Developing software and the creation of technology is a world I know nothing about... Thank the Lord. It seems to be fraught with pitfalls and repetitive problems. All that coding could drive anybody bonkers. Building new games for the masses is seems especially life consuming. Developers run on lack of sleep, patience and sanity most of the times. Maybe we should kept it all simple with Super Mario Brothers.
Redditor u/Dannycopo wanted to hear from developers out there by posing the question.... Game developers of reddit, what is the worst experience you've had while making a game?
Watch the Morale....
Was told by boss that we are supposed to create an online simulation game with integrated educational material to gain score/points so that users can learn about various financial concepts while playing the game. I was excited but after tons of modifications requests, it turned out to be video player combined with couple of drag and drop MCQs resulting in automated assets unlock animations giving user no control of simulation.
About to submit this in couple of weeks with a pissed morale. PrizeGoal
SO many issues...
Less than 12 hours after the launch of our MMO, it became apparent that we had a problem. Characters skipping so fast it looked like short distance teleporting, characters being hit and taking damage while no enemies appeared to be around, and a bunch of other really strange desync issues. None of our testers were able to reproduce this, but we could all see it happening on the live servers.
We had most of the programming team trying to track this down, working 24/7 on all sorts of theories including networking, cheats, logic errors, bandwidth issues.
I found this maybe 24 hours into the search. Turned out one of the oldest and most fundamental parts of our game engine used floating point for time - the time that was propagated to the entire game. This had worked splendidly during dev and testing, because we never kept a single game session going for long enough to accumulate floating point errors.
Had the dev originally creating this part change it to integer-based time, pushed out a tiny update, and then we all went home to sleep for 12 hours. einie
The Delete....
After about 2 months working on a project, my boss comes over and says she needs to move my shared virtual drive to another location. She said she would use a Unix terminal to perform this risky task. I watched her type the wrong command and before I could say anything it was done. She started whispering to herself, oh no... oh nononono... I have... deleted your drive. I'm so sorry... She had indeed deleted my entire drive instead of moving it.
No version control, no backups, no getting it back, just gone. She said I could take the rest of the day off and start rewriting it all tomorrow, it wouldn't take me that long! How kind! 2 months of work! I went home filled with rage and thought of never coming back. The next day however I went there and started rewriting everything. It wasn't actually that bad, it only took about 10 days and everything was much cleaner the second time. A mental exercise I recommend to every developer out there :)
Edit: She was a great boss and a very very smart person, she just made a really bad mistake that day.
Edit2: This was in 2009, no need to message me with your sick git setup, I'm fine now. salmonado
Can't Commit....
Worst experience I've had that concerns making games is getting started with a team of remote members who all eventually stop working on the project. No commitment, basically. Delphizeta
Exhausting Efforts...
Interfacing with external hardware. You can't do it in an emulator. So compile the game, put it on a medium, boot up the console, click through all menus, start game, see if it works. It doesn't.
Try again a hundred times more constantly tweaking your code to see if it works. Yes, it works, after an exhausting week of compiling and booting. HotLanguage
Too Much Memory...
Many many years ago I wrote a game for the Commodore Pet. A dungeon crawler type game. The pet had a cassette as this was pre-floppy days.
I had to heavily optimize the memory usage to fit the game into memory and finished the game with 0 bytes left. Saved it.
Apparently it took more memory to load than to save because i could never load the game again. Backups and print out were not a thing yet so lost forever. It was the best game I had written ever. PunkRockDude
Break the Code...
Being too lazy to comment my own code on long-term projects. My coding style has changed quite significantly in the last 2 years I've been working on a mobile game. Having to go back and digging through old code is just not fun. ExtremelyActive
The Old College Try...
Community college: was in a class where we had to work on two games concurrently, one group and one individual, because that sounds like a recipe for success. Group slacks so much that the night before both projects were due I just had to say "screw it" and had to finish all the programming of the game with placeholder assets. I was hardly behind on my work but was waiting on their work to finish things up. Got done at some point in the morning and proceeded to finish my individual project because I was an idiot and slacked on that one (totally my fault).
Got done with both projects at 7am, turned them in at 8am. Got 100% on both because my community college had low standards. pi_memorizer
The Clues...
Worked with GameMaker 8.1. (Free version)
Spend ~1 hour typing off code from YouTube tutorials on certain things -> GM tells me that some piece of code I typed is only available in paid version.
The worst thing is that didn't happen once, but more often than not when I tried to learn new code. Especially since I was still learning and had no clue how to do it otherwise, this was frustrating as hell. SwagWaschbaer
Over it!
Lack of patience with myself, leading to game abandonment and forgetting about it until a Reddit thread 15 years later. DemonKyoto
Naturally....
Natural Artificial Behavior for NPCs and Enemies
It took me nearly six months to stop having AI follow scripting protocol and instead react based on the environment and not what x says to do.
Every night was miserable, lying awake in bed and thinking about why it wasn't working. But now that I have finally finished it, I'm basically 99% done.
Four years of development in, solo and about 155GB later... I can finally start doing music. Soulbrandt-Regis
The Unfortunate Transfer!
It was a project for school, so I don't know if it counts, but I was working with Unity for the first time and my dumb butt decided to transfer files. Half of the game broke, it was 2 a.m. and I had to do a presentation of it in the morning. Garciall
The Revert!
I did a minor for my school in co-operation with two other schools where we were making a game for the Dutch Police Academy that would make it easier and cheaper for them to train the officers with. We were making the game in Unity with 4 developers and 4 artists. Well, one of the artists never pulled changes from the unity project (for those who don't know, unity offers (or offered, haven't used it in a long time) a build in git feature we used). So when he wanted to commit his changes, we were set back like 4 weeks of progress because it overwrote everything, and we couldn't figure out how to revert it back. We could go back to a previous version, but we couldn't revert his push.
We salvaged it somewhat by going back and getting the important scripts and pasting it in the new, wrecked version, but considering the next day was the end of a sprint and we were to show what we had, we weren't happy, and we already didn't really like that artist. maestroke
Take a Break. Refocus.
Having great ideas, putting it together and spending around 8 hours making an intro cut scene only to find the character won't turn the right way. Getting pissed that they won't listen, trying to fix it, fixing it and then seeing the fix messed up the rest of the cut scene. I ended up taking a long break, working on it for a bit then giving up. Radthereptile
Losing the Idea....
The worst experiences were early on where I didn't have enough experience to finish a concept and then abandoned it. The modern trend of smaller initial games as a way of learning is the right way to go. various15
'F' the critics!
Worst part for us was dealing with people on steam purchasing the game because it was cheap and then leaving negative comments because it wasn't a triple a title level of polish. oneofus1
Fix the Script....
Making a simple spell system for an MMO. A guy absolutely insisted against all odds that a certain aspect of a subtype of spells (particle collision with -bolt abilities) be done entirely through a script -- his unedited script. It was an absolute mess. It was so bad that I struggled to break 90 FPS basic when those abilities were cast, and had to optimize a dozen fairly complex scripts (he definitely made some of them), just to hold 90+ with this script active, because it was alone was generating spikes of 30+ FPS loss.
How bad was the script? I'm talking massive update calls on high particle counts. Re-caching other abilities 100+ times a second (why!?). Particle waves checking for every collision possible (including for other abilities from the same source, which can't even be cast simultaneously) when the physics settings prevents most of those collisions from even happening. Carefully lined up color progression via Update.... to match up with the particle system's color over time component.................
I'm pretty sure he was actually competent and just trying to make my life a living hell. boblikeslettuce
Be Specific!
I was working with a game that had some very and i mean VERY specific functions, I worked on the functions for about 3 weeks before i realized that half the functions i had programmed were already in the game engine i was using. I was mad at myself but happy at the same time. Mighty_V
Burned Out!
I'm still a student, but one time in my second semester I was super far behind on all my projects because I had 7 classes that semester and every one of them had a huge assignment, all assigned in the same week and due in the same week. We did not get much time to work on these projects. For one of them I thought if I stayed up and never stopped working I could check all the requirements in a day and then hand in something kinda trash, but still acceptable. I stayed up for 40 hours straight and I couldn't even get the core mechanic of my game to work. It probably would have helped if I took a nap at some point. Or even just a break for anything longer than using the bathroom or waiting in line for food at the cafeteria (before heading right back upstairs to work while I ate). I was definitely burnt out before I even started and that kind of exhaustion only made it worse. livipup
It all worked out....
After a week of working 16 hour days to push out content for a big demonstration for the company owners, they decided that they hated everything we'd spent two years doing and wanted almost of it redone.
It was portrayed as being all our fault even though they'd offered very little guidance as to what they wanted beyond vague generalizations (lots of player choice! hard sci-fi!). It also didn't help that they wanted a tremendous amount of work done very quickly by a too small team, and they wanted it all done impeccably.
I was let go shortly after, with the rest of my team following shortly after. I was devastated at the time, but can recognize now that I kind of dodged a bullet not working for them anymore. StewtredOfBebbanburg
When looking at a resume, it's easy to understand how prospective employers will assume someone is very intelligent based on their education and past experience.
But one shouldn't only assume someone's intelligence based on what they read.
More often than not, one can tell rather quickly that someone possesses above-average intelligence, based on how they speak, how they behave, or other telling details.
Redditor PadWanKenobi was curious to hear what people felt were the tell tale signs they were in the company of a possible genius, leading them to ask:
"What’s a sign of extremely high intelligence?"
Instant adapability
"Ability to intuitively and quickly understand complex systems and how lots of parts relate in a coherent whole."
"Like I work with some people who just keep tons of concepts in their head and easily integrate new information into their understanding of those concepts."
"They immediately know what questions they should be asking to better understand."
"And these are things they're currently working on, not like things they spent time studying in school over years."
"They just have a very strong ability to synthesize new information into their understanding."
"I sit in meetings distracted and confused having forgotten what we talked about in the previous meetings, and these folks just consistently have a solid handle on everything."- Ok-Control-787
Innate Problem Solvers
"They know when not to solve a problem."
"This took me a while to understand but the smartest people I know do this."
"It could be a really simple thing like ignoring emails from people asking for help."
"The supervisor or boss might have a quick and easy solution for the situation but instead of just handing it to the person that asked they let them figure it out on their own."
"They know who they can do this with and when to do it."
"If they did that with all of their underlings it would just create a mess."
"Another example that I can think of is planned chaos."
"Some people can predict exactly where things will go wrong and they could fix it before it creates a problem."
"They don't because nobody ever notices what's going on in the background when things are working perfectly."
"Once things fails then everybody notices and if you are the one person that fixed it you become the hero."
"They can also use then chaos to reach a goal they couldn't get before if things were working correctly."
"There's many examples of this in every day life that I didn't see before until I realized what was happening."- atapes
You know what they say about people with small hands
"If your hand is smaller than your face."- FallofTheKnight
The all knowing glow.
"When someone asks you a question and you push your glasses up while light comes out of it and covers your eyes for some reason."- JonEregor
Those giveaway behavioral quirks
"Wearing glasses and saying things like 'ah yes', and 'I see' while you pensively rub your chin."- iuytrefdgh436yujhe2
Encouraging others
"When they explain something they make the people around them feel smarter, not dumber."- redkat85
Being one step ahead.
"The capacity to understand complex things, see patterns where regular people don't."- Ostepop234
"They have this tendency to make you go 'Ohhh, why didn't I think of that?' when listening to them talk."- did_it_forthelulz
An endless love of learning
"A passion for knowledge and expanding understanding of complex concepts."
"The plumber can be just as insightful as the scholar."- KatatoniK94
Of course, one shouldn't always be fooled by what they see.
As many people are masters at appearing much smarter than they are.
In fact, one important sign of super intelligence is being able to separate those who appear smart, from those who actually are.
With each passing year of a marriage, couples will often discover that while they don't love each other any less than they once did, that spark their relationship used to carry has faded.
This will often lead these couples to look for ways to spice things up a bit.
Among the more popular experiments is inviting a third member to their bedroom.
Enticing as this prospect is, however, it's also easy to be intimidated by the reality of it, or even the mere suggestion of it.
"Men, what advice do you have for men whose wives want to bring a third into the bedroom?"
Make sure you want to do it.
"You need to be completely honest with yourself, ask if this is something you want and could live with."- Dame87
Proceed with caution
"It’s like frolicking in a mine field."
"You both better be SUPER into the idea, you can’t have one person who’s reluctantly agreed to go along with it."
"And established rules."
"A threesome sounds like fun and games until you’re watching your partner make faces and sounds that you only thought were for you in your most intimate moments together, and a burning jealousy comes out of nowhere and breaks your heart."
"I’m not saying it’s automatically a bad idea and I know people do polyamory successfully, but dear god be careful."- coleosis1414
Make sure you're an active participant
"I had an ex that was adamant that she wanted to be a swinger or whatever."
"The one time I decided to roll with it, I hit it off immediately with the other dude's girlfriend and had a blast hanging out with her all night."
"The other dude was a total creep, though."
"Also, my ex could not handle the fact that someone else was giving me the slightest bit of attention."
"So, needless to say, that didn't go anywhere."
"Turns out she didn't want to be a swinger, she just wanted to have sex with other people behind my back, which she had no problems whatsoever with."- Ted_Denslow
Look out for ulterior motives
"Just remember that if you bring this up and your husband is against it, that could be the beginning of the end of your marriage."
"For a lot of people their partner saying 'I am seriously considering having sex with other people and I'm checking with you if it is ok', is a deal breaker."- gamerplays
Consider a test run?
"Go to a bar together separately."
"Watch them flirt/interact with someone else."
"If you get jealous, it's probably a bad idea to bring in a third."
"If it turns you on, go for it."- SinSlayer
Query people with experience.
"It’s something my wife and I have talked about."
"We both agreed that opening the Pandora’s box is not the way we want our relationship to go."
"While it sounds fun, we have seen way to many relationships derailed because of it."- DarthDujo
Consider going whole hog.
"Bring a 4th."- xxemrgmi
Evaluate your relationship first.
"Make sure you and your partner are secure in your own relationship before having another person join."
"Have boundaries, and no secrets."
"From my experience it doesn't usually work out in the end."- Thick-Procedure455
Just don't!
"Don't do it."
"For a long time, my ex harbored a fantasy of watching me have sex with another woman."
"Hey, who knows why any of us are wired the way we are?"
"After contemplating the idea together for a while, we decided to approach one of her more attractive co-workers, who had made a series of flattering comments along the lines of "you're so lucky" and "he's so good-looking'."
"She enthusiastically agreed."
"Our first meet-up was of course awkward, but the second, third and following were pretty good."
"In fact they got progressively hotter, as we all got more comfortable with each other's boundaries, erotic likes and dislikes."
"However, over a few months these occasional kinky weekends transitioned into the co-worker asking more frequently and aggressively to be invited over."
"We tried to explain that we had intended these threesomes to be rare and exotic highlights in our sex life, not regular occurrences, but she didn't take the message to heart and instead became increasingly insistent, bordering on smothering."
"After being turned down one Friday, that night she unexpectedly showed up at our door anyway, carrying a weekend bag and wearing nothing but a raincoat, stay-ups and heels."
"While that was quite a sight, it definitely creeped us out, as it made us finally realize the whole arrangement was descending into 'play Misty for me' territory."
"My ex and I agreed that her unexpected and unwelcome appearance signaled the end of future three-ways, at least until we were able to cool our own selves down, reassess, and perhaps later find a less demanding and insistent third."
"Things subsequently got very sticky at work for my wife, as her co-worker, with whom she had to interact closely, strongly resented being permabanned, and kept demanding to know 'what she'd done that was so awful'."
"Coworker eventually asked to be transferred to another office, but by the time that process was over and done, the discomfort / guilt / pressure / confusion my ex was suffering both at home and at work had begun to take its psychological toll."
"I must confess it didn't help that our own sex life was simultaneously going through a rough patch."
"Long story short, we ended our decade-long relationship less than a year after breaking off the threesomes, chiefly due to trust issues and growing sexual incompatibility, both perhaps triggered by our experimentation."
"Ever since, I've regretted agreeing to that first three-way."
"If I hadn't been so damned eager to take a bite of forbidden fruit, we might have kept our relationship intact."
"But I guess this can also be put down as what sometimes happens when you ignore that old advice, 'don't sh*t where you sleep'."- theartfulcodger
When venturing into the unknown, it's always wise to gain some first hand experience, to hear a variety of pros and cons of what you're possibly getting yourself into.
That way, deciding whether or not it's for you will become increasingly clear.
It's also important to remember, that it is always ok to say "no".
People Share Their Best 'You Either Die The Hero Or Live Long Enough To Become The Villain' Experiences
"You either die the hero or live long enough to become the villain."
Though not necessarily a universal truth, all of us have witnessed unfortunate moments in our lives where we've seen this saying become a reality.
Be it seeing our favorite public figures take a serious fall from grace, someone we know and admire eventually disappointing us in a devastating manner, or even seeing ourselves turn into someone we promised we'd never become.
One Redditor was curious to hear people's examples of this saying coming to light, either from a personal experience or seeing it happen to a well-known, public figure, leading them to ask:
"Who is your example of 'you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain'?"
Jim Jones
"Jim Jones."
"He originally stood up for civil rights when it was really unpopular."
"Was hospitalized and accidentally placed in the black ward."
"When the doctors found out, they tried to move him, but he refused."
"Then he became a cult leader and used his power and influence to end the lives of a thousand people."- Crvsby
Earning a position of power
"Working in restaurant kitchens."
"You either burn out young, or become the boss that everyone hates."
"There's exceptions, but that's the rule."- grandpas_old_crow
Henry Heimlich
"Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver."
"Made up a bunch of untested uses for it, treating people having asthma attacks, and drowning victims were the two I remember that he publicly talked up."
"Later, he funded an experiment that involved injecting people with Malaria to see if it would treat other conditions.
"The experiment was found to be unethical by American review boards, so he conducted them in Ethiopia." - User Deleted
Philippe Petain
"Philippe Petain."
"In WW1 he led the French to victory at Verdun, one of the worst battles in human history."
"In WW2, after France was beaten, Petain was the head of state of Vichy France."
"Guy went from the Lion of Verdun to the biggest Nazi collaborator in France."- arthuranymoredonuts
Our bodies
"Every organ until it gets cancer."- SuperBaconjam
Conor McGregor
"Conor McGregor."
"He had the whole country behind him here in Ireland at one point bar people who thought combat sport is grotesque."
"He was witty, original, backing himself up and having a Hollywood like rise to stardom."
"Now he's someone who the whole country is ashamed of, goes punching old men, clearly sleeps around on his wife while she's at home with the kids, just a walking caricature of himself."
"He didn't listen to his own advice."
"Get in."
"Get rich."
"Get out."- StephenPigot2020
Turning into our parents
"My dad used to annoy me by calling my Pokemon cards 'Pokey-Mans'."
"Now my kids have them and I do the same thing and it annoys the sh*t out of them."
"Thanks for the (Pokeyman) gold!"- rumpel4skinOU
Benedict Arnold
"Benedict Arnold."
"Almost died during the revolutionary way, if I recall correctly, and if he had he would have been remembered a huge hero, and a martyr."
"Instead he lived and changed sides, and is remembered only for his being a traitor."- uniqueperson22
Be it someone we knew quite intimately, or someone we admired from a far, it is always heartbreaking to see someone evolve from someone we love, to someone we utterly hate.
Sometimes we do things that have to be done.
And some of those things live in life's gray area of right and wrong.
What comes as a surprise to some is when we don't care if we're wrong.
We may still technically be in the right.
But morally and ethically, there may be some issues.
But still, many people don't care.
Redditor BirdyPizzawanted to see who would fess up about some of the worst things we're responsible for but have no shame.
"What is the darkest thing you have ever done and don’t regret?"
I've stolen from department stores that overcharged. I was arrested. I didn't care. So there...
The Grief
"Five years ago my dad suffered a catastrophic stroke. Left paralyzed and robbed of his speech and ability to communicate he was a shell of the once vibrant, charismatic man he once was. He was moved into skilled nursing where he lived for nearly two years, he was miserable."
"On my last visit I told him it was okay if he wanted to leave us, that we would miss him but he should go. A week later I received the call that he had passed. Instead of immediate grief I felt relief. Relief that he was finally free. The grief came later and I still miss him every single day."
theroadtoeverywhere
Things Missing
"Got into a car accident and had to stay with my mom for a couple days to figure out what to do. Went back to my apartment (I had two roommates) and everything was missing from my room. Long story short one of my roommates had everything hidden in her room."
"I called and told her the things were missing from my room and she came up with a lie that a couple girls came to look at my room (I was moving out bc of the accident, long story) and that they must have taken my things. She had everything I owned. Including my grandmothers perfume bottles, stuffed to the back of her closet, under her bed, behind her dresser etc."
"So I packed all of my stuff up. Then took a giant black garbage bag and stuffed as much of her closet in it as I could. Took it to the middle of nowhere, dug a hole and burnt it. She called screaming at me that her stuff was missing. I told her the two girls must have come by and taken her stuff too."
udntsay
Violence
"I hit my uncle left right and center when he was trying to choke my father to death. I was 16 years old at that time, a very skinny girl. I beat his face neck and every part of him that I could target with so much intensity that my knuckles turned blue the next day. I had an animalistic rage that day trying to help my father get away from his death grip. I hate my uncle even today."
"I got anger issues because of growing up around him. And I don't regret beating him that day at all. He was physically abusive to his wife as well. One fine day, his wife retaliated by beating him blue with a stick. And he stopped being physically violent towards her post that."
avadakebakra
Danger
"A neighbor like 10 years ago was neglecting their dog badly in the heat. The dog escaped often and ended up at the shelter a lot. One day she jumped the fence and got her tie-out cable stuck on the fence. (She was not in danger of choking.) Neighbor put her on a 3-foot-long cable tied to a doorknob, no water, 90 degree day. I let some kind folks steal her, watched the whole thing and said nothing to stop them."
Oh-Oh-Ophelia
Goodbye
"When my father was dying and in pain I was the one who told the doctors he had been through enough and we couldn't see him suffer anymore. Doctor injected him with something, I assume a morphine mega dose and he passed peacefully moments after. Euthanasia may not be legal in UK but compassionate doctors know what's what. I don't regret it because my pa made me promise I would have his back when he got sick or old. I'm sad he got sick and never got to get old."
Express_Evidence_23
That is a lot of mess. But sometimes we have to do what we have to do.
Toxic
"One of my ex best friends in high school was a real narcissistic lunatic. Had so many egotistical fantasies about what he deserved but I remained his friend because we met through my close friend (his girlfriend). As I started realizing what a terrible person he was I convinced him to go after his fantasy of a harem by asking to add a 3rd to their relationship, that led to a fight between his gf."
"I called her about it and asked how she felt about him adding someone to their relationship and about him sleeping with her. She said she knew nothing about that and started crying because he cheated on her. I basically helped orchestrate their breakup and have no regrets. She is happy with her first child now and he is in a toxic af relationship with 3 kids, 2 of which aren't his and his partner is 8 years older than him."
skijeng
My Buddy
"Had to make the choice to take my dad off of life support after he got Covid this year. He was sedated for a couple of weeks and one of his lungs collapsed and I couldn't watch him fall apart anymore. My dad was a bulky dude. Constantly did a lot of outdoor work and to see him bone skinny and have no muscle left killed me and I knew even if he somehow got through it, he would have been so miserable and depressed in that state he was in. I don’t regret it. I think it was the right thing to do by him. I’ll never not miss him though. That was my buddy."
CarterS20884
The Ruin
"Turned a close friend into the fish and game. He would poach mountain lions and bears. His whole family would literally shoot them and leave them. He would brag about it. I couldn’t stand it and felt that I needed to stop him. He’s in prison and so is his uncle. I know I ruined his life but he was literally killing so many mountain lions and bears."
Donkey-Puncherr
School Daze
"In middle school, there was this group of boys that would corner me in the hallway and try to scare me. I was the perfect target for these little b**tards. I was short, skinny, and had (and still have) and anxiety disorder. One day I just had enough, and asked a friend if I could have an extra pencil, sharpened it as much as I could, and when I saw one of them in the hallway, I stabbed the hell out of his leg. Sh**head got what he deserved."
leserolith3
Wow... we really are a dark and secretive people.