Star Citizen Thread v6

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Haha I remember the guy who smugly claimed that making games was harder than actual space travel because he didn't understand John Carmack

Now it seems Star Citizen can make simplifications because it's not actual space travel
Before the guy said that, he got a brain piercing.
 
Really? Have sources for that.

https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/19/12559536/star-citizen-version-30
"Expected to hit end of 2016"
And this is not the first time, mind you. Remember when Star Marine was "weeks, not months" from release? Then it was canceled, then CR said it's "already in the game", then a year later it was said to "maybe get developed after all", and then eventually released as the barebone shooter demo it is?

Thier schedule shows they have no problem announcing delays.

That's exactly it. They have no problem announcing delays, just as they have no problem announcing unrealistic release dates. And CR even blamed the fans for the dates he himself announced. Remember when Squadron 42 said "Coming 2016"?

Way too many ED fan boys in this thread.

I have plenty of criticisms about ED. However as imperfect as it is, ED is a released game and it was started around the time SC started, and look where they are now. This whole ED vs SC argument is getting super old. What you don't seem to grasp is that I want a game like SC. I think the vision is awesome. It's just that CIG has shown time and again that they don't really know what they are doing.

Star Citizen is exactly where every other AAA title is after 4.5 years.

SC started development in 2011. This is information from Chris Roberts himself. So unless you know more about the development timeline than Chris Roberts himself, we are now in the 6th year of development.

Ah yes, comparison of an existing in-game asset with a concept art.

Exactly. Let's compare concept art with concept art:

Elite-Dangerous-Horizons-ART-1.jpg


Oh snap! Except you can't play concept art. Let's wait and see if the SC buggy is anywhere near as fun to drive as the SRV.
 
Really, John Carmack said that. I don't believe it. He's a smart guy.

I think it wasnt as much about 'harder' but 'simpler'. 'NASA used only X lines of code whereas Doom used Y'. NASA typically does go for the simplest solution simply because they have almost no margin of error. No quicksave up in space. :p
 
I think it wasnt as much about 'harder' but 'simpler'. 'NASA used only X lines of code whereas Doom used Y'. NASA typically does go for the simplest solution simply because they have almost no margin of error. No quicksave up in space. :p

And as we know, the most complicated part of going into space is software.

Edit: Just an interesting tidbit I just remembered: Apollo 11 LM's memory had to be quite literally woven.
 
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I think it wasnt as much about 'harder' but 'simpler'. 'NASA used only X lines of code whereas Doom used Y'. NASA typically does go for the simplest solution simply because they have almost no margin of error. No quicksave up in space. :p

Even then i would disagree, because solving hard problems (shot rocket from earth, hit small spot on mars with sensitive equipment intact) with as basic (i.e. robust/well understood) tools instead high level magic can be quite a challenge. From my perspective (lots of nonlinear dynamics and some control theory) i couldn't have greater respect for the intellectual achievements by the guys and girls at NASA.
 
Really, John Carmack said that. I don't believe it. He's a smart guy.

He really is. You can hear what he said in a video below. He`s always nice to listen to so i encourage you to do this.
What he said was that it was simpler but not easier.

[video=youtube;VcWRc1wK3gM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcWRc1wK3gM[/video]
 
Even then i would disagree, because solving hard problems (shot rocket from earth, hit small spot on mars with sensitive equipment intact) with as basic (i.e. robust/well understood) tools instead high level magic can be quite a challenge. From my perspective (lots of nonlinear dynamics and some control theory) i couldn't have greater respect for the intellectual achievements by the guys and girls at NASA.

That is still conflating 'simple' with 'easy'. E=mc^2 is simple. Dont mean you should disrespect Einstein.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
It seems the case that the wheels are so cleverly designed that they are perceived as bad

Lol mate, props for slipping in an insider joke related to the Star Citizen flight model old discussions with no one noticing for several pages!

Having physical cargo that you can rearrange at your liking and that affects your ship behavior is an interesting take, specially considering that the ships will have dynamic dampers to react to different weights and that planets and moons will have different gravity.

One of the key aspects of a future game like SC or of actual games like Elite, or many other MMOs in general, that is ofetn forgotten is that of player/character progress with time. Many players in Elite by and large manage their activity instinctively trying to get the best bang for buck, or translated to game terms, the more Cr per time unit (barring all the other emergent content and role play you can also have in it). I have so far no reasons to believe SC will be any different when released. And as such I struggle to reconcile a manual cargo loading/unloading and arranging mechanic in it as it directly defeats the main progress logic in the game by making you waste time. Players on their way to deliver their next mission in time will just click on the "insta load/unload button". Only if such a manual mechanic is rewarded in some way or form, over and beyond the satisfaction of the minigame itself, will this be at all successful or popular. So far I have not seen what is the in-game mechanic or trade off feature that would make manual loading/unloading incentivized in any way. Another option would be to actually de-incentivize auto loading/unloading by making the player have to wait a certain time. Incentivizing manual loading this way would probably be the worst way to to go about it though, especially if the mini game ends up being somewhat boring.

Ditto with other proposed mini games like the drink mixing or procedural bird hunting.

Because no content was dropped, it was always the development plan to deliver 5-10 systems first and the open the rest of the systems later.

I presume that by "always" you mean any time except during the the time the Stretch Goals have been public and achieved thanks to backers money and while the selling product description is still up in the main RSI site, both stating the "at launch" promise for the 100 systems?:

CeZGnlB.png


gcfKTo2.png
 
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Ha, the new schedule is up. Despite about a dozen elements having their usual 1-2 weeks of delay, the ETA of 3.0 itself happens to stay at Gamescon. Prediction: that ETA wont change until gamescon itself. :D
 
Really, John Carmack said that. I don't believe it. He's a smart guy.

Oh I believe him. Games are not about simulation but faking it.
If you implement full scientific funtion the compute power need goes through the roof. Faking it is making it posible or short cut could be seen as a optimisation.

In the old days wenn cpu has not a FPU and floating point sin cos function are expensive. They use interprolation with precalculated tables. There was a time I put a Weitec coproc insted of a 80387 next to a 80386. For playing Falcon F16 sim.
There was a time where multiply by 2 or devide beter done by a bit shift.

John Carmac is well know to get 3D fps games in time where other dev tought it wasn't possible. Epic was on verge of that to quit gamedev because of idsoft was way beyond them. But instead the figure it out.

NASA is mission critical aplication wich means you need proven hardware in at least military spec like a 80386 instead of fresh Pentium. In thise times. And use with robust writen software on mission critical standards.

In C and C++ is allocating dynamical on the heap high risky if alloc fail it crash. So some software engineers use allocate everiting on init and dealoccate at turning it of. Other implement with allocation but if run out of mem less critical system get de- allocated.
Wich means mis some functions.

These embedded system are not big or have used large amount of mem. At home P4 and a spaceshuttle flyes with a 386 or 486
So games are more into the large scale software enginering. But are not mission critical. As Nuclair powerplant or space craft.
Or airline systems.
Also the problem domain of rocket system are much clear and well defined.
Where gameplay and fun is bit more fuzzy. Nobody dies on deadlines. Or use of gaming. Unless gaming 24/7

I wonder if JC has further experiment with Haskel. Or functional programming
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Ha, the new schedule is up. Despite about a dozen elements having their usual 1-2 weeks of delay, the ETA of 3.0 itself happens to stay at Gamescon. Prediction: that ETA wont change until gamescon itself. :D

The schedule is already at the limit of what it can stretch. I.e. Live is shown at Gamescom week.

I dont think CIG can afford the schedule to show any window delay (Evocati, PTU or Live) moving things after Gamescom because that would mean admitting insta "defeat" ("defeat" defined as releasing any version of 3.0 after Gamescom) when we are still several weeks away from it. Why would they want to accelerate that pain unnecesarily and impacting all the hype based sales from now until then in the running up to Gamescom?

No, I think they will indeed not delay any of the windows later than Gamescom week, and will relase "a" 3.0 before or at Gamescom anyways, even if it is just Evocati, in whatever state the game is at that moment. They could probably release Evocati right now even if the game crashes every other second and FPS average 5-10. If CIG fails to release even Evocati by that date then that would be really an indication of much much more serious issues.
 
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He really is. You can hear what he said in a video below. He`s always nice to listen to so i encourage you to do this.
What he said was that it was simpler but not easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcWRc1wK3gM

Right - system complexity does not equate to difficulty of design. (Often a simpler system is harder to design, but that's not the point he's making)

But no, Roberts is a visionary because he's doing work that Nasa can't

What a joke
 
Correction to my last post in case I don't get time edit it, it's
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Has there been any revelations during the last schedule? I've not been keeping track lately. I missed Lulz Thursday.

Let me guess - another two weeks on most things?
 
I think that's a refreshing and ambitious take on a mechanic that usually is made to be very simplistic.

Having physical cargo that you can rearrange at your liking and that affects your ship behavior is an interesting take, specially considering that the ships will have dynamic dampers to react to different weights and that planets and moons will have different gravity.
In junction to the fact that there's fetch missions that will make players go after the same object it will be an interesting dynamic to see who goes coop or competes for it.



Apples and Oranges... Despite having similar features they cater to very different experiences, I think they complement each other and that legs arriving to ED wont impact Star Citizen just like planetary landings arriving in Star Citizen wont impact ED. Besides it's not about adding X feature, it's making it fun and a cohesive game experience that's hard. Just ask EVE dev's!

I can actually see some appeal in this system for smaller ships- not for those massive Hulls though!

I think a lot of people are thinking about the many missions we get in ED that might be stacked and finished in a couple of minutes. But what if everything in SC is slowed down, so we have fewer more meaningful missions and voyages?

Of course, putting more emphasis on the non-travel, non-combat aspects of a mission will make it hurt more if you fail.

Also, CIG would have to be extremely careful to not make SC a second job... stacking boxes in space is unlikely to be more fun than stacking boxes in a supermarket. I think that there should be options for cargo arrangements to be done automatically for you, even if it is a robotic worker. They would be far better at distributingthe cargo for optimal handling than people. If something were to go wrong, and boxes broke loose mid flight, then that has potential.

That car thingy is utterly ridiculous though... Asp explained why the wheels are bad, plus there are no downard thrusters for low-gravity moons. Also, which clown decided that protecting the occupants with a windscreen against... oooh... tumbling onto jagged rock spears was a bad idea?
 
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