🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 20 Apr 2013 18:54:48 -0400, David Lamb <dal...@cs.queensu.ca>
wrote:

>On 20/04/2013 10:10 AM, Xocyll wrote:
>> Bethesda never considered the interactions, where the inheritance
>> routine would conflict with you being a wanted criminal.
>>
>> It's like every script was written as though it happened in complete
>> isolation from everything else - only that's not how worlds work, it's
>> how laboratory's work.
>
>"Feature interactions" is a really hard problem. It was a significant 
>research field back in the 1990s just for telephone switching systems. 
>It's easy enough to pick four or five things and make sure they don't 
>interfere with each other, but the number of interactions goes up at 
>least as the square of the number of features -- and sometimes you get 
>more interactions than that, when feature A causes feature B to do 
>something that interferes with feature C.

Not only that, but in software engineering (as well in manufacturing
tangible items like electronics, machinery and robotics), the cost of
implementing and testing the features can rise exponentially with the
number of possible combinations of optional features.  

This is why for example most car manufacturers offer such a fixed
array of options.  Sure, you might have a choice of a dozen paint
colors, but that's a feature that typically doesn't interact (except
with regard to coordinating with interior color).  For example,
usually one or two audio system options are offered, and often one is
not available without a more complete package that also specifies
installation a nav system or similar option that puts a finite
definition on the feature set.  It's because if they offered a dozen
different car stereo options, and a dozen different nav systems, and a
dozen different types of climate control systems, even the smallest
economy cars would cost a few hundred grand each to produce once every
possible combination/permutation of feature was tested to properly
work together.

I doubt consumers would be willing to pay several thousand dollars for
a game like Skyrim, but that's what Bethesda would have to charge if
they tried to implement every feature in a way that's perfectly
logical.  Persnickety gamers should be careful what they wish for.