The Star Citizen Thread v 4

[hairychris]

Not necessarily just when they spawn, but these NPCs will have actual lives they're living. They'll have reasons for being in the same city you're in. You may be in a gun shop and an NPC walks in and wants to buy a gun because he's about to venture into lawless space for the first time. This system will also generate missions for players, where an escort mission could be taken from this specific planet to protect this specific NPC as he hunts for, say, a blackbox from a ship that got destroyed. These missions will also have threads, wherein a player may choose to investigate further once this mission is complete, find out who or why this ship was destroyed. That could lead to a bounty hunting mission where you hunt down a well-known pirate in the area.

Nope, NPCs will spawn with (I imagine) a semi randomised set of attributes that is affected by the BGS. This may include missions that you mention, and the NPC is likely to disappear once your interactions in single/multi player with them are complete - local attributes in your client or instance. Your activity with them will have a small affect on the BGS.

Limited persistence? Almost certainly. Part of the background sim? No, highly doubtful as the operational overhead would be ridiculous.

 

[Monk]

You're having trouble so I'll make it clear.

While true that the universe will not have millions of active NPCs, the background simulation of the AI will in fact populate the space where players are located. If there's a battle simulated in space and one player happens to QT into it, it'll appear. Whenever players walk into cities, NPCs will populate the cities with a variety of standard jobs you'd expect to see such as janitorial duties, bartending, peacekeeping, medical work, shopkeeping, and even thuggery if you travel down the wrong alley. Each of these standard jobs will have their own set of mini jobs to do. When a bartender isn't serving drinks he'll be cleaning glasses, sweeping, wiping down the bar, etc. All meant to simulate a living, breathing universe.

Until I see a demo, I'm going to assume that RNG will be the order of the day. Initiated by the presence of a player. Factors will play into the initial appearance, type and severity but that should be about it. Formulated scenarios that you can engage in.

Nothing wrong with that, it is just what is proposed here seems like a whole lot of extra simulation that isn't necessary and could be facilitated better by a simpler system that masks its somewhat random behavior. The computation power required to simulate so many individual agents would be cost prohibitive without a subscription service.

 

[bitstorm]

If true then this is not good. It's the sort of thing that gets adverts removed by the regulators in the UK... but as they're not buying ad space with that claim in it I think that they're safe.

Speculating on mean/average number of ships owned per backer definitely gets the numbers pretty brutal pretty quickly.

Would be nice of them to clarify but, well, not holding breath.

Sorry should source. There may be instances of CIG saying it's backers I have no idea, but from a Google this was CR's statement containing the previous quote : https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15007-Letter-From-The-Chairman

And this was the result : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=1+million+backers+star+citizen&ia=web

There's even a BBC link in there but if you read that you can see they subsequently added a correction that it isn't actually backers.

Let's just say there's a lot of misinformation out there, but of course it would be idiotic to think CIG might have crafted the message specifically to imply backers!

*shrugs* maybe Chris actually thought it was backers too! I mean...

"Every member of the Star Citizen team already knows that we work for the backers… and reaching one million is just another reminder why we are giving this project all of ourselves." - CR

 

[idkmybffjill]

"Knowing that one million people (and growing!) are counting on us will only further fuel our desire to deliver. Every member of the Star Citizen team already knows that we work for the backers… and reaching one million is just another reminder why we are giving this project all of ourselves." - Chris Roberts

Aye no *explicit* statement there, just misdirection. Misdirection which resulted in a boat of press announcing 1 million backers. I'm totally sure it was unintentional and this written statement wasn't crafted to mislead.

Fact remains that there are over a million unique accounts on the site.

Funny you said that it would have millions of NPC's, I point out that it will not, and you keep trying to prove me wrong by agreeing with me. how odd.


Sorry but burst your bobble, but you are talking about a company that can't get static NPC's working correctly with out them bugging out and getting stuck in T poses. There is zero evidence that anything you just said will happen.

Sorry you mistook that to mean that there would literally be millions of NPCs all spawned in the game at once. But that's not at all what I meant, although considering how many players will be playing the game at the same time and spread out across many star systems, your guesstimate of "far far far less" is probably still a ways off. There will still be a significant amount of NPCs all going about their own lives across the entire universe where players are located at the same time.

Second part of your statement is just adorable. Shows just how biased you are

Just look at all that T posing huh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhV12_x_VXg

And you'll notice that they're working to make sure they can populate the world space with lots of NPCs with very low memory used

 

[Hellhawk666]

Nope, background simulation is the same as that in ED (as described by CR).

My understanding (based purely on the public statements of both CIG and FD) is that they are similar, but slightly different.

ED has a BGS that does not attempt to model every NPC, transaction, and event that happens in the background but instead concentrates on the broad brushstrokes, registering player impact on the economy and political situation to simulate change against preset average states. This much was outlined in the technical presentation released by FD some time ago. I don't believe that FD have linked the generation of NPCs to the BGS as of this time, except perhaps with regard to Powerplay. I believe that the NPCs that appear are randomly generated in response to local factors, but there is no over-arching model affecting this, just as there is no true "global" economic simulation, just local supply and demands effects.

As I understand it, CIG will be doing something similar, but the intention (as yet to be proved) is to make this more precise and extensive by using their "BGS" to generate the number and type of random NPCs that will appear in given situations. It's just a more ambitious version of the same thing, but there would be qualitative differences.

 

[ianw]

Sorry should source. There may be instances of CIG saying it's backers I have no idea, but from a Google this was CR's statement containing the previous quote : https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15007-Letter-From-The-Chairman

And this was the result : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=1+million+backers+star+citizen&ia=web

There's even a BBC link in there but if you read that you can see they subsequently added a correction that it isn't actually backers.

Let's just say there's a lot of misinformation out there, but of course it would be idiotic to think CIG might have crafted the message specifically to imply backers!

*shrugs* maybe Chris actually thought it was backers too!

Heh - once the message is out there no-one sees the correction anyway...

 

[bitstorm]

Fact remains that there are over a million unique accounts on the site.

*shrugs*

I own 2 of them.

Account creation system confused the hell out of me with it's double account name thing, then lost the login and created another. I have yet to post.

No doubt there are tons of backers. I mean why don't CIG just say how many? It's gonna be a massive number regardless.

But no they put out figures which present this narrative of their being (around) twice as many backers as there actually are.

 

[1500]

Fact remains that there are over a million unique accounts on the site.



Sorry you mistook that to mean that there would literally be millions of NPCs all spawned in the game at once. But that's not at all what I meant, although considering how many players will be playing the game at the same time and spread out across many star systems, your guesstimate of "far far far less" is probably still a ways off. There will still be a significant amount of NPCs all going about their own lives across the entire universe where players are located at the same time.

Second part of your statement is just adorable. Shows just how biased you are

Just look at all that T posing huh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhV12_x_VXg

And you'll notice that they're working to make sure they can populate the world space with lots of NPCs with very low memory used

So you link something that is in an editor and not in game, good job. And does not show anything of what you claimed or stated just now. Now do you have anything that shows that in game?

Edit: also you showed static animations, then walking in straight lines that had them clipping through each other (even when they turned on their avoidance code). None of witch is anything out of the norm for a basic implementation of a game, and shows nothing of what you talked about.

 

[ianw]

*shrugs*

I own 2 of them.

Account creation system confused the hell out of me with it's double account name thing, then lost the login and created another. I have yet to post.

I've lost track - is website account creation still free now or did they introduce a charge?

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Seriously though,

our long time residents would be expecting a thread closure and new thread at this point in the thread's life.

Previously we had to do that because of performance issues with the previous versions of the forum software, but the good news is that we think it is now fixed, so we are letting it run over the 10,000 post mark and we will see how it goes.

 

[Monk]

As I understand it, CIG will be doing something similar, but the intention (as yet to be proved) is to make this more precise and extensive by using their "BGS" to generate the number and type of random NPCs that will appear in given situations. It's just a more ambitious version of the same thing, but there would be qualitative differences.

Well, is there any documentation that qualifies those differences?

 

[idkmybffjill]

If true then this is not good. It's the sort of thing that gets adverts removed by the regulators in the UK... but as they're not buying ad space with that claim in it I think that they're safe.

Speculating on mean/average number of ships owned per backer definitely gets the numbers pretty brutal pretty quickly.

Would be nice of them to clarify but, well, not holding breath.

"Speculating on mean/average number of ships owned per backer definitely gets the numbers pretty brutal pretty quickly." Not true as it's been proven the average backer owns an Aurora or a similar priced/sized ship and nothing else.

So infinity it is....

I love how snide remarks are perfectly okay in this thread.

But no-one has seen a glimpse of this to date, is that correct?

Please see this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhV12_x_VXg

Nope, NPCs will spawn with (I imagine) a semi randomised set of attributes that is affected by the BGS. This may include missions that you mention, and the NPC is likely to disappear once your interactions in single/multi player with them are complete - local attributes in your client or instance. Your activity with them will have a small affect on the BGS.

Limited persistence? Almost certainly. Part of the background sim? No, highly doubtful as the operational overhead would be ridiculous.

So you're just making random guesses and assumptions based on what... your game development background, or do you happen to work for CIG? Take a look at the video.

Until I see a demo, I'm going to assume that RNG will be the order of the day. Initiated by the presence of a player. Factors will play into the initial appearance, type and severity but that should be about it. Formulated scenarios that you can engage in.

Nothing wrong with that, it is just what is proposed here seems like a whole lot of extra simulation that isn't necessary and could be facilitated better by a simpler system that masks its somewhat random behavior. The computation power required to simulate so many individual agents would be cost prohibitive without a subscription service.

Feel free to check out the link I've provided that shows a small example of what subsumption will do.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Just look at all that T posing huh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhV12_x_VXg

Is this activity available in the PTU or PU yet? I keep reading that CiG are struggling with "netcode". Does that mean that it might be difficult for you, me and anyone else in an instance to see the same things? I might see two npcs avoid one another, you might see them not be on the same trajectory at all and a third player might see them do "the corridor dance" until they inexorably hit collision course?

Of course if the "netcode" is all soopah, there is nothing to be concerned about

 

[bitstorm]

I've lost track - is website account creation still free now or did they introduce a charge?

Not sure if serious. =p

Free, or it was, though I couldn't figure out how to post way back, so maybe there was some charge!

Well I can say account *creation* was free at least, which technically answers your question I suppose.

Maybe I should email CIG and ask them to reduce the count by 2, I don't think I am a Star Citizen.

 

[ianw]

Not sure if serious. =p

Free, or it was, though I couldn't figure out how to post way back, so maybe there was some charge!

I can see why you might not be sure :O

But yes - on this occasion I was being serious. I may have imagined it (and am happy to be shot down with facts...) but I thought they'd introduced a small 5 dollar fee at some point - I'm also aware there have been lots of free to fly things which would obviously inflate the website numbers.

 

[idkmybffjill]

So you link something that is in an editor and not in game, good job. And does not show anything of what you claimed or stated just now. Now do you have anything that shows that in game?

Edit: also you showed static animations, then walking in straight lines that had them clipping through each other (even when they turned on their avoidance code). None of witch is anything out of the norm for a basic implementation of a game, and shows nothing of what you talked about.

Typical hater, blind to the plain facts presented directly in front of your face. Did you even watch the video? If you did, it clearly shows that with ORCA activated they DON'T clip through each other and instead avoid all collision. Show me an MMO with NPCs that do that as "basic implementation." Where NPCs aren't just walking on a set path. And apparently you missed the beginning part where it talks about SUBSUMPTION and how they can fit a lot of NPCs into a small space with low memory usage. Which directly correlates to what I was talking about, and proves your statement false about there being a very low number of NPCs in the world.

 

[ianw]

Typical hater, blind to the plain facts presented directly in front of your face. Did you even watch the video? If you did, it clearly shows that with ORCA activated they DON'T clip through each other and instead avoid all collision. Show me an MMO with NPCs that do that as "basic implementation." Where NPCs aren't just walking on a set path. And apparently you missed the beginning part where it talks about SUBSUMPTION and how they can fit a lot of NPCs into a small space with low memory usage. Which directly correlates to what I was talking about, and proves your statement false about there being a very low number of NPCs in the world.

Well to be fair it just proves what they're telling us they're planning at this point.

As we know things haven't always gone to plan with CIG.

 

[Zetta]

I can see why you might not be sure :O

But yes - on this occasion I was being serious. I may have imagined it (and am happy to be shot down with facts...) but I thought they'd introduced a small 5 dollar fee at some point - I'm also aware there have been lots of free to fly things which would obviously inflate the website numbers.

Free to read. You need to be a backer (minimum £5 iirc) to post and to get access to other areas of the forum, off-topic, other games etc.

 

[idkmybffjill]

Is this activity available in the PTU or PU yet? I keep reading that CiG are struggling with "netcode". Does that mean that it might be difficult for you, me and anyone else in an instance to see the same things? I might see two npcs avoid one another, you might see them not be on the same trajectory at all and a third player might see them do "the corridor dance" until they inexorably hit collision course?

Of course if the "netcode" is all soopah, there is nothing to be concerned about

No, subsumption is not in yet. I'm sure they'd rather implement it when the netcode is more solid so that issues such as these don't present themselves often

 

[ianw]

Free to read. You need to be a backer (minimum £5 iirc) to post and to get access to other areas of the forum, off-topic, other games etc.

Thank you! I thought I remebered something along those lines.