The Star Citizen Thread v 4

[Monk]

Had an extended session with Elite Dangerous 2.1 last night...OMG, I can't stop gushing about the new AI. Finally PvE combat in this game is as challenging as chasing down an A-Wing while flying a Gunboat, but with modern graphics and rewarding flight model.

CIG should pay close attention to what the Mother of Minions has done with the AI. With their light ships, they could make some seriously wicked AI ships. The ones they have now are fine, I suspect there is some fudging going on to make them competitive, but 1v1 the Star Citizen AI are a pushover just like ED was prior to 2.1. Just think how much more rewarding combat could be if it wasn't just paint target with reticle. Rather they do their best to stay out of your firing solution and maneuver to confuse your targeting computer.

Which brings me to my question for Star Citizen.

What has the progression been for space combat AI for SC/SQ42? I can't say that I've heard it mentioned much. Are we still working with AI that was introduced in a much earlier release of AC? Also, combat AI for FPS, how is that coming along?

 

[ZeeWolf]

What has the progression been for space combat AI for SC/SQ42? I can't say that I've heard it mentioned much. Are we still working with AI that was introduced in a much earlier release of AC? Also, combat AI for FPS, how is that coming along?

Remember this? I don't think these guys are involved anymore are they?

From what I understood at the time I looked at that case study (and someone can correct me on this) SC's AI involved path finding and required the "agents" to know something about the environment maps beforehand as with most FPS games.

One thing that I find impressive about ED, that I don't think people realise much, is the amount of dynamic stuff going on. Since everything is generated, the asteroids could be anywhere so I can imagine it's especially annoying getting them to navigate furniture when you have no idea where it is. Not to mention the rotating stations and planetary movement going on.

 

[ianw]

Remember this? I don't think these guys are involved anymore are they?

From what I understood at the time I looked at that case study (and someone can correct me on this) SC's AI involved path finding and required the "agents" to know something about the environment maps beforehand as with most FPS games.

One thing that I find impressive about ED, that I don't think people realise much, is the amount of dynamic stuff going on. Since everything is generated, the asteroids could be anywhere so I can imagine it's especially annoying getting them to navigate furniture when you have no idea where it is. Not to mention the rotating stations and planetary movement going on.

That's all I could find - https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/49dskh/is_moon_collider_gone/

 

[bitstorm]

Heh lots of quiet modding going on.

Thanks mod(s) (I think!), it is a thankless task.

 

[lysan]

Welcome to the FDev forums

UEE Fleet is currently at 981675: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/

Disco Lando confirmed back in November that UEE Fleet is "number of ships sold": https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5945966/#Comment_5945966
http://i.imgur.com/n4KklP1.jpg

As every game package includes at least one ship, and many backers own more than one ship, the backer number has to be lower than UEE Fleet.

Somewhere between 600k and 800k backers is a reasonable estimation.

That actually support DS claim that RSI site is not reporting the correct numbers, as they say 1.3 MIO. backers and if in best case its "only" 800.000.

Interesting.

 

[ianw]

Heh lots of quiet modding going on.

Thanks mods (I think!), it is a thankless task.

Word!

I'm screen shotting everything for my memoirs!

(obviously I'm not but's that's all I can think of right now...)

 

[bitstorm]

That actually support DS claim that RSI site is not reporting the correct numbers, as they say 1.3 MIO. backers and if in best case its "only" 800.000.

Interesting.

Isn't it "fans", and it's just it often gets misquoted (possibly intentionally).

 

[Monk]

Remember this? I don't think these guys are involved anymore are they?

More outsourcing? Goodness gracious, for as much borrowed work that is in this game, shouldn't it be done already?

Don't get me wrong, I am a consultant by trade and value the advantages they can provide when appropriately applied to projects...but there is a curve with diminishing returns the more consultants and contractors you throw into a project. In fact, the result of too many outsiders coming in is expense and slowed progress.

 

[ianw]

More outsourcing? Goodness gracious, for as much borrowed work that is in this game, shouldn't it be done already?

Don't get me wrong, I am a consultant by trade and value the advantages they can provide when appropriately applied to projects...but there is a curve with diminishing returns the more consultants and contractors you throw into a project. In fact, the result of too many outsiders coming in is expense and slowed progress.

I remember the first time they introduced them and to my untrained eye the plans for what they were doing looked quite impressive.

I guess as the studio and dev numbers grew it no longer made sense from a financial pov to outsource.

 

[1500]

I remember the first time they introduced them and to my untrained eye the plans for what they were doing looked quite impressive.

I guess as the studio and dev numbers grew it no longer made sense from a financial pov to outsource.

But we have not seen any real product of their work. The AI in SC is very basic at the moment, and there are no walking NPC's yet, seems like another cause of CIG having to start the work over again.

 

[idkmybffjill]

That actually support DS claim that RSI site is not reporting the correct numbers, as they say 1.3 MIO. backers and if in best case its "only" 800.000.

Interesting.

Really? Come on, here lemme show you how this is a classic Dsmart misdirect. This is exactly what he does for all of his claims and predictions.

The site reports the correct numbers, because the only numbers being reported is the total number of funds, total number of unique accounts created on the RSI site, and total number of ships owned. That's it. CIG has never explicity stated those numbers mean anything else, and that's evidenced by Disco Lando publicly saying what the fleet number means. They're not trying to hide or misrepresent the numbers in any way.

Smarty wants you to believe otherwise, and that's exactly what I meant way back when I said "think for yourselves." Dsmart knows how to use the power of deduction and misdirection to make anyone willing to listen into a believer, much like any faith healer (or fortune teller) con artist.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

That actually support DS claim that RSI site is not reporting the correct numbers, as they say 1.3 MIO. backers and if in best case its "only" 800.000.

Interesting.

I even think that number of 800.000 is way exaggerated so many citizens have more than 1 ship and there is a lot of "Whales" that have dozen's of ships + many of them have more than 1 account....

 

[swfanatic717]

A few notes on the "delivery" of SC/SQ42:

That would be hard to proof, since cig already deliver something (Even if people here hardly tried to negate this).

Yeah, lets just ignor that there is something else to download on the cig side... ^^

I don't see how this holds up.

Say that the movie Now You See Me 2 never makes it into theatres because the cast and crew are all incapacitated at this very moment. You can go to their website right now and download posters and promo pics, but they still won't have delivered a product. You might say "this is different, the downloadable material is not part of the final product", to which I would say that the movie trailers on their website are exactly the same.

My biggest issue with this is that ultimately there is no launched product available to consumers. What is on CIG's site is by their own admission a work in progress, not an official product on which they can be judged. Fundamentally it's no different than if they only had screensavers and wallpapers on their site.



I assume from CIG's email that their viewpoint is that they're already in the process of "delivering" the product (update by update) hence the accountability clause only kicks in if development stops completely. It's true that the clause doesn't say that delivery has to be completed within 18 months, so as long as it's ongoing now CIG is safe.

It's like if you order a pizza from Domino's, and the delivery of your pizza starts when they put the ingredients on the unbaked pizza base, can go on indefinitely as long as the pizza is being worked on in some way during that time ("we now age our pizza for 2 months to introduce a good aftertaste!"), and only counts as a failure if the entire Domino's Group goes out of business (and the delivery boy dies/quits en-route) before the pizza is brought to your door.

Now obviously software isn't pizza, but the analogy holds up for the purposes of explaining this particular interpretation of the word "delivery". I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to waste my energy arguing, I'm sure Freyermuth has it all figured out already.

 

[1500]

Really? Come on, here lemme show you how this is a classic Dsmart misdirect. This is exactly what he does for all of his claims and predictions.

The site reports the correct numbers, because the only numbers being reported is the total number of funds, total number of unique accounts created on the RSI site, and total number of ships owned. That's it. CIG has never explicity stated those numbers mean anything else, and that's evidenced by Disco Lando publicly saying what the fleet number means. They're not trying to hide or misrepresent the numbers in any way.

Smarty wants you to believe otherwise, and that's exactly what I meant way back when I said "think for yourselves." Dsmart knows how to use the power of deduction and misdirection to make anyone willing to listen into a believer, much like any faith healer (or fortune teller) con artist.

Ya Disco didn't say that publicly, if you had not been in that specific payed for chat you would not have known. The fact is that CIG have used that number for propaganda purposes for sometime, allowing people to draw the wrong conclusion.

Perhaps you could link to an official statement from CIG on what the numbers mean?

 

[idkmybffjill]

But we have not seen any real product of their work. The AI in SC is very basic at the moment, and there are no walking NPC's yet, seems like another cause of CIG having to start the work over again.

Or... the more obvious answer which is the work isn't done yet? Subsumption has been talked about for quite some time, because a lot of work has been going into it. It's not easy thing to do, to give literally millions of NPCs their own lives complete with sets of animations to make them act like actual people.

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Ya Disco didn't say that publicly, if you had not been in that specific payed for chat you would not have known. The fact is that CIG have used that number for propaganda purposes for sometime, allowing people to draw the wrong conclusion.

Perhaps you could link to an official statement from CIG on what the numbers mean?

That chat isn't "paid for" at all, and no one within the SC community has any misunderstandings or delusions about the numbers. This is just more reaching for evidence that supports this entire conspiracy theory. The harder you look the more you'll "find." Just like Alex Jones.

 

[swfanatic717]

Smarty wants you to believe otherwise, and that's exactly what I meant way back when I said "think for yourselves." Dsmart knows how to use the power of deduction and misdirection to make anyone willing to listen into a believer, much like any faith healer (or fortune teller) con artist.

That's weird, I thought the biggest thing about faith healers and con artists is that they use lies and misdirection to get people to hand over money.

Honestly, I think SC's fanbase and the anti-CIG faction are just as bad as each other, but I tend to lean more towards the anti-CIG faction because I can't remember the last time that "people trying to convince strangers that buying into something is a sound choice" was regarded as a good thing. On the other hand "people telling strangers *not* to buy something" doesn't seem like a problem to me.

 

[1500]

Or... the more obvious answer which is the work isn't done yet? Subsumption has been talked about for quite some time, because a lot of work has been going into it. It's not easy thing to do, to give literally millions of NPCs their own lives complete with sets of animations to make them act like actual people.

Incorrect. CIG have already stated that the 10 to 1 ratio was just counting background simulation, and that they would not be in fact that many ingame NPC's. So no animations (this is not AI, so I don't know why you brought it up) for (lol) millions of NPCs, and I don't think actual people get stuck in the T pose.

They have moved on and CIG are now doing the work, but none of that work showed up in game.

 

[idkmybffjill]

That's weird, I thought the biggest thing about faith healers and con artists is that they use lies and misdirection to get people to hand over money.

Honestly, I think SC's fanbase and the anti-CIG faction are just as bad as each other, but I tend to lean more towards the anti-CIG faction because I can't remember the last time that people telling strangers to buy anything was a good thing. People telling strangers *not* to buy something doesn't seem like a problem to me.

Funny, because CIG tells people not to buy stuff too. It has always been, and always will be, explicitly stated that NONE of the extra ships are NEEDED for the final game. It is STRESSED that all the ships will be available in-game, for in-game currency. Yes, they hype ship sales when they get a new concept up. But they never use backhanded tactics to force people to buy. People buy because they want to, not because they feel obligated to.

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Incorrect. CIG have already stated that the 10 to 1 ratio was just counting background simulation, and that they would not be in fact that many ingame NPC's. So no animations (this is not AI, so I don't know why you brought it up) for (lol) millions of NPCs, and I don't think actual people get stuck in the T pose.

They have moved on and CIG are now doing the work, but none of that work showed up in game.

Uh huh sorry buddy but you're way off. The background simulation is to populate the universe with NPCs. If at any time a player enters an area where the background simulation has AI, those NPCs will appear doing the action that the simulation already had them doing.

 

[1500]

Funny, because CIG tells people not to buy stuff too. It has always been, and always will be, explicitly stated that NONE of the extra ships are NEEDED for the final game. It is STRESSED that all the ships will be available in-game, for in-game currency. Yes, they hype ship sales when they get a new concept up. But they never use backhanded tactics to force people to buy. People buy because they want to, not because they feel obligated to.

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Uh huh sorry buddy but you're way off. The background simulation is to populate the universe with NPCs. If at any time a player enters an area where the background simulation has AI, those NPCs will appear doing the action that the simulation already had them doing.

Nope, background simulation is the same as that in ED (as described by CR). There will not be millions of NPC's, CIG will just simulate large numbers, but players will see far far far less.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Or... the more obvious answer which is the work isn't done yet? Subsumption has been talked about for quite some time, because a lot of work has been going into it. It's not easy thing to do, to give literally millions of NPCs their own lives complete with sets of animations to make them act like actual people.
That chat isn't "paid for" at all, and no one within the SC community has any misunderstandings or delusions about the numbers. This is just more reaching for evidence that supports this entire conspiracy theory. The harder you look the more you'll "find." Just like Alex Jones.

"Millions of NPCs their own lives complete with sets of animations to make them act like actual people"........Ohhh I see that you tried my recipe for flawless dreams- Every night before the sleep you listen lullaby+Chris bedtime stories-........Man just take it easy with the dosage that .hit can .acked up your brain totally.....