När vi drar igång ett spel är det inte bara en ikon vi klickar på, det är åratal av arbete som kondenserats ner till upplevelsen som rullas fram på skärmen. Det vi ser är en välpolerad yta, och ibland sprickor i form av buggar, men vi är ofta helt ovetande om de nödlösningar som utförts för att spelet överhuvudtaget ska skeppas eller certifieras.
Kodarnas silvertejplösningar och McGyver-mentalitet är ämnet i en lång Twitter-tråd där människor från hela spelbranschen avslöjar hur pass ihoplappade spel kan vara i bakgrunden, och ändå fungera. Här är våra favoriter men det finns betydligt fler i konversationen.
"Ett fordon kan vara ett vapen i fel händer"
to solve a late in the day issue with the road clipping through the floor compounded by an obtuse rendering approach, the car in Paratopic is actually a gun
— jessica (@oysterFAKE) December 15, 2018
"Flygande tvättmaskiner löser dina problem"
My first game (Earthworm Jim 3D) had no scripting language. So I made conditional logic using invisible washing machine objects in the sky that travelled animated paths on timers and could set triggers as they arrived at nodes. Debug was a nightmare. Shipped that way, I think?
— Eric Holmes (@ericholmeslive) December 15, 2018
"Doorception!
I mean, sliding doors in Gone Home are just drawers with a different mesh, turned on their side. I feel you lol
— Steve Gaynor (@fullbright) December 15, 2018
"Frankensteins Dialog"
There’s a twelve line conversation in The Walking Dead: Michonne that I pieced together with cut recorded lines from other scenes to try and fix a plot hole
— Emily Grace Buck 🇪🇸 (@emilybuckshot) December 15, 2018
"Orsaken till alla uppdrag i MMO någonsin?"
On SWTOR, when you see a droid or an alien pipe up in a conversation, that was us patching one that had already been VOed.
— Old Man Schubert, Design Crank (@ZenOfDesign) December 16, 2018
There’s one where the VO is awesome but the quest was uncodeable, so a droid almost literally beeps “THAT was wierd. Uh... go kill a bunch of sand people.”
"Är du helikopter?"
Every game entity in Wolverine’s Revenge contains a single bit determining whether it’s a helicopter taking off or not. Including Wolverine.
— Matthew Brooks (@brooksoid) December 15, 2018
Du är helikopter!"
Every single AI Y-Wing in DICE's first Battlefront game ran on heavily modded helicopter logic originally made for a Medal of Honor game. It was a pain to work with.
— Malin von Matern (@vonEdfa) 16 december 2018
"Det är inte en bugg, det är en rökrast"
In the early 2000s I investigated why a particular content gen tool took insanely long to compile and run. Rewrote it so it was lightning fast. Was proud and rolled it out to the game content team. They were furious because I took away their smoke break.
— James Todd (@james_todd) December 14, 2018
"Vem behöver hissar?"
This is how *every single elevator* in BioShock Infinite worked. 90° turns, quarter mile teleports, 180° rotations, all sorts of nonsense.
— Forrest Dowling (@stuckbug) December 15, 2018
"I'm on a horse"
Not a dev personally, but I always think of this Ultima Online bug. "Bug Closed: Horse now behave as normal pants." pic.twitter.com/eDzqgjfrs2
— Darryl Mott (@Abstruse) December 16, 2018
"Baldur's Gate 1: Debug
Baldur’s Gate 1 shipped in debug mode because it crashed in any other compile target (uninitialized memory)
— Mark Darrah (@BioMarkDarrah) December 15, 2018
"Dörrty Code"
Made an RPG. Engine didn't support NPC walk areas so NPCs could walk into doorways and they would block the player from using a door. Solution was to make invisible NPCs that stand in the doorways to block other NPCs but let the player pass through.
— Michael Kidder (@fyrewulff) December 16, 2018
"Stödjul"
In Firewatch free roam mode I wanted the time of day to change constantly, but we didn’t write our system like that. It was only written to respond to Henry’s position in triggers. So in free roam there’s a water wheel of triggers attached to Henry that slowly rotate through him.
— Jake Rodkin (@ja2ke) December 15, 2018
"Duktig hund!"
I once coded an AI Pet, that after several fights would start spinning rapidly, and stop fighting. Turns out it existed in it's own list of enemies, so after a few fights it would gain so much threat it would consider itself the most dangerous enemy and attempt to attack itself.
— Cynicat (@CynicatPro) December 15, 2018
"Inte nudda mark!"
My physics break if the player starts the scene touching the ground so instead the player starts 0.01 units above the floor and falls.
— nxplv (@NotExplosive) December 14, 2018
"Har du startat om datan"
on black and white 1 theres a memory leak we never found. so it detects if low on mem, saves, quits and restarts itself without explanation. passed overnight qa soak after that...
— tanh(mmalex) 🦄 (@mmalex) December 15, 2018
Bonus: sjukt obehagligt easter egg
i suffered from that too! did you ever play after midnight and hear ghostly voices whispering ‘steeeeeve... steeeeve.... ‘? most hilariously evil easter egg ever. we localised the voice actors reading top 20 names in each lang and scraped your pc for your name....
— tanh(mmalex) 🦄 (@mmalex) December 15, 2018