I guess you have missed that part that the army didn't spend more $$$, fired all DEVs and that there are only 2-3 guys left in the Army Game Team ?

The Development studio for AA3 was closed on 17th june (release date of the game) and the DEVs had to release that unfinished game. They needed more time and manpower for it, but the army didn't give that and fired most teammembers and released that game ...

The ex-DEVs explained very well that they didn't have enough manpower, not enough time and that the army made their life very complicated a lot of times. Creating a game in that situation isn't easy ...

The army had a contract with that studio until 17 June, and the DEVs hoped they can continue to work and get more time and ressources. But it didn't happen ...

Quoted

I mean if i was a developer, I wouldnt release a game with bugs like AA3 has

Sure, but if they give you a impossible deadline and tell you that you have to finish that game in a few weeks and that all DEVs will lose their job then when the game comes out ... you would think different I guess !?

The DEVs wouldn't have released that game yet and continue work for at least a half year before releasing it ...

----

But yeah ... continue to blame the DEVs for all of this. They already lost their job and get bad feedback from the community so I guess it will not hurt them anymore

maybe devs stuffed it up when they found out their jobs were going lol

well, the Developers simply expected that they continue to work on that game for many more months/years. They were not finished yet and with the current ressources they would need 3-6 more months to get rid of most of the bugs, fix performance problems, animations and everything else. The game is still BETA. They simply have not expected that the game will get released by the army on 17th june and they lose their job on that day.

For sure the game isn't finished yet and needs much more time and many more patches. The Developers agree with that and are very sad that they had to release this "unfinished product" ... but that decision was made by the army. Maybe they would have worked harder if they would have known that the game will get released in june and that they lose their job then, but they simply did not know until a few days before the army decided to pull the plug and release that game.

Quoted

If I was a builder, and I was given a house to build, I'm fairly sure I could say to the contractor, we need x amount of time and x amount of builders. The contractor would then negotiate how they could achieve this with less time and less builders to save money. But eventually, both parties would come to an agreement and the house would stand (but maybe having cheaper roofing ) because that's what the contractor wants.

That may be your way but that's not the army way

Developers have asked the army many times for more ressources or at least more time because it's impossible to create a perfect and bugfree game with this small number of developers and that short timeframe. In other games like CoD or BF or whatever there are hundreds of Developers busy for 2-3 years, while the Army Devs were only 30-50 guys and had 2 years of time for this ...

Quoted

and I still got my original questions, they didn't plan to release a bug infested game did they

At least not the Game Developers. But the army didn't really care that the game isn't finished yet and simply forced the DEVs to release it ...

Quoted from "[2012th]-PACMAN"

maybe devs stuffed it up when they found out their jobs were going lol

if the army told them in advance that they all will get fired on the release date, then they are stupid.
ppl wont work with their full potential if they know they cant make it in time and wont get a chance to make it right.
thats just human nature.
on the other hand the army is burocracy and they dont care at first, but eventually they will realise that it wont work likr this.
they wat to recruit ppl with a half finished product, its like having a recruiting officer who cant talk

Fair play to Devs

talking about this isnt gonna change anything anyways.AA2 still has bugs and ive seen patches make things worse and have another patch days later.Im glad their fired,maybe they can get better ones,Either way, the devs were responsible for their actions wether they had time or not.Not having enough time is an excuse,GETR-DONE

Quoted

maybe they can get better ones

there will be no "other" or "better" DEVs. They will not spend anymore money into the project ...

Quoted

AA2 still has bugs and ive seen patches make things worse and have another patch days later

Yes, but the AA3 Developers have not coded AA2 ... The true AA2 Devs were also fired/replaced a long time ago (half of them after 2.0; the others until 2.5) ...

The AA3 Devs tried some things with AA2 but it's hard to bugfix a game that was coded by other people.

Which is one of the big problems the army is causing here. Too many times talented DEVs got fired already, always at a bad time when you need those DEVs. Like back in Army 1.9 / 2.0 where we got a new engine and DEVs hoped to create more patches for the *new* engine, but they were fired and replaced by new guys, who had a hard time to work on AA2 and yes, they messed it up. Because it's not easy to work on a game that other people have coded. You simply need some time to understand this engine and how the game was coded. And the Army does not give Developers many time and whenever a new engine comes out, they fire all Developers after the first version get released and let other people work on that game now. People who don't have any clue about this current engine, game and code and simply need time to get into it.

It's simply a way too complicated if half of the Developers you are working with gets replaced/fired every few months. You need a good team which works together to create a nice game. If the army replaces this team every few months ... you get a buggy game.

I'm sure of them they get a different job (all the DEV's that got fired) and probably a better one as well...
Even in our company we still lookin' for software engineers...

Sadly they got booted from that job tho ... makeing games (and testing them) soundz like funzzZZ

The only hope you have for significant updates of AA is if they do find
money and move it to Huntsville. Sadly, the management at Huntsville
is one of the reasons that the AA3 development process was so fubared.
A few gems;

-During 2.7 development Huntsville was on the hook
for the CROWS HUMVEE coding. They ran out of money less than halfway
through and suddenly stopped all work on it. Huntsville was also
responsible for the project management at that point, the PM was not
able to get us more time, more resources or to allow us to cut
features. The end result was we had to add their work on top of ours.
Guess why quality suffered. The financial structure they work under
won't change, it WILL happen again. In fact, it did on a regular basis
- everytime they gave us "resources" it would happen shortly
thereafter. My pointing that out was one of the reasons they were happy
to fire me, apparently the emporer does not like being told he has no
clothes.

-One of the "engineers" they assigned to help us when
it was clear that 3.0 was going to be late - long after we told them
that is exactly what would happen if they didn't get us more resources
in a timely fashion, started asking questions of our Lead Programmer
that really troubled him. No programmer should need to ask stuff that
simple. Turns out that that the "programmer" was an artist who at one
point was put on flash development. They basically changed his job
title to something that had no bearing to his skill set. Don't even
get me started on the artist who was sharing a character model he was
working on with us. When we asked why he had a Simpon's Yellow skin
tone he replied "huh, guess I shouldn't wear orange tinted sunglasses
when I'm doing art". I am not smearing all the devs there, there are
most definately some talented people out there (aside from management
that is) but the "help" they gave us was often worse than no help at
all. And we only got it for a few hours here and there until they
either ran out of funding or got poached by Huntsville Producers that
needed labor for their own projects.

-When Huntsville fired
MindRiot, the ONE guy who was full time on 2.x, they had no replacement
for him and acted all surprised when the last few 2.x updates were
absurdly late. They were also buggy because Huntsville is behind a
government firewall and cannot test the game. Hell, it's not even
possible for them to play the game on a government computer on a
government network due to the red tape. For that matter they can't use
half the tools we use on a regular basis. And I'm not talking about
anything fancy here. It's not legal to use an Instant Messenger client
on a government computer. We had an intern from Emeryville get hired
out at the Redstone Arsenal, he told me he had been on the job for
three months before he was allowed to sign onto a computer. That
unfortunately is not a joke nor an exageration.

Pye, just want to thank you for the hard work you put in. The fact that you are giving out information is very welcome too. I'm just a little worried about the future of this game after reading your posts. There must be some high up army idiot who realises that all the hard work and money put into the project are wasted if it isnt done the RIGHT way all to the end?

Hope you guys land on your feet after losing your job.

I worry about the future of the project too. I put too much time, blood, sweat and tears into it to not care even after everything that has happened. It's all up in the air right now, and it's not because the Army doesn't care. Colonel Wardynski has put more time into all of this than anyone else, this is a failure for him too. He's busy trying to keep the project alive by finding new money for it. It he can't, he pays a higher price than anyone else will. I can even understand why he did what he did. The fiscal year for the government ends in September, at the time the team was fired in June they had received 15% of the money allotted to them this year. They simply had to fire the team as they had no money to pay them with. If I'm bitter about anything, it is about how things went down - not the why.

Quoted from "decay90"

I've read all that, but I don't understand how they could stuff it up so much.

If I was a builder, and I was given a house to build, I'm fairly sure I could say to the contractor, we need x amount of time and x amount of builders. The contractor would then negotiate how they could achieve this with less time and less builders to save money. But eventually, both parties would come to an agreement and the house would stand (but maybe having cheaper roofing ) because that's what the contractor wants.

In aa's case it seems that the game doesnt "stand" and I am fairly sure that's not what the US ARMY wants. Why didn't they put in the intial build, less features and less bugs!? Kinda doesn't make sense to me...
either 1. The dev's are shit and didn't do their job.
or 2. The US ARMY wanted a commercial quality game at half price.

O and I still got my original questions, they didn't plan to release a bug infested game did they :S I was hoping patches would be more content... not bug fixes...

Then I really suggest you find a job in construction, cause you clearly don't understand the major difference, which makes it impossible to compare building a house and making a game. Building a house is a static process, which follow a clear and defined blueprint. Whereas coding a game is a dynamic process which changes all the time - you can't make a deadline for a game; what you can do, is make hallmarks along a line where you hope to reach a certain point in the coding, and then you decide when the next hallmark should be.

Sounds like pro Football,when they hire a new coach,the head coach brings in a guy that helped coach little league with him,but really aint that good,Stuff like this happens everywhere,i just thought the Army had some core values or something,but i guess we are all human. Caint wait for the NUKES and get this over with,its just a let down,,,Man i should sue, I think this game gave me depression years ago,,Maybe thats why its free...But why spend all that money on a free game,I never wanted to go inlist after playing this,,ID RUN OUTTA BULLETS AND DIE. And if they play this for a simulation thats JUST LAZY.

Quoted from "[DRUNK]_VODKA_"

Pye, just want to thank you for the hard work you put in. The fact that you are giving out information is very welcome too. I'm just a little worried about the future of this game after reading your posts. There must be some high up army idiot who realises that all the hard work and money put into the project are wasted if it isnt done the RIGHT way all to the end?

Hope you guys land on your feet after losing your job.

so why not talk to them, i understand money can be an issue pye, but if you put you blood sweat and tears in it, it wouldnt be about the money issue.

maby for them it would be but i dont thinkt he devolpers of this game care about the money to much becuase this is your dream your passion for this game, the game is super, sure there is alot of bug's and you guys got like no time at all to do stuff and no resource's, but all in all, isnt that what the goverment is good for rob the poor to help them out.

i hate the goverment, there nothing but snakes, i dont trust them as much as they trust me, i think its hi time for uncle sam to get a damn job, and stop sticking his hand my damn pocket to get his money.

but you guys did a great job, i dont knock that and homey is right alot of people think games that get relaesed are bug free there is no game out there that is bug free its going to be bugs no matter what. i wish you guys goodluck, heres a hint if you dont mind me giving you one, if you cant win with them beat them in there on game, you devs should just make your on game togther and make the army wish they never fired you guy's and lol at them for fireing you guys.

i know what we can even call it the Pye Game

Pye recruit the fired devs and do your own thing honestly yea you guys are right no game comes with out a few bugs thats expected but when its that bad theres no way in hell it should of gotten released i understand its nothing the devs could of done but damn, i mean around 10,000 (not sure of the exact number) players came on the first few days to see what AA3 was about and now 2/3 of them not even bothering with it anymore... If that was me i'd copy the code for the game then put a virus in the network taking out all the computers, If they want the game back demand more time to do it right lol

Lol homey you sound even worst than Pye. I can understand you being friends with Devs and all but that is simply a bunch of bullshit you wrote. I mean game is not finished that is obvious but game being laid off? The replacement team just released 1 gig patch lol. Anyway Pye great job with the game, I wish you could finish it. But I frankly don't care bout you ... so I wish others will finish it.

Quoted from "Odin[DK]"

Then I really suggest you find a job in construction, cause you clearly don't understand the major difference, which makes it impossible to compare building a house and making a game. Building a house is a static process, which follow a clear and defined blueprint. Whereas coding a game is a dynamic process which changes all the time - you can't make a deadline for a game; what you can do, is make hallmarks along a line where you hope to reach a certain point in the coding, and then you decide when the next hallmark should be.

My friend, u clearly have no idea what construction is... If u think it's static process, u r quite wrong. Did u ever think how does weather affect building, or how many differend contractors u have to syncronize on a project in the same time, how if one of them is late u get a domino effect?

It's very similar to programing, in terms of Project Planning.

In any job on this world: if u have a deadline, you have to finish every thing in given time, or u get fired or pay a wery nice sum of money required to be paid as a penalty... simple as that

That why u have Project planing. Clearly, bad one here...

For example, we all saw movies, on how much time dev's spend on sound, on shooting range, on creating realistic guns, etc. etc. AA3 was a three years project, so it had to be clear 6 months ago that it wont be finished in given time... If this happens, you put all of your resources on finishing the core of project, not polishing the little things 99% people dont care... And what happend here: we have a perfect sound, very realistic guns, nice graphics, and a game that doesn't work...

Wouldn't you rather have playable game, with ok sound, average graphics, and not so realistic guns, that works perfect? And then every few months a better sound patch, better graphics patch, better balistics patch, ...

If u had done that, you would give better product, that 70% people would like, 30% will allways complain, and u would have 6 months to polish the game...

Sry devs i really respect your work, and i think you did a great job. But if i were your employer... you would get fired.