Star Citizen Thread v6

[Silaz]

I just quickly put the words to this image off google, couldn't be bothered to fire up the iMac and Photoshop, so it's very rough:

Inspired by the latest ship offering, which looks rather like a Gutamaya ship to me.

"New concept ships destroy the prospect of Star Citizen ever being completed while the credibility of CIG as a serious games developer is gradually eroded. Meanwhile there are more ships in the pipeline."

 

[krylite]

What a farce of a presentation. I was glad I put off deciding on "early access" and finally bought ED in 2015. By that time I had seen and heard all the ponzi warnings about SC. The ships and design look weird and unpalatable. I'm tired of hearing "Idris" this and "idris" that. Procedural? ("Daymar" a day time planet only? or the shadows glitch the least on?)The "600i:" trying to be a luxury car tv commercial from the 90's with labcoat guy leaning over the "model" except they don't have the metal ball slowly sliding through the precision grooves. (no thanks, the cutter is the real deal). The FOIP face simulator and the 3rd party "RSI" labeled webcams. Obfuscation over the lack of progress and failure, simply, and more junk to spend on. All said and done, it's reassuring ED is a solid game and Frontier is a sane company with realistic management. I suspect the industry will be wowed when playable atmospherics and spacelegs arrive in ED even if five years from now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ITxpWAieKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DCbvu-uF4o

http://dereksmart.com/forums/reply/5685/
http://www.dereksmart.com/forum/index.php?topic=9.msg3235#msg3235

 

[AndyJ]

What we saw from AI is more than what we saw before, we saw NPC's interacting when entering the store or speaking at us when passing which is something. They talked about 200 NPC's in Levski alone roaming around. Makes a ton of difference when making a place look alive.

I only caught about 15-20 minutes over the 3 days. When was this shown - in the main presentation or one of the daily streams?

 

[Slythe]

I only caught about 15-20 minutes over the 3 days. When was this shown - in the main presentation or one of the daily streams?

Main presentation. I'll find a link with timestamp for you in a minute, don't expect to be impressed though.

LINK: https://youtu.be/bCtdyNFwQWo?t=1176

 

[MTBFritz]

I really, honestly, absolutely wish that the gamescom presentation wouldn't have been such a disaster. I don't mean this in a sarcastic way either, I'm absolutely serious. There's some absolutely fantastic modeling and texture work in that thing. It is however pretty late to suddenly realize this. Those people who didn't cotton on after the sudden switch from their "90% customized" fork of CE to the "90% identical" Lumberyard really have themselves to blame at this point. There's no way both of these statements by CIG were true. One of them was a flat out .

When I first watched it live I thought "this isnt so bad" but in hindsight I realized its actually much worse because of all the things its hinting at, mainly CiGs inability to deliver even the most basic things or take ages to create demos which dont have a connection with the real thing. I dare to doubt we ll see the 3.0 "part-time" on live servers anytime soon.

Whooo! I couldn't disagree more. They have nice hand made textures and some nice geometry, but their "planetary tech" is really primitive in comparison to what FD are doing. What made you say that?

I didnt see any proof of their planetary tech to be honest. It was just 2 barren moons which by all means could ve been completely handcrafted. You dont need PG tech for 3 moons, sorry.

 

[Silaz]

Ok I'm watching the presentation now.

I think there is some great material here. I think I need to get to work on this. CIG is corrupt, Star Citizen is now nothing but one gigantic ponzi scheme confidence trick, no matter what Mr Roberts' initial intentions were, he and his 'vision' have now become of genuine public concern.

 

[metatheurgist]

I know people go on about GoT or Walking Dead or Breaking Bad... This thread is my guilty habit.

GoT Spoilers

Spoiler

I'm looking forward to seeing the dragon melt the wall of delusion that's been holding back the Truth King and his Reality Walkers from invading Citizeros for 5 seasons. It's going to be an epic finale.

Prediction: When it all falls apart. "80% of all startups fail. Companies failing is standard practise in the industry." [haha]

 

[Viajero]

It's models are amazing and their planetary tech completely eclipses...

Dont want to expand further on an offtopic comparison but at least can focus on what SC seems to be offering at the moment. Which is exactly zero in our PCs currently, let´s not forget that.

All you have to go by at the moment are the miriad of clips CIG lets out in ATV, Gamescom(s) or the totally not paid for articles in some magazines.

But let´s take a look at the latest, even if not in our PCs:

I wonder how much memory each of those pre-frabricated terrain tiles takes. I also wonder how many of those tiles are required to recreate a small moon. I wonder how many of those pre-fabricated tiles are required for the eventual larger planets (not planned for 3.0). I wonder how many of those planets will be in average in a system. 4, 5? I wonder how many of those tiles are reuqired in 100 systems in order to give all their planets that individual personality SC is looking for, or even the 400 promised. Do we know how big is the 3.0 download is going to be? I really, really hope the patcher is ready by then.

Also, from the Gamescom demo there is a specific moment where Chris offers us a personal glimpse at the state of their "eclipsing" planetary tech:

min 07:35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=3ITxpWAieKo

"Paul, don´t go beyond the Buccaneer because it´s completely bland on that side"

SC´s procedural tech impressions from the man itself.

I would much rather wait to see all that "eclipsing" tech in our PC before really commenting much further to be honest.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Come on Sleuth no one answers questions like that on this thread you included.

My favourite is asking the forensic financial accountants here to predict when CIG will go bankrupt, or asking the legal experts who suggest the game is a scam if they have reported their concerns to the law enforcement authorities-- que silence.

In fact I applaud anyone who does have a stab/guess such questions.

good question.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...en-Thread-v6?p=5865931&viewfull=1#post5865931

using median salary values from 2014 for game developers we first got 78 million in wages but had to recalculate since the median wages were actually lower for CIG in 2016 at least.

That said, they are having around 20 million in wages for 400 people now since 2016 (5800/month instead of the 6800+ in my first calculation) so im guessing 2-3 years at most if they keep a full staff depending on how much cash they have.

 

[Cobra1984]

As I have already pointed out twice - without figuring the expenditure on third party studios and external contractors into financial estimates, you cannot gauge the health of the company.

That figure is well hidden because the majority of external work has been canned - Ilfonic's Star Marine and the AI tech are notable examples, the motion capture too has a question mark beside it and has done since 2016.

Overheads are never calculated in these examples either, I've seen lots of them pop up over the years. It's an attempt to push out the 'warning date' for backers, to put a date out there and say "look, we're good until this date, you don't need to worry until then".

The most accurate way to think about their health with the least amount of assumptions is to estimate a monthly burn rate and compare it to their income tracker. Month by month, money in, money out.

I've had a few goes at this with some help and it puts you in the ballpark of each ship sale adding 2 or maybe 3 months to the project, Gamescon 2016 put them right into the new year. It works as a predictive tool for ship sales so I feel it isn't far off.

The Gamescon 2017 funding results are looking like just under $2 million, half of last year's.

So it doesn't surprise me and it is expected and natural to see backers reassuring themselves regarding the safety of their 'investment'. Those reassurances are on very shaky ground using data that is incomplete, unverifiable with multiple assumptions and guesswork.

I started from one assumption - they have the monthly income only, and I use estimates of their monthly burn. This is the 'least wrong' way of doing it.

------------------------

With the talk of 'investing' in the company I got to thinking. If whales view themselves as investors, albeit without any of the benefits and securities of being an investor, and CIG *use* them as investors, without any of the obligations and contractual arrangements attached to receiving investment - that would be a serious cause for concern. It essentially bypasses contracts entirely.

So this is something I intend to follow up and I'd love to learn where the notion of 'investing into Star Citizen' originated.

There were investors back in the early days, one who pulled his money out is well documented as is how poorly he was treated - so it makes sense to me that CIG think about whales as investors without any obligation to them, and whales think about their monthly expenditure as an investment with no guarantee of a return.

This arrangement appears to be keeping the project afloat when as far as anyone can see it's standard commercial pre-orders.

When did the talk of 'investment' appear?

 

[MarktJones]

As I have already pointed out twice - without figuring the expenditure on third party studios and external contractors into financial estimates, you cannot gauge the health of the company.

That figure is well hidden because the majority of external work has been canned - Ilfonic's Star Marine and the AI tech are notable examples, the motion capture too has a question mark beside it and has done since 2016.

Overheads are never calculated in these examples either, I've seen lots of them pop up over the years. It's an attempt to push out the 'warning date' for backers, to put a date out there and say "look, we're good until this date, you don't need to worry until then".

The most accurate way to think about their health with the least amount of assumptions is to estimate a monthly burn rate and compare it to their income tracker. Month by month, money in, money out.

I've had a few goes at this with some help and it puts you in the ballpark of each ship sale adding 2 or maybe 3 months to the project, Gamescon 2016 put them right into the new year. It works as a predictive tool for ship sales so I feel it isn't far off.

The Gamescon 2017 funding results are looking like just under $2 million, half of last year's.

So it doesn't surprise me and it is expected and natural to see backers reassuring themselves regarding the safety of their 'investment'. Those reassurances are on very shaky ground using data that is incomplete, unverifiable with multiple assumptions and guesswork.

I started from one assumption - they have the monthly income only, and I use estimates of their monthly burn. This is the 'least wrong' way of doing it.

------------------------

With the talk of 'investing' in the company I got to thinking. If whales view themselves as investors, albeit without any of the benefits and securities of being an investor, and CIG *use* them as investors, without any of the obligations and contractual arrangements attached to receiving investment - that would be a serious cause for concern. It essentially bypasses contracts entirely.

So this is something I intend to follow up and I'd love to learn where the notion of 'investing into Star Citizen' originated.

There were investors back in the early days, one who pulled his money out is well documented as is how poorly he was treated - so it makes sense to me that CIG think about whales as investors without any obligation to them, and whales think about their monthly expenditure as an investment with no guarantee of a return.

This arrangement appears to be keeping the project afloat when as far as anyone can see it's standard commercial pre-orders.

When did the talk of 'investment' appear?

Maybe they plan on charging people real money to create their awesome ships from which they can earn in game money?

 

[Cobra1984]

BTW - nobody saw any AI in that presentation, you saw a an engineer character running his script twice in a row, identical both times including the tine it was triggered, you saw a guy clip through a bar stool when his mocap was triggered (this is the issue with all the mocap btw, none of it fits the environments)

You heard CR *talk* about AI.

Some of the posts I'm reading here regarding the presentation are clearly intended for folks who didn't watch it.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

BTW - nobody saw any AI in that presentation, you saw a an engineer character running his script twice in a row, identical both times including the tine it was triggered, you saw a guy clip through a bar stool when his mocap was triggered (this is the issue with all the mocap btw, none of it fits the environments)

You heard CR *talk* about AI.

Some of the posts I'm reading here regarding the presentation are clearly intended for folks who didn't watch it.

That's most likely because the subsumption system is not done yet that is supposed to handle NPC's.

So instead of having to script every npc action they would assign each NPC a role and function and then the subsumption system (Objective-oriented NPC system) would essentially do stuff linked to it's intended role and function and access the possible tasks within that role.

In the long run it will save them time since they can just plop down an npc with roles and functions and then watch it go about it's business.

Npc - Store Owner - Stanton Base #5 Mall - Clothing Store
Npc - Mall shopper - Stanton Base #5 Mall - Random Shopping Routine

It would allow for less static NPC's like in Mass Effect where the majority of NPC's stod still in groups and a small set patrolled the area in a set pattern.

 

[Cobra1984]

Maybe they plan on charging people real money to create their awesome ships from which they can earn in game money?

Boom!

Why did I not see this before

It's an investment without being an investment, that's why they buy up all the ships.

Holy moly. Now I get why they don't care if there is ever a game or not, the ships all get traded and sold on the grey market anyway. It's like trading cards, CIG know this, so they made actual trading cards.

The game is irrelevant to all of this, the ship is worth what its potential earning power might be in any theoretical future game.

I knew there had to be more to it

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Game is running on a 2011 engine made for 7th generation consoles. The framerate is limited by cloud server performance and it will stay this way. It can't make use of more than 3 CPU cores nor of more than 8 GB RAM.

Well thats not entirely true,you probably read some engine spec for consoles version(maybe).....because CE3 is capable to use up to 8 cores on PC and there is no problem with amount of RAM that I know........
Anyway it´s worth to mention that CE was also always very unpopular when it comes to the networking an overall MP gaming on it......

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Derek's writeup about Gamescom which I think is spot on http://dereksmart.com/forums/reply/5685/

 

[Cmdr-Wotherspoon]

Dont want to expand further on an offtopic comparison but at least can focus on what SC seems to be offering at the moment. Which is exactly zero in our PCs currently, let´s not forget that.

All you have to go by at the moment are the miriad of clips CIG lets out in ATV, Gamescom(s) or the totally not paid for articles in some magazines.

But let´s take a look at the latest, even if not in our PCs:

http://i.imgur.com/zhGyZDb.jpg

I wonder how much memory each of those pre-frabricated terrain tiles takes.

Once you start looking for them, the entire surface is made up of repeating patterns: I can see a lot more than you highlighted. So this one at any rate is not a procedurally-generated planet. It may use computer-generation of some features, but these are then being dragged-and-dropped by artists. This doesn't to me look either particularly interesting (if you know that what lies over the horizon is an exact replica of the place you're standing, exploring loses its excitement), and it also raises questions over how quickly a team of artists can drag-and-drop onto entire planets (even planets that are 10% scale models, as I believe they are in Star Citizen).

A possible cause for concern.

 

[MarktJones]

Boom!

Why did I not see this before

It's an investment without being an investment, that's why they buy up all the ships.

Holy moly. Now I get why they don't care if there is ever a game or not, the ships all get traded and sold on the grey market anyway. It's like trading cards, CIG know this, so they made actual trading cards.

The game is irrelevant to all of this, the ship is worth what its potential earning power might be in any theoretical future game.

I knew there had to be more to it

I think of the ships being more like tulip bulbs.

 

[Cobra1984]

That's most likely because the subsumption system is not done yet that is supposed to handle NPC's.

So instead of having to script every npc action they would assign each NPC a role and function and then the subsumption system (Objective-oriented NPC system) would essentially do stuff linked to it's intended role and function and access the possible tasks within that role.

In the long run it will save them time since they can just plop down an npc with roles and functions and then watch it go about it's business.

Npc - Store Owner - Stanton Base #5 Mall - Clothing Store
Npc - Mall shopper - Stanton Base #5 Mall - Random Shopping Routine

It would allow for less static NPC's like in Mass Effect where the majority of NPC's stod still in groups and a small set patrolled the area in a set pattern.

Ok, so what we saw was NOT AI. What we saw was static scripted non interactive NPCs.

"In the long run it will save them time", dude, the AI stuff was farmed out to a contractor almost 2 years ago and it was canned and brought in house. They've been working on AI for years and they show up with 2 scripts, one with clipping mocap.

 

[Cobra1984]

I think of the ships being more like tulip bulbs.

Harvesting analogy is apt.