TNT have posted 'work arounds' for the games...

[Secre]

So, having wandered onto the boards like the fool I am, I have noted that TNT have posted an entire post dedicated essentially to what doesn't work and how to get around it:

http://www.neopets.com/neoboards/topic.phtml?topic=161118979

I mean... they only had an entire year to prepare for this event. Is it so impossible to actually test things and make them work prior to releasing the games??

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[jellysundae]

I'm on FIRE with SOSD, look at that goal count!

  xDDDDD

Are they starting us off with free goals, like some kind of handicapping because gameplay sucks?

I'm pleased that I'm amused by all this right now; not sure how long I'll be able to maintain that for though. ^o^;;

 

[Angeló]

I can't play any of the games

They're not loading or very slow when they do

I'm on HP Laptop / Windows 7 Ultimate / Chrome + Pale Moon Browsers

[Secre]

Well, I've now tried all the games on desktop. They take a while to load and I need to do the YYB zoom out work around to make that game work but everything else is kiiiinda fine.

MSN - never been a favourite and never will be, but I'm hopeful that it might be more playable if there aren't the dreaded CAPCHA's this year.

YYB - needs the zoom out work around, but seems to be working ok other than that. Thank the most high that they have kept the skip ability for goals scored. I was dreading a return of the last revamp where you couldn't claw seconds back per game!! I'm hoping they make it not Full Screen for the main tournament.

SOSD - that goalie is fast! I'm missing more than I'm scoring, but it's still quick and relatively easy.

SS - more flaws here that I can see. The controls are clunky and often require you to click a button twice to do anything as it doesn't register the first click. There is a huge dominance of green slushies as well. And the strangeness of a customer turning up with a red slushie and it immediately changing to green. Sometimes I got full points for them, sometimes I didn't. However, I did manage to hit the min score without issues.

I'll have a look at the mobile versions in a bit...

21 hours ago, jellysundae said:

I'm on FIRE with SOSD, look at that goal count!

  xDDDDD

Are they starting us off with free goals, like some kind of handicapping because gameplay sucks?

I'm pleased that I'm amused by all this right now; not sure how long I'll be able to maintain that for though. ^o^;;

 

Yep, me too! I also missed more goals than I actually scored. Oops.

17 hours ago, Angeló said:

I can't play any of the games

They're not loading or very slow when they do

I'm on HP Laptop / Windows 7 Ultimate / Chrome + Pale Moon Browsers

Ouuch. I've used Chrome and Edge on both desktop and laptop and had no issues. I'm not sure what to suggest. Once loaded do they continue to be slow? It might be that you just need to have a single tab open and max it before playing anything else?

[Nielo]

On 6/2/2021 at 11:05 AM, Secre said:

I mean... they only had an entire year to prepare for this event. Is it so impossible to actually test things and make them work prior to releasing the games??

Kinda, yeah. From what I gather, TNT is incredibly understaffed, the codebase is old (and big), and I think they're also working with a 3rd party development team (in another country). (I'm not a 100% certain about that last part, so correct me if I'm wrong.)

I sort of get how they're feeling, even though the company I work for isn't nearly as understaffed, and our product isn't used in nearly as many countries, but dealing with a lot of old code & developers who work overseas (in a different time zone)? Yup, been there, done that. All of those things separately can create difficulties in releasing software on time and without bugs, but together? That's a recipe for disaster. You've got a handful of people trying to do the work of (at least) twice as many, dealing with communication (and time zone) issues with the 3rd party developers, and working with code that's at best outdated, but, more likely, outdated and lacking proper annotation/documentation (so you only have a vague inkling of what it's supposed to do), and it's probably connected to parts of the system it has no business being connected to (meaning that you might fix one thing, only to inadvertently break another thing on a different part of the site).

(Note: I don't want to say this is any way good or acceptable, just that I get how stuff like this happens. Personally, I'm a big fan of postponing something if you know you can't deliver the quality you'd like to deliver, but in my experience, that's not necessarily the mindset of companies that want to please their customers. Not having the AC would've been a disappointment, sure, but I think I'd have preferred it over an AC with as many issues as this one, because now I still feel somewhat obligated to play and support my team, even though just having to read through the work-arounds is enough to make me want to throw in the towel this year. )

[Aquamentis12]

Unfortunately, the Neoboards thread has been "poofed" and no longer exists. Could someone post the work-arounds who might recall them? I'm getting a late start on the AC this year and I haven't played a single game of YYB yet. :-\

Thanks in advance!