Wait.... what you're talking about is server meshing, that's what they are trying to get to.... but without instancing. A single instance on multiple servers.
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Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
- Thread starter Yaffle
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For how Star Citizen currently is yes. because i can't load you from one instance in to another while you're in the back of my MSR with your tractor beam thingy pulling my shield generator out its mountings. you know, for the giggles....
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Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Every server is a separate instance of Santon:
Exactly the same fundamental principle of Elite instances including a full system map. The differences are in how each game decides to cull and stream assets and information that are not needed at all in each instance for the player experience.
Yes, with a population of 110 players in each instance. Server.
Not quite, i may be getting hung up on the word instance here, even miss applying it, different map or level, super cruse is a different map from what ever space station, when you exit super cruse you're taken from the super cruse map and placed in to the space station map.
In Star Citizen the Stanton System is one map, the whole thing and everything in it, you are never taken from one map to another, there is only the map.
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Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
It’s the same map, proved many times with seamless transitions as mentioned above. Map assets are procedural and streamed as required whether in supercruise or not. Supercruise and normal speed are just separate instances of the same space much like different SC servers are separate instances of the same Stanton system. Elite has a whole separate set of features and gameplay in supercruise, different than those in normal speeds, that Star Citizen simply does not have at all, so not really comparable either way.
And, playably, the difference between the two systems is?
And more so in a game like SC whose "supercruise mode" is one in which you go in a straight line automatically without being able to move or interact with the rest of the entities in the space around you
And even more so in a game like SC, that no matter how much server meshing they want to do, it's going to have separate non-interactable areas, like the rest of MMOs...
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At least we understand what each other are talking about now, that's my fault, I apologise for my miss-guided posting.
The space station exists right where you are looking at it in super cruse, or at least a representation of it, but its not loaded in to your memory as something that is tangibly there, have you ever just not come out of super cruse and just smashed in to it? or a planet? You can't, it wont let you do that.
If it was the same, you would be able to EVA outside of your ship, you would be able to get up out of your chair and jump out of it while in super cruse, there would be no reason, at all, for not having ship interiors and multicrew.
If what you're saying is true, Horizons made all that possible.
Still using that argument.
In reality I see a lot of misery and gnashing of teeth, and people willfully sidestepping the glaring shortcomings of a completely broken base game engine. We suspect some streamers still get there just to make "content" as someone getting exploded by silly nonsense physics or random game engine hissy fits could be entertaining.
A lot of good space games are getting released and will scratch specific itches people had when they had thrown their money towards CiG in hopes they would maybe deliver 1/10th of their initial promise.
I also see a diminishing cultist base that's getting culled year after year keeping only the whitest of the white knights as Spectrum bans multiply. It's getting quite similar to what happened with Shroud of the Avatar and probably CRoberts will follow the same direction:
"Streaming" in SC is loading huge blocks of data that are enclosed in one SOI. You can notice the SOI change quite easily...
What real programmers call "streaming" is not that. It's continuous loading of very small amounts of data. A game engine that exhibits how it's done properly is Decima Engine (used in Horizon games and Death Stranding for example) where moving across the huge, dense world is completely seamless. No hitch. No loading of huge blocks of data.
I'm sorry but CiG's implementation of "if ship enters SOI then load the whole SOI data at once" is not streaming.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Space orbital stations are also part of the procedural stellar forge. Was Michael Brookes I believe who clarified that long long ago iirc. So yes, they “are” there really. Even in supercruise. The issue here is culling and when the game engine decides to load/stream stuff into view and to make it available to interact with. But that is exactly the same in SC with all the container streaming stuff. SC is very poorly optimized and coughs its lungs out though while Elite seems much more lean and elegantly managed in general thanks to procedural generation (on foot ODY staff maybe an exception…).
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The change to landable planets in SC was (if I remember rightly) announced just before Horizons was launched, so was SC not going to be multiplayer before then? I genuinely don't know the answer to that.
So just like Fleet Carrier jumps in ED, also between systems. That would be very un-immersive if you were jumping 10 systems, or 100, in quick succession. Maybe that won't be a thing.
That would leave the core differences between ED and SC:
1) SC with ship interiors/EVA in a single system, but seated ship instancing between systems.
2) ED with consistent seated ship instancing over the entire galaxy of 400 billion systems.
You pays your money etc ...
It does load the data all at once, it uses streamable containers for objects that are very large and viewed from extreme distance, like a 12KM wide space station, or an 8,000KM wide planet, not everything, if anything on said planet or in said space station is streamed in with it, that gradually happens as you get closer or more of it becomes visible.
It's weird in SC though as the game seems to load a huge amount of stuff upon entering a SOI then once approaching a station for instance, you get another hitch that gets much longer if other players are present, and the station may just pop up in existence out of nothing, sometimes just over your ship (asteroids tend to do that, too). It's broken beyond belief. As I said above it's not streaming per se but "SOI barriers" and of course CiG being CiG your ship will move across uninitialized areas before everything is loaded then everything pops out...
I mean maybe, my answer to optimisation would be there is nothing in ED, a few twigs and a few low poly buildings. the irony is my system runs Star Citizen better than it does ED Oddesey.
Honestly i'm in no way saying Star Citizen is well optimised, but you're the first to say ED is, you're not talking about Odyssey though are you? Horizons and Odyssey are different games, Odyssey actually is just a #### show in that sense.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Heh, yeah, I mention Ody as a potential exception to lean culling in my post indeed… Although I have no idea what is the real cause of the performance issues. I personally and anecdotally think it is rather an issue with AI computations as when I kill everyone fps go smooth as silk in settlements
In ED you can go from a star to a station manually, without going into supercruise, and the station will be there... What does it matter to me, as a player, that the game internally loads it sooner or later, more or less distance, alone or with more entities, etc...?
These are still things that, under my point of view, are hardly reflected in the actual gameplay in a way that really makes a difference on a playable level.
There is no reason why ED, under the FDEV way of working, can't have EVA or ship interiors. Will it be internally and externally in a different way than CIG do in SC?, surely, each game with their own limitations, and what they really want to express playably.
I still remember the video from a Citizencon where they bragged that a player on a ship could see another player standing inside a space station... and now it turns out that in EDO you can do the same...
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Personally I have no special interest in ship interiors, nor in an EVA mode, but I still think ED can have both without any problem, in its own way.
The problem is that; when you (and many others) think of ship interiors or EVA, you think only of the way SC treats both aspects... and don't contemplate other playable or applicable possibilities for ED.
SC is just another game, it is not a reference for anything, nor of course with its development should it be anyone's guide.
I think its a shame, because other than that missing from it i rather like EDO, it has other faults too, sure but those are not game killing, if SC didn't have that it would also be dead, for sure.
SC will live on, despite its many faults probably for a very long time to come, ED wont, and i suspect Starfield is going to be a flash in the pan too.
Sorry; ED has been a REAL game for 10 years, when its creators PROMISED it in their Kickstarter and DELIVERED it.
If SC ends up existing as a game someday (which we have yet to see) and does so once ED is dead, it won't be because of SC's merit, but because they FAILED to deliver on their promise to finish development on time. We are 8 years behind what was promised in their Kickstarter... that's not a MERIT, it's a SHAME.
Now it turns out that, if we are in the year 2023 and ED is in its final stage and SC has not yet begun its start, it's because of CIG's merit... of course it is.... SC is very much alive, of course it is....