The Star Citizen Thread v9

tridemax

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Zyll Goliat said:
Something like that....In short they relying that new "tech"and all necessary net-fixes will arrive somewhere during their development......
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It is a common practice, tbh. Few projects I've participated in did this routinely - that is it, relying on something to be fixed later as development progresses. If games were done as some people suggest here, "technology first, game design after", many couldn't be delivered as you still need time to iterate, to test things working gameplay-wise and so on.

Flight model as one of the examples for me. CIG ignored it completely, which looked strange to me, then found the right person(s), assigned them to this sub-project and fixed the stuff. And it looks and feels 'proper' now.

Downside of this is that you never can deliver in time as there are too much inter-dependencies between this 'to be' fixes. Well, most of the time technology is 'not there' so there is no other way besides go and develop things.
 

tridemax

T
Asp Explorer said:
I'm not sure it's actually even possible without a complete re-write of the socketing in both the client and whatever backend they deploy to.

OCS was their "solution" to this, but it isn't going to help one iota. Someone at CIG needs to actually sit down and look at the network implementation and what it's actually (or not) transferring. It's a huge mess of hot stinky. You've got megabytes of XML describing utterly trivial things. It's own bandwidth checker assumes a local gigabit network, and fails to properly detect client bandwidth and still assumes a local gigabit network. It's all kinds of broken.

They need to address this.

And I'm not doing it for them for free.
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Net-code itself is just a few months of work for a dedicated professional, not a big deal. Server-mesh is a much greater technical risk. But this is doable, no doubts. Hard to say how much time could it take, though.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
tridemax said:
It is a common practice, tbh. Few projects I've participated in did this routinely - that is it, relying on something to be fixed later as development progresses. If games were done as some people suggest here, "technology first, game design after", many couldn't be delivered as you still need time to iterate, to test things working gameplay-wise and so on.

Flight model as one of the examples for me. CIG ignored it completely, which looked strange to me, then found the right person(s), assigned them to this sub-project and fixed the stuff. And it looks and feels 'proper' now.

Downside of this is that you never can deliver in time as there are too much inter-dependencies between this 'to be' fixes. Well, most of the time technology is 'not there' so there is no other way besides go and develop things.
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Yeah....well...problem is if this was proper investor project, management would have been fired 4 years ago, or even worse - sued for incompetence. So it is not really common practice. Yes, sometimes it happens, and sometimes you don't design horse before cart, but this is not such case. Also flight model is not fixed yet. It might get better, but we really don't know, do we.
 

sovapid

sovapid
tridemax said:
Flight model as one of the examples for me. CIG ignored it completely, which looked strange to me, then found the right person(s), assigned them to this sub-project and fixed the stuff. And it looks and feels 'proper' now.
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If you like it now, I have bad news for you. It hasn't really changed yet and the flight model will be re-done once 3.4 is released. Or to whatever patch it might get delayed to.
 

TenakaFurey

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tridemax said:
Net-code itself is just a few months of work for a dedicated professional, not a big deal. Server-mesh is a much greater technical risk. But this is doable, no doubts. Hard to say how much time could it take, though.
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But...it hasn't been months. It's been years. AND they haven't finished yet. Much of this netcode - that SHOULD just take a few months to work out - has yet to be completed.

The netcode itself should have been up and running before they started the game, if only so they knew what the limits of the engine were. They've hyped 1000 player instance for example...do you see that as even remotely possible given the state of the netcode? I don 't.

Part of the problem is CIGs approach "technology first, game design after" - except, they aren't really even designing the technology so much as throwing everything together and hoping it'll all work.

Right now, CIGs big problem is easily stated - the engine they have cannot support the game they have promised. And that is down to simple mismanagement, hubris and greed. They don't appear to have engaged in any serious design phase for star Citizen, never looked into how all the various aspects of the game worked together, instead relying on a "modular" approach and sloppy thinking that if they create module A and module B and module C and link them all together they'll have a game into which they can then link Modules D, E and F and everything will work perfectly.

Instead, what they have are parts of a game that haven't linked together very well, supported by an engine that is operating beyond its limits and all of this is due to mismanagement, poor planning and little (if any) design. That might be - should be - enough to create some sort of game out of this mess, and it might even be a fun little game, but it isn't going to be anywhere near enough to meet the vision that is being sold to the players. "No Mans Skies" has come closer to that vision...and they did it with a fraction of the team and money available to them.
 

Zyll Goliat

Zyll Goliat
tridemax said:
It is a common practice, tbh. Few projects I've participated in did this routinely - that is it, relying on something to be fixed later as development progresses. If games were done as some people suggest here, "technology first, game design after", many couldn't be delivered as you still need time to iterate, to test things working gameplay-wise and so on.

Flight model as one of the examples for me. CIG ignored it completely, which looked strange to me, then found the right person(s), assigned them to this sub-project and fixed the stuff. And it looks and feels 'proper' now.

Downside of this is that you never can deliver in time as there are too much inter-dependencies between this 'to be' fixes. Well, most of the time technology is 'not there' so there is no other way besides go and develop things.
Click to expand...

I been gaming for 35+years and been participate also dozens times in many alpha and betas but I NEVER seen development process like this....It´s nothing common in CIG practice they doing everything upside down hoping that eventually things going to work for them at the end....
 

TenakaFurey

T
Zyll Goliat said:
I been gaming for 35+years and been participate also dozens times in many alpha and betas but I NEVER seen development process like this....It´s nothing common in CIG practice they doing everything upside down hoping that eventually things going to work for them at the end....
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I've seen it done...and there is a degree of back and forth, and interchange between development phases as well, and all the usual caveats that reality isn't always as neat as we may want it to be...but relying on "something to be fixed later" usually means that it is an aspect of a game that can be delayed, that isn't critical, something that you know is amenable to a fix, something that you suspect may be easier to resolve later once another system is working. I can't recall anyone telling me something such as "the engine can wait, let's figure out how to mix drinks first". Generally speaking - and yes, there are always exceptions and reality isn't neatly defined - the rule followed is design then engine then game then polish and bug fix then release. Design the game you want, select/create the engine you need, build the game, polish the looks and gameplay, bug fix and optimise it then release. Making it up as you go along isn't a design methodology that has seen much use since the days of the ZX Spectrum and C64. And even then, design was recommended

In short - tridemax is right in that it happens, but I doubt current devs do so with the frequency and impact he seems to be suggesting.
 

Wotthe Dickens

Wotthe Dickens
Zyll Goliat said:
I been gaming for 35+years and been participate also dozens times in many alpha and betas but I NEVER seen development process like this....It´s nothing common in CIG practice they doing everything upside down hoping that eventually things going to work for them at the end....
Click to expand...

TenakaFurey said:
I've seen it done...and there is a degree of back and forth, and interchange between development phases as well, and all the usual caveats that reality isn't always as neat as we may want it to be...but relying on "something to be fixed later" usually means that it is an aspect of a game that can be delayed, that isn't critical, something that you know is amenable to a fix, something that you suspect may be easier to resolve later once another system is working. I can't recall anyone telling me something such as "the engine can wait, let's figure out how to mix drinks first". Generally speaking - and yes, there are always exceptions and reality isn't neatly defined - the rule followed is design then engine then game then polish and bug fix then release. Design the game you want, select/create the engine you need, build the game, polish the looks and gameplay, bug fix and optimise it then release. Making it up as you go along isn't a design methodology that has seen much use since the days of the ZX Spectrum and C64. And even then, design was recommended

In short - tridemax is right in that it happens, but I doubt current devs do so with the frequency and impact he seems to be suggesting.
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I'm reminded of my early years on a Beeb, jumping into programming my latest idea for a game, starting on all the fun, shiney bits first but then hitting the 'oh dear, I'm going to have to, um, refactor this....' As soon as I had to actually, you know, do the boring bits...
Luckily, I mostly learnt my lesson by the age of 15. :)
(My pet projects still sometimes suffer this, I admit! But those are pet projects and not projects involving $200M+ of other peoples money!)
 
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MTBFritz

MTBFritz
Wotthe ens said:
I'm reminded of my early years on a Beeb, jumping into programming my latest idea for a game, starting on all the fun, shiney bits first but then hitting the 'oh dear, I'm going to have to, um, refactor this....' As soon as I had to actually, you know, do the boring bits...
Luckily, I mostly learnt my lesson by the age of 15. :)
(My pet projects still sometimes suffer this, I admit! But those are pet projects and not projects involving $200M+ of other peoples money!)
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Cash Roberts basically is a big kid fooling around doing whatever catches his interest. And while he certainly has adults on the team he sabotages all of them by being their boss. The problem is that other people expected him to be an adult and knowing what he does (as he claimed, yet he learned very early that all you need to get through life is charisma and telling people what they want to hear). When it comes to adult stuff in this project I can see a lot of wiggling and apologizing and asking for more time from him and next to zero competence. Usually when you keep failing and falling short all the charisma in the world wont help you anymore because in the end actual performance counts and not a nice smile. Your only hope in that case is to find new suckers who dont know you yet where you can use your superior "first impression". Its just so sad and frustrating to watch him digging up all these gullibles in sufficient numbers to keep him going.
 

Wotthe Dickens

Wotthe Dickens
MTBFritz said:
Cash Roberts basically is a big kid fooling around doing whatever catches his interest. And while he certainly has adults on the team he sabotages all of them by being their boss. The problem is that other people expected him to be an adult and knowing what he does (as he claimed, yet he learned very early that all you need to get through life is charisma and telling people what they want to hear). When it comes to adult stuff in this project I can see a lot of wiggling and apologizing and asking for more time from him and next to zero competence. Usually when you keep failing and falling short all the charisma in the world wont help you anymore because in the end actual performance counts and not a nice smile. Your only hope in that case is to find new suckers who dont know you yet where you can use your superior "first impression". Its just so sad and frustrating to watch him digging up all these gullibles in sufficient numbers to keep him going.
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yep - certainly appears so.
 
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Skizomeuh

Skizomeuh
MTBFritz said:
Cash Roberts basically is a big kid fooling around doing whatever catches his interest. And while he certainly has adults on the team he sabotages all of them by being their boss.
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I'd love to know how many hours have been spent on crunch mode for his lunatic belly button...

I bet many of the 500+ devs were in crunch mode several weeks before the CitizenCon, still are given 3.3 state and will be given 3.3.5 and Christmas events are to follow closely.

I feel for these poor fellas, even if well paid.
 

MTBFritz

MTBFritz
Skizomeuh said:
I bet many of the 500+ devs were in crunch mode several weeks before the CitizenCon
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No hard info...only rumors but due to the sheer number of them and also observing various random developers and how they look on camera I d say yep....lots of crunch time involved to get those glorious pixel-fests ready for major presentation. Recent videos show people in much better state, not sure if thats due to changes in work-schedule or simply handpicking people going in front of a camera.

I feel for these poor fellas, even if well paid.
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I cant imagine anybody getting paid above-average but of course thats just a gut feeling. The only people who got fat over the years have been the upper echolon members.
 

MTBFritz

MTBFritz
at that rate I dont see 3.3.5 coming this year and to think 3.4 was planned for Q4 2018 - add it to the "list" I guess, doesnt look like anybody else has an issue with it
 

tridemax

T
TenakaFurey said:
But...it hasn't been months. It's been years. AND they haven't finished yet. Much of this netcode - that SHOULD just take a few months to work out - has yet to be completed.

The netcode itself should have been up and running before they started the game, if only so they knew what the limits of the engine were. They've hyped 1000 player instance for example...do you see that as even remotely possible given the state of the netcode? I don 't.
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TenakaFurey said:
Right now, CIGs big problem is easily stated - the engine they have cannot support the game they have promised.
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It isn't uncommon to have few branches with something working but in prototype quality and no one cares because everybody focused on something else. So visible to us net-code state might be something really old because its "just works". I have few branches with really advanced AI GAN stuff over our production AI implementation but they are not there yet just because they are experimental. It would be a bit of offence if someone will tell me my deep learning architecture is outdated just on what they see in my 'master'. :)

CryEngine's network concept is pretty powerful (I mean SerializedVariables, quantinization and adaptive update stuff), guys who written it actually work for CIG now, so it's simply not the case they cannot support the game concept they promised on network level. Micro-services based server mesh isn't something really hard to do, what is really hard to do is to support it (means updating the code after you change something drastically in the game). All kind of hard-to-find bugs might be introduced and this is a real pain because debugging networking in game in just pain in .

May be, and I emphasize may be, it is a wise strategy to have base game working before moving to server mesh implementation. Sometimes you need something simple that can be easily iterated over before building a much more complicated stuff. If I was responsible for net-code development I'd just keep two branches with a straight single-server implementation which I could easily host in my zoo of VMs to develop and debug stuff, and separate multi-server implementation which is just an extension and used only for deploy.
 
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