Fallout co-creator Timothy Cain wants you to know that unreadable, so-called “spaghetti code” in video games isn’t a matter of discipline or genius – developers just never have enough time to do their jobs.
He knows this fact well. The former Interplay developer illustrates in a new YouTube video, with an example, he says, “I’d love to tell you […] was hypothetical. It’s not.”
“‘Item armor get DR’ looks at what armor they’re wearing – that one piece of armor they’re wearing – gets the DR off it, and returns it,” Cain continues. “OK, so all that’s written. It’s really great, it’s beautiful, it’s flawless code. It’s a diamond. Ooh, a change comes in.” Then another, and another…
“Wait, another change comes in,” says Cain. “But wait, suddenly the inventory UI designer comes to you and says, ‘Why is the UI wrong in the inventory?’ and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s the additional value from status effects.’ And the inventory UI designer is like, ‘I don’t want that. I never told you to do that, you stupid lazy programmer!'”
“Basically this is where spaghetti-fication begins,” Cain concludes. “What I’m trying to point out here, this is the thing that I’ve always had to explain to everybody since the beginning in the ’80s to now: games are not products. They are as much art as they are product.”
Fallout co-creator is glad his RPGs are remembered as “flawed masterpieces” rather than “very buggy games,” but warns devs that adding more features will always make other parts of their games worse.
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