Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[varonica]

If you truely believe that transition to 64bit coordinate system in star citizen was made because to sell more ships (see how fast I learned to cope with the rules here!) than this is consistent with the source of your information.

There's no info the 64bit coordinate system in SC has anything to do with the layout of the star systems in the galaxy, but we do know it was introduced to provide a seamless transition in the "one" existing system, and the reason we know that is because that's what they told us it was for!

One of the greatest challenges in getting Star Citizen working in the first place as a massively multiplayer game is due to the nature of its scale. In a typical game, you have dedicated levels or dedicated open worlds of limited size. Star Citizen operates on an entirely different level of magnitude - and to enable this, the developers converted the engine to use 64-bit coordinates to enable solar system-sized game spaces - 536,870,912 times larger than a space based on 32-bit float coordinates.

This of course tells us nothing about other systems apart from the fact that they also will use 64bit coordinates inside the system. If you think you need 64bit coordinate systems to represent the location of 100 star systems I have news for you, and it's not good! It's very likely SC will simply use a loading system based on a wormhole minigame for each solar system and not bother with 3D galactic coordinates because there's very little point. Now I am not saying that's a bad thing for a game with only 100 systems, I mean why bother with a 64bit coordinate system, it's not necessary on that scale, it's just we don't know how they are going to do it.

 

[StuartGT]

So at that speed how long would it take to get to Hutton orbital?

The maximum velocity in Quantum Drive is 0.2c, while the distance from drop-in at Alpha Centauri to Hutton Orbital is 6,784,404 ls (or 0.22ly), so...

33,922,020 seconds
or 565,367 minutes
or 9,423 hours
or 393 days

Assuming this doesn't happen of course:

 

[Intrepid3D]

So 190ls, around the a quarter the distance from a Sol entry point to the Earth, so to fly around a fully scaled solar system with fully scaled planets would be...well all but impossible. One of the problems with the QD in SC is that as far as I can gather it is limited to 20% of the speed of light, so in the real universe it would take approximately 9 hours to travel from the Sun to Saturn. Now if we could actually do that in the real universe that would be wonderful, but no-one in a game is going to wait 9 hours to jump to Saturn, hence the ridiculously small scaled solar system they are using for the game.

Now I don't have a problem with a scaled down solar system and planets, they aren't the only space game to do that, fully scaled systems and planets is, as mentioned before, hard! But this Pyro system is supposed to be much larger and I can't see QD travel working for a lot of players there.

I don't know if that is a hard limit, but the ship is moving in real time, i don't know how the engine will cope with moving much faster than that but i suppose there will be a limit given you can move around inside the ship during QT.
That may have to change just for the duration of moving between star systems.

So at that speed how long would it take to get to Hutton orbital?

No idea, what's the distance?

Edit: @StuartGT figured it out...

 

[varonica]

So at that speed how long would it take to get to Hutton orbital?

Around 2,350 hours.

 

[varonica]

The maximum velocity in Quantum Drive is 0.2c, while the distance from drop-in at Alpha Centauri to Hutton Orbital is 6,784,404 ls (or 0.22ly), so...

33,922,020 seconds
or 565,367 minutes
or 9,423 hours
or 393 days

Assuming this doesn't happen of course:

Huh, got a different answer, I may need to redo my maths, I probably dropped a zero or two!

 

[Surefoot]

XL-1, MSR, about 4 minutes from ARC-L1, about 57,500,000 KM.

XL-1 is a military drive, A-class (=$$$), and extreme gas guzzler.
I recall that CiG talked about limiting access to ship components based on ship class, and MSR is an industrial-class ship so no military drive for it, ultimately. But again, what are CiG promises worth...
Also fuel consumption and fuel tank sizes vary from patch to patch. I wouldnt build any theory on that basis.
The question of travel times, choke points, etc. is a gameplay balance question. In a normal game development process this happens at the very end. So for that one i would let CiG off the hook as they have much more pressing issues (like a completely broken core game engine).

I think System Shock 1 elevator music was the best loading screen music ever.

It was also oddly terrifying given the context

 

[Intrepid3D]

XL-1 is a military drive, A-class (=$$$), and extreme gas guzzler.
I recall that CiG talked about limiting access to ship components based on ship class, and MSR is an industrial-class ship so no military drive for it, ultimately. But again, what are CiG promises worth...
Also fuel consumption and fuel tank sizes vary from patch to patch. I wouldnt build any theory on that basis.
The question of travel times, choke points, etc. is a gameplay balance question. In a normal game development process this happens at the very end. So for that one i would let CiG off the hook as they have much more pressing issues (like a completely broken core game engine).


It was also oddly terrifying given the context

Not bothered about fuel consumption when it comes to the MSR, despite the high consumption of the XL-1, i only used about 5% of my tank for that jump, MSR tanks are huge.

It is expensive but i'm very wealthy in game so i don't care, the drive and refuelling is small change to me

 

[MouthOfSauron]

Literally nobody has said that. Other than you.

What was suggested previously was that travel times scaling with ship worth could obviously be abused in any P2W environment. Which isn't an unreasonable hypothetical.

Lord only knows how you've ended up at the co-ordinates that you have...



The jokes are about fundamental technical issues with SC & SQ42 friendo. And those things continue to exist whether people laugh at my jokes or not

(I do love how you've transformed a 5 year delay into 'somewhat late' though. That's some impressive fast travel. Are you playing offline? )

Well, I adjusted my posting behaviour. I saw with an earlier post that this is exactly what others do.

P2W enviroment which does allow to buy most of the ships with ingame currency? And where the bigger ships need a substantical big group of players? So you consider buying your player crew with real money just to fly your ship you bought with real money? where is the win?

Travel times are a major part of the current design, they are obvisously enforced to be long. If you notice that stanton is a rather small system, this issue will get worse with new systems. Furthermore you should also notice, that many of the small single seaters are tagged with "carrier based", nobody knows what this means when they enforce that (currently not possible, you can not remove the ability to move thru the system from all small ships when you have only 1 system but this could be an option with pyro - which is by design not usable for small ships - roughly 5x larger than stanton with LESS possibilities to refuel. You either have your pocket starfarer or you won't make it, can be tough times for small ships).

Basically: Their idea is, that you need something (a bigger ship) or someone (with that bigger ship) to move your stuff around, especially thru zones like pyro which will make you more than unhappy if you cannot jump directly to a location. The need of moving physicalized objects will be a trigger to make services from other players worthwhile. This is the general idea to get things going and everything that goes in that direction (example: making the transport of small ships painful when done by flying the ship on your own) is welcomed by the game developers. Having your stuff where you have moved it can be a blessing or a curse - just depends on your current position in the game world.

Speaking of delays: even the longest delay is smaller then infinity.
Example: even when it takes 5 years for CIG to get ship interior it will be still faster than E : D where you never get it.

Other facts are:
The common thing on stuff "that players dont want": SC has it. Isn't that weird?
That happens when you remove the money contraint from game dev
(does not make production faster by any means but enables features others wont even discuss).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

So at that speed how long would it take to get to Hutton orbital?

My back of a cig packet calucation puts it at:

7384021435819381000000000000000000000000000 years.

Or about how many years left until SC releases

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It is expensive but i'm very wealthy in game so i don't care, the drive and refuelling is small change to me

Until the next wipe of course

 

[VR Golgot]

Well, I adjusted my posting behaviour. I saw with an earlier post that this is exactly what others do.

Ah, you're posting non-sequitur nonsense on purpose? An interesting defence.

P2W enviroment which does allow to buy most of the ships with ingame currency? And where the bigger ships need a substantical big group of players? So you consider buying your player crew with real money just to fly your ship you bought with real money? where is the win?

Travel times are a major part of the current design, they are obvisously enforced to be long. If you notice that stanton is a rather small system, this issue will get worse with new systems. Furthermore you should also notice, that many of the small single seaters are tagged with "carrier based", nobody knows what this means when they enforce that (currently not possible, you can not remove the ability to move thru the system from all small ships when you have only 1 system but this could be an option with pyro - which is by design not usable for small ships - roughly 5x larger than stanton with LESS possibilities to refuel. You either have your pocket starfarer or you won't make it, can be tough times for small ships).

Basically: Their idea is, that you need something (a bigger ship) or someone (with that bigger ship) to move your stuff around, especially thru zones like pyro which will make you more than unhappy if you cannot jump directly to a location. The need of moving physicalized objects will be a trigger to make services from other players worthwhile. This is the general idea to get things going and everything that goes in that direction (example: making the transport of small ships painful when done by flying the ship on your own) is welcomed by the game developers. Having your stuff where you have moved it can be a blessing or a curse - just depends on your current position in the game world.

A game where starter ships are actively irritating to use, and paying can skip said irritation, is already sitting nicely within P2W categorisations. (One where said irritations increase after you leave the starter area would do so even more ¯\(ツ)/¯ )

No amount of 'What is winning anyway?' sophism changes that good sir.

That happens when you remove the money contraint from game dev
(does not make production faster by any means but enables features other wont even discuss).

As does the crazy scope creep which echoes through this project to this day friendo, and which makes it quite possible that it will never get beyond being an 'Alpha as a Service'.

A festival of features and dysfunction, together hand in hand, dancing into the future. It'll be fun to see where they go

 

[MouthOfSauron]

You make it sound like this is an efficient state of affairs. But clearly there are many downsides to building two such distinct games in this fashion. The 'networking for a single player game' aspect is one obvious inefficiency. But there are others, such as the decision to use unified avatars, etc.

This is effective. GEN12 Renderer and Vulcan are / will be substantical updates. It saves CIG quite some effort having mostly the same game client for both games. Since the local server will be a streaming one it will be quite effectice from technical POV as the normal server death sentence (players spread out max in the verse) is not there, it will save resources of the game client from players perspective as only those part of the verse is loaded where the player is currently playing.

Certainly these conflicting agendas and technical solutions must have contributed to SQ42's many missed deadlines over the years...

Unfortunately nobody knows what the real issues were because CIG refuses to talk about them. Looking at the sequence from which features where implemented I think AI and the GEN12 renderer would be stuff they really want to have for release (maybe the need vulcan too but gen12 alone brings a substantical performance improvement). It took longer than expected, to be honest I care more about PU which is unfortunately delayed by SQ42.

 

[Viajero]

P2W enviroment which does allow to buy most of the ships with ingame currency?

That does not really follow. Having the items available in game through grind does not prevent p2w via instant access of the same item (therefore bypassing said grind). Unless the "grind" required is also close to instantaneous of course.

Speaking of delays: even the longest delay is smaller then infinity.
Example: even when it takes 5 years for CIG to get ship interior it will be still faster than E : D where you never get it.

Are you really comparing a feature in a game that has been pre-sold to the tune of 500 millions and has not been released yet after 10 years, with another game where said feature has not even been confirmed for release, never mind sold, yet? (unless you really want to turn this thread into a LEP one of course).

 

[StuartGT]

Speaking of delays: even the longest delay is smaller then infinity.
Example: even when it takes 5 years for CIG to get ship interior it will be still faster than E : D where you never get it.

Other facts are:
The common thing on stuff "that players dont want": SC has it. Isn't that weird?

It took CIG two years to add ship interiors: development began in 2011, the hangar module ( with a few ships each having ship interiors) was playable in 2013.
So far, it's taken 10+ years for CIG to add many star systems to explore, NPC crew, aliens to fight, persistent MMO servers, Squadron 42, VR support, and many other promised ("definitely coming") features.

The common thing on stuff "that players do want and CIG said SC would have": SC doesn't have it. Isn't that weird?

Welcome (back) to the forums btw I see you created your account early last year, but have only ever posted in this thread.

 

[StuartGT]

Mostly wrong on every thing.

The solution to that is now the icache - a in memory database front end, that holds the data needed and a async backend that writes changed data back to the conventional database.

Servermeshing is their idea to share the workload so that the ONE SERVER for ONE VERSE is gone (which is quite a big blocker when you reach the capacity of that one server). Their idea is to use many small services that are bundled together and do the server stuff. These need to share data primarly via icache (which is already a global instance). With icache the problem shifts away from the "sharing data problem" to the "control of data problem" (having multiple servers running that are needed to virtually drive one player means, that you must control somehow which server has the lead for some particular data scheme (and is doing the updates vs. icache or you soon found yourself in a very complex locking system to avoid concurrent updates). If a different server needs a change, he must communicate it thru the lead server which than can do the update. Having a control layer for every service that exists and you can build your meshing dynamically as you can distribute the workload freely and you still can do updates vs the back end.

iCache was scrapped btw, apparently six months before you posted that comment. Persistent Entity Streaming is now the new tech.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Guys, you know it's pointless to argue about mental diarrhea - why do you still keep trying?

 

[thistle]

Oh lordy, the thread is taking a turn lol.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Unfortunately nobody knows what the real issues were because CIG refuses to talk about them.

Most open game dev ever!!!!

/s

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Oh lordy, the thread is taking a turn lol.

Bring back Mr. Nowak!!!! His predictions were always fun.

 

[KillaALF]

Sometimes I get this nagging suspicion that it is actually CIGs subsumption AI posting here. Their posts are always filled with the same techno babble and at first glance seem coherent enough, but then you finish a paragraph and you suddenly realize that none of it made any sense whatsoever. It is quite the chilling thought that we may see the first glimpses of Judgement Day right here in this thread! They're watching us ...