The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Ian Skippy]

edit: latest scoop from Derek: http://www.dereksmart.org/forums/topic/sc-scoop/#post-4459
Initiate farming mechanics? I think someone's been had, then again would prove no scope creep in SC, delivering what matters first, shirts, caps and space farming

Farming sounds off, rest is what I expect. Lots of animations and handcrafted stuff which they've spend their time on since gamescom. You wont get that stuff now, it'll come in six months which will become a year, but there will be a new spaceship to buy to keep you entertained.

 

[Tippis]

The thought that they've hired a rep management company to wage internet war is both hilarious and totally believable.

But they are so bad at it that I can't believe it's a paid for service, these people do a better job of making Star Citizen/CiG/RSI look ludicrous than even the warlord himself has managed.

So if they've hired a rep management company they've obviously picked an incompetent bunch of half-witted chancers to waste backer money on. Hang on we've slipped back into believable territory again.

I seem to recall that there was some connection between the INN crew and one of those companies — like, the site owner (but not one of the show regulars) was also the owner or executive of some reputation management business.

An interesting example. Having spent a little time on Aces High I have wondered how they achieve the feeling of a vast open real time simulation arena that is often filled with players, it's a far more relevant example than something like EvE or even Planetside 2 that has quite restricted arenas in comparison.

Hmm In what way does it feel more vast and open? I mean, EVE grids are sizeable fractions of a lightsecond across these days and a large fight can be spread out over hundreds of kilometres with a dozen sub-fights going at different corners of the could of players and the only sensible way to go from one to the other is to warp between them (without ever leaving the grid). Or is it exactly that you're referring to: that even with huge distances, EVE battles still “feel dense” in a way due to how movement — to say nothing of the orbital camera — works?

Cutting edge graphics don't change much, client prediction will take care of most of it (he flew a bit to the left instead of what we predicted, correct retroactively to avoid teleports, will look as if he did a bit of extra turn next click, fps is where things get wacky/teleport galore, which makes PS2 good to compare as it has both fps and vehicular modes). 500 in a huge area, ps2 did 1k+, but you never see them, so instanced, is there a vid of aces high 500 player battle? How close can players get until it gets weird?

The client-side hit prediction was one of the major issues with PS1, since it created very strange behaviour in zerg:y fights. I think it's a direct effect of this lesson that they introduced the variable vision range in PS2: so that you could get people a whole lot closer before the client started spazzing out trying to keep itself and everyone else updated about the surroundings.

In PS1, things started to get weird when you had 150+ people in the same SOI (~250m radius, iirc, but it was a decade ago so don't quote me). In PS2 you can have that amount without (quite as much) problem because the client just clamps down on the update range. There's still a lower bound, though, where you just get too high a density in too small an area for that trick to really work any more.

 

[szopin]

I seem to recall that there was some connection between the INN crew and one of those companies — like, the site owner (but not one of the show regulars) was also the owner or executive of some reputation management business.


Hmm In what way does it feel more vast and open? I mean, EVE grids are sizeable fractions of a lightsecond across these days and a large fight can be spread out over hundreds of kilometres with a dozen sub-fights going at different corners of the could of players and the only sensible way to go from one to the other is to warp between them (without ever leaving the grid). Or is it exactly that you're referring to: that even with huge distances, EVE battles still “feel dense” in a way due to how movement — to say nothing of the orbital camera — works?


The client-side hit prediction was one of the major issues with PS1, since it created very strange behaviour in zerg:y fights. I think it's a direct effect of this lesson that they introduced the variable vision range in PS2: so that you could get people a whole lot closer before the client started spazzing out trying to keep itself and everyone else updated about the surroundings.

In PS1, things started to get weird when you had 150+ people in the same SOI (~250m radius, iirc, but it was a decade ago so don't quote me). In PS2 you can have that amount without (quite as much) problem because the client just clamps down on the update range. There's still a lower bound, though, where you just get too high a density in too small an area for that trick to really work any more.

Yeah, network lod works fine with km distances, you can predict/correct a lot and it's not noticeable if done right, get into fps distances and people teleporting around tens of meters around is just not acceptable. FPS part of lod/ps2 is what makes their solutions/tricks interesting in SC context (ps2 also maxes around 200 players in small area before weirdness kicks in and this is for a mmo experienced company)

 

[Backer42]

Maybe CR will come up with another new innovative online mode feature - I dunno something like;

Anyone
Only your own group
On your own

I expect they'll think of more catchy names though.

1. High Maintenance
2. Goonrathi Mode
3. Special Snowflake

Game mode will get assigned by CIG support staff to each account and can't be changed by the player.

 

[hairychris]

Aces High 2/III can have up to 500 players in a single server, using a netcode algorithm to determine data sent based on player distance which is centrally determined by the server so that all players are in the same world sending the same data rate to the server but the server only sends back to each player the data relevant to their location and who is closest to them. So on the client side the players closest to the client would be updated more frequently than players, say, 5km away. At some point no data is sent based like if a player isn't in visible range. It's a constant data feed to the server for each client, but each client only receives updates based on player proximity. Of course, tons of data isn't being sent and there is a deterministic algorithm so that constant positional updates aren't required either in which it determines the aircraft anticipated next location based on previous locations and projects a path for it. That positional deterministic algorithm is pretty good too, but if someone has a wonky connection warping and other funny behavior happens.

So instancing isn't totally necessary, but some very good server side data parsing to determine which players/clients need updates on other players based on positioning and update frequency being based on distance to player to further cut down on downstream net traffic. But, who knows - based on their current accomplishments it certainly doesn't look like they will have more than a dozen players being visible to each other.

I suppose that with a lot of clever code CIG could amalgamate multiple users in a ship into one object as far as everyone else is concerned.

Am really not sure how they'll stop CryEngine from completely crapping itself though.

 

[Stigbob]

1. High Maintenance
2. Goonrathi Mode
3. Special Snowflake

Game mode will get assigned by CIG support staff to each account and can't be changed by the player.

SC mode titles

1. Goonfear. (available to all, open)

2. You might be safe, but can you trust them all. (Requires subscription $40 per month, group)

3. Safezone. (Requires subscription $100 per month, solo)

4. Avocado. (vetted members only with high reddit karma, subscription $1000 pcm, moderated server golden hat and npc manservant)

 

[Osmanthus]

SC mode titles

1. Goonfear. (available to all, open)

2. You might be safe, but can you trust them all. (Requires subscription $40 per month, group)

3. Safezone. (Requires subscription $100 per month, solo)

4. Avocado. (vetted members only with high reddit karma, subscription $1000 pcm, moderated server golden hat and npc manservant)

4a. Options to rename NPC manservant available at only an additional $50 per month. Note: moderators can veto manservant names at any time

 

[SkUnimatrix]

I'll bite. Again.

It was an analysis; was never asserted to be set in stone; and as analysis' go, a lot of unknown factors (e.g. that people would keep giving them money after the fact) can influence the outcome and end result. So anyone parroting it as fact, is a fool.

That's the nature of analysis. It's fluid. It's unpredictable. At best. With what I knew at the time, I gave them 90 days. The 90 days turned out to be wrong, though the evidence that led me to that analysis, wasn't wrong.

I know when this first started coming out last year I had run the numbers and the one thing yours never seem to account for was the fact that CIG/RSI/WhateverLLCThisMonth gained most of their fund raising in the 4th quarter based around anniversary and holiday sales. Typically to the tune of about $15M, which is enough to offset their estimated bleed rates given they don't incur any more large onetime expenses (i.e. more motion capture for Sq. 42). Not sure, but I probably said as much around on forums and reddit last year.

The problem is they are entirely dependent on that 4th quarter cash grab in order to stay solvent. And one of these years it's not going to materialize as they reach market saturation. My prediction is that will moment will come when the next market correction hits. People are a lot less likely to spend $1000 on jpegs when their retirement savings just lost 30% of its value. Question is when is that market volatility going to hit. Traditionally it's September & October when it does and we just so happen to be in an....well let's just say interesting election cycle. Beware October surprises and all that.

If we see a correction on the scale of 2008 or worse a 1987, I know many of you around here weren't alive to see that happen, that's probably the death nail. Lots of people will be out of work again and those who aren't will be tightening their belts.

 

[ZeeWolf]

Hmm In what way does it feel more vast and open? I mean, EVE grids are sizeable fractions of a lightsecond across these days and a large fight can be spread out over hundreds of kilometres with a dozen sub-fights going at different corners of the could of players and the only sensible way to go from one to the other is to warp between them (without ever leaving the grid). Or is it exactly that you're referring to: that even with huge distances, EVE battles still “feel dense” in a way due to how movement — to say nothing of the orbital camera — works?


The client-side hit prediction was one of the major issues with PS1, since it created very strange behaviour in zerg:y fights. I think it's a direct effect of this lesson that they introduced the variable vision range in PS2: so that you could get people a whole lot closer before the client started spazzing out trying to keep itself and everyone else updated about the surroundings.
.

EvE is not a real time simulation. Its a command and control game handled in ticks. There is no real time flight models to worry about. It's about as relevant as WoW.

 

[szopin]

Farming sounds off, rest is what I expect. Lots of animations and handcrafted stuff which they've spend their time on since gamescom. You wont get that stuff now, it'll come in six months which will become a year, but there will be a new spaceship to buy to keep you entertained.

Then again, farming is kind of a crucial thing for wing commander fans, don't get me wrong, there have been many attempts to do it properly, yet they all fail (farming simulator, stardew valley, grass growing simulator(http://store.steampowered.com/app/331200)... peasant level sims). You plant a carrot and then just wait for it to grow and gather... lame. PC will be saved by fidelity. No longer stupid timer, we can simulate amount of sunlight each leaf gets, the interactions with atmosphere on a given planet (every oxygen/nitrogen molecule counts). Players might want to park their spaceships to limit the amount of light your garden gets. 24 players in a capital ship parked right over it, just so you get less... Goons will love it. Emergent gameplay all around. Farming done right, can't wait

 

[Backer42]

If we see a correction on the scale of 2008 or worse a 1987, I know many of you around here weren't alive to see that happen, that's probably the death nail. Lots of people will be out of work again and those who aren't will be tightening their belts.

Also Chris & friends can blame their failure on the economy, take the money and run.

 

[szopin]

I suppose that with a lot of clever code CIG could amalgamate multiple users in a ship into one object as far as everyone else is concerned.

Am really not sure how they'll stop CryEngine from completely crapping itself though.

Yeah, such tricks make sense, until they all decide to EVA and the network goes *crap*


edit: BTW is it possible now for a commando to EVA from his ship while it is still flying? Like full throttle at the big ship and go running? Or is the movement of the ship tied to pilot? That will have impact on amount of entities to follow, though rather predictable (until others start ramming the unoccupied ramming ship)

 

[FuriousMeow]

Cutting edge graphics don't change much, client prediction will take care of most of it (he flew a bit to the left instead of what we predicted, correct retroactively to avoid teleports, will look as if he did a bit of extra turn next click, fps is where things get wacky/teleport galore, which makes PS2 good to compare as it has both fps and vehicular modes). 500 in a huge area, ps2 did 1k+, but you never see them, so instanced, is there a vid of aces high 500 player battle? How close can players get until it gets weird?

Oh sweet baby jebus no! Back in the day, this game has been around in 3 iterations so far but started back in '99 so back in the heyday of modem usage, systems were still limited and the max visible players was 32. Any more and planes would pop in and out, it was... interesting... in large scenario battles. Of course more recently technology and 64bit OS/memory allocation has removed that limit - but there is still a tremendous slow down with a lot of visible players but this is purely graphical here. In the past when large scenarios happened after the 32 player viewable limit was gone there was a bit of warping at further ranges but mostly good in close, but it varied and it also depended on other player's connections. So there are issues with lots of players in a single area regardless, even with most people being on DSL or better. I'd say cable is probably the mean connection right now? Don't know though, didn't actually look it up.

I'm not saying it is stable and something that will work the best, especially considering when you look back at that Eve battle that had thousands of players in one giant battle and the FPS was in seconds and not per second, things can start to go south very quickly with allowing that many connections in a single area even with a great server, connection and server based controls to allow the most efficient use of bandwidth.

Which is why I seriously do not see that happening with SC considering they can't even get things going without major refactoring and they've gone through 2 or 3 netcode revisions and they have all been terrible.

 

[ZeeWolf]

Sorry, not clear, high polygon count won't impact network, unless you send updates about each polygon (CE is bad but not that bad), they might need quad 1080s to render, but that is easy vs get a petabyte/s connection

I was thinking more in terms of complexity of hard points and damage systems along with furniture such as debris, asteroids and projectiles where as the WWII combat represented in Aces High is more primitive and confined to several large areas rather than several billion star systems. It's still one of the few examples that has simulated cockpit gameplay in a large world with groups of players involved in different real time campaigns.

 

[hairychris]

edit: BTW is it possible now for a commando to EVA from his ship while it is still flying? Like full throttle at the big ship and go running? Or is the movement of the ship tied to pilot? That will have impact on amount of entities to follow, though rather predictable (until others start ramming the unoccupied ramming ship)

I dunno. I've seen a lot of glitching vids on YouTube...

 

[szopin]

I was thinking more in terms of complexity of hard points and damage systems along with furniture such as debris, asteroids and projectiles where as the WWII combat represented in Aces High is more primitive and confined to several large areas rather than several billion star systems. It's still one of the few examples that has simulated cockpit gameplay in a large world with groups of players involved in different real time campaigns.

Projectiles - no problem, fully client side prediction will work. Hardpoints/turrets should not have more data than speed/stance/eq/... needed to handle a person, aim direction/did it fire should be enough, so a ship with 5 turrets manned needs less data than those same 5 commandos floating/running/gunning in space. Debris is a hard problem, you get info on players in ticks and want to simulate small pieces behaving the same between multiple clients which get their data at different points in time... Having fidelitious debris behaviour in MP might need starnetwork 3.0 to solve (but again, graphics and polygon counts don't mean much as long as you have deterministic animations in network terms, I'm probably missing something though)

 

[CMDR_Orlando]

Nope, wrong. All of it. You need to try harder than that. For one thing, you speculate (<---- see how that works?) that my info comes from Goons; while ignoring the fact that you have NO evidence of that in any way, shape or form. Notwithstanding the fact that you don't get to define what an analysis is. You either understand what it is, and accept it, or you don't. At the end of the day, nobody cares what you guys think, when, regardless of facts and/or minutia, we're watching an on-going train-wreck unfold. Nothing is going to change that. The project is ; and all backers have done is made a handful of people rich, while giving around 500 people a paycheck for going on five years.

In the reverse, YOU guys care what we Goons think; which is why you have this dying need to follow us everywhere in order to defend your financial life choices. We're just having a laugh. You guys are having a collective aneurysm over a video game.

Oh Derek my dear friend... you're passion allways obscured your reasoning. We've come a long way... way before you adopted Smart as your last name (I know and understand your reasons, no biggie one does what one has got to do to cope with these things).

And yes Derek, your info comes from us that feed you stuff in the SA thread and the rest is up to your imagination.

We are the same guys that mocked and alienated you 10 years ago and we are doing the same now, and you know it, but since it suits your agenda you roll with it.

You know that both Bootcha/Beer/Ace or any disgruntled ex-employees are just using you, you can try and use them back to raise "awareness" for your cause but you know that there's no way that this will end up good for you, but you don't really care, there's really nothing left for you besides GamerGate and CitizenHate.

The thing is, there's no stopping this Star Citizen train, whatever you and your gang of hecklers try: mock/ harass / stalk / CIG staff at will, scavenge for all the furniture, concept art, lawsuits, peoples personal life at will, do your best at being your worst. It doesn't matter in the end it's just lulz while the Big Boys work.

And people do care about what I do think and post, that's why they feel the need to post back. As you know Star Citizen now has way way more than 500.000k paying backers. In 2015 alone they got 178 million page views and 9.5 million visitors while having 80,000 players playing the 2.0 Crusader Universe. Have a look at the videos in their channel, their weekly show has +100k views , the minor ones go from 20k to 50k. Their gamescom demo amassed millions of views between the 3 official versions and around 4.5 million$.

What's the number of the haters cultists that you gathered? 50? 100?

Just because you try your best to keep screaming and shouting very loud adnauseum doesn't mean people will listen. It's the opposite really, like I said, you burned your bridges by making this personal, you are emotionally attached and that's hindering your judgement even when using the text-book trolling tactics. You went from "Warlord" to "Oh Lord". Oh yes your twitter stats are also impressive 32k tweets 90% about Star Citizen or it's Staff, talk about having a collective aneurysm over a video-game. [rolleyes]

In other words, you're lying and have no sources. OK, got it.

You've either lost it, or you are devoid of a clue. In your book, transition from space to planet without a loading screen is material to the game because "people can have fun goofing around inside their ship". I don't even have the energy to laugh. So I'm just going to smirk, and take another sip of my coffee.

Why do you say I've lost it? Do you see me punching coke machines or shouting from the top of my lungs so that you let me fk finish? Might as well call my PSD Nam Vet friend to clear things out.

You want sources about your 2015 Gamescom diatribes, sure you asked for them.

Just skim trough the pages while you sip your coffee, careful to not spill it. [big grin]

[video=youtube;qfJgirJ-HgI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfJgirJ-HgI[/video]

Enjoy Citizens!

 

[Marak]

Oh Derek my dear friend... you're passion allways obscured your reasoning. We've come a long way... way before you adopted Smart as your last name (I know and understand your reasons, no biggie one does what one has got to do to cope with these things).

And yes Derek, your info comes from us that feed you stuff in the SA thread and the rest is up to your imagination.

We are the same guys that mocked and alienated you 10 years ago and we are doing the same now, and you know it, but since it suits your agenda you roll with it.

You know that both Bootcha/Beer/Ace or any disgruntled ex-employees are just using you, you can try and use them back to raise "awareness" for your cause but you know that there's no way that this will end up good for you, but you don't really care, there's really nothing left for you besides GamerGate and StarCitizenHate.

The thing is, there's no stopping this Star Citizen train, whatever you and your gang of hecklers try: mock/ harass / stalk / CIG staff at will, scavenge for all the furniture, concept art, lawsuits, peoples personal life at will, do your best at being your worst. It doesn't matter in the end it's just lulz while the Big Boys work.

And people do care about what I do think and post, that's why they feel the need to post back. As you know Star Citizen as now way way more than 500.000k paying backers. In 2015 alone they got 178 million page views and 9.5 million visitors while having 80,000 players playing the 2.0 Crusader Universe. Have a look at the videos in their channel, their weekly show has +100k views , the minor ones go from 20k to 50k. Their gamescom demo amassed millions of views between the 3 official versions and around 4.5 million$.

What's the number of the haters cultists that you gathered? 50? 100?
Just because you try your best to keep screaming and shouting very loud adnauseum doesn't mean people will listen. It's the opposite really, like I said, you burned your bridges by making this personal, you are emotionally attached and that's hindering your judgement even when using the text-book trolling tactics. You went from "Warlord" to "Oh Lord". Oh yes your twitter stats are also impressive 32k tweets 90% about Star Citizen or it's Staff, talk about having a collective aneurysm over a video-game. [rolleyes]



Why do you say I've lost it? Do you see me punching coke machines or shouting from the top of my lungs so that you let me fk finish? Might as well call my PSD Nam Vet friend to clear things out.

You want sources about your 2015 Gamescom diatribes, sure you asked for them.

Just skim trough the pages while you sip your coffee, careful to not spill it. [big grin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfJgirJ-HgI

Enjoy Citizens!

Have you ever heard the phrase - "Don't feed the troll"?

Derek Smart must be about 50 stone right now - he's been fed so much by SC backers that he probably has his own gravitational field.

Just ignore him. He won't go away but he may end up having to send out for pizza now and again.

 

[Asp Explorer]

My lulzidris needs a class 50 engineered lulz-containment expansion

 

[Sydivision77]

Can I purchase an Idris with bitcoins?