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Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
- Thread starter Yaffle
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@LittleAnt as someone who actually likes Star Citizen, what do you think of things like "bed sheet deformation" being added? I have no problem with the optics of seeing my imprint in a bed, kinda reminds me of how everyone got so excited about seeing tracks in mud and snow in Tomb Raider, RDR2, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. On the other hand, every little bit of code adds to the code bloat, and I do have a problem with that. It would be one thing if they had a couple of prerendered deformation meshes that are randomly applied to a bed when you get up (very minimal coding involved), but IIRC they are actually applying major physics to this thing you will see for two seconds out of your gameplay. THAT seems kinda silly to me. It would make more sense if this was The Sims rather than a game about flying spaceships (I'd rather see clouds deformed as I fly through them, for example).
Anyway, I'm curious what you think.
Anyway, I'm curious what you think.
Pagefile can be wherever you want as long as it's on a SSD. Dispatching in x disks is absolutely not needed, it comes from some guys having simply a full main disk. So, of course, with no room for pagefile the game crash a lot and when they tried to move their pagefile, they thought wrongfully that a separate disk for pagefile was the solution.
Usually SC need at most 20gb of free ram to run, so someone with 16gb (and around 6gb used by the system) is lacking around 10gb of ram that its system will seek in the pagefile. Without a good pagefile, the alpha run like crap because the game constantly load/disload assets on the virtual memory while you move or someone move toward you.
Pagefile is mandatory, whatever amount of ram you have. Don't know why but some guys on reddit with insane amount of ram (64 or 128gb) had crashes resolved just by activating a system managed pagefile.
With 32gb the alpha shouldn't need to use your pagefile for virtual memory but some says that pagefile is used also for cache and temp storage.
IF I were to reenable the page file, I would want to put it on its own drive anyway, not so much for performance, but rather because constant writing to an SSD is bad for it, and I don't want to clobber either my OS or my Data drives (that's why I turned it off in the first place).
But I'm kinda stubborn, and I'm more likely to say "No thank you" to Star Citizen if it's the only game that requires I go through this trouble. I can play all my other games (including X4 and Space Engineers, both of which eat RAM like cookie monster) with zero stability issues with my swap disabled. In fact, my system is more stable with 32 GB RAM and no swap than it was with 16 GB and swap enabled.
After 10 years and $500M that is simply ludicrous. Sorry.
And, if their take on server meshing is 'never been done before' stuff, is this because it's simply not do'able with the current tech?
Talking about pagefile.sys like it's 1995.
4 things :
- bedsheet deformation is for the solo game SQ42. So bedsheet deformation will be used in some very specific known places with constraint environnement. Also, developping bedsheet deformation is not a guarantee that itwill make it to the release. If it's too taxing, it will be abandonned.
- CR is a very cinematic guy. He wants the wow factor in SQ42 nd you get the wow factor with this sort of tech.
- CIG have a big budget, a lot of devs and no deadline. So assigning 1 or 2 guys to a new tech to see what the outcome could be can be really profitable if the outcome is good.
- CIG is developping tech and tools for it's engine that will be used for SQ42 sequels. Having a sheet deformation tech addd to the value of the engine.
It is not the management part that makes X4 stand out - it is the dynamic world. Ever iteration of X aimed at refining the economy sim and add a dynamic world to it. In X4 they kinda succeeded where older Xs lacked in dynamic environments. You still get scripts and spawns but overall what you look at is a pretty believable world that is full of cogs of causes and effects for you to discover. Or you just blow up stuff. Or watch others blow up stuff.
It's a non optimized alpha. Perhaps at release the pagefile will not be required with 32gb but for now the pagefile is higly recommended. Just try without enabling it if you want. If the game crash, activate the pagefile and launch SC with your task monitor up. After 15 min, you should have your cache shader done and if the disk usage is still to high for you, desinstall and wait 6 or 12 month before trying the alpha again.IF I were to reenable the page file, I would want to put it on its own drive anyway, not so much for performance, but rather because constant writing to an SSD is bad for it, and I don't want to clobber either my OS or my Data drives (that's why I turned it off in the first place).
But I'm kinda stubborn, and I'm more likely to say "No thank you" to Star Citizen if it's the only game that requires I go through this trouble. I can play all my other games (including X4 and Space Engineers, both of which eat RAM like cookie monster) with zero stability issues with my swap disabled. In fact, my system is more stable with 32 GB RAM and no swap than it was with 16 GB and swap enabled.
I still think it's silly, though I do appreciate "Having a sheet deformation tech add to the value of the engine." Clothing physics add quite a lot to games IMO (especially 3rd person games), and I'd love to see more work done with hair physics. My favorite part of Tomb Raider is not the puzzles, definitely not the story, but rather Lara Croft's hair, LOL.
Put Lara Croft in SQ42 and I'm sold!
that does look like fun.
CIG spend a LOT of ressource on the engine and tools part. It's a bet on the future for the company, CR not only want to make a good game with SQ42 but also a good engine for all future projects of the company. My personnal though about it is they want to have an engine as powerful as RAGE developped by Rockstar. So, spending ressource on sheet deformation or cart wheels is empowering the engine (as the 64bit position, Raymarching tech, Cloud/Gaz tech, Planet tech, Building Block, Subsumption tech, gen 12 renderer, Entiity graph, Vulkan, Server meshing, The bridge to Houdini, etc).I still think it's silly, though I do appreciate "Having a sheet deformation tech add to the value of the engine." Clothing physics add quite a lot to games IMO (especially 3rd person games), and I'd love to see more work done with hair physics. My favorite part of Tomb Raider is not the puzzles, definitely not the story, but rather Lara Croft's hair, LOL.
Put Lara Croft in SQ42 and I'm sold!
@Old Duck the hair thing was developed by AMD, they called it TressFX, it was first used in TR. its much more common now.
gpuopen.com
Deformable blankets is softbody physics, or cloth physics, its nothing new, the Cryengine version which "Star Engine?" is based on has softbody / cloth physics, its was used in Crysis 3, remember?
Having said all that for the sort of "fidelity" CIG are looking for, IE something that can be properly weighted and deform on the fly around 3D objects it will need a crap tonne of work doing to it, so while its nothing new its practically being reinvented.
As for its usefulness, i think anything that can be improved upon in game development is a good thing, it may seem like nothing but lots of details like that, just like the hair, it all adds to the experience.
TressFX
The TressFX library is AMD’s hair/fur rendering and simulation technology. TressFX is designed to use the GPU to simulate and render high-quality, realistic hair and fur.
gpuopen.com
Deformable blankets is softbody physics, or cloth physics, its nothing new, the Cryengine version which "Star Engine?" is based on has softbody / cloth physics, its was used in Crysis 3, remember?
Having said all that for the sort of "fidelity" CIG are looking for, IE something that can be properly weighted and deform on the fly around 3D objects it will need a crap tonne of work doing to it, so while its nothing new its practically being reinvented.
As for its usefulness, i think anything that can be improved upon in game development is a good thing, it may seem like nothing but lots of details like that, just like the hair, it all adds to the experience.
You know, out of all the discussion and advice and feedback, it's ironic that the one thing not offered as feedback and has nothing to do with Star Citizen is the thing that's resonating the most with me right now. My brain just keeps coming back to this. To paraphrase your own words, "SC has always been a game I know I’m going to try eventually, but I’ve got to stop installing games I won’t get around to playing for several months. No matter how it may tempting it may be. It’s in my list, but I have to remind myself just how full my current game lineup is to stop pulling the trigger."
Even all the time I've wasted thinking about and discussing Star Citizen, when I should have been building my fleet in X4 instead (no swap file required) is confirmation that your unwitting advice is the best advice for me to follow. So thank you!!
I still think it's silly, though I do appreciate "Having a sheet deformation tech add to the value of the engine." Clothing physics add quite a lot to games IMO (especially 3rd person games), and I'd love to see more work done with hair physics. My favorite part of Tomb Raider is not the puzzles, definitely not the story, but rather Lara Croft's hair, LOL.
Put Lara Croft in SQ42 and I'm sold!
I agree entirely that these little things can add immersion, I mean having convincing hair in a game is now mandatory, if a characters hair looks like plastic it gets laughed at, but I have never, ever seen "putting a team working on flowing hair tech" as part of a roadmap of a game coming up for release, that's not something that belongs in that location. What it says to me is they are more concerned with how things look than how they work, and they want you to know that.
These things, how realistic the hair is, how material reacts to the wind and flows with movement, these are things you notice from watching a game demo's and youtube in game footage, no-one puts that stuff in the actual roadmap, and that's where the issue comes from with this "bedsheet deformation" noise, it just doesn't belong in a roadmap, it's filler to tell players how dedicated they are to fidelity.