The Star Citizen Thread v5

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Is this "In the unlikely event that RSI is not able to deliver the Game and/or the pledge items, RSI agrees to refund any unearned portion of your Pledge, and to post an audited cost accounting on the Website to fully explain the use of the amounts paid for Pledge Item Cost and the Game Cost." the statement you're refering to? If so, it's still in the ToS as it was in the old ToS (except for the bold part which was added in the new ToS).

Yes, that's what I mean, and cheers
 
Do you have a source for that? Also could you use a different word other than "promised", can't hear that word anymore as it's commonly misused in the discussion about Star Citizen. Not everything they're stating is automatically a promise.

Of course not, that's why I typed "I thought". It's nice to know you advise people against believing what CiG say.

Thank you, this is an important distinction I didn't see.

stigbob - they promised it released in the event of their failing to deliver the goal in their (earlier?) TOS. I don't know if that clause is still there. I can't find it in the Kickstarter promise

Ah, thank you. I knew it had been promised by them at some point. IceGryphon if the "offensive" p-word is getting to you I can put broken in front of it if you like.
 
I'm not the biggest fan of the game, but i can say that "providing financial reports" and "being accountable" are two different things, should Roberts be held accountable if this project ultimately fails, yes definitely,

Yeah right. Good luck with that.
It's been proven time after time that fans of this game will excuse CIG of ANYTHING, including not delivering the game.

Just out of curiosity, what's your "ultimately fails" interpretation ?
 
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On another note, someone over at SA linked this which I thought was interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc

e: relevance is, I'm no game programmer but what the guy says makes a lot of sense to me. What are some potential drawbacks to this method? How does method differ from (what we know of) CIG's?

(The guy explains how Dual Universe aims to have all clients on a single shard)
 
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Yeah right. Good luck with that.
It's been proven time after time that fans of this game will excuse CIG of ANYTHING, including not delivering the game.

Just out of curiosity, what's your "ultimately fails" interpretation ?

From my other comments it should be pretty clear that i'm not your usual "fan", i'm mostly interested in the development process of the "tech demo" (as the game is usually refered to), i enjoy watching the "CGI trailers" as much as i enjoy watching siggraph videos on youtube. I'm not here to excuse CIG, but to provide reasonable discussion about the topic Star Citizen and its development. "ultimately fails" = ceasing development, packing up shop, running out of funds...
 
Yeah c'mon guys. This isn't that polarized

Though to me personally since IceGryphon here is a DCSer in my very biased eyes he can do no wrong so
 
On another note, someone over at SA linked this which I thought was interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc

e: relevance is, I'm no game programmer but what the guy says makes a lot of sense to me. What are some potential drawbacks to this method? How does method differ from (what we know of) CIG's?

(The guy explains how Dual Universe aims to have all clients on a single shard)

I would say it's somewhat similar to CIGs approach in regards to Network LoD, there was no talk about the way the "mesh of servers" will work in detail, e.g. partitioning and distribution of clients to servers. Wouldn't call it a potential drawback, but solving collision detection, networked physics as well as player interaction might be a whole other beast of a challenge which isn't part of the video.
 
On another note, someone over at SA linked this which I thought was interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc

e: relevance is, I'm no game programmer but what the guy says makes a lot of sense to me. What are some potential drawbacks to this method? How does method differ from (what we know of) CIG's?

(The guy explains how Dual Universe aims to have all clients on a single shard)

Well DU as I am aware using UNIGINE 2 game engine that it´s almost brand new so huge mp numbers and different approach to the network are very possible....
 
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From my other comments it should be pretty clear that i'm not your usual "fan", i'm mostly interested in the development process of the "tech demo" (as the game is usually refered to), i enjoy watching the "CGI trailers" as much as i enjoy watching siggraph videos on youtube. I'm not here to excuse CIG, but to provide reasonable discussion about the topic Star Citizen and its development.

I wasn't referring YOU were a white knight.

"ultimately fails" = ceasing development, packing up shop, running out of funds...

So no timeline?
 
So no timeline?

Can't talk about their financials, as they haven't provided me a financial report, but talking about the release of it i would take a guess and say 2018 for Star Citizen and mid to late 2017 for SQ42 (i have no clue how far they are in reality from what they've been willing to show, it could be everything they have to show after all). They are still receiving funding so i don't expect them to pack up shop any time soon, if that's what you have been asking.
 
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So no timeline?

Well, development of Daikatana or DNF didn't fail, because those games were released. One might say the games were critical or commercial failures, but that means something different. Looks to me that Gryphon's talking about the former, not the latter.

In this sense, "timeline" didn't mean very much, particularly in the case of DNF.

e: my point is, even if the game still hasn't released by 2026, then if your criterion for failure is "packed up shop and stopped working on it", then development hadn't failed, by definition. That's not to say everything about it wouldn't be terrible, but that's another thing
 
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Warning signs are there for all to see I think. Personally for me when I heard Chris Roberts bleating on about the undefined "minimal viable product" for release that's when I wanted out. I don't think they have handled that at all well going from unbridled feature additions and hype to a whoa now let's not get too excited here we are going minimal .. attitude in recent times

Which is frankly what people were expecting for delivery 18 months ago for delivery in 2014. It's why I exited via the grey market two years ago. I still have an account, but in terms of dollars I've got more invested in used Mass Effect games for the 360 than I do Star Citizen at this point. Until then I'll be working on getting my Cutter upgraded with engineering mods...

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That's not the case, neither is there a "mesh of servers" yet, as in multiple servers feeding a "single" game instance. Google cloud services aren't causing this either, the cause of this is the use of CryNetwork to accommodate something it wasn't specifically built for.

Here is one of the biggest issues I've had with CIG. Since 2013 they said specifically that CryNetwork was never going to work and they'd have to roll their own backend from day 1. The whole excuse given in late 2013 for the delay of the Dog Fighting Module, now dubbed "Arena Commander", was so they didn't have to go down the rabbit whole of making CryNetwork work well enough only to abandon it later. They reason why it Arena Commander was 6 months late was supposed to be so they could start with that netcode from day 1 and start hashing it out, warts and all, from the beginning. Only my understanding is that never happened. Arena Commander shipped with        ized CryNetwork code.

Then I was told last year that the big deal about the PU was they finally had inserted the magical "custom developed backend netcode".

Now we're still waiting for this customized netcode? Netcode that was/is to rely on a 3rd party open source networking layer (not sure what ever happened to that)?
 
Well, development of Daikatana or DNF didn't fail, because those games were released. One might say the games were critical or commercial failures, but that means something different. Looks to me that Gryphon's talking about the former, not the latter.

In this sense, "timeline" didn't mean very much, particularly in the case of DNF.

e: my point is, even if the game still hasn't released by 2026, then if your criterion for failure is "packed up shop and stopped working on it", then development hadn't failed, by definition. That's not to say everything about it wouldn't be terrible, but that's another thing

Pretty accurate, however i don't think they'll be able to survive without any release of a product, minimal or not, in the not too distant future.
 
Do you have a source for that? Also could you use a different word other than "promised", can't hear that word anymore as it's commonly misused in the discussion about Star Citizen. Not everything they're stating is automatically a promise.

It was stated in early versions of the TOS including through 1.1 and I believe 1.2, but I'd need to double check.
 
^He got the source already, it's here

Is this "In the unlikely event that RSI is not able to deliver the Game and/or the pledge items, RSI agrees to refund any unearned portion of your Pledge, and to post an audited cost accounting on the Website to fully explain the use of the amounts paid for Pledge Item Cost and the Game Cost." the statement you're refering to? If so, it's still in the ToS as it was in the old ToS (except for the bold part which was added in the new ToS).
 
Here is one of the biggest issues I've had with CIG. Since 2013 they said specifically that CryNetwork was never going to work and they'd have to roll their own backend from day 1. The whole excuse given in late 2013 for the delay of the Dog Fighting Module, now dubbed "Arena Commander", was so they didn't have to go down the rabbit whole of making CryNetwork work well enough only to abandon it later. They reason why it Arena Commander was 6 months late was supposed to be so they could start with that netcode from day 1 and start hashing it out, warts and all, from the beginning. Only my understanding is that never happened. Arena Commander shipped with ized CryNetwork code.

Then I was told last year that the big deal about the PU was they finally had inserted the magical "custom developed backend netcode".

Now we're still waiting for this customized netcode? Netcode that was/is to rely on a 3rd party open source networking layer (not sure what ever happened to that)?

I remember that very well and it was not the only occassion they used a "rework of CryNetwork" as an "excuse". As far as i know they extended the original CryNetwork to accommodate the additions to what CryNetwork didn't handle before and that's it, this ultimately led to the dead end of using CryNetwork in its current state. The "magical custom developed backend netcode" was always part of the equation and is not directly related to the use of CryNetwork as CryNetwork is not a MMO or general backend protocol, but a simple Server/Client solution to be used as is in most projects that need simple networking. Of the 3 big engines on the open market (Unity, UE, CryEngine), not a single one provides MMO backend functionality as this specific use case is almost always in need for a specific custom tailored solution. And yes, they're already utilizing the "3rd party open source networking layer" aka ZeroMQ in their current backend.
 
Here is one of the best effort posts I've seen on the SA forums in recent weeks (and there have been a lot of great ones too, interspersed between the plentiful CIG-baiting cack-posting comments and cat(te)tax pictures.) It perfectly distils all of the issues that are afflicting Star Citizen and the huge obstacles CIG would face just trying to address all of them (and those are just the ones the poster mentioned, there are a ton more which could be included) if they want his game to come out in any sort of reasonable state worthy of release....

AP posted:

The player wears a ship skin when he enters a ship and it takes about a second to switch, while switching the configuration has to be passed from avatar skin to ship skin and back. Think what that means for an Idris, the Starfarer slows the server to a crawl when spawned for a few seconds. The shotgun does damage as long as you don't right click to aim it and only hip fire, hangar flair attaches to ships randomly. The buggies don't work anymore, climbing a ladder can kill you, walking down a corridor is tough for flickering and missing wall sections and performance is getting worse. Stairs are a challenge, lifts have almost beaten them, people are starting to fall out of the hangar into space. Switching weapons can morph the player avatar, all the FPS animations are screwed. You can jump higher when prone that when standing.

The only thing they know how to do is make new cryengine maps, new ships and new weapons. But scopes don't stay attached to weapons, the Avenger, the Argo and Mustang all don't have enough ceiling height for the player avatar causing the head to clip into the roof. There's zero sign they can fix those scale issues without redesigning the ships, which takes months to years, quantum travel can kill you, walking up a ramp can kill you. Ships don't stay fixed in place, physics is broken everywhere, boundaries fail everywhere, AI is broken, sound is screwed. Add a few people to your friends list and the player names clip out of the text box, you have to restart the client to see friends online. Walk around the inside of the Retaliator and doors that are open/closed can be different in the external view camera while piloting, I don't even know how that one can even be broken, it doesn't seem possible.

It's called the "Star Engine" and we should use the proper name for it as CIG spent years getting it to this state and deserve all the credit. Personally I think it's almost impossible for them to make any game at all from this mess.

And none of that stuff is even touching the difficult parts of the pitched game, like network coding, player count and instancing.
 
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