The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Stigbob]

Yes. It's in here somewhere. Good luck finding it with the search function.

e:

However, even without that official word, you can just look at the ships themselves — they're built to “look good”; not to make sense, and they consistently lack the thrusters that would be required to have their movements make any sense.

If I were charitable, I'd guess that it's another victim of both the technical and the financial debt created by the project: they started designing ships to have something to sell before they had figured out the flight model or run the control systems through the ringer, letting visual artists go wild without any consideration of the intended realism. It would have been quite easy to have some poor physics guy whip up a couple of templates that could be tested and balanced as simple grey boxes, and then have the artists conform to those templates for the placement and size of thrusters, and as a basic guideline for apparent mass distribution. But of course, doing it that way would have meant that they wouldn't have had a a single jpeg to sell for at least a year…

Oddly enough the best search function for this forum is to google frontier forum thread name and the specific phrase you are looking for. Works very well, provided you can remember the words used.

 

[Commander Debic]

I will say, I don't like games selling such expensive items because we, as a community as a whole, tend toward the addiction side. I've read SC backers talking about how much theyve spent and hoping their wife never finds out. Jesus, that's a gut punch for me. Take care of your families first guys, play the games once you got a college fund set up and you're stashing some money for retirement.[/QUOTE]

WoW is $10 a month I believe, so $120 per year and it's been going strong for ... it's gotta be more than 10 years by now right? There's probably people that started paying on day one and are still paying today. Yikes. We spend money on our games, it's not a cheap hobby. I paid $150 for the Elite LTE pass, which is the most I've spent on any game (I'll waffle and say non-MMO but only because I couldn't say what's the longest I payed for an MMO....not that much but one was at least a year) and I did it because I expected it to save me money in the long run (knew I wanted Horizons, knew I wanted Atmo, knew I wanted Cap ships, still think I probably want Space Legs). Frontier could screw me and not release any more expansions. CIG could screw their customers and ...well, should I try to pick just one possible way they could screw everyone? We all hold our breath and cross our fingers and hope we're playing the game we want when we want to play it.

But at least my yearly £120 Wow subscription cost gives me a game to play for that year, unlike SC who I had to threaten with the small claims court to give me back my £125 I had invested, and in accordance with their TOS which they have last summer changed, allowed me to claw back if they didn't give me a working game within 18 months.

 

[MTBFritz]

Anyone believing into Miracles is self at fault here.
It should have been Obvious that such an massive thing would not work out within an such Short Time Frame.

The funny thing about that statement is that you can tell it to the backers who defended the project with bared teeth once it goes up in flames. Fits perfectly.


Somehow "physically correct flight model" and the current handling of the ships doesnt go together too well. I m talking about the 0-100% in an instant and the reverse. But again you are making excuses FOR the company instead of demanding proof for its correct application. I mean

So doing Adjustments like actual Inertia Calculations for each Ship is likely not on their Agenda.

Specifically.

I dont think anybody at CiG came out and stated "oh hey, all the values needed for the ships to actually behave newtonian correctly are currently NOT in and we ll do them in a future patch but trust us, its working physcially correct NOW, word". Thats actually YOUR words speaking FOR CIG....did you even notice? You making excuses for them? I see this all over the net really. Fans explaining issues with "probabilities" and "maybes" blindly trusting that everything pans out as they hope.

And thats what I dont get. WHAT exactly is there for you that makes you trust them so much that you dont have any doubts, dont ask tough questions, dont want to know more? You are somehow happy with paying and waiting. Is it the POTENTIAL of it all? I mean it simply cannot be the actual alpha thats available is it? If you bother to explain I m all ears, maybe there is something that I miss?

@CmdrKull

I play WoW and I started out when it first released. Its kind of a small fortune I dropped into the game over the years but I feel like I got a fair return in entertainment for it. People are ready to pay hard cash for quality. I am one of them. Maybe its a respect thing because I personally make sure I get my moneys worth or at least try to and if I somehow "waste" money then I feel bad about it. Now I m critical with games that cost 40€ and have high expectations from such games. But with SC we are talking about hundreds....even THOUSANDS of dollars for nothing substantial in return. I could probably understand rich people simply throwing their money out of the window because they have a different mind set (thats "understand" I dont agree with them) but many of the SC backers claim to be "normal" people. Somebody came up with the term "disposable income" and suddenly EVERYBODY used it because it was a certain get-away card in addition to sounding superior and successfull (look at me I m doing so well I dont care about 4000 bucks).
I payed for ingame mounts. I still feel like 10€ are kind high for a pixel asset but some of them look so awesome and brought a smile to my wifes face that I deemed it justifiable. Blieve me that if I payed that amount and logged in that mount BETTER be ready and summonable else I d call service right away and give em a piece of my ( off) mind.
Now some of the CHEAP ships cost 175$ and more and are not even in the game yet YET people are okay with waiting for years now without going on the fence and rioting? Do backers get mailed a special kool-aid drink or what?

Scraping all your previous work after few years is disaster - especially if you have limited budget from crowdfunding. It means you have got no fundamentals right. I don't understand why it's been kept mentioned as something positive. It's not. It raises lots of red flags. Does it explain why SC/SQ42 is late? Yes. Does it somehow make it ok? Nope, not at all.

I personally dont care about the reasons and if you are a manager in a company like so many people here claim to be then you know that you simply cannot bring this up as an excuse when the moneygivers come knocking and demand answers. If you came up with weak crap like that you d be out the door in a nano second. Maybe you have a chance if you communicate problems early so there might be solutions coming but CiG communicates very clearly that everything is just peachy and they are on top of everything, there are some minor problems but everythings going fine and they string out even more carrots in order to pacify people. Everything is fine and a lack of product also becomes increasingly unbelievable the more time passes. And I guess CR knows he only has a limited time left on the gravy train before it jumps off the rails.
The only FACT I know is Chris Roberts statement in 2012 stating development was underway for a year and the first videos were "ingame in-engine live gameplay" footage. We dont need to come up with re-definitions of when development "really" started. 2011 ....fact.

Now I believe that CR realized very soon that his chosen engine was able to push out brilliant videos but cant provide the gameplay he promised. Observation shows that they brought top dogs in to change the code or make massive changes in order to get around the limitations.....that couldnt ve been cheap. I also believe that the first couple of years were spent trying to change the engine instead of focusing on game development. But that didnt work out, outsourcing also didnt pan out because even third parties were unable to come up with something. At some point he must ve realized that he went through a ton of money, got zero results to show and spent another year making promises putting him even further into debt. The hole was so deep by then that there simply was no way out of it. So IMO he comitted to the scam. We dont need to discuss the term, thats just my opinion. I happy that so many on this site have left enough optimism to give him the benefit of the doubt but I m past that. I remember him lying, I watched him on video and life (also on video) and I m kind of old enough to read body language. And I keep see him failing on dates and deliver of content (like know how the ORIGINAL 2.6 patch list looked like? know how many of those features are ingame at the moment?)

No doubt about it that backers money is wasted left and right and that the majority of the income is spent to keep up the illusion of game development. We ll just never learn about the details of it and thats a real shame. I d love to be a fly on the wall in there and listen to the meetings.

It's no wonder it's way behind schedule.

Contrary to many of the SC crowd I do believe that many of the posters in this thread DO have the game development knowledge to know exactly what problems you have to handle if you dont plan your project correctly and suddenly run into technical debt. Its particulary sad because CiG seems to learn this as it goes while pretending to have everything under control and the discrepancies will become bigger the more time passes. That includes Derek Smart and many of his predictions might not been on-time but they certainly held true in hindsight (too early for a "DS was right" eh?).

Already things change to fit the SC narrative going from "we ll play 3.0 at the end of 2016 while you losers have to play with your lame games hahahaha" to "everybody with an iota of grey matter KNEW that 3.0 wouldnt make it this year sssht pleaaaase, NOBODY really believed that anyway".

Its that particular squirming, backpedaling and goal moving which I find immensly fascinating and it will only get worse.

I know I will get myself a T-shirt when the time comes, Derek....you better dont disappoint

 

[Cotic]

Its that particular squirming, backpedaling and goal moving which I find immensly fascinating and it will only get worse.

Assuredly, this is the most interesting and entertaining thing about the whole project.

 

[hairychris]

It really wouldn't matter now. Star Marine, looks like a standalone game anyway.

It would still matter... assuming that you wanted to share/use any assets with/from the main game!

 

[hairychris]

Contrary to many of the SC crowd I do believe that many of the posters in this thread DO have the game development knowledge to know exactly what problems you have to handle if you dont plan your project correctly and suddenly run into technical debt. Its particulary sad because CiG seems to learn this as it goes while pretending to have everything under control and the discrepancies will become bigger the more time passes. That includes Derek Smart and many of his predictions might not been on-time but they certainly held true in hindsight (too early for a "DS was right" eh?).

Already things change to fit the SC narrative going from "we ll play 3.0 at the end of 2016 while you losers have to play with your lame games hahahaha" to "everybody with an iota of grey matter KNEW that 3.0 wouldnt make it this year sssht pleaaaase, NOBODY really believed that anyway".

Its that particular squirming, backpedaling and goal moving which I find immensly fascinating and it will only get worse.

I know I will get myself a T-shirt when the time comes, Derek....you better dont disappoint

Not even games development, really, but any experience of projects at all.

Ballooning scope, missed targets, massive amounts of wasted work/money (Illafonic), micromanaging by the top boss... All of these are warning flags for any project. What's most damning is that the larger the project the more fatal bad planning/management is to it.

 

[govny]

1.

They are still Alpha and are adding the Ground Work. So doing Adjustments like actual Inertia Calculations for each Ship is likely not on their Agenda.

sorry but from what I have seen so far I am sure CR (and SC fans) doesn't know what inertia is and to be fair I think he doesn't know it even exists.

 

[CmdrKull]

The Physics Engine is only the Base System for Calculating things.
But for the Physics Engine to Calculate anything. It needs the Values to Calculate.

For an Ship Model to be Calculated Accurately and for its Movement to make Sense.
You need to Include.

Positions Thrusters (All of them including each small Support or Direction Thruster)
The Power of each of these Thrusters.
The Mass of each Module and each Part of the Ship including the Density of that Part and that Position.
The External Influence Factors like Stations Gravity etc.

Now for SC the Thrusters already need fine Detail Work. Because they aint always Placed Symetrical. Which means they need additional Support Thrusters to work which will be requiring some fine detail Calculations to be worked out.
The Mass per Module is actually the thing which causes the Illogical View People get when an Big Ship Turns around with no Inertia behind it.
For an Ship to work properly. You not only need to put a Number into its Weight. But you also need distribute this weight among the Ship so the Physics Engine recognizes that the Long End of the Ship turning needs to have more Inertia than when Rolling Sidewards for example. This is not done in SC right now. So especially with the longer Ships your Nose turning looks super Unnatural because its super long away from the Core of your Ship but just starts and stops with no inertia.
As I said. This is not exactly hard to do. But its alot of work. Because if you want to have it handled by the Physics engine. This is like a Hundred or more Values for each Ship which need to be added and calculated properly.
These then need to be tested and adjusted as well to look right.

The Engine does not know how heavy each part of the Ship is supposed to be after all
So just having a Ship with an Weight wont be doing anything for the Physics engine.

Edit: Either I quoted the wrong person, or I read you wrong because I though you were saying it was a simple fix and they just had to plug in some values. My bad, rep as compensate. I'll leave my original reply regardless.
I don't want to beat you over the head with this topic because I think you "get it" but then you equivocate and downplay the effort ahead of them. It is far more than just plugging in some numbers. It's integral to the design of each and every ship. Literally, a space ship is a set of thrusters with livable space bolted on in such a way as to not get in the way of the thrusters. The placement isn't cosmetic. You can't just crank up the power to compensate for new mass values, you have to rebalance all of the thrusters together. If they don't have this working now, then either they're going to redesign every ship, or they will never have this working accurately. As I said, I'm ok with them faking it, if it's fun to play. But don't feed me turd serial and call it wheaties.

Im not a game developer, but I've tried simulating these sorts of linked thrusters in Unity. It's a good experiment to set up some joined boxes with mass values and attach rigid body physics and tie forces to key inputs. It's not making Star Citizen, but it can give you an inkling of how difficult it is to balance these. you also don't get the instant start/stop I experienced in SC. The force value to overcome inertia that quickly would rival "Ludicrous Speed"

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

I suspect that SC is suffering from a great deal of technical debt and far too many tech/priority changes along the way. Multiple ship passes, skeleton and rigging changes, animation changes, a massive re-writing of the core engine, botched contractor work (looking at you, Illfonic), etc. etc. It's no wonder it's way behind schedule.

Hopefully it'll all sort itself out in the end. I have to say, though, that I really hoped for more in 2016. Here's hoping for more visible progress (to and end users like me anyway) in 2017.

Jenner, I'm afraid that Star Citizen is suffering from a terminal case of "TooMuchChrisRoberts-itus".

It is 100% fatal when first contracted, and to be quite honest, the world's best doctors in the realm of videogame development have been rather surprised that the subject has managed to survive for so long through the endless delays, missed deadlines, spaghetti-fied code, myriad bugs and a list of project mismanagement decision that would make a 3rd world dictator blush with embarrassment.

 

[Osmanthus]

sorry but from what I have seen so far I am sure CR (and SC fans) doesn't know what inertia is and to be fair I think he doesn't know it even exists.

He's all ready shown that he doesn't know what angular momentum is

 

[Asp Explorer]

He's all ready shown that he doesn't know what angular momentum is

He just needs to pivot on the spot, unleash the grappling refactor beam, and release all the physics he wrote himself

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Do not get me wrong. I do not doubt that some specific scraping can be critical and force teams to almost restart some of the work from scratch. All I am stating is that SC is not unique in that regard and all that is part of any game development timeline.

SC is not unique? Right. But read all my post - I said it is not a norm. Lot of games simply fail to be produced despite having lot of money churned for them. Scratching fundamentals after 2 years of work is NOT a norm. It is not normal - as far as my experience goes.

Edit: also what is missing from that narrative is CIG explanation why and how it did happen. All we get is rewriting of history, which makes it look sleazy and shady. Even if it was just 'we figured out it was wrong way to go' it still casts doubt on unquestionable leadership of Chris - and that's whole point. They are dependant of unquestioning of that leadership for crowdfunding.

 

[thorn-]

I m sorry I dont care about DS's game one bit but his questions are sound and he has a technical base to speak from.

His questions may be sound, but his technical background - as it applies to SC - is somewhat dubious. His history as a developer does not, as you said, "make him an EXPERT about the topic." If anything, it shows that he is not an expert on how things are successfully completed.

I once worked in a graphic design shop. The art director was good with layout and conception, but his software skills were of the 2002-era. The artists would spend a few hours retouching a photo of a grocery shelf, replacing the product labels with a "generic" label. They'd make a flat label in layout, then spend far too much time trying to twist it around several cans in photoshop. The process was very lengthy, outdated, and the result wasn't that great.

I suggested to the Art Director that I simply make one 3D can. Then I'd match perspective, drag it into position, and make a few instanced copies. It would save several hours per project. He finally agreed after much convincing.

Hour 1: I was drawing the profile of the can, in order to create a lathed object. He argued (for 20 minutes) that I shouldn't be using a flat-on view of a can, because the cans in the photograph had perspective.
Hour 1.5: I was making the art for the can. He argued that the label didn't need to be 7 inches wide, because the can in the photograph is only 3 inches wide. I had to explain the basics of "circumference".
Hour 1.75: While I was matching perspective, he argued that the label was too bright. He argued that the shadows weren't matching. I tried explaining that all these issues would be addressed at a later point; this was not the time to worry about such things. "No, I need you to make the shadows perfect NOW. Otherwise all of this effort is pointless."
Hour 2: Project completely abandoned. Back to retouching in photoshop.

My method would have worked completely fine, and saved time... but because The Boss had no idea how to do it himself, he assumed that either I also had no idea, or that it couldn't be done at all. Certainly, he felt qualified to stand behind me for a couple of hours and tell me why i was pushing the wrong buttons, doing the wrong steps, and ultimately trying to use a solution that would fail. The problem wasn't my method. It was his complete lack of knowledge in how it's done by competent people.

It's a lot like listening to DS discuss why CIG will fail.

 

[ianw]

His questions may be sound, but his technical background - as it applies to SC - is somewhat dubious. His history as a developer does not, as you said, "make him an EXPERT about the topic." If anything, it shows that he is not an expert on how things are successfully completed.

I once worked in a graphic design shop. The art director was good with layout and conception, but his software skills were of the 2002-era. The artists would spend a few hours retouching a photo of a grocery shelf, replacing the product labels with a "generic" label. They'd make a flat label in layout, then spend far too much time trying to twist it around several cans in photoshop. The process was very lengthy, outdated, and the result wasn't that great.

I suggested to the Art Director that I simply make one 3D can. Then I'd match perspective, drag it into position, and make a few instanced copies. It would save several hours per project. He finally agreed after much convincing.

Hour 1: I was drawing the profile of the can, in order to create a lathed object. He argued (for 20 minutes) that I shouldn't be using a flat-on view of a can, because the cans in the photograph had perspective.
Hour 1.5: I was making the art for the can. He argued that the label didn't need to be 7 inches wide, because the can in the photograph is only 3 inches wide. I had to explain the basics of "circumference".
Hour 1.75: While I was matching perspective, he argued that the label was too bright. He argued that the shadows weren't matching. I tried explaining that all these issues would be addressed at a later point; this was not the time to worry about such things. "No, I need you to make the shadows perfect NOW. Otherwise all of this effort is pointless."
Hour 2: Project completely abandoned. Back to retouching in photoshop.

My method would have worked completely fine, and saved time... but because The Boss had no idea how to do it himself, he assumed that either I also had no idea, or that it couldn't be done at all. Certainly, he felt qualified to stand behind me for a couple of hours and tell me why i was pushing the wrong buttons, doing the wrong steps, and ultimately trying to use a solution that would fail. The problem wasn't my method. It was his complete lack of knowledge in how it's done by competent people.

It's a lot like listening to DS discuss why CIG will fail.

Haven't you described one of the major problems many people have with CR running the project - when his software skills are as equally if not more outdated?

 

[Earthshine]

I play WoW and I started out when it first released. Its kind of a small fortune I dropped into the game over the years but I feel like I got a fair return in entertainment for it. People are ready to pay hard cash for quality. I am one of them. Maybe its a respect thing because I personally make sure I get my moneys worth or at least try to and if I somehow "waste" money then I feel bad about it. Now I m critical with games that cost 40€ and have high expectations from such games. But with SC we are talking about hundreds....even THOUSANDS of dollars for nothing substantial in return. I could probably understand rich people simply throwing their money out of the window because they have a different mind set (thats "understand" I dont agree with them) but many of the SC backers claim to be "normal" people. Somebody came up with the term "disposable income" and suddenly EVERYBODY used it because it was a certain get-away card in addition to sounding superior and successfull (look at me I m doing so well I dont care about 4000 bucks).
I payed for ingame mounts. I still feel like 10€ are kind high for a pixel asset but some of them look so awesome and brought a smile to my wifes face that I deemed it justifiable. Blieve me that if I payed that amount and logged in that mount BETTER be ready and summonable else I d call service right away and give em a piece of my ( off) mind.
Now some of the CHEAP ships cost 175$ and more and are not even in the game yet YET people are okay with waiting for years now without going on the fence and rioting? Do backers get mailed a special kool-aid drink or what?

I used to play WoW, not for years now but I too must have spent alot of money on it. What strikes me now is that my justification was simply...yes, it's costing me >£100 per year for one game, but at the time I hardly played or bought any other games, and provided the utility I was getting from it - the play time and enjoyment - was reasonably good then it was worth the money. Which leads me to wonder about how that will work out for people who have bought the very expensive ships in SC - how much utility do you need to get for spending e.g. $1500 on a ship? Will such people get to use said ship enough to make it truly worthwhile? I don't know, but it ties in with the dearth of information around game mechanics. Not to mention that they are essentially pre-orders so any utility gained has been very minimal to zero so far...well...unless you count fantasising about how you're going to own everyone in your...idris or whatever.

Ultimately I suppose it is down to the psychology of the individual.

 

[GaryII]

His questions may be sound, but his technical background - as it applies to SC - is somewhat dubious. His history as a developer does not, as you said, "make him an EXPERT about the topic." If anything, it shows that he is not an expert on how things are successfully completed.

Compared to an average SC backer he is definitely an expert even if his games are bad, he has knowledge and experience, that at least 90 % of SC backers do not have, btw initially he backed SC, too so even he was tricked by CR hype train....

 

[CmdrKull]

His questions may be sound, but his technical background - as it applies to SC - is somewhat dubious. His history as a developer does not, as you said, "make him an EXPERT about the topic." If anything, it shows that he is not an expert on how things are successfully completed.

...

It's a lot like listening to DS discuss why CIG will fail.

I think Derek's motives are not clean. Well, honestly other than a bit of self-promotion that doesn't exactly promote his best qualities, I don't know what his motives are. His blog is equally critical of CIG and their customers, so I don't think he's doing it "for the gamers". It is all very entertaining though. Arguments in which you're not personally vested are always entertaining. The thing is I'd like to be personally vested in Star Citizen to the tune of $59.95 when they have a complete game. Even as skeptical as I am I wonder if I should have picked it up on discount a couple weeks ago. I like space games, I hope Star Citizen grows up to be one some day, and I don't understand some people gleefulness at setbacks.

Well that's not true, I can understand someone drifting more and more that way when they're repeatedly called liars and told they're spreading FUD when they point out obvious problems and missed deadlines. i believe everyone here wants to have a civil discussion though, and if it became an echo-chamber for SC hate with no one defending it, I wouldn't visit anymore. It was great to have Ben posting about the lumberyard transition even if he was more familiar with the source control than the source code.

 

[thorn-]

Haven't you described one of the major problems many people have with CR running the project - when his software skills are as equally if not more outdated?

That completely depends on how CR interacts with his project leaders.

I've worked for leaders that knew little about the process, and left me to solve it as I wished (of course, providing the result they desired.)
I've worked for leaders that also knew nothing about the process, but also insisted that I do things in a way that would lead to failure.

The delays in SC could be related to CR having great coders, but being a terrible manager. It could also be that he's a good manager day-to-day, but unfortunately hired bad coders. It could also be that he's a good manager, with good coders, but has decided the scope of the game needs to be increased and therefore it's taking more time.

As I'm not on CIG's team, nor personal friends with any of the SC project leaders, I've no idea if CR's management style is competent or not. Nor does anyone else, unless they're actually on-site or get regular reports from people with current knowledge.

 

[Stigbob]

That completely depends on how CR interacts with his project leaders.

I've worked for leaders that knew little about the process, and left me to solve it as I wished (of course, providing the result they desired.)
I've worked for leaders that also knew nothing about the process, but also insisted that I do things in a way that would lead to failure.

The delays in SC could be related to CR having great coders, but being a terrible manager. It could also be that he's a good manager day-to-day, but unfortunately hired bad coders. It could also be that he's a good manager, with good coders, but has decided the scope of the game needs to be increased and therefore it's taking more time.

As I'm not on CIG's team, nor personal friends with any of the SC project leaders, I've no idea if CR's management style is competent or not. Nor does anyone else, unless they're actually on-site or get regular reports from people with current knowledge.

Or it could be that he learned nothing at all from Freelancer and he's making all the same mistakes.

 

[frostypaw]

That completely depends on how CR interacts with his project leaders.

Could we take how things went with Star Marine and Illfonic as anything to do with that?