Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Time between pre-alpha and alpha

    • 281 posts
    November 9, 2017 1:42 PM PST

    luminarius said:

    azaya said:

    Pyye said:

    I would assume they are working toward full funding and if that happens, could accelerate the entire process.  If and when that happens is key.  And in order to consider March 2019 as a launch, I believe they have to get a bigger team.

    I would not assume that more man power = faster progress, though it can. 

    You may or may not have heard of an essay by Fred Brooks (IBM Computer Scientist/Engineer) who was a pretty smart guy, called the Mythical Man Month.

    He makes many observations about software engineering and productivity. See the full Text.

    Some of these are:

    "The Man-Month 

    The second fallacious thought mode is expressed in the very unit 
    of effort used in estimating and scheduling: the man-month. Cost 
    does indeed vary as the product of the number of men and the 
    number of months. Progress does not. Hence the man-month as a unit 
    for measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth. It 
    implies that men and months are interchangeable. 
    
    Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when 
    a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communica- 
    tion among them (Fig. 2.1). This is true of reaping wheat or picking 
    cotton; it is not even approximately true of systems programming. 
    When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential con-
    straints, the appHcation of more effort has no effect on the sched- 
    ule (Fig. 2.2). The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter 
    how many women are assigned. Many software tasks have this 
    characteristic because of the sequential nature of debugging. "

    He also became known for Brooks Law, which states:

    According to Brooks himself, the law is an "outrageous oversimplification",[1] but it captures the general rule. Brooks points to the main factors that explain why it works this way:

    1. It takes some time for the people added to a project to become productive. Brooks calls this the "ramp up" time. Software projects are complex engineering endeavors, and new workers on the project must first become educated about the work that has preceded them; this education requires diverting resources already working on the project, temporarily diminishing their productivity while the new workers are not yet contributing meaningfully. Each new worker also needs to integrate with a team composed of several engineers who must educate the new worker in their area of expertise in the code base, day by day. In addition to reducing the contribution of experienced workers (because of the need to train), new workers may even make negative contributions, for example, if they introduce bugs that move the project further from completion.
    2. Communication overheads increase as the number of people increases. Due to combinatorial explosion, the number of different communication channels increases rapidly with the number of people.[3] Everyone working on the same task needs to keep in sync, so as more people are added they spend more time trying to find out what everyone else is doing.
    3. Limited divisibility of tasks. Adding more people to a highly divisible task, such as cleaning rooms in a hotel, decreases the overall task duration (up to the point where additional workers get in each other's way). Some tasks are less divisible; Brooks points out that while it takes one woman nine months to make one baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".

    So, I wouldn't assume that full funding means quicker to launch or shorter alpha times, it simply means we get more quality and more time to accomplish the goals that will result in Pantheon being released before it has to turn a profit. 

     

    -Az

     

     

    that's just, like, ur opinion man

    LOL

    • 98 posts
    November 9, 2017 1:46 PM PST

    I think what he's saying is that VR should have more women on the team because they produce a result in 9 months no matter what.

    (In all seriousness, more people doesn't necessarily equal faster production or a better game. You need the right people in the right places with the right workload.)

    • 769 posts
    November 9, 2017 1:52 PM PST

    DragonFist said:

    luminarius said:

    azaya said:

    Pyye said:

    I would assume they are working toward full funding and if that happens, could accelerate the entire process.  If and when that happens is key.  And in order to consider March 2019 as a launch, I believe they have to get a bigger team.

    I would not assume that more man power = faster progress, though it can. 

    You may or may not have heard of an essay by Fred Brooks (IBM Computer Scientist/Engineer) who was a pretty smart guy, called the Mythical Man Month.

    He makes many observations about software engineering and productivity. See the full Text.

    Some of these are:

    "The Man-Month 

    The second fallacious thought mode is expressed in the very unit 
    of effort used in estimating and scheduling: the man-month. Cost 
    does indeed vary as the product of the number of men and the 
    number of months. Progress does not. Hence the man-month as a unit 
    for measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth. It 
    implies that men and months are interchangeable. 
    
    Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when 
    a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communica- 
    tion among them (Fig. 2.1). This is true of reaping wheat or picking 
    cotton; it is not even approximately true of systems programming. 
    When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential con-
    straints, the appHcation of more effort has no effect on the sched- 
    ule (Fig. 2.2). The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter 
    how many women are assigned. Many software tasks have this 
    characteristic because of the sequential nature of debugging. "

    He also became known for Brooks Law, which states:

    According to Brooks himself, the law is an "outrageous oversimplification",[1] but it captures the general rule. Brooks points to the main factors that explain why it works this way:

    1. It takes some time for the people added to a project to become productive. Brooks calls this the "ramp up" time. Software projects are complex engineering endeavors, and new workers on the project must first become educated about the work that has preceded them; this education requires diverting resources already working on the project, temporarily diminishing their productivity while the new workers are not yet contributing meaningfully. Each new worker also needs to integrate with a team composed of several engineers who must educate the new worker in their area of expertise in the code base, day by day. In addition to reducing the contribution of experienced workers (because of the need to train), new workers may even make negative contributions, for example, if they introduce bugs that move the project further from completion.
    2. Communication overheads increase as the number of people increases. Due to combinatorial explosion, the number of different communication channels increases rapidly with the number of people.[3] Everyone working on the same task needs to keep in sync, so as more people are added they spend more time trying to find out what everyone else is doing.
    3. Limited divisibility of tasks. Adding more people to a highly divisible task, such as cleaning rooms in a hotel, decreases the overall task duration (up to the point where additional workers get in each other's way). Some tasks are less divisible; Brooks points out that while it takes one woman nine months to make one baby, "nine women can't make a baby in one month".

    So, I wouldn't assume that full funding means quicker to launch or shorter alpha times, it simply means we get more quality and more time to accomplish the goals that will result in Pantheon being released before it has to turn a profit. 

     

    -Az

     

     

    that's just, like, ur opinion man

    LOL

    Best post I've ever seen on these forums. Lol

    • 234 posts
    November 9, 2017 1:52 PM PST

    /sigh

    So I get a "Thats just your opinion"..no its clearly the Opinion of Fred Brooks, a much smarter guy than any of us. 

    And a LOL.

    So, I guess ignorance is bliss, cause as per usual most people don't understand what I'm talking about. 

    But @sorn at leats got something out of it.

     

    But, all I'm trying to say is money/funding/more devs doesn't equal faster progress.  And if you study software engineering you've probably already heard this. 

    Anyway, yes it is an oppinion. 

    Take care

    -Az

     

    • 281 posts
    November 9, 2017 2:01 PM PST

    azaya said:

    /sigh

    So I get a "Thats just your opinion"..no its clearly the Opinion of Fred Brooks, a much smarter guy than any of us. 

    And a LOL.

    So, I guess ignorance is bliss, cause as per usual most people don't understand what I'm talking about. 

    But @sorn at leats got something out of it.

     

    But, all I'm trying to say is money/funding/more devs doesn't equal faster progress.  And if you study software engineering you've probably already heard this. 

    Anyway, yes it is an oppinion. 

    Take care

    -Az

     

     

    I took his post as a joke.  My LOL was with that frame of reference.  I think your post was spot on.

    • 769 posts
    November 9, 2017 2:03 PM PST

    DragonFist said:

    azaya said:

    /sigh

    So I get a "Thats just your opinion"..no its clearly the Opinion of Fred Brooks, a much smarter guy than any of us. 

    And a LOL.

    So, I guess ignorance is bliss, cause as per usual most people don't understand what I'm talking about. 

    But @sorn at leats got something out of it.

     

    But, all I'm trying to say is money/funding/more devs doesn't equal faster progress.  And if you study software engineering you've probably already heard this. 

    Anyway, yes it is an oppinion. 

    Take care

    -Az

     

     

    I took his post as a joke.  My LOL was with that frame of reference.  I think your post was spot on.

    Indeed. Az, are you not familiar with The Big Lebowski?! 

    • 281 posts
    November 9, 2017 2:19 PM PST

    Truth be told, Az, you summed up concepts that I've repeatedly attempted to get across in other threads in a much more concise and detailed way than I ever did.  That's why the "that's just, like, ur opinion man", aside from the movie reference, was so funny.  Because there was no way that could be interpreted as "just opinion".


    This post was edited by DragonFist at November 9, 2017 2:19 PM PST
    • 234 posts
    November 9, 2017 2:23 PM PST

    /cheer, maybe there is hope for mankind after all :P

    lol Thanks

     

    -Az

     

    • 234 posts
    November 9, 2017 2:29 PM PST

    Tralyan said:

    Indeed. Az, are you not familiar with The Big Lebowski?! 

    I apparantly am not.

     

    • 668 posts
    November 9, 2017 2:53 PM PST

    The scale of the world planned will take more manpower (or women) to reach a March 2019 was my point.  

     

    • 470 posts
    November 9, 2017 3:02 PM PST

    azaya said:

    Tralyan said:

    Indeed. Az, are you not familiar with The Big Lebowski?! 

    I apparantly am not.

     

    How dare you Az... lol Go...now...watch. :p

    Point of reference btw:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

    Good detailed post on the other part. But how dare you. :p Jokes aside, it's one of those must watch flicks. Something to do while waiting for Pantheon.


    This post was edited by Kratuk at November 9, 2017 3:05 PM PST
    • 281 posts
    November 9, 2017 3:19 PM PST

    Pyye said:

    The scale of the world planned will take more manpower (or women) to reach a March 2019 was my point.  

     



    You are not wrong in that, given that much work that needs doing is art asset creation and placement (world building) which is much more divisible than coding efforts (one could assign world builds to specific zones or sections of zones, assuming the tools allow for this) and scales better.

    • 107 posts
    November 9, 2017 4:19 PM PST

    Pre-Alpha starts December. 3 Months till Alpha, 3 months till beta, 6 months till release. Releasing for Christmas of 2018! Now before I get any feedback I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and start making noise.

    • 470 posts
    November 9, 2017 7:54 PM PST

    zendrel said:

    Pre-Alpha starts December. 3 Months till Alpha, 3 months till beta, 6 months till release. Releasing for Christmas of 2018! Now before I get any feedback I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and start making noise.

    It's wishful thinking. But I'm just going to point out Vanguard's closed beta lasted somewhere in the neighborhood of I think 1 1/2 years. Not saying Pantheon's will be that long...but, same culture behind the development. :p And Brad has stated that he likes a good and long alpha and beta. It be great if this thing would be ready for prime time in 2018...but I am skeptical.


    This post was edited by Kratuk at November 9, 2017 7:54 PM PST
    • 334 posts
    November 10, 2017 3:00 AM PST

    On Azaya's note, if you have 5 activities that take x time and 5 workers to do them, then you can add a worker or remove 2 for a scenario like this:
    1.25, 2.30, 3.60, 4.20, 5.35 => 1.25.30, 2.60, 3.20.35 (1 and 4 take over jobs from 2 and 5, because the the bittleneck is at 3 taking 60 minutes, or add 1 to split that 60 in 2x30
    (or just break down in smaller parts and redevide)

    • 753 posts
    November 10, 2017 4:41 AM PST

    I could be wrong... but I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time the devs have dealt with managing test cycles :)  

    • 1281 posts
    November 10, 2017 1:35 PM PST

    I have a feeling that the world is alot more "built" than any of us anticipate that it is.

     

    With that in mind, I anticipate pre-alpha taking three months to test for show stopping errors in the built world.  I anticipate alpha taking three to six months to get mid-level errors ironed out.  I anticipate beta taking six to nine months to get minor errors and functionality fleshed out.  Part of what makes me say this is because a certain amount of the placement and repeatability of items will probably be "automagic" due to the functionality of the game engine itself.

     

    I am *NOT* basing any of this on an actual knowledge of Pantheon development or game development in general.  I am basing it on self-styled hunches having seen aother types of app development alone.

    • 134 posts
    November 10, 2017 7:15 PM PST

    I personally don't care when Alpha starts, as long as it comes eventually. I managed to get Alpha access for 100$ before they removed it and am grateful for the opportunity.

     

    Besides, I have Monster Hunter World to hold me over in January!

    • 10 posts
    November 12, 2017 10:10 PM PST

    azaya said:

    /sigh

    So I get a "Thats just your opinion"..no its clearly the Opinion of Fred Brooks, a much smarter guy than any of us. 

    And a LOL.

    So, I guess ignorance is bliss, cause as per usual most people don't understand what I'm talking about. 

    But @sorn at leats got something out of it.

     

    But, all I'm trying to say is money/funding/more devs doesn't equal faster progress.  And if you study software engineering you've probably already heard this. 

    Anyway, yes it is an oppinion. 

    Take care

    -Az

     

    Lol, sorry Az I thought you'd know right off the bat that I was totally messing around. Your post was spot on. Not often that I actually learn something on a gaming forum.

    • 60 posts
    November 14, 2017 1:41 AM PST

    I'd be super concerned if the game somehow came out in 2018 personally.  The closer it is to Q3 2019 or later (I'd even be ok with Q2 2020), the better I'll feel about the length of time spent polishing the game and developing content, no matter the team size.

    • 844 posts
    November 14, 2017 8:24 PM PST

    If there is something Brad does know about, it is running out of time to finish your game and then losing control of it as it goes out the door partially finished.

    So assuming he has finally learned and there are no hard dates and deadlines based on finances and publishing concerns, pre-alpha will start (when parameters are ready) and technical goals are met and will run as long as it needs before alpha and then Beta pass the same criteria. Best bet, months for each? Possibly stretched out to years (I certainly hope not)? (But I did wait 3 years after Vanguard was announced to play the beta. Yikes. And Vanguard was really not ready when it was released.)

    If money and deadlines are not an issue (as they hopefully are not) then technical must-haves will dictate dates, rather than arbitrary guesses. MMO's are hard. But it sure is fun reading the posts. :)

    As all MMO fans know, MMO's are always a WIP, they are never finished. No MMO resembles what it was a year after "release" and even less so more years down the road.

    • 8 posts
    November 15, 2017 3:11 AM PST

    azaya said:

    /sigh

    So I get a "Thats just your opinion"..no its clearly the Opinion of Fred Brooks, a much smarter guy than any of us. 

    And a LOL.

    So, I guess ignorance is bliss, cause as per usual most people don't understand what I'm talking about. 

    But @sorn at leats got something out of it.

     

    But, all I'm trying to say is money/funding/more devs doesn't equal faster progress.  And if you study software engineering you've probably already heard this. 

    Anyway, yes it is an oppinion. 

    Take care

    -Az

     

    I don't think you get it. Especially after you pat yourself on the back for self implying some level of super intelligence us peons can't grasp. Most of us, including, like, just ur opinion, man 100% understood, even agreed.

     

    Edit: far too savage and could potentially derail the conversation even further. I'll mod myself right on out of here.


    This post was edited by erho at November 15, 2017 3:16 AM PST
    • 2756 posts
    December 17, 2017 3:38 AM PST

    I'm going to wishfully think 3 months and hope for 1.  Sorry VIPs - I want to get involved, but can't afford the monetary invevstment!  ;^)

    Hope it's going well.

    • 3852 posts
    December 17, 2017 7:49 AM PST

    I think/hope 2018 is quite possible although not necessarily a better than 50% chance.

    Game development involves many compromises between the urge to make it perfect when it releases and the need to release it before money runs out and while anyone still cares.

    Releasing too late can be just as disasterous as releasing too soon.

    Remembering Vanguard (and VR remembers it a whole lot more vividly than I do) my guess is that they will release right before the holidays in 2018, they will release with certain areas not done, the areas that are not done simply will not be in the game at all (rather than in the game in an unfinished way), and the areas we are likely to get to in the first few months of gameplay will be tested to death and polished as heck. Other areas perhaps less so but they can be patched as we go along.

    I will guess 3 months for pre-alpha. Enough time so that those people that spent extra money for the priviledge will not feel ripped off. Enough time to get alpha to the point where it isn't too unready. 

    Many of us figure alpha is *supposed* to be extremely buggy and incomplete - that is what alpha *means* - but if it goes too far in that direction the test will be of less value.


    This post was edited by dorotea at December 17, 2017 7:55 AM PST
    • 2138 posts
    December 17, 2017 10:46 AM PST

    I am hoping it wil ltake less time than I may think based on my following assumtptions:

    The Devs have experience designing games like this in the past, so there is little that is not new to them except for where they want to take the genre as far as adding new features to game play, or "world"play.

    The Devs may have alot more earnest, professional-industry types that are keen to test the game in pre-alpha and through beta. Like, more testers than there are Devs to receive and process the information from the testers. However, because testing is not merely a focus group of a target market to find out what works and doesn't, the people testing the game may actually be able to provide industry specific redediation. By this I mean, instead of " hey, this is wierd/broken/doesn't work" and the Devs need to figure it out; rather the response will be " hey, this is wierd broken/doesn't work and this is how you could fix it from a coding/development/ because I've worked with the unity engine, or I know how the unity engine interacts with such and so and you need to improve the ETL layer...and so forth"

    So I am thinking pre-alpha would be limited to one zone to test out raw mechanics and would take less time, like 2 months? at most. Once that core is nailed down the rest is the fun stuff: using similar termplates and putting a new face on it for new zones, artwork, design, culture.

    Alpha would then be longer and involve everything else in the created world, I anticipate a 3-4 month alpha where one new zone is created, testers run in, while another new zone is in process of being made and when completed, the testers move into that zone, etc untill it is done.

    Beta might take less time and would be more for load testing and "goof-ball-ed-ness" or random factor of normal folks or even professional gamers. Because of the seriousness of Pre-alpha to Alpha I see beta also as being more of a  customer service dry run. By that I mean the mechanics would be there its just dealing with the people as they interact with the game that will be the issue and maybe take a month, tops. I think It would be a good idea at this time for the Devs to work on finishing up any tweeks they want to do or even begin lazy work on expansions (because they will be playing, too)

    It would be nice to time it with another game anniversary for the sake of the visionary, but being its own game Pantheon doesnt need to be that cute, although.... it would be cute. I would be happy with small "in-crowd"  or meme related easter eggs in game.

    Summer 2018 woud be great.