Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[Agony_Aunt]

In other news

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/rbhha1 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/rbhha1/someone_is_out_here_making_art/

Damn that Brotherhood of Dada!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

* This opinion is based on general professional intuition about distributed systems, examples of how other games do things and absolutely no game development experience whatsoever.

This opinion is based on Chris Roberts' history.

 

[Mole HD]

Woah! Where are you finding that!? I've been holding off on a physical copy, but the original streaming service removed it.

Amazon, Rakuten, Sky...early home release for rental only...but well worth the rental

 

[Ronzer]

On a spaceship that would be a vacuum toilet, so I am assuming really bad things right?

Indeed and could be useful. If ending life is a quick way back to a starting point, sit and flush.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

It appears to me that NMS has a limited set of animal parts, vegetable parts, and mineral parts, which it then uses to populate any particular world. I only played it just shy of 30 hours before deciding it wasn't for me, and another three hours before deciding I didn't like how they implemented VR in their game. In that short amount of time, despite starting on or visiting many different worlds with different conditions, it didn't take all that long before I started identifying particular limbs and bodies, trunks and leaves. They have have been resized and differently colored, but they were definitely the same structures.

Hence the "Potato-head" life comment.

This would've been fine if that had been the only problem with the game. They're a small studio that managed to salvage their game after a disastrous launch that made CP77 and EDO look polished in comparison. They needed to make compromises somewhere. Heck, Empyrion Galactic Survival has hand crafted alien life forms, and I quite enjoy exploring in that game. It's all the other choices that they made that ultimately made NMS unappealing to me.

Creatures and plants use a catalogue of parts to assemble from. These parts make up a high number of possible permutations. Obviously not every part goes with everything which limits the amount of possible variations. That means there is no unlimited number of varieties and depending on how often you visit the same biomes you begin to see "familiar" sets.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Creatures and plants use a catalogue of parts to assemble from. These parts make up a high number of possible permutations. Obviously not every part goes with everything which limits the amount of possible variations. That means there is no unlimited number of varieties and depending on how often you visit the same biomes you begin to see "familiar" sets.

The knee bone is connected to the thigh bone...

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'll never get used to 'Concierge' being a supposedly prestigious title when in French, it's the lowly-paid dude(tte) that lives on the bottom floor apartment and is in charge of maintaining the common floors and addressing the building-related problems of everyone. The concierge is basically the delegated building slave, sent by the owning company to serve the residents. The cliché mental picture of the concierge is that of a lower-class-than-the-real-residents individual mopping the stairs.

Working as intended

Just hope they don't clip through the stairs while mopping them.

 

[Viajero]

Working as intended

Just hope they don't clip through the stairs while mopping them.

I believe the American word for the French concierge is the "super".

 

[Surefoot]

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind you, considering I like Empyrion: Galactic Survival which doesn't even have procedural life, but not when you combine that with in their bad flight model, their mandatory starting tutorial, their extremely frustrating (for me) implementation of VR, and something else I still can't identify which makes that particular survival game unenjoyable for this particular fan of the genre.

Like i said i didnt enjoy the game either, but i do admire the power of procgen, even if the artistic choice of going with excessively saturated coloured worlds is not for everyone, at least it's not just desolate rocky moons. Someone else pointed FDEV went for realism there - it's missing the point: FDEV avoided taking any risk by not doing any atmospheric planet or moon (where they would have to do volumetric clouds, fauna and flora). At least NMS goes the extra mile even if indeed the style is cartoony, the algorithm behind it is amazing and so far unmatched IMHO. They do produce varied enough worlds with different geographies, and yeah there are a limited amount of base types but you cant go full "life simulator" even on current supercomputers so one has to feed the procgen with a reasonable amount of assets. Could they have produced more assets for even more world types ? Could they have improved the procgen even further to create more realistic worlds ? Certainly but at what cost & time, the project was late enough and even delivered while half completed...

And that "reasonable" part is that compromise everyone has to make in order to ship a product, and which is entirely missing from CiG's project. One has to consider what's the core aspect of the product they want to deliver: is it a space game (with spaceships, space trucking & pewpew), or a universe simulation (with simulated geology, erosion, life from DNA, etc.) ?

 

[Surefoot]

Look, its not difficult to put 18 quadrillion star systems in a game,

It is. Dont try and dismiss such a coding feat. That was definitely a new step up for procgen that I hope someone else will build upon.

its a case of making a verity of seed assets and letting the procedural engine generate random systems with those assets, how good and varied the results depends on how many different seed assets you create and how you set up the procedural engine.

Yes indeed, creating more assets and seeding the engine with these additional assets will create more variety - again, time/money vs reality = you have to draw a line at some point.

Its nothing special.

It definitely is. Creating something somewhat coherent as a result is a huge feat.

If this is done or not will be down to CIG choosing to or not to,

They didnt chose not to. They never had the coding skills to do it. The reality proves it as they lack a lot of coding talent to even do the most basic parts of their core engine, which is still completely broken, almost 10 years in (anniversary at the end of the month IIRC).

i prefer they didn't because of player spread, even at the best of times its extremely rare to see another actual player in ED, even somewhere like LHS 20 and the surrounding area, which is where i'm currently based.

Depends on where you go, on how you set up your "verse", as SC is closer to Jumpgate in that regard with limited paths through systems (creating choke points), with 100 core systems you still could have a lot of people in every place, then leaving the pure procgen systems outside of that for exploration gameplay that's been completely killed by CiG decision to go 100% handcrafting.
As for ED, there are some fair criticisms to be leveled against it for its MP aspects, but playing in open I did quite often meet other CMDRs not accounting for the Distant Worlds expedition I was part of - quite often saw a lot of people in the various systems i was based in, and even crossed paths with HarryPotter a dozen or so times (and with him taking pot shots at me lol). Then of course space is vast and empty, that's the reality of it...

I suspect CIG will chose no, because its very much a game for interacting with other players, its a proper MP game.

Note it's note really "massively MP" anymore now that they are restricting heavily the player count per shard. "Proper", with that netcode, is not the word I would use...

 

[Vasious]

You cant when you throw in seamlessly getting out of the ship.

Ah too true I stand corrected

 

[Mole HD]

We got bored with pew tonight so Badger and me decided to head off exploring on foot and do a bit of hand mining in one of the giant caves on Hurston for a change. As well as those giant caves being chock full of hand mineable deposits..I thought it looked kinda nice with all the different lighting and bioluminescence etc..

A small tip when taking screenies inside a giant cave full of crevasses, don't go walking backwards in the dark trying to get a wider angle...Lucky for me, Badger had a med attachment for his multi-tool

Coming out of the cave drugged to the eyeballs and heading back to the ship to find a medbay to fix the spinal injuries after my David Bailey moment, I came across a much safer place to take a nice screenie...Sunset on Hurston. Sometimes, it's just nice to get out of a ship with no intention of pewing everything that moves...even if taking screenshots in a cave ended up being far more hazardous than the pew. 20k aUEC each for the rucksacks full of Hadanite made the spelunking adventure well worthwhile in any case

 

[Viajero]

You cant when you throw in seamlessly getting out of the ship.

Come on Sov, I could understand the goal post moving from Int when he was shown something he maybe didnt like, but I am pretty sure you know better than just drafting behind it.

Goal posts were moved from here (simple discussion about seamlessly going from one planet to another and Elite´s "sequence of entering from orbit to surface"):

its a disguised loadscreen, its very well done, but a loadscreen, sometimes you can catch it, sometimes that sequence of entering from orbit to surface hangs for a bit, i have seen it hang for 30 seconds before it comes out of "cruse mode" there was a delay or problem loading.

to there (discussion swiftly moved now to include exiting the ship once landed):

Right so you're telling me to if i jump in to odyssey right now i can pick any moon, go down to its surface, land there and get out of the ship without using Super Cruise?

I mean you have to give it to Int for the sneaky attempt but it was imo a bit of very poor rhetoric form .

 

[GuruNot]

We got bored with pew tonight so Badger and me decided to head off exploring on foot and do a bit of hand mining in one of the giant caves on Hurston for a change. As well as those giant caves being chock full of hand mineable deposits..I thought it looked kinda nice with all the different lighting and bioluminescence etc..

A small tip when taking screenies inside a giant cave full of crevasses, don't go walking backwards in the dark trying to get a wider angle...Lucky for me, Badger had a med attachment for his multi-tool

Coming out of the cave drugged to the eyeballs and heading back to the ship to find a medbay to fix the spinal injuries after my David Bailey moment, I came across a much safer place to take a nice screenie...Sunset on Hurston. Sometimes, it's just nice to get out of a ship with no intention of pewing everything that moves...even if taking screenshots in a cave ended up being far more hazardous than the pew. 20k aUEC each for the rucksacks full of Hadanite made the spelunking adventure well worthwhile in any case

Ooooh Shiney ........ Medic!!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Server meshing will fix everything!!!

 

[sede]

The average SC fanatic doesn't dive too deep into the wrongful games out there. For them only SC is the only measure there is.

We got bored with pew tonight so Badger and me decided to head off exploring on foot and do a bit of hand mining in one of the giant caves on Hurston for a change. As well as those giant caves being chock full of hand mineable deposits..I thought it looked kinda nice with all the different lighting and bioluminescence etc..

A small tip when taking screenies inside a giant cave full of crevasses, don't go walking backwards in the dark trying to get a wider angle...Lucky for me, Badger had a med attachment for his multi-tool

Coming out of the cave drugged to the eyeballs and heading back to the ship to find a medbay to fix the spinal injuries after my David Bailey moment, I came across a much safer place to take a nice screenie...Sunset on Hurston. Sometimes, it's just nice to get out of a ship with no intention of pewing everything that moves...even if taking screenshots in a cave ended up being far more hazardous than the pew. 20k aUEC each for the rucksacks full of Hadanite made the spelunking adventure well worthwhile in any case

interisting….enjoying sunset on Hurston with spinal injuries

 

[Agony_Aunt]

interisting….enjoying sunset on Hurston with spinal injuries

He'll pay for it later when the drugs wear off!

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Must be Spinal Tap

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Must be Spinal Tap

Fake band, fake game*. Makes sense

* - waits for someone to take this comment seriously and explain how its not fake, how they are playing it and having fun.

 

[Surefoot]

3.16 has reach evocati. Here's a selection of known perennial bugs and interesting ones:

Ships can explode after players exit them

This was seen during the expo by free flyers too - ships spontaneously exploding on the expo floor.

Cannot Repair, Refuel, Restock at LEOs

Should have counted how many years this has been an issue - really it's basic functionality and they never managed to fix that.

Medical bed not healing injury

Well, of course, that would be its primary purpose.

Character's head, mobiGlas, and other equipment are missing after being released from Klescher

Stolen by prison guards

Bounty hunter mission may stall indefinitely if leaving the area before it updates on a slow server

That's been the case since forever - and yes indeed it's a pain. Playing at off hours and getting an empty server is the only way.

EZHabs in Everus Harbor have no atmosphere and will asphyxiate players with no suitd

That's an infinite death loop by the way since you respawn there too.

Bed logging on a moon or planet - ship falls through surface

Again, this one wont be solved in the next decade or so...

Quantum Traveling towards a party member can cause the player to fly into the planet

Shows their mastery of physics, and coordinate systems.

After trying on clothing in a store, all equipped items are permanently deleted from the inventory

Thanks for the new inventory system and perma-loss of items this will be quite infuriating to people who genuinely think they can do anything in this alpha..

BTW for non-coders. No one in any IT industry takes years to fix a bug, maybe apart from Microsoft but they have their own way. Usually the most annoying ones (random occurence = the worst) take maybe a few weeks for one person, at most, and that's for huge complicated systems (like in finance..) where changing a single line could lead to even more catastrophic results.