Star Citizen Thread v6

[lysan]

Their new ATV/Burndown/Whatever is up - has been for an hour or so but I've been busy

I'm only a minute in and they have massive bandwidth issues - it's almost as if the fibre doesn't reach the rack.

Why on earth would you want a light in a helmet? It just tells someone else exactly where to shoot you. Devs do not understand palette cycling. Procedural generation is now spreadsheet random choice - apparently. NPC's Tposing is apparently a camera problem due to distance from player - how on earth are they going to make that work with multiple players?

Now they are significantly down on issues - which is a good thing I suppose - but their main issue is....

STILL NO GAEM CIG!!!!

I've watched it again and still cannot quite believe it. I bet real cash that a bunch of clowns with absolutely no game development experience could come up with something better in two years. I'm actually tempted to ask for help on this forum and try it.

May I ask, with what because we don't have access to any codes or
Whatever we call the original source programming.

However, yes something could probably be done better as this project seems to be running wild.

 

[Wotthe Dickens]

I bet real cash that a bunch of clowns with absolutely no game development experience could come up with something better in two years. I'm actually tempted to ask for help on this forum and try it.

May I ask, with what because we don't have access to any codes or
Whatever we call the original source programming.

However, yes something could probably be done better as this project seems to be running wild.

I've been teaching some 5 year old nephews this language = https://scratch.mit.edu/
And they could give cr a run for the money!

 

[Britney]

There's no atmosphere in that atmosphere. It appears as if there is literally no drag or momentum at all.

The whole scene reminds me of the ground missions in Wing Commander 3, space combat over a ground texture. It is super obvious that there is no atmospheric flight model nor gravity.

 

[Cmdr-Wotherspoon]

The whole scene reminds me of the ground missions in Wing Commander 3, space combat over a ground texture. It is super obvious that there is no atmospheric flight model nor gravity.

There also appears to be very little momentum. The ships turn too quickly, with little lag. It's as though they're made of polystyrene. The alien super bike thing floats above the terrain in a too-good-to-be-true sort of way: it should sometimes buck upwards when it meets a sudden terrain change, but it's motion seems somehow detached and unreal.

I think it's early days; the physics will probably improve in time. With the "burn down" going from 77 to 68 this week, and assuming a linear progression, Alpha 3.0 might be released in some form as early as the beginning of November, less than a year after the date it was promised. And at least the burn down segments are beginning to show real bugs: the testers appear to have genuine work to do at last.

 

[Cobra1984]

This is from the interview CR did with GameStar.DE on Wednesday

"We were talking about showing a sequence last year, a section of the story that we were going to take to a finished level. And you know we're still basically doing that, we're in production on all of them and we'll be showing some things at some point. You know last year I said, "We are planning to show a piece of some Squadron 42 gameplay" and then we ended up not getting it to the point where we were happy with, but we didn't show it and everyone was very upset." - Chris Roberts
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/169412267?t=47m32s


What happened was they had a video of choreographed SQ42 gameplay (it was too unstable to show live and prone to crashing) but in the end CR was convinced to drop it from the presentation entirely. I expected this to have been fixed and stable and shown this year, or at the very least a video of it. The reasons for it being dropped from last year's show are subject to much speculation and vary from 'terrible dialogue' to 'embarrassing and cheesy'.

The release date for Squadron 42 Prelude was December 2016, when leaks of its delay (SQ42 delayed indefinitely) surfaced a few gaming sites ran press from CIG denying that it was delayed. Then it was pushed back to 2018.


Now - one of the reasons CR gives in that interview for the SQ42 delay is this:

"it's just a huge amount of high quality performance and motion capture data that we're bringing in and making sure that when the characters are moving around that they look really great and really fluid. I think it's going to be really great, it's going to be worth the wait let me put it that way"

Compare that to what Sean Tracy says in an ATV episode from June 9th 2016:

"SCENE MANAGER and ASSET MANAGER is basically a way within MAYA to take all our performance in basically two clicks... and you're within MAYA. It builds up all the characters, they've got all their weapon attachments, two clicks and it's OUT TO ENGINE"
Around the Verse: Episode 2.35 Jun 9, 2016 @ 16:20


So in June 2016 the mocap was out to engine in two clicks, in August 2017 it's (one) supposed reason for the delay in SQ42.


So you can take what's there and add a sprinkle of the leaks/rumous of the AI not working after 2 years and you can see what they're up against. And just for kicks, another snippet - this just in from Wednesday's interview:

" But no, you know I mean, I would say it's sort of the ANIMATIONS and the AI because we're going for a level of AI that you don't normally have so we want... ah... you know... when you're on, say... the ship you're serving on, at the beginning of the game it's the STANTON which is an IDRIS CORVETTE, you know all the crew have their full, you know... they have a SCHEDULE, they get up in the morning they EAT BREAKFAST, they go about their JOB, you know they go GET LUNCH, go back to their JOB...
... have CHIT-CHAT over DINNER, maybe UNWIND...
... then go back to SLEEP...

You know, there's a whole SCHEDULE and CYCLE and they're... so we... it's almost... like a level of sort of SIMS SIMULATION FOR THE AI" - Chris Roberts August 24 2017

 

[hunvagy]

" But no, you know I mean, I would say it's sort of the ANIMATIONS and the AI because we're going for a level of AI that you don't normally have so we want... ah... you know... when you're on, say... the ship you're serving on, at the beginning of the game it's the STANTON which is an IDRIS CORVETTE, you know all the crew have their full, you know... they have a SCHEDULE, they get up in the morning they EAT BREAKFAST, they go about their JOB, you know they go GET LUNCH, go back to their JOB...
... have CHIT-CHAT over DINNER, maybe UNWIND...
... then go back to SLEEP...

You know, there's a whole SCHEDULE and CYCLE and they're... so we... it's almost... like a level of sort of SIMS SIMULATION FOR THE AI" - Chris Roberts August 24 2017

You mean something like the Radiant AI that Bethesda had since .. oh I don't know... Oblivion and the advent of the Gamebryo engine? Though technically the Morrowind NPCs already had schedules and routines. And if I would dig even deeper,even the Ultima 7 NPCs had that

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

There also appears to be very little momentum. The ships turn too quickly, with little lag. It's as though they're made of polystyrene. The alien super bike thing floats above the terrain in a too-good-to-be-true sort of way: it should sometimes buck upwards when it meets a sudden terrain change, but it's motion seems somehow detached and unreal.

I think it's early days; the physics will probably improve in time. With the "burn down" going from 77 to 68 this week, and assuming a linear progression, Alpha 3.0 might be released in some form as early as the beginning of November, less than a year after the date it was promised. And at least the burn down segments are beginning to show real bugs: the testers appear to have genuine work to do at last.

It won't be released this year or ever. I can also make nice graphs of bug count going down.

Let's stop speculating this. Let's stop pretend this is normal for any software project. It is not. Any other genre game would be already dead, all developers gone, all investors gone. Any other software project outside gaming wouldn't have even left planning stages in this shape and form. This is not even prototype. This is tech demo land, not even good one.

 

[Cobra1984]

You mean something like the Radiant AI that Bethesda had since .. oh I don't know... Oblivion and the advent of the Gamebryo engine? Though technically the Morrowind NPCs already had schedules and routines. And if I would dig even deeper,even the Ultima 7 NPCs had that

Oh that's only one small part of it.

This is from 10 for the Chairman: Episode 78, Mar 7, 2016

We have a universe simulation that runs on a separate server, and that's much more a sort of... BIG PICTURE simulation, think of it like, I dunno, a... a... CIVILIZATION game or something like that, sort of a slower turn based game and that actually is simulating the universe, what all the NPCs are doing sort of on a macro basis, who's trading with WHAT, what's producing WHAT, what goods are needed WHERE, where pirates are attacking and so the general outcomes of those results are all happening on the universe simulation in its own process... and then that's getting trickled down into the local game servers that are all the players, i.e. you guys are attaching to and
playing in.

And then you add into that the multiple instances that will supposedly be able to communicate with each other in realtime as described in 10FTC in Feb 2016, the one where Chris talks about "Server Mesh Tech" and then you're starting to grasp what's being marketed here.

Subsumption AI, real life schedules
+
Universe sim server feeding AI instructions and processing results
+
Server mesh tech, instances can all see and communicate with each other

We've still to see evidence of AI pathfinding or a mocap in-engine beyond a loop of a dude mopping the floor of a greybox. The point is that you're not supposed to be expecting to see any of this, you're paying for them to TRY.

 

[Komemiute]

If Roberts was thinking forwards and not 20 years in the past he'd use all that mocap to train a neural network and come up with something like this (apologies if it's too off-topic, it's pretty cool stuff though):

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/Ul0Gilv5wvY

OMGWTMBBQ!
That's AMAZING! When are game dev going to implement this stuff?

 

[Komemiute]

We've still to see evidence of AI pathfinding or a mocap in-engine beyond a loop of a dude mopping the floor of a greybox. The point is that you're not supposed to be expecting to see any of this, you're paying for them to TRY.

And then *BAM* this sentence make so much sense. +rep.

 

[Viajero]

If they're going to show off a janky build anyway I wish they had just demoed the entire PU along with whatever they have working for cargo missions. The only reason I can think to show a limited in scope demo that is locked to a single planet and has no gameplay loop is that the PU build is essentially broken right now. After all they showed PC Gamer last month more than they're showing now....

I dunno. Just disappointed.

If there is one thing CIG is good at is doing those convention demos or scripted "walkthroughs". I would expect a fine one today too. Possibly including concepts of things they have not shown yet, such as new professions or anything planned for those 3.X or 4.X really (it is always the patch after next that is the really cool one).

But I reckon we have seen already too many of those concept demos without corresponding results in released content. Unless what they show is translated to something we can use in our PC´s right away it is also going to end up like another "Dune worm" and quite meaningless though.

 

[Cobra1984]

And then *BAM* this sentence make so much sense. +rep.

Doesn't it though, and I've no problem with that per se - as I said if they put a big DONATE button for whales then good luck, have at it.

But they're selling virtual spaceship concept art and marketing the game as if it already exists and all this stuff is coming. That's why there's a schism between the whales and ordinary gamers who've bought a package, go and look at a $16,000 whale and some dude with a starter pack arguing on Reddit. The guy with the big bucks in is just looking to finance a crazy dream and feel like he's part of the game industry. The other guy just wants a space game to play.

This verges on becoming off-topic for this thread so I'll say no more.

 

[Cmdr-Wotherspoon]

Let's stop pretend this is normal for any software project. It is not.

Listening to the Star Citizen livestream just now, the Star Citizen Community Manager (name escapes me) is taking great pains to make absolutely clear that this is all *completely* normal, and that all software projects are like this.

Methinks he doth protest too much.

 

[Zetta]

Listening to the Star Citizen livestream just now, the Star Citizen Community Manager (name escapes me) is taking great pains to make absolutely clear that this is all *completely* normal, and that all software projects are like this.

Methinks he doth protest too much.

Is that the hobo guy? Does he have any experience in the industry prior to Star Citizen or is he another one of those "You just don't understand game development" people trying to wear the authority hat?

 

[Cmdr-Wotherspoon]

Is that the hobo guy? Does he have any experience in the industry prior to Star Citizen or is he another one of those "You just don't understand game development" people trying to wear the authority hat?

Yes, Mr Hobo. I recall he once said had a job cleaning swimming pools in Los Angeles before he was hired by CIG.

 

[Rolan]

Star Citizen: Meet the Drake Dragonfly

Spoiler

[video=youtube;-fqVdqOrCYU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fqVdqOrCYU&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Star Citizen: Meet the New RSI Aurora

Spoiler

[video=youtube;1gdTg6vQT7k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gdTg6vQT7k[/video]

 

[Winterwalker]

The point is that you're not supposed to be expecting to see any of this, you're paying for them to TRY.

This might be fair enough and i'm ALL FOR the cutting edge but shouldn't it be front and centre if it's only an attempt? Ships are being sold on a pre-order basis of what you WILL get as far as I can tell. Unless they're sold on the kickstart basis still (fund the project and we'll try it) that's not a bit odd?

Mo Capp ?

Spoiler

edit : Watching the stream again (required viewing) .. disapearing player character right in front of you and a bunch of code just interrupted half the screen, so 'experimental' sounds good.

 

[Komemiute]

Doesn't it though, and I've no problem with that per se - as I said if they put a big DONATE button for whales then good luck, have at it.

But they're selling virtual spaceship concept art and marketing the game as if it already exists and all this stuff is coming. That's why there's a schism between the whales and ordinary gamers who've bought a package, go and look at a $16,000 whale and some dude with a starter pack arguing on Reddit. The guy with the big bucks in is just looking to finance a crazy dream and feel like he's part of the game industry. The other guy just wants a space game to play.

This verges on becoming off-topic for this thread so I'll say no more.

I so agreee with all of this... +virtual rep.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Guys, given that I am not a mod, take this as you will: This thread is one of the last bastions of critical discussion about SC. The current forum pvp is to try and drag it off topic as hard as possible by posting egregious and inflammatory statements about games other than SC.

People then take the bait, get involved in OT and then into borderline ad hominem and the thread gets locked.

If someone posts some flamebait about anything other than SC in here, say "That's nice dear" put them on ignore and carry on.

@Rolan, the assets (Aurora) always look beautiful. Will the seats be locked to ship variants, or are they available in the store? Nothing like getting an old set of Recaros and a Cherry Bomb exhaust for your Mini 1275 GT

 

[Toumal]

Completely agree with Tuub. Don't get dragged in by people who incorrectly claim that ED needs to load maps. We all know it's purely a matter of instance negotiation. Let's keep this thread about SC only.

And on topic: I don't think the lack of a SQ42 demo for gamescom is unexpected. I knew that back when they said SQ42 would come out in 2016, that they were at least a year away from any possible release, perhaps more. So no, not surprised. I'm only dismayed that CIG claimed they'd do it in 2016, then went into angry mode when they had to eat their own words, then avoided mentioning dates while SC fans vehemently claimed they'd all be playing SQ42 in 2017.

Here's my prediction: There will be no SQ42 in 2018 either. All they will release is a teaser with perhaps a few short and heavily scripted missions in 2018. I would not expect a meaningful release before 2019. That is, unless they run out of money.