Well, in programming, garbage cleanup routines (which are important so data in memory that’s no longer needed is released - get it wrong and you either have a memory leak where the longer your app runs the more RAM it consumes, or you have bizarre bugs that are hard to replicate cause memory was released early) in general are actually quite tricky to get right, so usually you use APIs built into whatever programming language you’re using. You don’t have that luxury inside a video game’s environment. Imagine if they got it wrong and your character is mistakenly treated as some dead monster and poof it’s gone.
I think it was just a missed problem, as so many updates are for. Later games that I played would do something as simple as a timer attached to a dropped item to then force removal (including your old corpses). But I saw the mention of persistence in the post and the UO trash dilemma came to mind.
Oh it could easily have been that. I’m no expert at programming, but I know enough to be aware of some of the weird things that you gotta get right behind the scenes. There’s a lot of moving parts that gotta stay synchronized, more than a lot of folks realize.
Edit: I guess in other words, just cause it sounds simple and straightforward does not mean it is easy to implement. In fact, the opposite can often be true in that there may be surprisingly complex things needed under the hood to make sure the visible result “just works”.
Well, in programming, garbage cleanup routines (which are important so data in memory that’s no longer needed is released - get it wrong and you either have a memory leak where the longer your app runs the more RAM it consumes, or you have bizarre bugs that are hard to replicate cause memory was released early) in general are actually quite tricky to get right, so usually you use APIs built into whatever programming language you’re using. You don’t have that luxury inside a video game’s environment. Imagine if they got it wrong and your character is mistakenly treated as some dead monster and poof it’s gone.
I think it was just a missed problem, as so many updates are for. Later games that I played would do something as simple as a timer attached to a dropped item to then force removal (including your old corpses). But I saw the mention of persistence in the post and the UO trash dilemma came to mind.
Oh it could easily have been that. I’m no expert at programming, but I know enough to be aware of some of the weird things that you gotta get right behind the scenes. There’s a lot of moving parts that gotta stay synchronized, more than a lot of folks realize.
Edit: I guess in other words, just cause it sounds simple and straightforward does not mean it is easy to implement. In fact, the opposite can often be true in that there may be surprisingly complex things needed under the hood to make sure the visible result “just works”.