It's pretty common for games to be a few months late, However being still in Alpha three years after the release date takes a special kind of skill
The Star Citizen Thread v5
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It's pretty common for games to be a few months late, However being still in Alpha three years after the release date takes a special kind of skill
Video game development is a different field entirely. Famously, when John Carmack gave a speech at Nasa he essentially shat on their floor claiming with good authority that making videogames is much, much harder than sending rockets in space.
On top of this, there was not and still there isn't a commercial engine on the market with the characteristics required to make a game like Star Citizen; this establishes a number of dependencies because a lot of gameplay features cannot be planned properly without having the tools needed to start working on them. I think they tried to parallelize them by getting Ilfonic to work on the FPS part, but we all know how well that went.
It seems that with the network bit (assuming it is being done properly) they may have all of the pieces of the puzzle in place, but that remains to be seen.
But yes, in general videogame programming is much, much more complex than traditional software development.
On top of this, there was not and still there isn't a commercial engine on the market with the characteristics required to make a game like Star Citizen; this establishes a number of dependencies because a lot of gameplay features cannot be planned properly without having the tools needed to start working on them. I think they tried to parallelize them by getting Ilfonic to work on the FPS part, but we all know how well that went.
It seems that with the network bit (assuming it is being done properly) they may have all of the pieces of the puzzle in place, but that remains to be seen.
But yes, in general videogame programming is much, much more complex than traditional software development.
I think "No, yes, no" does about cover it.
I get the impression most of the delays are caused by CR changing how he wants things done (Well, that and putting most of the focus of jpegs and mocap rather than actual coding): Estimates & schedules are worthless if you then change the features. If they packed him off to Fiji for 6 months and sent the artists on a sabbatical, it would be solid alpha going on beta by the end of the year... As it is, you still fall through the floor of your spaceship but hey, have a new concept sale!
I get the impression most of the delays are caused by CR changing how he wants things done (Well, that and putting most of the focus of jpegs and mocap rather than actual coding): Estimates & schedules are worthless if you then change the features. If they packed him off to Fiji for 6 months and sent the artists on a sabbatical, it would be solid alpha going on beta by the end of the year... As it is, you still fall through the floor of your spaceship but hey, have a new concept sale!
CIG have missed deadlines by years... and also seem to have moving goalposts which, as someone who also does a bit of software development professionally, is absolutely the worst thing to have to manage as a dev.
1) No. Roberts already said in interviews last year that monthly income directly affects goals. We know that this year fundamentals like AI and networking are far from being complete, along with obvious physics & engine issues like clipping, ships having zero weight, etc. These have been ongoing for years. It will be interesting to see what 3.0 brings but right now it looks like it had better deliver on a lot or it's a bust. Having >400 staff & contractors will burn through a lot of cash, not sure how much longer it can continue. Whether it's a slow decline or a dramatic implosion I'm not sure.
2) No, I think that it's probably too late.
EDIT: They basically built the game backwards, shiny polygons before core features. Now that core features need to be backfilled into what may have been a bad choice of engine for the type of game SC morphed into means that the whole thing looks like a mess.
3) It depends. No network architecture can support the >1000 players instances that CIG seem to want. Whether they can get smaller instances running is another matter but they have a lot of work on both the client and server infrastructure to do.
Beyond hope as it is IMO. My reasoning, off the top of my head:
1) CR has been trying to make the same game for decades - basically a film as video game.
2) Wing Commander was a success, but he was being managed.
3) The last time he tried to do this he failed (Freelancer). His studio was bought out by Microsoft.
With 1) in mind
4) The game market has changed. Gamers do not want that experience. 1300 page scripts and hours of mocap? Urgh.
5) CR is a crappy (at best very cheesy) director. BioWare, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red tell a story better than he does.
With 2) in mind
6) Things are very murky wrt finance and management. CR is not very good at it, looking from the outside.
7) Mocap isn't cheap. CIG seem to have been spending their money in a very weird way if they want a completed game out of it.
8) I am really unsure how they are going to fund their service in an on-going way...
9) Some weird management decisions (the whole Sandy debacle which smells strongly of nepotism).
With 3) in mind
10) There is no MS to save him this time. They have ~$150m in preorders to fulfil, and what are their assets?
11) The space game is a relatively small market. Even if CIG release a product, how many more people are going to buy into it? Not many, I'd say, as CIG have already made $150m in pre-sales!
Not an exhaustive list!
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Reading this thread makes me wonder what the point of it really is? No matter what happens with star citizen you will find a way to put a negative spin to it. I can't help but feel disappointed that the mods have allowed a hate thread (yes exactly what this is) regarding a fellow developer studio to exist.
Indeed. Especially given the very friendly terms that both communities are on reddit. The level of "criticism" is beyond what should be considered rasonable, IMHO.
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The problem is that technology that supposed to allowed us to play action/twitch based games with the high FPS and HUGE data transfer that is calculated almost instantly for thousands of players in same place/instance it´s NOT YET INVENTED.......
We all want to believe that something like this is just around the corner and that someone will figure this out SOON....still it´s way more complex and it´s depends of so many different factors....
-Here(below)are few Potential causes of netcode issues taken from WIKIPEDIA:-
Latency is an unavoidable fact of online games, caused by not only network latency, which is largely out of a game's control, but also latency inherent in the way game simulations are run. There are several lag compensation methods used to disguise, reduce, or cope with latency, however their feasibility varies by application.
A single update of a game simulation is known as a tick. The rate at which the simulation is run on a server is referred often to as the server's tickrate; this is essentially the server equivalent of a client's frame rate, absent any rendering system.Tickrate is limited by the length of time it takes to run the simulation, and is often intentionally limited further to reduce instability introduced by a fluctuating tickrate, and to reduce CPU and data transmission costs. A lower tickrate increases latency in the synchronization of the game simulation between the server and clients.Tickrate for games like first-person shooters can vary from 60 ticks per seconds for games like Quake or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in competitive mode to 30 ticks per seconds for games like Battlefield 4 and Titanfall.[citation needed] A lower tickrate also naturally reduces the precision of the simulation,which itself might cause problems if taken too far, or if the client and server simulations are running at significantly different rates.
Games may limit the number of times per second that updates are sent to a particular client, and/or are sent about particular objects in the game's world. Because of limitations in the amount of bandwidth available, and the CPU time that's taken by network communication, some games prioritize certain critical communication while limiting the frequency and priority of less important information.As with the tickrate, this effectively increases the synchronization latency. Game engines may also reduce the precision of some values sent over the network to help with bandwidth use;this lack of precision may in some instances be noticeable.
Various simulation synchronization errors between machines can also fall under the "netcode issues" blanket. These may include bugs which cause the simulation to proceed differently on one machine than on another, or which cause some things to not be communicated when the user perceives that they ought to be.Traditionally, real-time strategy games have used lock-step peer-to-peer networking models where it is assumed the simulation will run exactly the same on all clients; if, however, one client falls out of step for any reason, the desynchronization may compound and be unrecoverable.
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Oh yes, absolutely; I am well aware of low-level networking problems in fast paced multiplayer games. This is why most FPS don't have huge maps, and those who do tend to feel definitely less responsive than those who don't. I remember Battlefield 2142 back in the good old days - you COULD theoretically snipe someone out of their cockpit, but so much of it depended on lag and server quality that at the end of the day it was not worth betting on it.
I am absolutely certain that you won't be able to shoot someone's coffee mug in their ship off their hands because there's no way the system will synchronize every little object, that would be madness. All the more reason to be concerned at how they will handle the persistency of the game's world. In many games you can't even drop objects because of this! This is also the reason why you cannot drop more than 50 Commodities in Elite, because a few fully loaded T9 during beta were enough to bring an instance to its knees if they dropped all their cargo near a busy station...
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I agree.
How they dare to criticize this wonderful project that will change videogaming and maybe the existence of hunmankind, forever.
I found all this disbelief unbearable.
Please someone close this tread and send some zealot after this thugs to teach them a lesson they will never forget.
A hate thread? Sorry but everything written here is from people that backed at one point SC and are sick of the marketing talk and the heads in the clouds approach that SC is taking to fish out more money while failing at delivering ANYTHING they promised so far.
Gamescom 2016 - Their "great" presentation of a so called live build for 3.0 and claiming it would come end that year. Just to hear at the beginning of 2017 that they just started game designing for 3.0, that begs the question what was shown in 2016 of 3.0? A huge lie to get more money and they even get away with it, getting cheered on and thrown money at them while they literally spit in the face of the backers with every lie and shipsale they do.
For 3 years we hear "end this year" for SQ42 to be released.
Nothing to do with hate if i point out a giant stain on a small white sheet and say "it stinks!"
People ask uncomfortable questions and are labled "haters" or "dsmart clones" for pointing out concerns. Whats with the whole promise of him showing financial data that he claimed during kickstarted when he missed his deadline? Oh right it was removed and never uphold. Its ridicilous to think that people are defending those kinds of practice and feel good about putting their own believability on the line for a at this point proven notoric liar for the sake of getting more money for a project that barely moved the past 3 years. Its still about ships, its still about fancy videos and what they promised to never land in the hands of people.
Star Marine first being shown then weeks away just to vanish for a year just to come back in a generic version and not even closely resembling what was shown in a video.
The whole landing on nyxs or what ever it was called with their seemlese landing on a planet starport that is over 2 years old now. Can people do it?
The whole showing off playable female characters sommer 2016, can you play them?
We are talking about a game that still has no character customization beside buyable clothing after 2 years and being heralded as a "be a pilot!" game for 6 years while another game that started as a "be a ship" slowly transforms through iterrations to a exactly that.
How many slaps do the SC backers need to their face before they realize that there is something very wrong with SC. The "open" development is nothing more then open marketing that fills you with so much "information" about stuff where 90% never see the day of light. And everything they talk about is so watery and refractorable that people can dream the hell they want about stuff that has been talked about.
Thats not "open" development at all, its hiding development behind a thick veil of fog while obscuring everything to a point where no clear vision is seeable.
I disagree. CR and CIG have pushed false hope, lies and above all shoddy POC software for years. A lot of people here also backed SC and are just sick to the back teeth of the tripe that is coming out of CIG.
Beyond what is normal?! LOL. People are not criticising CR, SC and CIG just for the fun of it or because they are bored or because they are ED fans...This isn't unmerited criticism...it's 100% expected...and 100% deserved.
It's an absolute train wreck and CR should be ashamed of himself.
People can only base constructive views on what CIG push into the public domain...and so far this is truly terrible. People don't give a monkeys what CR says he going to invent next. People don't care anymore what CR says and don't want to care.
If CIG pushed out bugged, slow, terrible software then this is what people are going to judge them on. Simple.
tbh I find it quite disgusting that SC fans still, to this day, do the hard sell and refuse to accept criticism, of any aspect of the project, because CR said it's going to be the best thing ever.
CR has a HUGE back history of failing promises and failed projects...in fact his last attempt at this game failed and he was kicked off the project and essentially sacked because he blew all the money and didn't have a game at the end of it.
The fact people overlook this is like putting your fingers in your ears and going "lalalalalalalalalala"
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Interesting, how should mods police the thread so it remains exclusively positive? That would be odd considering folks are free to be negative about Frontier's own products.
History my friend, history. We have seen far too much bull from CIG to take anything they say these days at face value. We now judge based on results, not dreams.
Take for example the recent videos of planet surfaces (some of it regurgitated from earlier in the year), looks nice. But won't start gushing over it until we see in in an actual release and actually to a decent quality. The icy planet had some concerns, for example, it looked like the marine in that one was running over a flat surface and those rocks were simple bump mapped textures. So, if i see a video of someone (from the public, not CIG marketing) running over those rocks, and the character moving up or around the rocks like real obsticals, then i'll say "Nice, they now have reached the same level as ED". Of course one of the problems is, CIG marketing doesn't say "Hey, this is ok, we will have not bad planets here that we can walk on" but they say "Look at this wow, amazing, never ever ever been done before awesomeness, walking on planets so amazing we even had to invent a new word to describe the amazing technique CR invented to make it work!"... which makes us groan and the hardcore SC fans lap it up.
Its not a hate thread at all, i don't think there are any/many here who hate it. Its more like watching a black comedy and having a bit of a laugh as things go on.
Maybe CIG will release something at some point, and it might even be a decent game. But based on CR's past attempts, i'm not holding my breath.
Besides, while FD continue to allow this thread to exist (and if they shut it down, shouldn't they shut down every other thread on the forums that discuss any other games from other publishers?) we might as well post here. Look at the other options. Something Awful? No way. Reddit/Spectrum? LOL, no chance. Any negative comment there and would get pounced upon and downvoted into obliivion. Can't have a discussion under those circumstances.
Yeah, it means its a bit of an echo chamber around here, but at least we can express our concerns and have a laugh here without upsetting the hardcore fans who are free to live in their own echo chamber on Spectrum
Lets just forget for a moment about the droping hundreds of commodities and shooting someone's coffee mug in their ships,what we have here is the promise of "fidelity" that reached unprecedented scale and is in direct conflict with the current networking technology especially when we know that game is getting build in the engine that is not on the good voice when it´s comes to the networking.
At first CIG tried for years to convince their backers and all the public how their very best programmers going to change and make so much better netcode but in reality we didn´t see almost any improvements....Now Roberts starts talking about some new magical tech in "clouds" that will fix all current networking problems but again NO ONE experience anything like it in the RL and so far thats all just only Theorycrafting....
I want to believe in this kind of miracles but I want to see first some improvements in his own game,contrary to his dreams and talks that SC will have huge battles with thousands of players in the same instance in reality atm.game can not handle more then dozens players with severe lagging and almost unplayable frames per sec. that is caused by networking issues and it´s been like this for all this years.........
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If you check out the Dang Dis section of these forums, you can barely pass an hour without a thread surfacing that tells FDev that "They have no clue what they are doing, they are terrible game devs, the game is broken, the game is ruined, they would be better off selling the franchise to a better company, etc"
It would appear that within certain boundaries, the forums here provide a balanced, if somewhat (bi)-polar debating ground for anyone to share their opinions.
Long may it continue
It would appear that within certain boundaries, the forums here provide a balanced, if somewhat (bi)-polar debating ground for anyone to share their opinions.
Long may it continue
You are confusing hate with criticism. And as odd as it may sound, charging money without deliveribg usually results in criticism. If they give us what we paid for, the negativity will end. Its that simple.
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Are you now seriously claiming building a spaceship game is harder than actually building spaceships? Really? [haha]
Thats because they used to have a WoW-only magazine printed for years so their regular editions didnt contain any information about WoW anymore. Its true tho that Gamestar has released a LOT of articles about Star Citizen in a short time and the quality of those articles reminded me of shill pieces more then informations. Sure they didnt actually lie but IMO the very reason for me to buy a magazine of this sort is to get information and they were simply touting whatever Chris Roberts threw at them without checking or investigating any of the stuff. They didnt have an opinion of their own. I purchased their editions from time to time but after their recent behavior I stopped completely. Nothing they print these days cant be gathered on my own with a lil effort. Kind of a shame.
It seems like a tiny thing but we could really argue if SC in its current iteration even fulfills an "alpha-definition". Feature-implementation isnt complete, whole new concepts and mechanics are still waiting to get introduced or even announced. Gameplay loops are not in the game. By all means it has more resemblance to a "pre-alpha" or "tech-demo". Of course thats under normal game development conditions, CiG tries to do so many things differently in order to stay out of the crowd that its pure chaos and I fear that the apparent cluelessness of management is exactly the reason for its current condition and not "intentional design" as Britney suggests. CR had to be a mastermind to foresee and plan on the communities reaction and to expect the extreme devotion/delusion shown by some of his top zealots. IF he had this kind of intellect he wouldnt be in the current situation. No I rather think he stumbled into this mess one step at a time and adapted to what he saw without having a masterplan or exit strategy. Too many changes smell too much of immediate desperation and reactions to current conditions in order to fit into an overall plan (other then "get money from gullibles").
Instead the process reminds me of a theory in diving which I m unable to remember the correct name for. Sinkhole theory? Something like that.
Basically the diver (game developer) simply acts on impulse without having a greater plan in his mind and the longer the expedition goes the more errors and disadvantages pile up on his side without him noticing until they reach a critical threshold which finally alert him to life-threatening conditions but by then its too late, hes dug in too deep and all his efforts wont save him anymore.
CiG and their current course remind me of a desperate attempt to get off the hook but the game itself is dead already. The debt (both technical and gameplay) is too big, the progress is too slow, money is NOT infinite but bills must be paid on time, there is no detailed plan they care to share with their backers. I guess the only "grand" thing about Star Citizen will be its intention in the end. Realistically it never had a chance to become reality. Not with CR and his family members involved. I might be wrong, its just the current "vibe" I get from all the stuff surrounding SC and hey, regarding the actual information we all have....I might be right
I find it funny to observe how SC fans try to lift CiG on a pedestal for rudimentary stuff which is absolutely common and come up with adventerous explanations trying to imply that "game development" is something completely different. Software development is a variation of "development" and shares many identical traits to other areas. There are some unique things that justify a term of its own (mostly terminology) but in large it can be said that it follows rules which are logical and conclusive. They need to be otherwise people wouldnt be able to learn it. Now every once in a while a game developer tries a new approach and often enough he fails because theres a reason why some things are done in a specific way. In CiGs case a LOT of things are done drastically different to regular game development cycles and the justification for such differences (success) is non-existent.
When somebody claims to "be a software developer" or "experienced in management" I expect a well funded argument filled with knowledge and experience. Often enough real world results and conditions can back up somebodies points. Star Citizen fans are riding a wild horse in this regard because they cannot point to the game and say "THIS is how its done" or "a good example why CiGs approach is a good one" simply because everything is a mess, nothing works properly, they are delayed and already begun scratching features....in short....you cant point to a failure and say "they know what they are doing". And sorry to say but stating "I m a game developer myself and I know how its done" doesnt give you any extra credibility because you know....its words only and they lack a logical foundation others could follow.
Its interesting to observe how one-sided the quality of arguments is in this thread. I dont need to have first-hand experience in software development to recognize a good argument when I see it.
Its confusing for me to see people claiming to be "experienced in software and game development" standing WITH the project yet being completely unable to explain its current condition in plain english or justify its apparent shortcomings. I ve seen other projects instead not particularly software which had excellent management and development cycles which expressed itself in a low amount of delays and superb results ON TIME. I m very sure that these successful projects characteristics can be (and actually are) applied to other fields as well.
I remember the skeptics not touting "FAILURE, FAILURE" from the start but it all started with hinting at possible problems coming up due to the development choices being made and publicized at the time. Its first major issue being the game engine. As time passed more and more issues were raised and adressed by the skeptics who were ignored by the kool-aid crowd. Now...years later we stand at a point where a LOT of issues brought up in the past have shown to be of critical nature and trying to fix them NOW is almost impossible without completely restructuring the whole project (aka reset). As we established that these predictions have become a reality by now we can assume that whoever brought them up at the time does have development experience and everybody else does not or is a rookie in this regard. Of course we need to distinguish between a blind hit or an experienced opinion but the arguments at the time were detailed and sufficient enough to do that.
So I can stand here and state in a confident way "Somebody was right"
And in 2017, watching Star Citizen and its current PU being a complete mess, seeing the developers struggle with core issues which they cannot name nor explain, whenever somebody trying to defend Star Citizen starts with the line "I know how game development works...." is a complete disqualification for him-/herself and brings me a small "lol" moment.
A lot of problems they are struggling with NOW have been predicted and adressed in the past. Isnt it funny how all the experienced and knowledgeable people are NOT on the game roster?
Pretty much everything CiG has released so far has been investigated and examined to its core and has been found either problematic, being a hack or completely normal in game development. They are not actually doing anything that might revolutionize the industry. They have a very high goal but so do many companies across the world and the difference between them and CiG is they actually know whats possible and whats not because they didnt come back from a decade long hiatus thinking "the magic is okay now surely" and if nobody else did what SC attempted so far its because its technically impossible at the moment (as has been outlined often enough in this thread over its iterations). Star Citizen claims to know how to do it, overcoming problems that other companies and development fields would pay BILLIONS for (networking especially). Their released product so far lacks playability, stability, core features and obviously is not done regarding a vertical slice. Oh its possible that its just a distraction to keep the competitors prying eyes from the "real thing" which is 3.0 (not anymore....I think 4.0 is the jesus patch now?) and eventually release a smashing success in one go at the end. Just keep faith, keep your wallet open and disregard the glaring problems.
And this wundergame is brought to you by a car-salesmen, his wife and his brother all being out of the industry for decades or never been entangled with it in the first place with a track record thats not really praising once you start looking past the facade (got kicked out, failed in their following endeavor etc).....
Those blinders must be industry-strength
Welcome to the thread, you only logged in and participated to demonstrate that you dont read posts? Well your choice I guess.
Its true that words can twist everything into something its not. But if you apply this to the skeptics and realists then you need to face the music and admit that its very possible that its exactly what Chris Roberts is doing. Describing a future paradise where everything works out and is perfect when in reality....its not.
Simple "hate" is not allowed in this thread. As you are logged in you see the forum rules at the top. They apply to everybody and while a lot of people get carried away with their emotion (often being under personal attacks) the mods make sure they are enforced in every case. If you feel that there are so many "hate-posts" in this thread then feel free to report them and let the mods deal with them. They will make sure to keep this place in the spirit of things. The "hate" you perceive wrongly is mostly mocking and poking while we wait for CiG to prove us wrong. Dont get angry at US if CiG takes its time.
I personally am disappointed that after years of lies and disappointments and constant distractions CiG is still in business and people like Chris Roberts are allowed in front of a crowd without being boo'ed at or being bombarded with ripe vegetables. Would we talk about an established publisher like SEGA or EA nobody would show this kind of restraint or patience but would demand blood. The only thing Chris Roberts and CiG has succeeded in is transforming part of their community into a cult where people feed on impossible scenarios in a distant future and enforce each other. And not even THAT is new or groundbreaking in the industry.
So you see we all have our disappointments ^^
Hahahaha.....wait....you are serious arent you.....really?
Oh my.....thanks for the laugh especially when pure hate comments can be seen everywhere on reddit and whole subreddits are dedicated to haunt and ridicule a single individual protected by the moderators. Such a sane and friendly place indeed
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I believe they were referring to the code that controls the spaceship, not the spaceship itself.
Look at the program that got men on the moon in the 60's and what hardware it was running on. I think mobile phones 15 years ago were way more powerful.
I suspect it's a little more complex with todays spaceships...cars have gone from mechanical machines to computers on wheels in the last 20 years.
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There is one HUGE difference though....quality of the code. you cannot risk bugs in software like this or other critical software like airport control software etc...in saying that, I think NASA had a famous GoSub bug in the 70's that caused some bad results.
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Computer software can contain bugs. Fact.
Applications Crash sometimes. Fact.
Everyone has had a computer or app crash at some point. Fact.
Soooooo...maybe CR is going for the buggy mess because you know...fidelity
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He (well, John Carmack) is correct if you look at it in terms of modern games and complexity. They put men on the moon with 2 million lines of code, which isn't massive in today's terms, it was about the amount of code in the NT3.51 O/S IIRC.
There are some huge caveats as to how relevant, or much of a good thing, this is, obviously. [hehe]
The difference is that the error margin is a bit higher in game development... NASA cant afford 'kinda buggy but good enough', nor can they upload a patch when something goes wrong.
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