Month: Nov 2019

Untested illogical code

A Junior Developer sent a Code Review for some C# code. There was a bug that if a user didn’t have permission for a particular record, the code would try and look for the record and couldn’t find it, then it would then crash.

Not only was the “fix” a classic case of merely hiding the bug, rather than addressing the fact of why the code was trying to find the record in the first place – but the fix produced couldn’t possibly work. The Junior Developer had written some code like this:

public boolean HasPermissionToAccess(int recordId)
{
 try
 {
    records.singleOrDefault(record => record.id == recordId);
    return true;
 }
 catch(InvalidOperationException)
 {
    return false;
 }
}

Another developer had beat me to the review, but he nicely asked questions to hint that this can’t possibly do anything beneficial; along the lines of “can you tell me where the exception is thrown?” and “can you tell explain why these return values work?”. I would have just said “you cannot possibly have tested this”.

The thing is, the Junior then gave an answer like “the singleOrDefault line will return null if the user doesn’t have permission”.

Yes that is correct Junior, but you ain’t doing anything with the return value. You are returning “true” regardless of what happens. i.e the user “HasPermissionToAccess”. Surely it should return “false”? Also how can the catch block ever execute? singleOrDefault will never throw that exception. Since his new method always returns true, then the calling code will still crash in the exact same place it did before.

I don’t understand how you can write code with the aim of fixing a crash, but it doesn’t even fix the crash. On a positive note, I guess it didn’t introduce any other issue, other than being completely redundant.

EA Sports

Around 2002-2009, I was very loyal to the FIFA computer game franchise and purchased it every year. There were always detractors; people stating each version had a few tweaks and updated player rosters – so was always a cheap, annual cash grab.

After 2009, I bought the game occasionally, before taking a 6 year break, returning to the franchise for FIFA 2019. I really enjoyed the game and seeing all the improvements in 6 years was really impressive. When I read other reviews and comments, people were saying that the Career mode was exactly the same as 2018 versions with virtually zero changes.

So people’s complaints of EA reselling the same game each year seemed like a valid viewpoint. When FIFA 20 was announced, EA not only announced Volta, a 5-a-side football mode which has been missing since FIFA 98, but they also promised an overhaul of Career mode.

Feature 1:

They promised to fix the problems with fixtures. Sometimes you would get fixtures multiple days in a row. This has been a problem for years, and you would think EA would have fixture scheduling perfected. Surely a similar algorithm is required for Madden, NFL and NBA Live? (although I guess the NBA Live franchise died off on the consoles).

What actually happened…

Fixture scheduling still broken; they are still been organised on consecutive days. Additionally, after a few years, the European Cup and Champions League stop working.

EA put out a statement saying “…implemented logic improvements to this system early in the development cycle, where the results we were seeing were positive. Unfortunately, a change that we made late in the development cycle, which was the insertion of the authentic fixture schedule for the first season of a Career Mode, resulted in an issue where the rescheduling of games is creating new match congestion issues.”

Feature 2:

“new Morale system” and “player conversations”. They announced a new morale system where player’s morale will affect their stats. You can talk to players to discuss their concerns.

What actually happened…

Players request a rest…then moan when you don’t play them.

Feature 3:

“Speak to the media”. Press conferences

What actually happened…

The general consensus is that they got boring real fast. Also, sometimes the questions won’t be relevant to your matches. EA’s response: “due to the large amount of text and options that are present, despite our best efforts during testing to identify and resolve as many of these issues as possible, there are some issues that have been found by our players that we were unable to find during the development cycle”

Feature 4:

“Improvements to team line-ups”

I didn’t have a problem with the line-ups for opposition teams in FIFA 19. When changing your own tactics, often players would switch positions, e.g. your winger playing in centre midfield.

What actually happened…

Opposition teams mainly play reserve squads. This resulted in big teams like Manchester City being relegated rather than winning the leagues. Final league positions were essentially the opposite of real life.

Feature 5:

“getting sacked for offering contracts”

What actually happened…

I read there was some kind of contract negotiation feature on FIFA 19 that could be exploited to gain extra cash. It seems EA have prevented it on FIFA 20 by sacking the manager if they offer a big contract. People were complaining they signed a new star player and were instantly sacked. Other people took small clubs up the leagues, only to find they couldn’t offer even small pay-rises without getting sacked. It makes zero sense.

All these problems got the hashtag #FixCareerMode trending on Twitter. You would think that EA will work harder to improve their reputation. They have had a lot of bad reputation in recent years with the disappointing Anthem, the loot box controversy of Star Wars Battlefront. Going further back, they kept on being voted “Worst Company In America”.

To those detractors that say “all this game is – is FIFA 19 with updated rosters”, well you are wrong. The game was released with old squads! You would think it would have updated squads since the game releases after the transfer window has shut, so squads are finalised. But no, EA can’t even have that correct on launch.

It was interesting to watch a few videos on YouTube from the “Game Changers” – YouTubers that get the game early, and can deliver constant feedback to EA. The Game Changers said they got the beta for FIFA 20 only a month before release, and even though they reported all these problems, they knew that EA would not have enough time to fix them before launch.

To be fair, it’s been less than a month, and EA have actually put out a patch that apparently fixes the majority of these issues. However, a company shouldn’t need a huge backlash before sorting things out.

We just need #FixVolta to start trending. In the story mode for the Volta mode, one of the main characters, Syd plays for your team. She also plays for every other team you are up against. She must have 30 identical twins. How do bugs like this even get released?