Ben, I tend to debate and engage in meaningful discourse in
good faith. I am not about "winning", nor do I strive to be "right", because there is no growth in that. So if you think that I was being disingenuous, then that's unfortunate.
Regardless, everything I've stated in three (
1,
2,
3) posts are pretty clear, on point, and are specific to what's being discussed. Which is why I tend to cite sources (including my own posts) in order to keep the discussion flow on track. Yes, I tend to write a lot of words; but that's because I'm neither dismissive, nor arrogant to the point of glossing over things in order to hand wave opposing commentary. That sort of thing is for Redditors.
When it comes to self-quotes, I'd suggest maybe editing down to the point you're drawing attention to - obviously
you think it's clear what the point is, but writing well enough that you can see your own point isn't exactly hard mode. Aside, if you want to save words and don't want to seem dismissive, perhaps cut back on phrases like "bereft of reason".
The problem you seem to be having is that you completely refuse to accept the simple fact that it all started with that 1st post (gist quoted); even though you just referred to it again above.
The problem you seem to be having is that you completely refuse to accept the simple fact that it all started with that 1st post (gist quoted); even though you just referred to it again above.
That's not a first post,
this is a first post. Again, style suggestion - if it's important that people don't understand what a thing is, throw in a brief gloss just to show your reference points. The "scene" thing is a prime example, totally common technical term, but I've never seen it used interchangeably with "map" or "level". The scene is the full set of active objects, which includes the loaded level(s), but minus anything that's been destroyed, and plus players, player-spawned objects, etc etc. It's a sidetrack to the discussion but I was cautious of it because of your previous tendency to jump on someone's word usage as proof that they're obfuscating, without being clear what usage you considered correct.
The 2nd and 3rd posts merely served to bring clarity to your continued obfuscation of simple things which to any junior programmer should be easy to understand and explain.
I did my best to pick apart where you were going and respond directly. I thoroughly approve of this new format where you actually ask specific questions. Let's hope I'm up to the challenge.
And before that, you were
trying to change the meaning of the word "transition" and its implication, which
was met with with a rebuttal you
later conceded in your usual off-hand manner. Even as you try to also act astonished (while accusing me of using non-technical terms) that the word "scene" (a standard widely used terminology) was somehow foreign.
Right, no, I can't agree that's what happened there. You said there was a glitch to
cover a transition. From the context, it seemed clear that you meant a transition between two maps, especially since you wrote about doing an external camera cut in a similar place in your own game. I said the glitch was probably just some feature turning on or off, and your "rebuttal" was to fall back on a dictionary definition without context. Anyway, I'm aware that too long a post of "I said, you said" wakes the moderators from their slumber, so I'll move on.
And through all this, the crux of the discourse remains largely unresolved; even as you continue to pick on choice (and mostly irrelevant and inconsequential items), while ignoring the more important ones which are being discussed. It's as if you just gloss over what's written, pick something to distract from the gist of the discussion, then run with it. Hence obfuscation. Forgetting that you're not addressing some backer nitwit who doesn't know better, who is used to the obfuscation of facts that you CIG guys keep spewing even as you continue to (knowingly|unknowingly) aid croberts and co to mislead backers under the pretext of tech (which has all been done before) and progress (which is patently non-existent for a 4yr, $134 million project).
While I realize that you and I have different experiences and qualifications, and without making light of your efforts, in truth, I have to say that the things being discussed aren't that hard to reconcile. They would only be thus if you (or a CIG programmer/engineer) is unwilling to clarify and/or explain, for fear of running afoul of the studio. That I can understand; and while I am 100% certain that pretty soon ALL of you are going to be off this project and on to the next adventure, I wouldn't want for you (or anyone) to say anything which would not only breach your NDA, but also put you in line for ramifications from the studio heads.
Including this section only so you don't complain that I cut it. I'll reiterate that I really do my best to understand where a person's going, and suggest that you may be less comprehensible than your own self-evaluation. Also, suggest you look into the online rationalist community, they have a lot of good arguments about assigning better percentages to things - eg if you're actually 100% certain of something, you ought to be up for betting me $1m to $1 that it'll happen, since it's just a free dollar for you. This is why I was pushing you towards PredictionBook before, it'd give you an opportunity for grow
Anyway, since we've gone completely off-track, let us circle back around to the nitty-gritty of this discussion. I would like for you to answer (in whatever way you feel you can without running afoul of your studio) the following if you don't mind. It would not only bring clarity to a lot of things, while also being informative to the backers who are following our banter out of morbid curiosity.
Explaining things is something I love doing. When I'm on a long walk, I explain things to myself to pass the time. If I seem to be wording around, please understand it's not an attempt to obfuscate, it's because I don't trust you.
1) Has
true global 64-Bit positioning been implemented
in toto; and/or was any part of it hacked together as I
opined here?
1a) I'm cautious right off the bat - "in toto" could be taken to mean converting every position to doubles in every calculation, if I say yes it's proof of incompetence, if I say no it's proof of fakery. However, it's safe to say that every game system that interacts with entites, is able to do so by asking for and/or setting their 64-bit world-space positions.
Cast-iron-clarity edit: 64-bit 3D IEEE 754 floating point world-space positions
1b) My initial response of "everything in that post was wrong" may have slipped your notice. To be polite, here's a summary of what I think you're describing so we don't go round and round for another three pages, I'll respond inline.
i) You describe the placement of 4km zones, tiling the inside of an 8km map
(nothing to contest)
ii) You describe filling the stated Alpha 2.0 world with 4km zones also, and state that without super-extensive modifications the maximum map size in CryEngine couldn't be exceeded. I take this to mean the tiling-with-zones is a way to cover the required space with maps, without extending the map size
(this hasn't been done, and it's unclear to me why you see the maximum map size as such a unique obstacle)
iii) You say this isn't what you think has happened, and that instead CIG has "zoned it". (ii) seems like a kind of zoning to me, but you don't explain much further. At a guess, you're describing something where a planet would be at the middle of one map, say, and a station at the middle of another, and some clever system hops you from one to the other when you're not looking
(If I guessed right, you guessed wrong)
iv) You say doubles would be problematic performance-wise, and singles would force the previously mentioned 32-bit cheat, and force the game to calculate everything relative to the camera.
(It's doubles, but I imagine you already got that)
v) You talk of 8km zones being stitched together like a mat, and that they're streamed.
(Streaming yes, zones stitched together like a mat, no)
vi) Jump tunnels as loading connectors between zones
(I guess it should be obvious given previous answers, but I wanted to stress just how simple the quantum travel is - we put the tube and the blur in *after*, to make it look good. Without it, you literally just go really fast in a direction)
vii) World Origin Rebasing
(As I've said before, a cool term like that and it'd already have been puffed up as a public feature)
viii) The weird boundary
(I still don't know why that's there. It may be that there's a system that breaks down beyond that boundary and hasn't been fixed, or it may be that QA just didn't do much testing in the deepest dark, and so it was preferred to wall it off rather than finding problems there the hard way)
ix) Logarithmic depth being needed to prevent Z fighting
(Nothing to contest, though if the bug in question was the gif a few posts earlier, that was a threading bug. Z-fighting would have been spatially inconsistent rather than just temporally)
2) Are the scenes/maps/levels (e.g. Port Olisar, Grim Hex et al) all separate assets placed in the world map (e.g. small box in larger box) or were they all created as one contiguous asset within the world?
2a) Note first - even in standard CryEngine where everything ends up as a single continuous map, you have a system to edit subsections in separate levels, and export as prefabs to be included in the main level.
2b) You said upthread that we're not talking about demand-loading, but this is all about demand-loading. With the new object management stuff, there's not much difference between a ship, a room, or a planet. They're all demand-loaded collections of sub-pieces. Since we were talking about carpet-stitching before, I'll stress that this doesn't make Port Olisar a box/map with a space station in it, just a space station, in the same way that spawning a character wouldn't create a map with a character in it.
3) CitizenCon presentation, showed a planetary surface in the editor (precisely why I am asking #2 above), and the camera transitioned from planet to space. So was that planetary scene/map/level standalone, or was the entire current game world (as is now in the PU), loaded in the editor, while the artist was working on that planetary section alone?
Hopefully my answer to (2) covers this. Going right into the PU universe to edit one subsection would be an awful way to work. Since the planet's just another object, albeit a big one, they work on it a bit, export it to a container, and the PU contains a reference to it.
4) Seeing as Stanton (
see Stanton local map) isn't even completed yet, in relation to the above, is the intent to build Stanton as one contiguous system which would permit seamless (no cutscenes, no QD fakery etc) intra-system (e.g. Crusader to Mirotech) as well as inter-system (e.g. anywhere in Stanton to Pyro) as per the
global map?
Intra-system: Yes.
Inter-system: As far as I know, no, you travel to other systems via jump points. ~30AU isn't really large enough to fit multiple solar systems.
5) What is the distance (km) between Crusader and ArcCorp?
How or why would I know that? You think I travel around manually, like some kind of pleb? I'm a dev, if I need to get somewhere I use the console!
