Patch notes that state how many lines of code have been added

[Atemsiel]

Is this something that people actually care about? I understand wanting to know how many images/events are added, but lines of code? Really?


I ask partially because I'm making a game and I haven't been counting lines of code.. Does this actually matter?

 

[jamdan]

No. The lines of code doesn't really say anything informative.

Ideally, the number of code lines should be the minimum necessary. Which, in theory, should mean the game is coded well and less likely to be buggy.

Not to mention, you could easily stretch the lines of code.
Like putting..
Everything...
On..
It's..
Own line of code..
To make it look longer..
Than it..
Actually is...
Penis.

I think the same about the number of words.

You can say what needs to be said quickly. Or you can say what needs to be said in a way that puts people to sleep because they can't possibly stay awake for all this dialog that never seems to end. Just imagine combining this technique with the stretching of the number of code lines. You can have the longest update ever in one run-on sentence or less!

 

[Niv-Mizzet the Firemind]

At best it's an indication of how much the story progresses, because usually the story moves forward through dialogue and such. It kinda of makes sense to have it if the game is story/text heavy.
Also I assume some devs want to put out all the stats of an update, so they include that.

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, just do it however you want to do it. It's better imho to include other stuff like how many events the update has etc.

 

[Atemsiel]

At best it's an indication of how much the story progresses, because usually the story moves forward through dialogue and such. It kinda of makes sense to have it if the game is story/text heavy.
Also I assume some devs want to put out all the stats of an update, so they include that.

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, just do it however you want to do it. It's better imho to include other stuff like how many events the update has etc.

I think I'd probably agree with that. Obviously I've not released anything yet (Early days) but my plan is generally to be pretty descriptive with what I'm releasing in each update. Not so descriptive as to include lines of code added (now that I know nobody really cares) but a good indication. Stuff like events added as you said, which characters they feature, whether they're H or not, etc. I don't think I'll be releasing anything until maybe early March, but that gives me plenty of time to decide how I wanna do things. Thanks buddy

 

[Meaning Less]

The only thing that really matters to me is the game version, if it is 0.5 it should be halfway done and so on, doesn't need to be perfect but at least close enough to what the planned progress is, this way if it goes from 0.11 to 0.2 you have a better idea of how much was done.

Counting Pictures, Lines of text, Events or anything like that just feel like an excuse to show any/minimal progress. Sometimes a single line of code can mean several minutes of gameplay depending on the game and complexity of the code added.

 

[anne O'nymous]

It kinda of makes sense to have it if the game is story/text heavy.

Even with a story/text heavy game it make no sense and don't mean much, because it rely on something totally not related to the game: the author coding ability.
Take a a sandbox game with clothes/mood management, like Super Powered by example. If the author have a poor knowledge regarding coding, adding one character will lead to 5 000+ new lines, against 500 if he's a really good coder who planed everything right from the start. Or it can be around 2 000, like actually, if the author is an average coder. And in all case, the exact same amount of content would be added to the game.

Even the number of new CG is relative. A sprite based game will have fewer new CGs than a game using 3D pre-rendered CGs, yet the first one can perfectly have in fact ten times more content added than the second.

What matter and is significant, especially for a story based or text heavy game, is the words count related to the dialog/narration. It's the only thing that can give an effective indication regarding the size of the update.
Yet it would still be relative, a game that describe everything would have a higher words count due to its heavy narration, than a possibly longer game that rely on its CGs and don't add useless narration describing what the player already see on the screen.

 

[CardinalRed]

The only thing that really matters to me is the game version, if it is 0.5 it should be halfway done and so on, doesn't need to be perfect but at least close enough to what the planned progress is, this way if it goes from 0.11 to 0.2 you have a better idea of how much was done.

That's not how it works... at all.