What is the measure of "Good Enough"?

Some would say "good enough" is a lazy person's perfect result. In this case of mine, it is my term for capitulation to issues mostly beyond my control. I am still "Forging" forward but I admit I am pushing an imperfect product.

My solution to the 3 player split screen works but not quite as perfect as I thought in the last blog. I revisited the test and found that a more precise test in same area did produce some frame-rate issues. I only occurs at that location as far as I know. Be that as it may, the map as a whole suffers noticeable problems during a 4 player split. This is even after I deleted all of the portable shields and half of the concentric ring of railings as well as the horseshoe group of railings. Not horrible, but still there. It would be pointless to delete anything else because the Stonehenge reconstruction would then be essentially emasculated. I could just give up now and save everyone in the Community Cartographers (CC) process time and effort. Not without looking for a frame-rate reference first.

So I went looking for excuses to allow my map's imperfections to be "good enough". I figured if Bungie's own products were free of frame-rate issues in a 4 way split screen scenario then I'd have unstable ground to stand on. I fired up REACH in a 4 way split on the map Breakpoint. Immediately off the spawn everything seemed fine and my spirits began to falter. I moved each player to the lower Banshee spawn platform. I pointed each one towards the main mass of the map. Swinging one player's view left and right caused noticeable frame-rate issues. Moderately bad I'd suggest. Would it be wrong for me to conclude Bungie considers this result to be "good enough"? It appears to indicate problems to me. I'd offer direct video proof but the films from the player point of view do not exhibit the problem. I had to capture it off the TV itself. I don't know how to post video links in a Blog so check this link out please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7aqGc_xOE

I now have an excuse, such as it is, for my map's frame-rate performance to be less than perfect. "It's as good as one of Bungie's maps". Well not quite because theirs failed a 4 way split and mine fails with a 3 way split. Adding on to my excuse then I offer a second factor. Bungie's matchmaking playlists frequently do not allow a 4 player split. They call it Max Local Players. Perhaps Bungie will limit this value to 2 or even 1 for the community map playlists. I hope so. Does this mean my "good enough" is acceptable to the CC process? No it does not. Those people in that process will be setting their own bar for "good enough" and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. Power to them for just being involved.

Additional:

I deleted that new stuff I showed you in the last Blog and the 3 player split test was performing very well. Hmm....

Next Blog will show you some of the other changes to MEGALITH. Depending on it's length, I might talk about MEGALITH's fiction.