What do you think? Spaghetti code

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?

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Never. If your program reaches a certain amount of complexity, then you will always have spaghetti code. Because your ressources are limited.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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Did they really use this excuse in the past?


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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1 - I don't know how much weight it actually has in the game, but in the features I care for, yeah older code and resources are a detriment.
2 - Probably some stuff regarding your retainers. And I think the glam dressers bork the game a little if implemented in housing due to the way the housing system and the glamouring system were designed, which conflict with eachother.
3 - No, but they might be able to mitigate the damage it causes by clearing some stuff up.
4 - No. Have you seen 1.0? It's a mess.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

Did they really use this excuse in the past?

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They have used it as a justification for why some stuff couldn't be done, or to explain away a serious glitch or two. Now if you both mean "excuse" as in "a get-out-of-having-to-do-real-work card", then I wouldn't say they have. But I'm not the most tech savy person when it comes to analyzing the extent of the damage caused by their spaghetti code.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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It's more of an excuse players make when they think something cannot or should not be changed or added to the game. I'm sure the old code puts some restraints on things, but the devs have shown they're capable doing quite a lot to the game.

It's just a stupid meme at this point, which came about I believe due to comments Yoshi and the development team made over the years that players either mistranslated entirelly or just took out of context (the basic idea is that ARR "uses 1.0 code" which "prevents <insert desired/requested addition/content/improvement here> from being implemented. It doesn't use 1.0 code or 1.0's engine at all, something Yoshi actually came out and stated officially).

Many of the limitations of the game are by design and were simply done to expidiate development and get the game's client and servers running stably and efficently (by comparison with 1.0), but by doing so they had to make it a 'closed system' that is very hard to expand on it's core functions (glamour being an example of this).

And as Larirawiel said, when you get down to it, all computer code is by it's very nature 'spaghetti code' - rare is the program that is designed simply and efficently and expanding on requirements places extra strain and complexity to it, it's the nature of the beast.

Yes, the game has spaghetti code because they have spent 12 years adding features on top of features. This would happen to any and all MMOs without exception. This spaghetti code is not from 1.0 (see my signature), but from everything that came after 2.0.

The limitations seem to affect inventory and items that you can carry as well as housing. You can see an example of how a limitation was worked around by making cross-world linkshells separate from normal linkshells instead of trying to salvage them.

The game will never be free of spaghetti code but they will over time resolve old "spaghetti" issues as new ones form.

It's more like an increasingly precarious house of cards at this point. Changing too much at the base levels risks toppling whole chunks of the code, but it's been going so long now that the only way to actually fix all the original limitations would be to knock it all down and start over, and that would mean A: a big financial investment, B: a whole lot of time, and C: diverting work from the current game to build a new one.

I think, that there's a lot of armchair programmers on the forums.

As Jeeqbit says, it's less an issue of "spaghetti code" itself as it is a situation where "spaghetti code" is just sort of a catch all for all of the technical limitations imposed by a decade of continued development. It's also important to remember that the basic structure of the game was built to run on a PS3, with all of the special issues that brought to the table. FF14 was rebuilt from the ashes of 1.0 in a rush and has had continued focused, ongoing development ever since. It also was never built to be as easily expansive and scalable as some other games.

So, no, "spaghetti code" is not an issue any more in the specific sense that some people use it in. But the concept of it is still very much a continuing drag on the game's development. If you think it's just an excuse made up by someone you clearly have no concept of how game development works... and you don't need to be a programmer or game developer to get that.

unless they rewrite the game from scratch, there will always be old code lurking around, which is generally meme'd as "spaghetti code"

I am not a dev, but I support software, and what I currently support is something that was expanded from something developed in 2010, so about the same length of time as FFxiv. A major problem is old code bits left around which are always causing issues. are the devs using it as an "excuse"? I doubt it, its reality, and rooting it all out will never happen without a complete rewrite, which I doubt they will do since for an mmo, would likely entail more resources than they can or want to spend on the game. current FFxiv may not resemble 1.0, but its built from it, so will always be with it. they can try and mitigate it, and add new systems on to it, but the unfortunate reality is, some things they may not want to touch because changing it, may break more things in game and they, or we, can imagine.

doesnt mean they cant try, and they may have, we will never know. but in some cases, implementing some new feature might be more like trying to erect a skyscraper on a mudflat. not ever an ideal plan.

Spaghetti code is usually used as a slang term for situations where old code and newer code are essentially in different formats and rather than reformat all the old code they just find a way to make it interact with the newer code. In regards to SE this has happened in the past due to changes to game engine or intended gameplay hardware during development on multiple titles in the company's history resulting in various issues on those titles. At this point with FFXIV they can build on top of it but the original game being built around the PS3 console has essentially set a hard limit to what they can add to it. Like a plate of spaghetti they can add meatballs and other stuff to it to dress it up or improve it but eventually they're going to run out of plate.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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I feel like you just made the topic just to use the term Spaghetti Code lol.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?

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On the server side in particular? Abso-fricking-lutely, yes. Based on every bit of my own experience, I have close to zero doubt that the codebase for the server side of this game is some sort of nightmare-inducing disaster. Because, after a certain amount of time, most complex server systems are a nightmare-inducing disaster, unless you periodically refactor it, or go in with a lengthy architecture phase looking to future-proof it. (And even then the latter isn't always enough.)

And most aren't done on an incredibly short and rushed development cycle as the ARR relaunch was.

We know the client shares no code with 1.x, because it was written on an entirely different engine. But I would be at least mildly surprised if the server codebase didn't reuse some of the 1.x code.

The client? I could go either way on that one. But the server? Yes, I absolutely believe the server codebase is a mess, especially with the game having been out this long.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?

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That's harder to say without knowing what modules of the server ecosystem the worst spaghetti code might be in.

But one of the most common issues with "spaghetti code" scenarios is having one piece of code that depends on another piece of code which depends on another piece of code which was written for a previous project by someone who's not with the company anymore, and where no one entirely knows how that one piece works because it's a big tangled mess of undocumented code that was written quickly... but everyone's afraid to modify it too heavily because there's likely a bunch of undocumented (and non-obvious) quirks which those different systems built atop it silently rely on.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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I am absolutely certain it's a real issue. Both just by observing some of how this game works, and from all my own experience in the field.

Unless you sit down and write a piece of software completely new and never intend to change it, you're going to end up with spaghetti code. Maybe when you conceptualized this piece you built it this way due to time or resources. And later on you want to expand it, but you've coded yourself into a corner. Or someone else wrote it the way it is and you want to change it but there's a lot of moving pieces you would have to adjust. They've managed to find ways to work around some of the ways they had to set things up, but there are some that from what they've indicated would require some pretty hefty rewrites which would take up considerable dev time and resources. And players aren't patient enough or the suits aren't willing to foot the bill enough to make that possible.

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Originally Posted by Jybril

I feel like you just made the topic just to use the term Spaghetti Code lol.

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I have been detected xD

Honestly though, that's the second reason. The main is actually understanding what's the spaghetti code of the game nowadays, to understand what's it referring to and what's not. Clarification since everyone are using the term but not all are using it correctly.
And the third reason is discussing the spaghetti code of the game if there are any.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

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I have been detected xD

Honestly though, that's the second reason. The main is actually understanding what's the spaghetti code of the game nowadays, to understand what's it referring to and what's not. Clarification since everyone are using the term but not all are using it correctly.
And the third reason is discussing the spaghetti code of the game if there are any.

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If this game's spaghetti does that mean we can eat it?

Could someone pass me the shredded mozzarella?

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

The main is actually understanding what's the spaghetti code of the game nowadays, to understand what's it referring to and what's not. Clarification since everyone are using the term but not all are using it correctly.

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The term spaghetti code is used incorrectly. A lot of the time it's being used to explain why something is not being done when we've actually been told by Yoshi-P that it's intentional. It was used to explain why the graphics were not good but we knew the engine was capable of a lot more because of other FF games that use it, so it's more about the assets being upgraded and increasing the system requirements. It was used to suggest that 1.0 code was hindering current development when this has been denied and we've been told in the past exactly what it was hindering (summoner, chocobos and player collision).

Instead of it being "spaghetti code" it's a lot like building a house. Once you have built the house, if you decide a part of it is no longer fit for purpose, you have to knock a lot of it down and start over and that takes a lot of time.

As time progresses, parts of the MMO house become redundant. What if parts of the MMO house that are not redundant are built on top of that redundant part of the house? It's going to be a lot of work to change it and this is a problem that every MMO is going to have to work with. The priority has to be the next patch which will give people a reason to login, not knocking down what they have built, so the redundant parts will usually get left behind, accepted as limitations or worked around.

"Spaghetti code" is a meaningless statement that players just spout off. The reality is we, not being the game's programmers, have ZERO idea what is complex and what is not. The reality of complex large scale coding is that there is often little relationship between what we as customers perceive as easy/difficult and what is actually easy/difficult. Some things which seem insane to us can be rebuilt in an afternoon by one guy, then other things that seem like they should be easy ("iTs JuSt A fEw ExTrA fIeLdS iN tHe DaTaBaSe!1!!!") are insurmountable and would take an entire team a year to fix.

Basically there is no point in being an armchair expert and/or ranting/guessing/pontificating about programming stuff and features, you have to assume that at the level of the actual programmers that they are putting their best foot forward to get stuff done. Issues crop up here and there but in the grand scheme of things there isn't some stream of critical disasters. If the devs say something is difficult, then it's difficult, they aren't lying or covering, thinking that is just being a child.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

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I have been detected xD

Honestly though, that's the second reason. The main is actually understanding what's the spaghetti code of the game nowadays, to understand what's it referring to and what's not. Clarification since everyone are using the term but not all are using it correctly.
And the third reason is discussing the spaghetti code of the game if there are any.

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The topic "spaghetti code" is a huge one. Basically, it means, that it is hard to figure out what a piece of code does, even for experienced developers. And this is also highly subjective. And the reasons why a piece of code is considered as "spaghetti" are different. The common reasons are: many deep nested loops/if-else-constructs, bad naming of variables, methods, procedures, the usage of many mutable global-/static variables or a class, method, procedure does too much etc.

Can you "fix" spaghetti code? The answer is: it depends. Because the reasons why the spaghetti code does what it does are also different.

Are the calculations, which the spaghetti code has to do also very complex? If yes, then you will propably not be able to "fix" it with a rewrite. Maybe you can make the spaghetti code less spaghetti, but not more. This is mostly the reason for many deep nested loops/if-else-constructs. If you have ever wrote code, which calculates the salary of a employee based on taxcard, health insurance etc. then you propably know what i mean. :)

Bad naming? The hardest thing is to find a good name. And yes, naming is hard. :) But if you have a good name for a variable or method then use the refactoring funcionality of your IDE. :) And bad naming can turn even trivial code into spaghetti code. If you name your method "calculateSpellCriticalHit" then the devs will know what this method does. But if you name it "calculateHit" then they will need to look into it because this name is too generic. :)

But it seems to me, that "spaghetti code" is not the reason why they have often much pain to improve some things. I guess, they have really f*cked up the persistence layer. The persistence layer is the piece of code, which communicates with a database server. And because it is so fundamental, the chances are high that if you change something here then it will break some things in the software if you do not pay attention. And unfortunately nobody knows how the persistence layer of the game looks like. But there are also methods to mitigate the pain if you really need to make changes: use a statically typed programming language and use an ORM framework and write integration tests. Because there are many tools, which can help you identifying incompatible changes. If they do not use them then they have to analyse the whole code base manually (basically via CTRL+F) and identify the places, which could break with the change. If the codebase is huge then this is very personal ressources intensive.



Cheers

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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They can't make glamour dressers in housing despite every other just as complex system like retainer bells, FC chests and Chocobo stalls, but not glamour chests because it broke a server once when multiple people used it despite them having the power to make a different item or overhaul the system but don't. Because, spaghetti code.

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

"Spaghetti code" is a meaningless statement that players just spout off. The reality is we, not being the game's programmers, have ZERO idea what is complex and what is not. The reality of complex large scale coding is that there is often little relationship between what we as customers perceive as easy/difficult and what is actually easy/difficult. Some things which seem insane to us can be rebuilt in an afternoon by one guy, then other things that seem like they should be easy ("iTs JuSt A fEw ExTrA fIeLdS iN tHe DaTaBaSe!1!!!") are insurmountable and would take an entire team a year to fix.

Basically there is no point in being an armchair expert and/or ranting/guessing/pontificating about programming stuff and features, you have to assume that at the level of the actual programmers that they are putting their best foot forward to get stuff done. Issues crop up here and there but in the grand scheme of things there isn't some stream of critical disasters. If the devs say something is difficult, then it's difficult, they aren't lying or covering, thinking that is just being a child.

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'' Nooooo, I don't believeee you.
Lazy devs REEEEEEEEEEE. ''

I think unless you work with the system itself then you should refrain from trying to attribute something such as lying or malice when in reality you have no clue yourself and are just trying to venture into the "Lul lazy" paradigm.

EDIT: To address the comments themselves, it absolutely does exist and when you work with a project which involves multiple working parts and components then this issue is just further exacerbated. So in the sense of whether it will be addressed or not. No, it never will be addressed. The best they will ever be able to do is work actively around stopping this spaghetti code from being too inhibiting on the game features.

I'm still wishing for GNB/DNC/RPR/SGE weapons for the other Ultimates. I don't know if spaghetti code would have anything to do with not bringing these weapons into the fold, but I know some people are still saving their totems for this eventuality :eek:

It's not 1.0 spaghetti code.
it's the bones of the 2.0 game, having to replicate data from 1.0, running on a modified FFXV engine that was specifically built to run on the playstation 3.

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Originally Posted by BachelorCole

I'm still wishing for GNB/DNC/RPR/SGE weapons for the other Ultimates. I don't know if spaghetti code would have anything to do with not bringing these weapons into the fold, but I know some people are still saving their totems for this eventuality :eek:

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That's less likely to be a code limitation and more a "the weapon design/modeling team is working on other content right now, and we consider that higher priority." (I would bet, for instance, that right now the weapon design/modeling team is working on hashing out the general aesthetic of this expansion's relic weapons.)

Things like "the server coughs up a hairball and then falls over dead if multiple people open a glamour dresser in the same spot" or "the glamour system breaks entirely if you move a glamour dresser while you're using it"? Those could easily be due to spaghetti code.

Say, for instance, that the cache of glamour items is tied to the record of the in-world object being used, versus the character. There are many reasons this could be the case!

But then if you move the in-world object (i.e., removing it and recreating it elsewhere), the glamour record goes "poof" while being used. That would be Bad. Or you have four people using the same glamour dresser, and as a result of it having 1600 glamour items loaded into the in-memory record of a single object, it exceeds what was ever supposed to be the maximum object record size in memory, and Bad Things Happen.

And "there's no feasible way to change this without cutting out a giant chunk of the zone instance servers to rewrite it" could 1. absolutely be a real problem in trying to implement glamour dressers in the world in general, and 2. could absolutely be the fault of the aforementioned development issues. Be it spaghetti code ("some of this is built on code where no one really knows how it works anymore"), or legacy code that you just can't change because 47 different things depend on it doing things one way, so even if you cut the legacy code out and rewrote it, you'd then have to rewrite the other 46 things as well. Stuff like that.

(The latter isn't technically spaghetti code in the traditional sense, but there's still a fairly large overlap; sometimes the reason you can't cut the thing out and replace it is that because the thing in question is spaghetti code, no one is 100% certain how it works. Thus no one is certain that replacing it with a newer function won't break the other 46 things.)

You can't change glams outside of major settlements, due to the terrible code. Yes, it really is the spaghetti code.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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Anything is an excuse made up by the devs at this point.

I wish I had the confidence in talking about things I have no experience in that half the people on the forum do.

They have never used the limitations of spaghetti code from 1.0 as an excuse for anything because devs are The Twelve incarnate according to the forums, so don't you dare say they make mistakes.
Reality, though, is they have. Memory limitations too, every time they can.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

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I wouldn't know. I dont work on the game, Im not employed at SE or part of the FFXIV Dev Team. I dont have access to the Source Code, and I dont know how it all mingles together or perform a handshake with the server itself.
Cant make claims without being there.

To Question 3, say maybe. This Upgrade might fix some issues in the Code, or just be a Bandaid.... Odds are unless the entire Code gets revamped, I dont think we will ever escape the Spaghetti Code. So my best hope is they can continue to create some of their best work despite the limitations.

I am pretty sure Yoshida recently suggested in an interview that they were not really constrained by the spaghetti code/architecture of 1.0 anymore.
That said, spaghetti code is an issue in pretty much all development projects, to various extent. You always have some things to refactor here and there to be able to improve on it.
Sometimes you just cannot allocate resource on such work.
The whole glamour system/item database is a good example of what could probably benefit from a refactoring :P