Every few months I'm starting to play the newest version of SCPCB available with a friend. We are doing that since 2012 before V1.0 was released. We play for hours until a bug prevents us from playing on. Before 0.8 was released we decided to stop playing until a stable release is available. We assumed V1.0 to be the stable version. The game was almost stable, we had most problems with bugs in the ending.

Now we started again with V1.0.4. Unfortunately I have to say that's even worse. The game crashed at what we assumed to be a DNA scanner. Then we installed V1.0.5. It told us that it cannot read our 1.0.4 save game. Then we started a new game until it crashed again with "Memory Access Vilation" (MAV). We also had lots of other MAVs in this version, but we were able to continue playing by avoiding to look at certain points (eg move through rooms while looking at the floor). But we weren't able to avoid this MAV.

So we tried it later with V1.0.6. I was really excited, as I think it's much more balanced. SCP 173 surprised us now and then like before V0.8 (we didn't see it in the low containment area at all in 1.0.4 / 1.0.5) and it was really big fun to play (Could also be caused by the map seed). We played about three hours and then... Memory Access Violation.

I would really like to see all those bugs fixed. It was more fun to play 0.7.X than now although it had less features, because it was more stable. We just want to finish the game even once.

I expect my save game to work when updating from 1.0.4 to 1.0.5. With all the new features, the game has grown. Regalis, it's not like in 0.5.X anymore, hours are lost if the new version doesn't support the save game.I expect an update from 1.0.4 to 1.0.5 to be a small bug fix update. Why on earth does 1.0.6 get a new room in the pocket dimension? Isn't this a good addition for 1.1 after being tested in a beta version? This is just an example. Being a developer, I know it's more fun to present a new feature to the users than bug fixes. Don't you think that every feature addition can decrease stability?

Also, I'm unhappy to see you slowly moving away from this project before we ever had a (true) stable version :(

I think a big problem is the procedural generated map. You cannot say if a certain bug exists in two different maps. My suggestion is: Specifiy one OFFICIAL map which is tested and the player knows he can finish the game. Make the random map an advanced feature. If players are bored by the official map they can experiment with other maps. Fixing bugs occuring in the offical map can then have higher priority than bugs in generated maps. What do you think?

Don't you think, it's sad that we weren't able to finish the game with three tries and three different versions just because of random bugs?

Now I don't want to tell only negative things ;) The working parts of the game are really great. Thank you Regalis and other contributors. If it wasn't then we would have stopped playing it long ago, due to frustration ;)

I'm sorry to hear you've been having that many issues. Posting more detailed reports on the bug reports -section might help me or someone else fix them though, there usually isn't much anyone can do if they are unable to replicate the bug themselves.

It seems also seems that many of the bugs are hardware/driver-specific (some of which might be partially caused by the ancient engine running on DirectX7), which makes fixing them even more difficult. I don't think the procedurally generated map is a major factor in causing all the bugs: randomizing the order of the rooms generally doesn't cause any crashes, if there's a bug in a room/event it will happen no matter what order the room are in.

To be honest, the entire code is a huge unorganized mess which would need major refactoring or a complete rewrite to be completely stable, which is something I unfortunately don't have the motivation to do at this point of development. When I started programming it around 2.5 years ago, I didn't have the skills to do all the groundwork properly for a game project of this size. I had no idea it would grow this big or that I would be working on it for so long, so things like the map system or the NPCs weren't even designed to work in this scale, and by the time I started to realize the issues, I thought I was already so far in the project that it wasn't worth it to go through a massive refactoring anymore (even though it probably would've saved me a lot of effort down the road).

Juanjpro's Irrlicht port and Answer42's C++ conversion seem quite promising though, so we might get a more polished and stable SCP-CB running on a modern engine at some point even if no-one goes through the effort of rewriting the code of the original game. :)

I'll be writing a more lengthy posts about what went wrong and what went right with the development of SCP-CB in the blog some time soon, so more about this subject later...

It's completely understandable, i would like to see your opinion on how everything about SCP:CB turned out from your point of view, the collaborations, the community, modding, etc.

Like Edmund McMillen's game postmortem on The Binding of Isaac, he had a similar issue with it being in Flash due to him not thinking about the game growing THAT big and it being too late to fix it.

Thanks for your reply, Regalis. Unfortunately you didn't go into the save game incompatibility issue and also you didn't comment on the issue that minor releases contain new features. I would still like to hear what you think about it.

You are worrying about the code mess. Sometimes I wonder if you could not have a code mess for a game like this. I mean, it's about SCPs and they like to break rules. How long would it have taken to add SCP-XYZ if you have had clean code and to force its logic into your structural rules? What I'm trying to say here is that I think cleaner code would have decreased your flexibility.But that's just a theory, since I don't know much about your code.

fishbone wrote:Unfortunately you didn't go into the save game incompatibility issue

I think it's important to remember that Regalis didn't write the save-file fix. While it would've been nice for somebody here to provide a save patching tool, I'm not convinced that such a tool was absolutely necessary. During the time between the fix being released and it being included in the official release there were no complaints about the lack of save compatibility to my knowledge, everybody seemed to be complacent with the fact that your previous save couldn't be used; so I think it's fair to say that nobody bothered to write a patcher because it appeared that nobody was in need of one.

You are worrying about the code mess. Sometimes I wonder if you could not have a code mess for a game like this. I mean, it's about SCPs and they like to break rules. How long would it have taken to add SCP-XYZ if you have had clean code and to force its logic into your structural rules? What I'm trying to say here is that I think cleaner code would have decreased your flexibility.But that's just a theory, since I don't know much about your code.

The purpose of keeping relatively clean code in any code base is to help provide the project with some form of structural integrity. This in turn usually allows programmers to add features in less time and with a decreased chance of error. Most people know this; the problem arises when you need to add content that doesn't fit very well with your current program structure. It most cases you're left with two opitons: You can either redesign your code base such that it can accept such content, or you can write some form of a workaround in your code base to accommodate for the content. The second option is significantly faster to do in most cases, but it often completely ruins any form of consistency you had with your original code structure.

This is what I mean in part when I say that CB has long since exceeded its appropriate scope. It's perfectly acceptable for a solo programmer to cut corners in their code because they aren't expected to maintain a code base that other people are going to use. That being said, it's very easy to see segments of CB's code where the design was clearly meant for a much less complicated game. I'm not blaming Regalis for this, I don't think he expected the game to grow as it did, nor do I expect him to refactor his code as a solo developer; but I do think the effect of adding certain content to your game is something to be increasingly aware of as the game grows.

#Official News.

Juanpro has been hard at work with the Irrhlight engine port for the game. It should be completed in a few more months. Hopefully it will make playing the game more accessible.

LORD DEATH wrote:#Official News.

Juanpro has been hard at work with the Irrhlight engine port for the game. It should be completed in a few more months. Hopefully it will make playing the game more accessible.

Might I ask how you think this is official?

On-topic: The Undertow Games website has screenshots of version 1.1

I have a post to his link. Also, there hasn't been much on the games status so I updated on what's currently going on with the game.

Here is Juanpro's Post: Re: Irrlicht Port
Postby juanjpro » Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:12 pm

I don't have a specific date, but there's not a very long way to go, in a few months the project should be complete.

Link: http://undertowgames.com/forum/viewtopi ... 7bc#p93129

LORD DEATH wrote:I have a post to his link. Also, there hasn't been much on the games status so I updated on what's currently going on with the game.

Here is Juanpro's Post: Re: Irrlicht Port
Postby juanjpro » Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:12 pm

I don't have a specific date, but there's not a very long way to go, in a few months the project should be complete.

Link: http://undertowgames.com/forum/viewtopi ... 7bc#p93129

Still not official

It may not be "Official" but it still answers anyone's question to the status of SCP:CB. That's the purpose of the "Official" News feed.