Star Citizen Discussion Thread v11

[Mole HD]

Welp...after having the Expanse bug revitalised post my season 4 binge...I watched it from the beginning of season 1 all over again. Got to S3 ep2 before my head hit the keyboard...had weird dreams of being a Belter as I slept... as crew on an ice hauler just doing what Belters do.

Owkwa Beltalowda, ando du livit da livit da Belta....and all that. Love the Belter creole used in the series. I think when you get a TV series that uses 'hard' sci-fi with very little handwavium involved, it's way more inviting and immersive than traditional sci-fi tropes...as for a computer game set in the imaginary world of the Expanse...sold

 

[n4p0l3on]

You better provide some solid evidence here. Otherwise it's an argument of authority and it has just as much value as CR's technical explanations...

Yours first then. As for evidence against your claim well where is it? We know what procedural contents from other games look like, where is it for SC?

 

[Surefoot]

Yours first then. As for evidence against your claim well where is it? We know what procedural contents from other games look like, where is it for SC?

Extraordinary claims need extraodinary evidence.
At the moment it's quite visible outside of the hand crafted parts, even though they have few planets most of the content there is both empty and procgen. ArcCorp being a good example of both. Also procgen is an abstract algorithm, it will produce entities based on fractal patterns for example, it's not tied to a 3D rendering engine. Minecraft is procgen for instance... So your claim of procgen not being supported by CE is puzzling at best, and you'll need some very solid evidence to back it.

 

[AJW]

Extraordinary claims need extraodinary evidence.

Indeed. Which is why so many on this forum are sceptical about all the extraordinary claims being made regarding all the things Star Citizen is going to contain. So far, the evidence seems to consist of a far-too-ordinary failure to deliver. Though I must admit I find the failure of some 'citizens' to notice this quite extraordinary.

 

[n4p0l3on]

Extraordinary claims need extraodinary evidence.
At the moment it's quite visible outside of the hand crafted parts, even though they have few planets most of the content there is both empty and procgen. ArcCorp being a good example of both. Also procgen is an abstract algorithm, it will produce entities based on fractal patterns for example, it's not tied to a 3D rendering engine. Minecraft is procgen for instance... So your claim of procgen not being supported by CE is puzzling at best, and you'll need some very solid evidence to back it.

games and similar game engines in the similar genre that sc participate in are capable of delivering more than "texturing" few planets, I didn't say anything about CE supporting or not supporting procgen, I said the engine can't handle it, which for me as a customer mean that it ought to be capable of delivering contents and stuffs to the extend where it can rival it's competitions and also you claimed that sc could've achieved much more than what it's presently being delivered if not one man sabotaging it. Where's your proof for that? Isn't it more reasonable to assume that if they could, they would've already boasted about it 24/7 since quite some time ago (years)?

here's (yet another) a simple example and question that backers should wonder, remember back then where sc claimed to feature seamless hangar to PU gameplay capability? where every players/backers can have their own private hangar physically existing in the PU? wouldn't that be a prime use case of procgen tech? so why can't we have such a thing if the engine is capable of doing and having such feature? We don't even need 1 million unique hangars physically exists in the current PU, anything other than the fully hand crafted olisar and hex and whatever they have now, why can't we have some real physical procedural generated hangars existing in the PU by now? Alas, I don't even know if that thing is still a feature at this point, and dunno about you but for me this is yet another breach of trust from sc, because that was one of the feature that was being sold to me.

what did that procgen empty city that they have now accomplish? why can't they instead of having a pointless city and pointless biome tech demo, implement procgen hangars? something that actually have substance for the players and improving the game?

 

[Viajero]

Welp...after having the Expanse bug revitalised post my season 4 binge...I watched it from the beginning of season 1 all over again. Got to S3 ep2 before my head hit the keyboard...had weird dreams of being a Belter as I slept... as crew on an ice hauler just doing what Belters do.

Owkwa Beltalowda, ando du livit da livit da Belta....and all that. Love the Belter creole used in the series. I think when you get a TV series that uses 'hard' sci-fi with very little handwavium involved, it's way more inviting and immersive than traditional sci-fi tropes...as for a computer game set in the imaginary world of the Expanse...sold

Hellion was/is probably the closest thing

 

[[VR] DDM_Reaper20]

I binge watched the entire season 4 of the Expanse last night waiting on the PTU to go live

My brother's going to receive as a Christmas gift (aside from GOT 8 and all of BattleTech's DLC (he has the base game only) Season 3 on BluRay. He enjoyed the first two seasons a lot, so...

I would love to see SC ripe into a great game . . . unfortunately, I don't see it happen any time soon. Too much fluff, too much technical debt. I also do not approve of selling JPEGs for prices you could easily get entire PCs (or good television sets...) for.

 

[Mole HD]

Hellion was/is probably the closest thing

I played a few hundred hours of Hellion on private Discord servers...a great shame it didn't make it. There's still servers up and running of course, but it's sad it'll never become what Zero Gravity envisioned.

For a small fraction of the budget that Ci¬G has utterly wasted through shameful corporate greed and mismanagement of epic proprtions, Zero G could have made Hellion into something a bit special... and we might all be harping on about that instead of wasting our breath on Star Citizen

 

[metatheurgist]

My brother's going to receive as a Christmas gift (aside from GOT 8 and all of BattleTech's DLC (he has the base game only) Season 3 on BluRay. He enjoyed the first two seasons a lot, so...

I would love to see SC ripe into a great game . . . unfortunately, I don't see it happen any time soon. Too much fluff, too much technical debt. I also do not approve of selling JPEGs for prices you could easily get entire PCs (or good television sets...) for.

Sheesh...GoT 8. You must hate his guts.

 

[Surefoot]

games and similar game engines in the similar genre that sc participate in are capable of delivering more than "texturing" few planets, I didn't say anything about CE supporting or not supporting procgen, I said the engine can't handle it, which for me as a customer mean that it ought to be capable of delivering contents and stuffs to the extend where it can rival it's competitions and also you claimed that sc could've achieved much more than what it's presently being delivered if not one man sabotaging it. Where's your proof for that? Isn't it more reasonable to assume that if they could, they would've already boasted about it 24/7 since quite some time ago (years)?

You really didnt read my initial post, and did not answer my question.
The man who sabotaged it is the commander-in-chief in person... Very certainly on the back of art asset teams for fixing every blue pixel here and there (and for that, we have substantial proof) and completely defeating the purpose of having proc gen to start with. His hand crafted mission on the new planet (as shown during CitCon) was another very blatant proof. What else do you need, I can test the pre-alpha and go to planets and see with my eyes the proc gen planetary surfaces (the area of those make them impossible to handcraft), along with the entirely handcrafted areas plonked here and there. Everything is there for display, no need to theorize.

here's (yet another) a simple example and question that backers should wonder, remember back then where sc claimed to feature seamless hangar to PU gameplay capability?

That's true and i also remember VR promises, etc. But that's a tangent and you are diverting from the question.

where every players/backers can have their own private hangar physically existing in the PU? wouldn't that be a prime use case of procgen tech?

Very probably yes, but my $$ guess is CR thinks it's not fidelicious enough so everything needs to be pixel perfect.

dunno about you but for me this is yet another breach of trust from sc, because that was one of the feature that was being sold to me.

That trust was breached long ago and before that... it's a drop in the ocean now. Still i'm not blind and raging foaming at the mouth, i see the "product" as it is, warts and all.

what did that procgen empty city that they have now accomplish? why can't they instead of having a pointless city and pointless biome tech demo, implement procgen hangars? something that actually have substance for the players and improving the game?

That accomplished nothing but demonstrate they can procgen... Indeed there is still no gameplay to speak of. But again that's something i have said before and all of us are very aware of that around here.
(edit) i might add their biome tech and atmo haze effects look stunning. There are some competent devs at CiG. They are just not on the game loop engine or network stack.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Binged on the Expanse myself last night.

Now i want more!

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Expanse vs Star Citizen Detail. Pretty cool what they can achieve now. Hopped in the 3.8 Stress Test PTU to see MicroTech. Very impressed except for the meh cloud layer that will be replaced with the Crusader Cloud Tech in the future. It kind of is low resolution and sometimes blocks the view of the ground from high altitude.

I won't revisit all the old places until LIVE is out. However checking some streams out, it seems like a huge upgrade on all areas.

Really excited about the new mining lasers, law system additions, AI ships on planets and the orbital stations. Lot's of QoL additions being added to 3.8. And I noticed QT times were reduced and fuel consumption has been increased. Performance is up for me as well. Arccorp has been optimised because I got 20 more frames there than the usual.

 

[Sanya V. Juutilainen]

...At the moment it's quite visible outside of the hand crafted parts, even though they have few planets most of the content there is both empty and procgen. ArcCorp being a good example of both...

Tbh, with being seven years in, I am not completely sure it's "quite visible" anywhere. If you gave me seven years and 300 million dollars, I could make ArcCorp and the other SC current content without procgen. ArcCorp example: make few brushes with buildings (as you would for procgen), paint over the surface manually (this replaces procgen's randomness), fix/smoothen transitions, generate PoIs manually (you have to do that anyway in SC, so there's no time loss here).

And the CI videos where they basically say: "We used procgen, but it looked like butte, so we have to go through everything manually anyway," don't really instill me with trust towards their procedural generation capabilities.

 

[Mr.Nowak]

If you gave me seven years and 300 million dollars, I could make ArcCorp and the other SC current content without procgen.

I think you are severely underestimating the complexity that goes into making something at a planet scale that also looks good on a first person scale. Additionally the point in building out a tool like that is to scale quicker and quicker as it matures. You can't fully handcraft several systems at first person detail.

That is the reason why nothing like Star Citizen exists. It's insanely difficult, costly and risky to do a first person universe like this. The closest game that I found is Dual Universe but they lack the lore and sense of place that drives the art for locations in SC. But they really embrace the sandbox and player-driven aspect and that is their strength.

SC is much more lore driven. Kind of like Star Wars in a way. The identity of each place is rather unique and memorable.

 

[Mole HD]

Expanse vs Star Citizen Detail. Pretty cool what they can achieve now. Hopped in the 3.8 Stress Test PTU to see MicroTech. Very impressed except for the meh cloud layer that will be replaced with the Crusader Cloud Tech in the future. It kind of is low resolution and sometimes blocks the view of the ground from high altitude.

I won't revisit all the old places until LIVE is out. However checking some streams out, it seems like a huge upgrade on all areas.

Really excited about the new mining lasers, law system additions, AI ships on planets and the orbital stations. Lot's of QoL additions being added to 3.8. And I noticed QT times were reduced and fuel consumption has been increased. Performance is up for me as well. Arccorp has been optimised because I got 20 more frames there than the usual.

Some of the older moons with the V4 tech..whilst looking good from orbital approach seem to blur when closer. The hand placed assets like landing pads seem either stuck into the scenery or oddly out of sync with huge texture pop in as opposed to the smooth transitions with planeteray surfaces or even with V3 used in the PU. I've no doubt they'll iron some of that out eventually but the contrast of detail between Microtech and some older moons from V3 with the V4 kinda lumped on instead of being built with it is quite startling. Closer in, the old moons look much better in V3, probably due to all the attention with V4 being lavished on Microtech.

It doesn't help that Ci¬G haven't removed the evocati wash mark from the wave 1 PTU which consistently blurs large sections of the graphics giving an overall poorer result. Perhaps when we get an update to the PTU they'll remember to remove it this time

 

[Old Duck]

\as for a computer game set in the imaginary world of the Expanse...sold

SPACE ENGINEERS!

Source: https://youtu.be/ncj3b01JuJ8

 

[Surefoot]

And the CI videos where they basically say: "We used procgen, but it looked like butte, so we have to go through everything manually anyway," don't really instill me with trust towards their procedural generation capabilities.

There are telltale signs of procgen like seams in object semi-random patterns. I give them the benefit of the doubt here and covering whole planets like Microtech or Hurston manually would exceed the total budget they have already spent..

 

[Surefoot]

You can't fully handcraft several systems at first person detail.

Definitely if we consider the amount of detail that goes on planet surfaces.. But there is just ONE system at the moment by the way. Not "several"..

That is the reason why nothing like Star Citizen exists.

Hold on lets not get carried here. Other games have done perfect seamless transisiton from space to surface and back. Some with amazing detail too. At the moment there is nothing else in SC that compels me to say "its unlike anything else" since it's barely functional...

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Expanse vs Star Citizen Detail. Pretty cool what they can achieve now. Hopped in the 3.8 Stress Test PTU to see MicroTech. Very impressed except for the meh cloud layer that will be replaced with the Crusader Cloud Tech in the future. It kind of is low resolution and sometimes blocks the view of the ground from high altitude.

I won't revisit all the old places until LIVE is out. However checking some streams out, it seems like a huge upgrade on all areas.

Really excited about the new mining lasers, law system additions, AI ships on planets and the orbital stations. Lot's of QoL additions being added to 3.8. And I noticed QT times were reduced and fuel consumption has been increased. Performance is up for me as well. Arccorp has been optimised because I got 20 more frames there than the usual.

Straight out of the Chris Roberts playbook. Trying to compare SC with other products to prop up the legitimacy of SC. How about letting the game speak for itself... oh, right, don't want to do that. More content in a single crater in SC than the whole of Skyrim, isn't that right?

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Hold on lets not get carried here. Other games have done perfect seamless transisiton from space to surface and back. Some with amazing detail too. At the moment there is nothing else in SC that compels me to say "its unlike anything else" since it's barely functional...

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 in SC. That sort of first person detail is missing from all the other games I have looked at. Tried NMS as well. Doesn't look as crisp or good. It does have a different art style so it's hard to compare visuals there but visually more restricted due to a console release.

Gameplay is another discussion for sure. SC still lacks several professions and mechanics other games have.

Moon comparisons are in too!

Source: https://youtu.be/kHvNekBBO0k

Example of visual detail and feel; https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/eakq23 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/eakq23/i_think_im_fall_in_love_with_microtech/