The Star Citizen Thread v5

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So, just to try and pin down the claim here, you're saying Star Citizen upgraded its maximum world boundaries by expressing the number in a 64-bit integer, but didn't change the format of the coordinates used to place objects?
This seems to be a pretty weird claim:
1) 232 metres would already be a bleeding huge playspace.
2) Why would the world boundaries be expressed as an integer, when all the coordinates within that space will be floating point?

Meters? Wouldn't that mean defining the position of anything at the maximum accuracy of 1 meter? That's no good.

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Hems303, look up the long and troubled development of Strike Commander. We have been here before.
I had a Strike Commander poster on my wall for years. When the game finally came out, i got bored of it after 4-5 missions, when i realized what a turd it actually was.

I actually rather liked it, and the lore of the "post peak oil" near future setting was well written.
 
So, just to try and pin down the claim here, you're saying Star Citizen upgraded its maximum world boundaries by expressing the number in a 64-bit integer, but didn't change the format of the coordinates used to place objects?
This seems to be a pretty weird claim:
1) 232 metres would already be a bleeding huge playspace.
2) Why would the world boundaries be expressed as an integer, when all the coordinates within that space will be floating point?

Out of curiosity - and a lack of familiarity with game engines: Why is floating point the preferred data type? (I'm guessing that it's the most flexible and performant for most types of modern games?)
Reason I ask, is that many years ago, I created an "asteroids" clone in DX3/Windows SDK/C++, and simply for fun, I created a fixed point decimal data type, based on a 32 bit integer (3 bytes for whole number, 1 byte for bicimal), and I was then able to use integer maths, along with bit shifting to get high-performance calculations. Laugh at my ignorance, but something similar for world positioning with 64 bit would seem to be a sensible way to do things. But then I guess you may run into data type compatibility/conversion issues with other things going on?
 
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Anyway, if we can believe their counter people are spending on SC like crazy...2m in last 2 days thats just crazy...
 
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Anyway, if we can believe their counter people are spending on SC like crazy...2m in last 2 days thats just crazy...

Can't help but wonder if the counter includes all purchases even if there's no new money entering the system, ie melt ship -> credit -> buy new ship = new transaction.

Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if melting a package counted as purchasing store credit and then purchasing a ship with said credit is counted as another transaction... the more active it seems the more people believe its popularity and in turn the more likely they are to spend themselves.
 
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Meters? Wouldn't that mean defining the position of anything at the maximum accuracy of 1 meter? That's no good.
True, but his claim seems to be that what was changed was an integer used to describe the boundaries, not the precision of the positions themselves. The positions themselves (in default CryEngine) are 32-bit float. To be honest, map boundaries would probably be expressed as a float too, so the concept of changing to 64-bit to be able to "describe a bigger box" is kind of senseless.

Out of curiosity - and a lack of familiarity with game engines: Why is floating point the preferred data type? (I'm guessing that it's the most flexible and performant for most types of modern games?)
Reason I ask, is that many years ago, I created an "asteroids" clone in DX3/Windows SDK/C++, and simply for fun, I created a fixed point decimal data type, based on a 32 bit integer (3 bytes for whole number, 1 byte for bicimal), and I was then able to use integer maths, along with bit shifting to get high-performance calculations. Laugh at my ignorance, but something similar for world positioning with 64 bit would seem to be a sensible way to do things. But then I guess you may run into data type compatibility/conversion issues with other things going on?
Waaay upthread I think I linked to an idealistic design of a positioning system that used fixed point. I agree that it would be better, but I think retrofitting CryEngine with it would have been much harder and more error prone. I'm also not sure if it might spanner up the conversion between frames of reference, eg local grids etc. You might end up swapping from float to int and back several times.
 
Waaay upthread I think I linked to an idealistic design of a positioning system that used fixed point. I agree that it would be better, but I think retrofitting CryEngine with it would have been much harder and more error prone. I'm also not sure if it might spanner up the conversion between frames of reference, eg local grids etc. You might end up swapping from float to int and back several times.

Thanks for the response - I guess when creating a game engine you have to decide on your numeric data type and use that throughout, not just for positioning. I also guess that 32bit floating point is good enough for the vast majority of applications - hence why it's used.
 
Anyway, if we can believe their counter people are spending on SC like crazy...2m in last 2 days thats just crazy...

Yeah....I admit I was wrong...I really didn´t expect that CIG is going to cash in that much this year after all they did....or actually didn´t do.....well this is one more reason for them to prolong this agony and not deliver anything substantial next year....
 
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Thanks for the response - I guess when creating a game engine you have to decide on your numeric data type and use that throughout, not just for positioning. I also guess that 32bit floating point is good enough for the vast majority of applications - hence why it's used.

Depends on if you're being naughty. It was over 20 years ago now but if memory serves - my illegally fast 3d routine held it's object/world data as floats so I could put CAD drawn stuff in it then actually rendered everything through a int-based pipeline but it was all linear monolithic code in what was meant to be an exercise in OO so no dice and I 'failed'. It was however orders of magnitude faster than any other routine in class. That was the last time we touched on games development and it went back to compilers, databases and operating systems which was boring as hell after that.

ps. i remember the bug from switching back/forth between the two as well - objects exploded very gently and slowly as all the verticies came apart
pps. funding graph is mental at the moment, i wonder how many are really new backers? So much talk on the forums of buying ships for their friends etc
 
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Depends on if you're being naughty. It was over 20 years ago now but if memory serves - my illegally fast 3d routine held it's object/world data as floats so I could put CAD drawn stuff in it then actually rendered everything through a int-based pipeline but it was all linear monolithic code in what was meant to be an exercise in OO so no dice and I 'failed'. It was however orders of magnitude faster than any other routine in class. That was the last time we touched on games development and it went back to compilers, databases and operating systems which was boring as hell after that.

ps. i remember the bug from switching back/forth between the two as well - objects exploded very gently and slowly as all the verticies came apart
pps. funding graph is mental at the moment, i wonder how many are really new backers? So much talk on the forums of buying ships for their friends etc

I think if you're "rolling your own" engine for one specific game, then anything goes. Though the "standards" nerd in me would want to make things as easily compatible as possible with external stuff like 3d models & meshes, textures and all the rest of it.
The benefits of using an existing engine, such as CryEngine or UE4 are pretty obvious, you can use standard tools to create content and assets, the vanilla editors are pretty good, and so long as you don't want to do too much that's not available out-of-the-box, development is relatively painless and good results can be achieved quite quickly (see original SC Kickstarter video :D)
 
Yeah....I admit I was wrong...I really didn´t expect that CIG is going to cash in that much this year after all they did....or actually didn´t do.....well this is one more reason for them to prolong this agony and not deliver anything substantial next year....

Same here, after bad Citcon and no new content still at this date, I expected less sales and bigger drama, but looks like Alfa backer faith in CR is still quite strong...

I guess also their ships commercial videos are good enough to get new sales too..

Anyway it does not change my opinion, that in end if there will be game it will be average at the best...
 
I think if you're "rolling your own" engine for one specific game, then anything goes. Though the "standards" nerd in me would want to make things as easily compatible as possible with external stuff like 3d models & meshes, textures and all the rest of it.
The benefits of using an existing engine, such as CryEngine or UE4 are pretty obvious, you can use standard tools to create content and assets, the vanilla editors are pretty good, and so long as you don't want to do too much that's not available out-of-the-box, development is relatively painless and good results can be achieved quite quickly (see original SC Kickstarter video :D)

If it weren't so off topic I'd have all sorts of questions about Cobra vs. Cryengine etc for Ben. The engines have all gotten to levels of complexity that reading up on them tends to spin my head before I can grasp the overarching shapes/differences but it is fascinating, especially when they start becoming more specialised and tricksy. I buy most of the little weird own-engine/modded-engine 3d games I find on steam just to see what they come out with

I remain very curious how they handle the memory in their huge scenes for SC.
 
NMS have announced base building will be in their next patch.

Anyone want to take bets on CR announcing base building being added to the roadmap for SC in the coming days?
 
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