Aspyr Media have delayed the Civilization VI 'Fall 2017' update until sometime after the 'holiday break'

They were busy releasing Civ6 for Ipad's.

Its development... it happens.

As any developer can tell you, making code changes can be a pain even if it is your own code. (Good developers do what they can through documentation and coding standards to minimize future pain.) When it is someone else's code, it is harder because you have to think like the other developer sometimes to understand how and why they wrote the code as it is. The fact that it is a different company with different coding standards makes it even harder.

In addition, this is a port... which means that functions and libraries used on the original may not be available on the other platform and need to be replaced or in a worse case scenario, written new from scratch. (Engines like Unity and/or Unreal minimize this by having the same functions and libraries available on all platforms, but 1) you have to use the middleware, 2) you would need to limit yourself to only use functions within that middleware, and 3) any bug in that middleware between platforms is a pain to fix.) Porting can be a pain, especially if the original developers don't make any attempt to keep the code friendly to porting.

TL;DR... Rewriting someone else's code can really be a pain in the ***.

Quoting: LeopardThey were busy releasing Civ6 for Ipad's.

but damn, I'm actually seriously considering buying an ipad just for that game lol...

Quoting: Asu

Quoting: LeopardThey were busy releasing Civ6 for Ipad's.

but damn, I'm actually seriously considering buying an ipad just for that game lol...

Price seemed a bit high to me. For a mobile device game of course.

You can play 60 turns for free then you have to pay.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/civilization-vi/id1123795278?mt=12

2.6 point


Last edited by Leopard on 22 December 2017 at 7:02 pm UTC

Copy pasta from my previous comment on an other Aspyr News: Aspyr has to step it up, there's a quite noticeable gap in both quality and quantity between Feral and Aspyr, and it just seems to get bigger and bigger. They haven't even released a Vulkan title (or even some experimental build, like Mad Max) yet, Feral is miles ahead.

Quoting: balintCopy pasta from my previous comment on an other Aspyr News: Aspyr has to step it up, there's a quite noticeable gap in both quality and quantity between Feral and Aspyr, and it just seems to get bigger and bigger. They haven't even released a Vulkan title (or even some experimental build, like Mad Max) yet, Feral is miles ahead.

Plenty of room for both, and both have some really popular titles under their belt. I don't see why you'd want to make it into a competition. Ideally I'd like the original developers to handle their own cross platfrom releases and support, but as long as we have to rely on third party porters, I don't even care who actually does it. As long as we get quality ports.

Quoting: stretch611Its development... it happens.

As any developer can tell you, making code changes can be a pain even if it is your own code. (Good developers do what they can through documentation and coding standards to minimize future pain.) When it is someone else's code, it is harder because you have to think like the other developer sometimes to understand how and why they wrote the code as it is. The fact that it is a different company with different coding standards makes it even harder.

In addition, this is a port... which means that functions and libraries used on the original may not be available on the other platform and need to be replaced or in a worse case scenario, written new from scratch. (Engines like Unity and/or Unreal minimize this by having the same functions and libraries available on all platforms, but 1) you have to use the middleware, 2) you would need to limit yourself to only use functions within that middleware, and 3) any bug in that middleware between platforms is a pain to fix.) Porting can be a pain, especially if the original developers don't make any attempt to keep the code friendly to porting.

TL;DR... Rewriting someone else's code can really be a pain in the ***.

I will preface this by saying that I'm not a full-time coder, or even that good by any stretch of the imagination, but I can usually look at and understand what code is supposed to do after a time, and must say that comments that say something as simple as 'this function does blah' is nice.

That said, at my previous job, the developers there were always told that if their code was too complex that people couldn't just look at it and it needed a comment to say what the code did, then they were doing it wrong, and they were chastised for using comments at all.

I think that's idiotic, because some complex functions need to be... well complex enough that a comment should be used. What are your thoughts on that?

Quoting: slaapliedjeWhat are your thoughts on that?

Whether your code is readable or not, comments are a must. What you consider readable might be total gibberish to someone else. Readability of a function or other code structure is also often dependent on context.

I'm sure anyone who's ever had to work on someone else's code would agree.

Quoting: slaapliedjeThat said, at my previous job, the developers there were always told that if their code was too complex that people couldn't just look at it and it needed a comment to say what the code did, then they were doing it wrong, and they were chastised for using comments at all.

I think that's idiotic, because some complex functions need to be... well complex enough that a comment should be used. What are your thoughts on that?

Complex code is sometimes necessary. I agree that when code is complex, it should be commented. Even when code is pretty easy, a comment can help.

When you write code, the idea of exactly what it does and how it does it is fresh in your mind immediately after you write it. However, go back to that same code after 6 months of working on a different project and sometimes even the simple things are not as simple as you remember. I try to write my code with the idea that in 6 months, I will be back to change something and need to re-learn what I did. I write comments to remind me of certain details of why I wrote it that way initially.

One pet-peeve of me in that respect is variable naming. Far too often I see people use two letter variable names. Many languages do not limit the size, use it. For example, when everything is fresh in your mind, "nlg" may obviously mean "number of linux games", but 6 months later it won't be so obvious. Just write "NumLinuxGames" as a variable name instead. It will help you remember 6 months later, and help you self-document the code due to increased readability. (some complain about the increased code length or characters to type, but that argument falls on deaf ears when you consider the amount of code that gets cut/pasted and the ability to search and replace.)

Sadly there are too many coders that do not value comments at all. They obviously have never tried to read their own crap code after the 6 month mark. My favorite editor is Sublime Text, which allows for color themes. The number of themes available that make comments nearly invisible (e.g. light grey text on slightly lighter grey background) is astonishingly high.

This is why I feel sympathy for porters... when re-writing code, you have know idea what you are getting yourself into, until after you start. You may get lucky and find well structured and documented code... or you may find spaghetti code implementing obscure function calls that is lucky that it works at all. Most cases will likely be somewhere in the middle, but no one can tell until after they start to dig into it.

Often, what is important is not comment what function does. You can see it if the code is well written. More important is to know why the code does a certain thing.