
– Cd Key Handling
• You ask why? GameSpy makes business with YOUR
game and YOUR customer ... And charges YOU for it!
– No secure cd keys
– Endusers don’t like it
– Many features we needed not available in 2001/2002
20. Code
GameStar: “The game has serious problems with
water: any vehicle touching water explodes”
Comment: Your beloved Bf1942 does the same
and you weren’t bitching at all about it
21. Code: Good
• Open Source Physics were painless more or less
• Landscape Renderer: streets, dynamic texture
generation, 25km View distance
• Auto Generation of content: Terrain, Roads,
Foilage, Settlements saved thousands of level
editing manhours
• ADS: simply worked
• Data driven design: Integration without coders
• Re-iterating 3d Tech (although FarCry hurt)
• Late Optimization: 12fps to 50+ fps in 3 month
• Localisation Technology: mastering with no code
22. Code: Bad
• Missing code reviews in 2001/2002 nearly killed the
project (-> lead was fired)
• AI: late design, monster of state machine
• Tools: not enough (balancing 130 game units)
• Lack of performance sensivity/control
• Lack of consistent preplanning and structuring
• Applied standards weren’t strict enough: bad resources
spoil code quality and stability
• Submit discipline -> stable builds (much better in 2003)
23. QA
Gamestar: “.. If they now get their
bugfixes done and balance a little
then ...”
Petra: “IF! If ever ...”
Statement: Professional Journalism?
24. QA: Good
• Internal QA increased productivity, short
feedback loop, build discipline
• Automating builds: from 42 down to 12
minutes
• Closed beta: feedback, organisation
25. QA: Bad
• External QA not up to the task:
– Load tests: 16 testers minimum needed
– Testplans: too many things to test
– They were functionality control, not quality control
• Beta
– Hosting at foreign providers: not good
– No dedicated beta manager: not good
– Automation feedback of logs was missing
– Only 10% give proper feedback, only 1% are perfect
26. Marketing
Florian Stangl (ex-Gamestar):
“The vehicles don’t work”
Comment: So how else could you
complain about the Vehicle Physics?
27. Marketing: Good
• Our own Online Hype exceeded expectations
• Marketing Online Games Online
• Community Management before Release
• Getting Game and Fan-Sites into Beta
• Cover
• Packaging
• PR (germany only)
28. Marketing: Bad
• Up to 12/2003 we were doing it ourselves
– So Marketing started late: requests during crunch added load
on team
• Germany: perfect PR
– France: horrible
– UK: arrogant, incompetent
– US: lets not speak about it
• 1st MP Game of Jowood: lack of customer knowledge
– No real online campaign despite Wings concepts & plans
– No understanding of internet marketing as a tool
29. What we learned
Gamestar, Commenting on bugs they
copy/paste into their review from our tech
support forum:
“I don’t want to repeat what’s being said
in the forums, we are building our own
opinion after all ...”
Comment: none ...
30. What we learned
• Code pre planning for all modules
• Code reviews for all modules
• Optimize early: implement automatic performance
tracking
• Without Perforce we wouldn’t be here
• Automate build process early: saves hours of time
• Incorporate debug output early and automate
feedback: makes reproducing much easier
• Automating localization works: export, installer,
done
31. What we learned
• Generating content works ... To a limit
• Be sensible to resources leaving
– Restructure
– Transfer orderly
• Be honest: no experience in one field: hire
contractor for counsel
• US Server providers suck
32. What we learned
• Multiplayer Games have their own rules
– Linux Server is a must
– Server must not use DirectX
• And many other specs we won’t reveal here
– Clan Support is #1 priority
• When Clans don’t play your game noone will
– Server Provider Support is a necessity
• Their demands differ from your view
• Understand their business and you win
33. Top Reasons Söldner is like it is
• Code planning/structuring: should have
acted sooner
• JoWooD Crisis and it’s consequences
• Lack of proper QA for MP games
• Lack of resources in critical time
• Wanting too much
34. Q&A
Gamestar: “money has nothing to do with
reviews”
Comment: LOL!
(GameStar canceled a Söldner preview after
they learned from PC Games deal)
35. 10
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37. Söldner Facts
• Measured in week 22-31, Coverage 82%:
44.844 sold units in Germany
• For weeks 22-31 Söldner is second best
selling title in Germany (#1: Panzers)
• Söldner spend 2 months in the top 10
• Info: Joint Operations sold 13227 (D)
• Info: Joint Operations sold 27800 (US)
39. Misc Facts
• 3200 Bugzilla entries • 1544 xml files
• 717 textures
(08/2002-05/2004)
• 651 Animation files
• 18054 Perforce submits • 722 x-files (Objects)
• 656 test builds • 1991 wav files
• Full master build: 20 • 18 mio square km terrain
minutes generated
• 225 villages generated
• Master from submit to • 775.000 lines of code
CD: 1 hour • Languages: 10,
• Patch from submit to De,Fr,Sp,It,Uk,Us,Jp,Cz,Hu,Ru
exe: 30 minutes
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Söldner Task/Bug Hunt*
Delta
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42. Tools used
• Visual .Net • 3D Studio Max 4/5
• Perforce
• Character Studio
• Incredibuild
• Visual Assist • Photoshop
• Granny • Kaldera
• ODE
• Miles
• zLib
• Python
• DoxyGen
• BugZilla