Pet lost somewhere in map

[NirnaethArnediad]

I gave a good thought about it, and seems like I was just around a solution: what about a pet detector trinket! When equipped it shows pet markers on map. Since detectors are too high tech for crafting from animal parts and plants, it could be some rare/unique material that JuiceBox can detect using technomagic!


I had a whole paragraph about failproofness but I seem to have discarded it. Long story short, (math lingo ahead) unless "failing" is formally defined, it cannot be proven infalible. Formal definitions are hard, and complex systems are prohibitely expensive to define this way. Testing only detects presence of errors, never their absence. Therefore, no amount of testing proves failproofness. The tests done in Crashlands were mighty useful, but since the testers are game-savvy, lateral thinking and unusual behaviour were not verified quite as well. Which is not a problem, but this things happen, and it's nobody's fault. Managers don't understand this, unfortunately.

[bscotchAdam]

We call those unexpected behaviors EDGE CASES. There will be a ton of edge cases that each only happen to a handful of people.

As for the lost pet problem -- we're playing with a possible solution. Gotta see how it feels first.

[Mr.Jpesky]

Well stealing Adam's thunder here (If he want's it back he can delete this post). I've got the go ahead to spread the good word of a new map system coming about some time in the future, this map system will include icons of pets, npcs, and such oh my... While there is no official date to this know it will be here soon and you will be reunited will all your lost pets!

[Kenshiro70]

My son did find his Glazer, so catastrophe has been averted. He's on the autism spectrum (high-functioning), and I'm trying to slowly turn him on to programming, since that's a profession where quirks are quite tolerated. For that purpose, Crashlands is a wonderful follow-on to Minecraft. It makes him think about the stories in addition to the building mechanics.

As a side note, I'm a Product Manager at a cloud software provider, and am very sympathetic to unanticipated use cases (aka corner cases). I probably spend 20-40% of my time dealing with the impact of them in fact. But I don't think being featured on Apple's Apps home page is a use case you can anticipate. That's one of the reasons the game went so wide beyond a traditional demographic.

Anyways, thanks for making such a wonderful game - it's making a big difference in a young boy's life. We actually live just outside of San Francisco and I'd invite you out to dinner while you're in town, but I'm sure you're swamped with GDC activities. If you're a sushi fan, make sure you go to Sushirrito - it's a combo of sushi and burritos. There's one just next to the Embarcadero station, about five blocks from the Moscone center.