The Star Citizen Thread v5

[GuruNot]

So how do they crew the big ships?

That was my thought too but it has been clarified for me.

AFAICT they are handling 24 people per Arena Commander instance, and that's all they say about AC. They are handling 40 people per Arc Corp instance, but Arc Corp is currently divided geographically into 8 instances.

What they are discussing is, for Arc Corp (which isn't very lag sensitive), increasing the pop-cap by using a different instancing system. I'm not sure if the exact mechanism discussed makes sense, but it is common for MMOs to do something somewhat similar in high traffic area (the server only sends the details on characters "close" to you, which has a bunch of positive/negative effects).

The elephant in the room for SC is that you almost certainly can't render 100 characters at the same time with that level of fidelity/avatar customization/animation anyway. So having 10,000 characters per instance is perhaps a rather academic point.

The joys of the English Language ... Grammar ... Punctuation ..... and of course me being "thick as two short planks"

 

[Frank]

The ATV released today shows just how down to the wire the Squadron 42 demo got before they decided to axe it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRsF6_lwLas

OK so if I tone down the harsh a bit, "They couldn't even get a demo finished for their own backer financed event planned one year in advance, despite their sleep deprived employee's making sacrifices to the detriment of their families".

What's the TOS like for citcon, can the ticket-holders get a refund ?.

That was my thought when I was watching that video. It was like the whole Star Citizen development in microcosm; nothing malicious behind it. A whole lot of talented people working hard to complete an impossible task.

...and a bunch of disappointed fans who paid good money to see the new demo who were instead watching a lecture about a website and an advert for an imaginary spaceship. No wonder somebody shouted "shame on you" at Chris Roberts.

 

[Stormprooter]

So Wow....Is this really going to work???

I would think with traditional server archtecture (rack/in a box), then no - but cloud-based? it may be theoretically possible - the issue is the amount of data that needs to be synchronised between all the clients - there's a lot to process, and a fraction of a second to get it all done.

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You programmers have it so easy

Comfy chair and a kettle? Luxury!

Try being stuck in a hardware clean room for a working day - with the nasty lights, constant hvac noise, bootie covers, grounding wires, no chance to go outside on a break, and you have to troubleshoot some pointless PCB against the wrong test data

Yep, compared to that, we programmers have it easy

 

[Stigbob]

That was my thought when I was watching that video. It was like the whole Star Citizen development in microcosm; nothing malicious behind it. A whole lot of talented people working hard to complete an impossible task.

...and a bunch of disappointed fans who paid good money to see the new demo who were instead watching a lecture about a website and an advert for an imaginary spaceship. No wonder somebody shouted "shame on you" at Chris Roberts.

Yep, it's not a con. But Derek was right they can't deliver.

They can whack out a "Sorry here's some excuses" video in a hurry though, so credit where it's due they are good at that. Practice makes perfect, and in that field they've had an awful lot of practice.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

OK guys, for the layman. How does Planetside 2 get so many players on a map at one time.

Oh to keep on topic. Go melt something.

PS2 does tricky combination of LOD and instancing. Interesting concept on terrain, horrible, horrible, exploitable mess in space - where there's nothing to break line of sight. Also you don't directly interact with all those players. It gives you feel you might be in same instance, but you really really don't.

And by the way that server talk is worth dudu if there's no clear answer how much it's gonna host (hint: it will cost several millions on hosting alone in a month) and how much CIG will be able to afford it. Because they have pretty much maxed out their fan base at this point.

 

[Dooguk]

PS2 does tricky combination of LOD and instancing. Interesting concept on terrain, horrible, horrible, exploitable mess in space - where there's nothing to break line of sight. Also you don't directly interact with all those players. It gives you feel you might be in same instance, but you really really isn't.

And by the way that server talk is worth dudu if there's no clear answer how much it's gonna host (hint: it will cost several millions on hosting alone in a month) and how much CIG will be able to afford it. Because they have pretty much maxed out their fan base at this point.

Thanks for that. I'm "sort of" understanding it now.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Wow that SQ42 demo video:

a) game is in very early alpha stages, not even ready for 2017;
b) they are not con, at least willingly (I am not that convinced about Chris himself, but I see him just sleasy); They however clearly lack solid management skill to make any of these games work. Artists and asset creators are awesome, their work is what SC keeps over water; But not being able to fit things together when putting things together....it happens, but it seems to be happening with CIG so much that it is clearly management issue;
c) Uninspired copy paste universe - this is what starts to get me. Has no one raised question why those 'sand people' look very generic sci-fi desert planet cliches? Lack of artistic direction;

So lack of artistic direction (knowing it's CR doesn't surprise me at all, I think all his works are sort of fanfics in some sort of sense), lack of development management (soaking up incredibly lots of money), lot of very talented artists wasting their time and rushing from demo to demo.

edit: also CR clearly directs movie there, not makes a game.

 

[hiciacit]

The ATV released today shows just how down to the wire the Squadron 42 demo got before they decided to axe it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRsF6_lwLas

OMG, they really don't have anything! If there's one thing that video shows is that there is/are no game(s) in sight. And then all the melodramatic whining ... community, community, community.    . On the other hand, this pathetic pampering of their 'community' is probably part of why it keeps throwing money at CIG, so understandable from CIG's point of view, I guess.

Erin's quote at the end is best: "We all really look forward to showing you all the great stuff that's coming up over the next few years." I bet.

 

[Toumal]

So the SQ42 demo was mostly built as a demo first? Instead of, you know, having a development plan and showing something that is in progress, since everyone knows and understands that it is in development?

Way to boost confidence there, CIG.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

So the SQ42 demo was mostly built as a demo first? Instead of, you know, having a development plan and showing something that is in progress, since everyone knows and understands that it is in development?

Way to boost confidence there, CIG.

Problem is that no one outside "knows" anything anymore. CIG42 first episode had to come out at the end of 2015. Then at the end of 2016. Then they went radio silent for most of the year, then Gamecom demo, then promise of SQ42 demo at CitizenCon. Didn't happen, and obviously, now "late of 2017". Judging by amount they could put into beta, there's ZERO gameplay. And before someone utters phrase "64 bit conversation" and I slap him virtually in da face, no, for gameplay you don't need sodding engine.

Judging amount of bikering and Titanic chair reshufling going on this video, SQ42 won't come out in 2017. It just can't.

 

[Stigbob]

Problem is that no one outside "knows" anything anymore. CIG42 first episode had to come out at the end of 2015. Then at the end of 2016. Then they went radio silent for most of the year, then Gamecom demo, then promise of SQ42 demo at CitizenCon. Didn't happen, and obviously, now "late of 2017". Judging by amount they could put into beta, there's ZERO gameplay. And before someone utters phrase "64 bit conversation" and I slap him virtually in da face, no, for gameplay you don't need sodding engine.

Judging amount of bikering and Titanic chair reshufling going on this video, SQ42 won't come out in 2017. It just can't.

It's not just SQ42. The whole of SC's development is a trail of massively hyping a given thing coupled with ship sales linked to that thing followed by missed dates silence and history revision. And throughout it all the ardent backers run round the internet spreading the word and getting very exited, then attacking people after the inevitable subsequent letdown.

Star Citizen has already failed.

 

[Winterwalker]

No doubt a lot of skill in the devs and (from that video at least) enthusiasm remaining in the core of funding. Any idea on what state the finances are really in? How much longer have they got as of now, any ideas?

The game 'might' end up being good (let's be optimistic) but I really wish CR would take his FEET off the TABLE! Not for me to judge (I suppose) because I don't work for him but badly disrespectful for me that, in any meeting even a creative one. "Buh-bye then". For students of the art it is 'I'm the alpha', body language (acquiring) yes, but I'm sure people realise who he is and if you're ready to pay for people (and they're ready to lose sleep for you) why non-verbally tell them to get stuffed?? lol. Please consider yourself double W slapped, CR!

 

[dsmart]

Thanks for sharing!

The more I try to understand any of that, the more hopelessly lost I get.

Releasing this "Road to CitizenCon" video, good or not, was a big mistake I think. And before anyone says "open development", note that they were forced to release this because of the outcry over the show, and the fact that their funding has flatlined as a result. And they didn't shoot it for this purpose. This was shot as part of their "Making of Star Citizen" documentary. They just chose to release the footage.

Anyone who saw this video, and saw all the work that went into making an R&D tech demo - which has no relation to the game being made - for a show, and thinks "yeah, this is a great way to spend time, money, and resources", doesn't know anything about game development.

The project is dead. There's no recovery.

ps: Now that I'm back, that's the last time I copy and paste anything posted over on SA. Marak, remember when I said I'd probably get banned if I pasted that here?

Meanwhile over at /r/DS, upon hearing that my temp-ban had expired. These guys are really salty that they don't control the narrative; and now this person thinks he had anything to do with my temp ban. Oh, he wants a refund or else.

Well. Time to open another ticket for Frontiers customer service.
If he's still posting, I still want my refund.

PS: Alpha Kickstarter backer here, under the given circumstances it's time to remind them again of the undelivered offline game I still haven't received.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...cry-over-elite-dangerous-ditched-offline-mode

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I just watched the latest reverse the verse-special edition and it was kind of interesting to watch CR, Erin Roberts, Tony Zurovec, Brian Chambers, and John Erskine talking about the current and future state of the SC....to cut the chase around 20 min in they start to talk about the networking and how many players we could expect per instance in the "near"future so let me quote CR:

"So it’s really more just about the fact that there will be a limit to how many players we can simulate on one server. Right now it’s 24 in Arena Commander and it’s about 40 when you’re running around Arc Corp. Really, that’s actually 8 instances running on one server. So, if you just times it by 8 and figure it out we could have 200 players if we could scale the game linearly that way but right now we can’t because it’s not – parts of it are built for multithreading and distributing to all of the cores but some aren’t. That’s what we’re doing a lot of refactoring on, so an individual server instance could perhaps run 200 players which then is obviously a lot denser than what we have right now and you would still seamlessly go between locations. But, on top of that if you can mesh those servers together and each server is authoritative over a group of players and generally those players would be based on colocation and each server tells the other servers what it has done with the players it’s responsible for. You can sort of, on a peer-to-peer basis on the server side, you can have thousands of players being simulated all at once but each server is only doing the work for its little portion. That’s the new model, we’re not the only people that are working on this or trying to work on this. It is the new model of using the big – using the cloud to give you a lot more game experience and that’s where we’re going. At some point, you know, we may even – that may allow us to have 2,000 people in the same area or whatever but what if there was maybe 10,000? At that point we probably would still have to instance."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyymbmis7xA
20:00 min start

So Wow....Is this really going to work???Well if this work.....then we certainly can expect kind of revolution in the near future gaming...right???Or CR just talking to talk???Or maybe it is the truth that will happens in +few years...or beyond the 2020??

It's pure and utter rubbish. So no, it's NOT going to work. For one thing, he's not the one developing it; and thus has absolutely NO idea HOW it's even supposed to work.

I've built and/or integrated all kinds of multiplayer game tech, what he described is i) not the way to do it ii) simply cannot be done iii) if they could do it, then the cloud instance costs alone would be prohibitive

Note that "networking" didn't appear in ANY of the CitizenCon slides. So they're probably not even going to touch that in 2017. Unless they've been working on tweaking it for 2.6.

 

[dsmart]

Sounds like what Dual Universe is doing. Another CR special, see someone else's idea/technology and try to rip it off.

No, they're not doing it like that actually. And even they are going to run into serious problems down the road when they finally get a "game", with all the bits and pieces on top of that layer.

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I'm confused. CIG have never been balked before at showing a buggy mess, on the grounds that it's an alpha: And things like the floating not-a-Mako, artificially moronic not-Tusken-raiders, and the repeating not-Shai-Hulud suggest they are still cool with that. So just far down the toilet was the S42 demo that they decided not to show it?

Pretty much what I've stated: It's all broken. There is no "game" for them to play; and croberts doesn't want the second (the first was the horrid Morrow Tour) impression of his masterpiece to be met with outrage.

Also, if they were planning on showing SQ42, do you see any mention or shot of it in that video? Anywhere? Maybe aside from this quick glimpse. That to me means that they weren't planning on showing it at all once they determined it was all broken. If they were, then there would be footage of their attempts, right to the point at which they decided they couldn't make it. So, enter the sand worm.

 

[Iskariot]

So the SQ42 demo was mostly built as a demo first? Instead of, you know, having a development plan and showing something that is in progress, since everyone knows and understands that it is in development?

Way to boost confidence there, CIG.

Yes that is what shocked me most.

When they talk about "getting things in", "getting things polished", "getting things looking good", "getting features in there", "getting things to work" etc. they are not referring to the actual game, but to the demo.
When they talk about "it's challenging, we have a lot of challenges" they are referring not to the game, but to making a bloody demo.
I fell off my chair. I just can't believe it!

So it is clear to me that even this buggy demo does not in any way represent what the game can currently do.
The game and the demo are mostly separate development worlds.

 

[Backer42]

When they talk about "getting things in", "getting things polished", "getting things looking good", "getting features in there", "getting things to work" etc. they are not referring to the actual game, but to the demo.
When they talk about "it's challenging, we have a lot of challenges" they are referring not to the game, but to making a bloody demo.
I fell off my chair. I just can't believe it!

So it is clear to me that even this buggy demo does not in any way represent what the game can currently do.
The game and the demo are mostly separate development worlds.

They're only developing demos to raise "crowdfunding" money, that's why it's a con. Five years and no game.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Oh boy... that poster claiming they are entitled to a refund makes my head hurt. I wonder if they have asked for a refund from CIG for non delivery?

 

[GuruNot]

Yes that is what shocked me most.

When they talk about "getting things in", "getting things polished", "getting things looking good", "getting features in there", "getting things to work" etc. they are not referring to the actual game, but to the demo.
When they talk about "it's challenging, we have a lot of challenges" they are referring not to the game, but to making a bloody demo.
I fell off my chair. I just can't believe it!

So it is clear to me that even this buggy demo does not in any way represent what the game can currently do.
The game and the demo are mostly separate development worlds.

That does not bode well at all!! I was hoping that the less "technical" Squadron42 would be half good and justify my pledge.

 

[Stigbob]

I just noticed 12 minutes into the citizen conning excuse video there's an Arcadia coffee shop cup in front of the dev whose typing on the laptop. That $42,000 coffee machine was a great use of backer money. Star Citizen is now my favorite reality TV show.

They should do a spin off called Derek Smarts development hell, where Derek goes into game dev companies and yells at people. Like Gordon Ramsay but with less food and more swearing.

 

[Marak]

ps: Now that I'm back, that's the last time I copy and paste anything posted over on SA. Marak, remember when I said I'd probably get banned if I pasted that here?

Yeah... I did think it a bit ironic when you started that post with something like "I'll probably get into trouble for this and any infractions will be your fault!... "

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and now this person thinks he had anything to do with my temp ban. Oh, he wants a refund or else. .

Hey - If there's any credit going for your ban - I want it!