The design decision that killed CS2

[McKillynu]

As we all know by now CS2 launch is going to be a dumpster fire. I'm a software developer so the question as to why, tickles my fancy. I've spent a part of day looking at early reviews and trying to make sense of this mess. I'm not a game developer so take this theory with a grain of salt. Take a look at the IGN review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn7WVoFdxWA&ab_channel=IGN

A lot of time has been spent on the look of the ploppable assets and how the asset molds itself to the terrain. The review quite rightly points out that it looks like a dog's breakfast. It seems that there are both hard and soft meshes in each asset. The soft mesh conforms(badly) to the terrain. When I watched this review the only thing I was thinking was, how expensive it is to redraw these assets against the terrain every time the camera moves? With tens of thousands of assets in LOS all redrawing to the terrain, holy crap! A modifiable terrain no less. Not only does it look bad but is going to bottleneck your GPU and start hitching frames.

In my mind, I see the last few years of development being inside a test sandbox with perfectly flat terrain, the developers being too scared to unveil the monster they have created. When you build software you ask, "what is the worse case scenario?" and build your core systems around that performance requirement. You assume the user is going to abuse your software. You design your system around worse case scenario, not best case. It looks like there's no senior developers inside Colosaal Order and juniors and mid level punks have been let off the leash with razzle dazzle features without understanding the implications of the decisions they have made. Then you have incompetent management that failed to hire and retain expert technicians or, set in place quality control processes through the early stages of design for the game. In summary, business as usual for your typical software development studio. Remember kids, competent software developers are 'difficult to work with' so show them the door and fill your seats with 'yes men'

/Rant

[kilésengati]

If your assumption is true, why not just rotate the mesh and have the rest clip through the terrain. Almost the same results and way less taxing than constantly recalculating meshes.

[McKillynu]

I looks like every asset is dynamically drawn. In CS1 the asset sat on a flat box which created cliffs terrain breaks around the asset. The answer is to go back to the way CS1 did assets and nuke the current approach.

[McKillynu]

The other thing I would point out is, if you competent problem solvers on your team you could come up with a better terrain smoothing solution with static assets like drawing a polygon like the district tool and asking for a smoothed terrain in the area. I wouldn't be perfect but that's what software design is, a compromise.

[robovader]

I'm sure it will be fine in 5-10 years or so. What a shame.