Star Citizen Discussion Thread v11

[Tippis]

At the moment there is nothing else in SC that compels me to say "its unlike anything else" since it's barely functional...

Unlike anything else, SC manages to combine both Daikatana AI and Privateer 2 AI.

Transitions isn't the primary difficulty. The detail is.

Lolno. Detail is what procedural generation makes trivial — doubly so if it employs prefabs, which is why CI¬G chose that tried and tested decades-old methodology.

What narrative?

That was made abundantly clear from the post. What part was difficult to understand?
CIG have proven themselves to be very bad at their jobs.

The simple fact remains: SC looks like it was made in the 2013 engine it was made in… except made badly, because CI¬G has not been able to iron out even fairly simple things like animations, smooth movement, camera movement, or any of the other fundamentals needed for their game. They also haven't been able to keep up to date with visual quality, most notably in characters, and almost every feature they try to highlight as some fancy new never-done-before exploration of fidelity turns out to be just off-the-shelf plugin solutions provided by others (that CIG, not being very good at their jobs, fail to integrate properly).

The only thing other games can learn from SC is how not to do things, because the entire history of its development is just a very long tale of tumbling down the fumble-tree and hitting every single branch, leave, twig and bud.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I would be interested in some visuals to compare. What narrative? Look below that is Battlefield on top vs Star Citizen

Battlefield 3, released in 2011.

Cogratulations, SC (according to some) looks better than a game released before SC even (alledgedly) started development.

 

[Mole HD]

Unlike anything else, SC manages to combine both Daikatana AI and Privateer 2 AI.


Lolno. Detail is what procedural generation makes trivial — doubly so if it employs prefabs, which is why CI¬G chose that tried and tested decades-old methodology.


That was made abundantly clear from the post. What part was difficult to understand?
CIG have proven themselves to be very bad at their jobs.

The simple fact remains: SC looks like it was made in the 2013 engine it was made in… except made badly, because CI¬G has not been able to iron out even fairly simple things like animations, smooth movement, camera movement, or any of the other fundamentals needed for their game. They also haven't been able to keep up to date with visual quality, most notably in characters, and almost every feature they try to highlight as some fancy new never-done-before exploration of fidelity turns out to be just off-the-shelf plugin solutions provided by others (that CIG, not being very good at their jobs, fail to integrate properly).

The only thing other games can learn from SC is how not to do things, because the entire history of its development is just a very long tale of tumbling down the fumble-tree and hitting every single branch, leave, twig and bud.

I'll take issue with the character visual quality...not even going near the rest since you seem to be on a roll of commonly and ad nauseum repeated tropes, misnomers and misconceptions there...

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'll take issue with the character visual quality...not even going near the rest since you seem to be on a roll of commonly and ad nauseum repeated tropes, misnomers and misconceptions there...

SC certainly has polygons, lots of polygons.

 

[Asp Explorer]

But my dear Mole - as lovely as the high-poly characters are - when you see them clip through themselves and their accoutrements and pretty much everything else - it does leave one scratching ones head as to why there is all that frivolous detail, and a non functional foundation.

 

[Mole HD]

SC certainly has polygons, lots of polygons.

And strangely...it all runs at a reasonable framerate with smooth animations. The jerky and weird animations are caused by the network code and when looking at other players...your own animations are very smooth.

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Battlefield 3, released in 2011.

Cogratulations, SC (according to some) looks better than a game released before SC even (alledgedly) started development.

That shot is not from 3. Also SC is more on the DS level of visuals imo. But it does it on a planet scale across multiple planets and in different visuals. Which is impressive for me. But yea the real discussion is what kind of gameplay supports the visuals? Right now trading, mining and bounties go only so far. Not giving a longer experience than 30 hours or so per quarterly patch.

vs

And strangely...it all runs at a reasonable framerate with smooth animations. The jerky and weird animations are caused by the network code and when looking at other players...your own animations are very smooth.

Completely agree. The jittering of other players is very irritating for me. Hope that some work is happening on that front.

-

Also Mike is coop mining with others on the unstable 3.8 PTU build.

Source: https://www.twitch.tv/saltemike

 

[Mole HD]

But my dear Mole - as lovely as the high-poly characters are - when you see them clip through themselves and their accoutrements and pretty much everything else - it does leave one scratching ones head as to why there is all that frivolous detail, and a non functional foundation.

Meh...that's been happening since the beginning and nothing new...it's certainly improved of late compared to how it was. I haven't been killed by a door/ladder or glitched through a lift for months now.

you know as well as I do most of the glitching through the scenery and clipping was tied to network code and client/server desync just as much as the general physics engine...so don't kid me..

Besides...the issue was discussing visuals, not the crap game engine or shoddy network code and physics engineering...CSOCS kinda improved on it and not just general frame rates, there's a lot to go before it's anywhere great...but now it's not too bad. The jury is still out on whether SSOCS will improve anything at all..I don't think so judging on the stress test, but we'll see.

 

[Viajero]

Transitions isn't the primary difficulty. The detail is. Infinity has done some transitions too but you can't land and walk and actually feel there. Any spot you land on a moon or planet looks straight out of a handcrafted CryEngine level. That sort of

Battlefield 3, released in 2011.

Cogratulations, SC (according to some) looks better than a game released before SC even (alledgedly) started development.

Battlefield 3 from 2011 definitely looks like quite a tough match up for 2019 SC:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtIsVqhKOOk

Spoiler

 

[Tippis]

I'll take issue with the character visual quality.

SC's characters look like utter crap and they animate like string puppets from 1970s low-budget kids show on the happy few occasions when they don't break completely. They're standard CryEngine (2013) models that have been over-greebled and then contorted with amateurish mocap. Oh, and look up the next Senua chapter…

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Less detail and on a small 8km2 map. Death Stranding is still the closest but still not planet scale. That is why just like Mole said. SC is another beast. It's first person level of detail on a planet scale.

 

[Mole HD]

SC's characters look like utter crap and they animate like string puppets from 1970s low-budget kids show on the happy few occasions when they don't break completely.

Posting a screenshot from an Xbox series X demo and from a game that will be released sometime late 2020 taken in 8k resolution not yet available or used in gaming isn't going to impress me either

We're discussing Star Citizen here...and still you persist in the comparison game I've already stated I don't do...fill your boots if that's yer thing but it's not really relevant or very interesting

You stated that the character visuals were kinda crap...I posted a screenshot from Star Citizen that showed they weren't really that bad...and in context with your comment. I don't usually enter those type of pointless discussion topics as a rule...I simply state what is and what isn't good about Star Citizen from my perspective...arguing about it doesn't really float my boat at all.

I'm looking forward to Senua's saga BTW...looks pretty awesome.

 

[govny]

2013? Keep telling yourself that I guess?
I guess you never played Alpha's then? No one said there were no bugs nor no crashes. I haven't crashed since 3.6 but bugs I did encounter. Nothing that disrupted my game session though.

never played a 5 years alpha, or are 7?

 

[Mr.Nowak]

It's best to leave graphics talk to the professionals anyway.

Source: https://youtu.be/OngP6uEfQoE

Btw Mole what do you think about the QT changes? They were a little too long on the travel times before imo.

 

[Azirphaeli]

No man's sky has planets that, apart from style, are better than SC. There are detailed flora and fauna, you can modify terrain and build things on them and it has been made by 20 people in far less time and money than SC and even if it has not be intended to be a space sim, I find combat more fun than SC. Ah, it even have VR support.
Please stop with your absurd narrative that CIG is the best, honestly it is pathetic.

But the planets in NMS generally look terrible from space which is why they have such aggressive LOD as you approach. This is what he meant and he's right. I used to do a lot of work in Terragen which is a landscape generation tool, and with or without proc-gen it is INCREDIBLY difficult to get the scaling to look good both from space as a whole planet as well as on foot on said planet. The reason, of course, is draw distance and realism. We here on earth have eyes and haze and all sorts of things working to give us an expectation of scale, distance, and what mountains/plains/hills/forests are expected to look like at a distance.

The simple reality is, game engines in general cannot handle the level of detail expected from on foot exploration at the distances needed to properly render real actual sized mountain ranges, forests. So, if the planet looks good from space, on foot the mountains and vast forests will be lost to LoD and draw distances. They won't be visible until you are too close that they appear to be just slopes disappearing into a fog or hidden behind an aggressive curve.

Mountains that look good on foot, the type in NMS, need to be small enough to appear "in the distance" (while actually being fairly close up) and clustered so much to look like ranges on foot that if you zoom out to space level and look at that part of the planet they are just small rough bumps across a landscape blotched with small ponds that, on foot, appear to be large lakes.

It's not just NMS, mind you, even Space Engine.. the best of the best for universe proc generation still shows this on larger planets. Elite as well, though they do a very very good job with their planets. Small moons in Elite look proper from space with large mountains and canyones... but larger planets quickly start showing this same problem but to a lesser extent. FD really did the planet tech well, from this standpoint.

(Missed the whole point of this) Edit: So when it come to SC, from what I've seen they've done an impressive job, much like elite, of minimizing this effect. Whether with proc or by hand (likely a mix of both) it's pretty damn good. Now if only there was gameplay..

 

[Tippis]

Posting a screenshot from an Xbox series X demo and from a game that will be released sometime late 2020 taken in 8k resolution not yet available or used in gaming isn't going to impress me either

…you understand that these are images from games released in 2016 and 2017 on last-gen consoles, right? Not some future thing but what is already old hat and what will be surpassed the next time the same teams (or teams with equivalent levels of proficiency) release something.

We're discussing Star Citizen here.

No. We're discussing the visual quality of characters, where SC and its 2013 engine no longer holds a candle to what's already out there, much less to what will be available if it ever comes out.

Thus: the characters look like crap and their level of animation is horrid even by 2013 standards, never mind what has been available for the last decade. The only thing that is not last-gen in SC is the stuff they've bought from competent middleware manufacturers and then bolted on with the skill and precision of drunken Millwall fans.

 

[Viajero]

Less detail...

Does not look like less detail at all I am afraid. 2011 BF3 actually looks better than 2019 SC more often than not. But more importantly:

BF3 worked, it was stable and had much much much less bugs and glitches than SC after 7-8 years of development.

... and on a small 8km2 map.

Oh? It was you who brought the BF comparison here (and a 2011 one at that), and now that it does not seem to serve your argument as well as you would like it to you decide to move goal posts? I must say I am slightly disappointed.

 

[Mole HD]

…you understand that these are images from games released in 2016 and 2017 on last-gen consoles, right? Not some future thing but what is already old hat and what will be surpassed the next time the same teams (or teams with equivalent levels of proficiency) release something.


No. We're discussing the visual quality of characters, where SC and its 2013 engine no longer holds a candle to what's already out there, much less to what will be available if it ever comes out.

Thus: the characters look like crap and their level of animation is horrid even by 2013 standards, never mind what has been available for the last decade. The only thing that is not last-gen in SC is the stuff they've bought from competent middleware manufacturers and then bolted on with the skill and precision of drunken Millwall fans.

Fill your boots mate, I'm done being argumentative for the day

 

[VR Golgot]

That shot is not from 3.

Yes it is.

AA’s point stands. Strictly speaking it was released in a September 2012 DLC pack, but you’re still celebrating looking slightly better than a game that predates SC completely. Go you

 

[metatheurgist]

Let's compare SC with The Expanse for other topics then: writing, directing, actors performances, episodes delivery dates, production funds management, actors not phasing through ships or sit on desks, crash to desktop, jpeg costs...

No fair! Expanse doesn't have amazing things like quasars just outside the solar system.